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The days of personal trainers relying solely on meeting clients in person are over. Online classes are more popular than ever after they have proven to be a successful way to increase class sizes with hybrid teaching, and grow customer bases by reaching clients further afield. Online personal training has become a very lucrative business but it can be tricky to find clients when the net is larger. But there are plenty of reasons to keep training clients online.
Some of your clients may still feel more comfortable attending online classes. There are also some who may prefer them due to busy schedules limiting the amount of time they have to travel to and from classes.
Focusing on getting more online personal training clients also means extending your reach when trying to improve attendance and increasing your customer base. This guide will show you some simple strategies you can implement to get more online personal training clients.
Advertise locally in your community
Your local community is perfect for some old-school marketing tactics. Advertising with local businesses is an easy way to reach people in the area. Offer their customers a small promotional deal for signing up for their first classes. It broadens the potential clientele you'll receive interest from and it shows local spirit. Advertising with local businesses also opens the door for future partnerships.
Invest in your website and online visibility
Your website is one of your most important online marketing tools. As an online personal trainer, your website is set to become the hub of your interactions with your clients and members. Your website works as your booking page, but it's also how you get your business seen on Google.
You need a number of pages so that you can add keywords to help with your SEO strategy. SEO (search engine optimisation) is how you tell Google you want to be noticed. The better your SEO, the higher up the search results pages (SERPs) you'll be. This is why having a full website with a number of pages is crucial.
Your website is also a place for you to distribute your creative content to share with clients, members, and potential customers. Your current members and your potential clients want to see an attractive website that makes your business stand out from other online PTs.
Create a content marketing strategy
Creative content is a really important part of your marketing strategy. A blog for your website is a good starting point and you only need to create a new post once a week or every other week to keep your website fresh and up to date. Similarly, your social media accounts are a vital way of keeping your current crop of clients engaged, as well as reaching out to potential clients and members.
Become a part-time blogger
Writing blogs and articles for your website is a simple way of incorporating the keywords you need into your website. Google will see these keywords and it helps to get your website noticed and ranked higher in the search results pages. Your blog is more than an SEO tool though.
Your posts should be relevant to you and your business so you can use them to keep your clients engaged with their own fitness goals. Posts about fitness trends, additional workouts, and even nutrition will be helpful for your clients.
A post about what led you to become a personal trainer or fitness instructor is a way for clients to relate and see that everyone has to start from somewhere. Remind them you weren't born a fitness guru either!
Use social media to create engaging content
Utilising your social media platforms is invaluable to your online marketing strategy. Facebook is useful in a number of ways. Creating a Facebook group for your members helps you to engage with them, and for them to engage with each other.
It also gives you a place to share your blogs and articles, and Google likes that when ranking websites. Facebook ads is also a great feature for promoting your business. Cheap and easy to use, Facebook ads allow you to target your preferred demographic while not blowing through your marketing budget.
Instagram and Twitter play their part by using pertinent hashtags to draw interest to your posts. Creating posts that show happy clients and short videos demonstrating your classes gives potential clients an insight into your training style.
Linkedin is a great place to share your blogs, customer testimonials, and any professional goals you hit. It's also a great way to engage with other businesses in the fitness industry and gradually build up a network of people you could potentially collaborate with.
Keep reading to find out why you should create a good working relationship with other local businesses
Collaborate with other businesses similar to you
Reaching out to businesses that work in similar areas of the health and fitness industry can be very productive. The types of businesses you could collaborate with include sports physios and nutritionists. They will have a lot of clients and former clients who may be looking to get back into fitness or need guidance reaching their goals. The deal works both ways.
If you have clients who have very specific dietary needs or they have injury concerns, refer them to the nutritionist and sports physio you've made contact with. You can even take it a step further and create a reciprocal referral program. Whoever you're collaborating with, create a mutual referral program by agreeing on a discount for clients you refer to each other.
Build a great online content library for members to use
On-demand content is the perfect way of complementing both your online classes and in-person sessions. Making it clear to your clients that by buying a full membership they will have access to extra online content that non-members don't is a great way to retain clients as well as entice new customers to buy a membership.
Your on-demand content is ideal for your members to stay on track with their fitness goals outside of class time. But that's not the only major perk to on-demand content. If for whatever reason a client is unable to attend a class or a session, they can make up the class at a later date. It keeps them engaged with their aims and allows them the freedom to choose when and where they do a workout.
Use personal training software to manage clients
Keeping track of all your admin can make it feel like your business has taken control of you rather than you taking control of your business. Investing in the right personal training software puts you back in charge of your admin and aids your engagement with your clients.
Personal training software ensures that everything you need, such as waivers, reports, and customer information are all kept in one easy to use place. It also makes your schedule and availability clear for your clients to easily sign up for your online classes.
Create memberships that allow you to keep track of your payments so you don't have to chase clients up. Set clear cancellation and no-show policies so that a missed class doesn't mean lost income for you. Host your online classes by connecting your Zoom account to your software.
Through integrations with services such as Mailchimp, emails can be set up so your clients will automatically be sent the link to the class so you don't have to spend time sending individual emails.
Be consistent with your online classes
Consistency is key for anyone chasing their fitness goals. Having a plan and sticking to it helps turn working out from a resolution into a healthy habit that clients look forward to. It's important that just because you're launching an online personal training business that you don't change the way you schedule your classes or structure your courses. Keeping your members focused by maintaining your reliability as their fitness instructor is a big reason they will keep clicking the "Enter Zoom call" button every week.
Build loyalty with a loyalty scheme for returning members
Every now and again, clients and members decide not to continue with their memberships. It could be as simple as their schedules becoming busier or taking time out over Christmas or the summer with the intention of returning in the New Year or during the September rush. Those are also the times of year to send an email to encourage them back to your classes. By offering a promotion to your former clients when they re-sign up is the perfect way to show them that you value them and want to help them rediscover their fitness goals.
Find out why nutritional support is as important as training sessions for your clients and members
Provide nutritional support
Nutrition plays a big role in fitness. For some of your clients, learning more about nutrition could prove important in achieving their goals. For weight loss or increasing muscle, for example, good nutrition is all part of the process. Being able to guide your clients through their dietary needs adds another string to your bow that sets you apart from the competition.
To sum up
Getting more clients as an online personal trainer won't happen overnight. But with a solid marketing strategy, knowing who your target demographic is and giving yourself a unique selling proposition (USP) to stand out above the rest will all help you increase your client base. Reaching out to similar businesses to collaborate and create a mutual referral program builds a network within your local community and benefits all parties. Investing in the right management software will help to organise all of your processes from initial admin to scheduling and customer engagement so that you can focus on successfully leading online classes.
Request a Demo
To find out how management software can help your online personal training business, schedule a call and enjoy a no-obligation free trial with TeamUp.
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