Digital Marketing for fitness trainers

despite the fact that you may be short on budget, you have to invest in your digital marketing as a personal fitness trainer. If you believe in yourself you have to make others know you and trust you and then hire you.

fortunately, the Internet, Mobile technology, Social Media and the Location-based search will be there for you to decrease your digital marketing expenditure and increase your digital Marketing ROI.

As a Fitness Trainer, you have two broad options to choose from. DYI or Hire an expert. I assume that you choose the first option and that’s why you’re reading this. So keep reading and expect to have a bird-eye perspective about digital marketing for a fitness trainer when you finish it.

Digital Marketing foundations for a fitness trainer

If you want to start your digital marketing journey you need a Road Map first. People usually afraid of the word Marketing Strategy because it looks complicated but the truth is it’s nothing but a roadmap towards your success in digital marketing. If you want to know what is your digital marketing strategy just answer the following question:

1.who is your ideal client?

the first thing you must know to start drafting your digital marketing strategy is to find out who is your ideal client. you must know your ideal client very well and design a customer persona for him/her. It’s up to you how you wanna segment your potential clients. you may use age, income, and behavior or any other means.

Purple, a marketing consultation firm segment fitness clients into three distinct group:

-Fitness enthusiasts for whom training is a key life choice, alone or in a team

-Team players, who are motivated in part by the social aspects of training

-Reluctant participants, who find it difficult to commit to a fitness programme and are typically lapsed gym members

Another marketing consultation firm used clients intention to segment them into 6 categories:

those who want to make friends

those who want to lose weight

those who want to take shape and improve the look of their body

peak performers who want to be the best

clients who attend a fitness class for health requirements

and sport focus clients

2. What are your smart objectives?

If you wanna succeed you have to know what do you want to achieve. your goal should be SMART.  it should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bounded. choose your objectives wisely and stick to them. you have to assess, revise and rethink your objectives monthly or quarterly.

Remember that your objectives should include a number. you can look at your history, your competitors and your marketing budget to estimate the next cycle’s smart objectives..

3. Why your clients should choose you?

There are lots of other fitness trainers out there. give your potential clients a reason to choose you and not your competitors. build a Unique Selling Proposition for yourself.  Entrepreneur defines USP as: “The factor or consideration presented by a seller as the reason that one product or service is different from and better than that of the competition.”

4. How you on-board your engaged clients?

You have to design and implement a well furbished and smooth funnel for clients to get on-board with you. a well-designed landing page with a clear call to action and simple process to register for your fitness classes will do that for you.

5. Which combination of digital marketing channels do you intend to focus?

There are numerous digital marketing channels out there. You must decide which channels would be the most effective ways to communicate with your potential clients. You can add different channels every day but you have to understand which channels will be used most by your ideal customer persona and concentrate more on it.

6. Which Key metrics show your progress and how you measure it?

Digital marketing is all about numbers and measurement. You have to measure different key metrics to understand how your digital marketing efforts pay off. your landing page unique visitors, number of conversions, number of your Instagram followers, Reach, Impression and engagement rate are just a few to consider.

Digital Marketing tactics for a fitness trainer

After you create your digital marketing foundations you should start the famous “plan, act, measure” cycle and attract new clients to use your services. As I told you before, there are numerous ways to acquire new clients for your fitness trainer business. I’m going to introduce some of the most important tactics you can use:

 

1. Content is the king

you need to build trust to differentiate yourself from your competitors. great high-quality content will do that for you. with eye-catching and visually appealing visual content, you will show your potential clients that you are professional and they can trust you. to do so, you can do it yourself but or pay huge amounts of money to graphic designers. another option is using fitness graphic packs and just customize it as you wish.

2. Produce and publish video

you can create a video to add value to your customers and build trust. use live video platforms for workouts, live testimonials and sharing your life behind the scene with your existing and potential clients. you can share the video on your social media or use them in your blog or send them to your email lists. try to educate your audiences and make them laugh. it’s also a good idea to ask them for an action at the end of your content so you can keep them engaged

3. Cooperate with other local businesses

ِِDo a little research and find out which local businesses deliver services to your potential clients. depend on your customer’s persona, hairdressers, chiropractors, life coaches, juice bars, Gyms, and other businesses may be your partners. Simply go and build connections with them. Send your clients to them and expect to receive their clients.

4. Use email marketing

Email is a great way to create a long lasting relationship with your prospects. you can grow your email list by offering value-added content and ask them to subscribe.

you can send different kinds of emails to your subscriber’s list including newsletters, attractive offers, and event-based promotions. Your potential clients will gradually trust you and finally, they will convert to your client.

5. Pay for new prospects

If you spare a budget for digital advertisement you can always spend it on different ad platforms like google adwords, facebook ads and etc. If you decide to pay for traffic you have to get most of it. design a visually astonishing landing page with a singular Call to action and clear Unique selling proposition and create several experiments to understand if your funnel working smoothly or not.

after that, you can create and run your ad campaigns and calculate CAC (customer acquisition cost) for each ad network.

 

Diversity and complexity of digital marketing tactics you can use are open-ended. Above tactics could be a good starting point for you to start the process. No matter which tactic you’re using, you should stick to the plan-act-measure cycle and see any activity as an experiment.

Instagram Marketing for fitness trainers

Instagram is the home of user engagement, it’s growing one billion users spend on average between 25-30 mins on the platform liking over 4 billion posts per day. If you design an Instagram strategy with your ideal customer’s persona in mind, you can acquire new clients and keep your existing ones engaged.

1. Be a proactive Instagrammer

You must be proactive on Instagram if you intended to get found there. Simply like, comment and follow the accounts and posts in your niche. look for your strong competitors and follow their followers. If you show interest in other’s profiles they will come back to you and this will increase your overall account engagement.

Create a content schedule and plan ahead for your posts. you can send a motivational post on Monday and a training tip on Thursday and a wellness advice on Wednesday. Use your clients success stories to motivate others. There are tons of new and bright ideas out there. Just wander around Instagram and find inspiration for your next post.

2. Use hashtags effectively

Hashtags help new users to find you on Instagram. find most used hashtags in your niche and use them in your posts. Precor did a research and mention 51 hashtags that will help you to achieve your fitness goals. most popular hashtags in fitness are: #FitnessAddict

#GetOutside

#GetStrong

#GirlsWhoLift

#GymLife

#GymTime

#NoPainNoGain

studies show if you use more than 11 hashtags in your posts, engagement rate will increase 70%. tools like Websta.me will help you to find more relevant hashtags.

3. Pick a theme and stick to it

if you want to get into your follower’s minds try to use a defined theme for your brand. whether you’re designing your posts or using a content package you purchased you have to repeat your name and color theme in your posts and stories. This way your prospects will remember you more and this will increase the chance of remembering you when they decide to sign up for a fitness class.

4.Create and share Instagram stories

Instagram stories are posts and videos that disappear after 24 hours. These pieces of content will be shown at the very top of Instagram feed of your followers so you have the chance to get your brand right in front of your followers.

If a follower engages with your story you have the chance to be shown at the very top of their feed. You can build awareness around your training sessions and instruments and facilities you use with “sneak peek” content and “day in the life” style videos. with Instagram stories instead of just telling people, you can show them how awesome your services are.

5.Post and engage

People want to see new stuff so they don’t get bored with you. talk to your clients and understand what they need. there are lots of ideas for Instagram posts. some of them would be:

 -The story behind a gym photo

 -A historical photo of you as a fitness trainer

 -Inspirational quotes

 -Ways of making routine fitness fun

If you haven’t done it yet, ask for a business account so you get access to Insights. try to understand which kinds of posts engage your customers more and increase the weight of that kind.

Also, you should engage your followers more proactively. ask questions related to your posts so they can answer you in comments. ask them to tag a friend who could benefit from the post, do polls or surveys, conduct contests and ask them what they want to know from you.