The personal training business is a booming industry, since many people nowadays are in tune to their health and wellness.

That means that personal trainers are highly sought after and if you know how to get personal training clients easily, then you may be one of those personal trainers who have no problem in filling their calendars.

If however you’re currently struggling to understand how to get personal training clients to fill your business, then this post was written especially for you.

I am going to break down several ways in which you can get personal training clients. You will also get a detailed case study of how one personal trainer was able to close his gym, which kept him in debt and go on to generate over $250,000 in sales by switching to one system.

There is a method to getting tons of personal training clients and you don’t have to be anyone special because I am going to show you how to do it, so you can get started right away.

Here’s what you will learn in this blog post:

• How to get personal training clients online
• How do I promote my personal training business
• How do you generate leads for personal training
• How do personal trainers get clients fast – a case study
• How to use Clickfunnels to sell online fitness programs

How to get personal training clients online

Online businesses are fast becoming the easiest business models, that you can start, to make money online.

That’s because, we are in the digital age where there are so many platforms that allow people to get online and get information or products easily.

Not to mention the convenience of getting those products.

Therefore it is necessary, as the personal trainer, to keep up with the times.

As Thomas Jefferson said “… with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times”.

There are many ways to get personal training clients online. I will share with you a few of the most popular and effective ways, so you can be inspired to use these methods to get your first personal training client yourself; if you do not already have one.

Let’s get started.

1. Build a Website

As a personal trainer, the most powerful way to build an online presence and attract clients to you, is with the use of a website.

The most professional personal trainers, who attract and retain a large number of loyal clients and do so quickly and sometimes passively, do it with a personal branded website.

Why should you have a website? Because you will be able to set yourself as the authority in fitness and your prospects will get to know a little more about you, before they actually meet with you.

This is one of the best tools that you can use, to sell yourself and do so, without any real human intervention. Your website will do most of the talking for you, until the prospect decides to reach out for more information.

You can build any website, but if you want to build a successful online presence with a website as a personal trainer, that draws in prospects, there are certain functions that your website must have.

Firstly, to start building your website, check out my easy to follow tutorial, which will guide you, in a step-by-step fashion and teach you how to get your first website up and running quickly.

After you have built your website, consider adding the following items to your website’s navigation menu, to make it easy for visitors to navigate and to give the prospect exactly what they are looking for:

Work with me

Here, you will tell your website visitor how they can work with you. You may list your requirements for accepting new clients here and also speak about any of your personal training services.

About 

This is where you will speak about who you are, what specialist skills you have, your history as a personal trainer, any achievements you have and anything else you want your prospect to know.

It is a good idea, to demonstrate how you can help your prospect, should they eventually become your client and you can do this by talking about, what has worked for your other clients in the past and why you feel it will work for them.

Testimonials

As you may know, having other people vouch for your expertise, is a huge opportunity to get the attention of prospects and build their trust in you.

If people have already used your services and it is evidenced on your website, through testimonials, then this is a contributing factor that can lead to more people being interested in using your services too.

When creating the testimonial section, I recommend that you use an image of your client in this section, as images tend to do better in converting prospects, since the testimonial can be claimed by a face.

If you do not have your client’s permission to use their image, then this is not a problem. Simply use their testimony as it is, although you should note that this can reduce conversions from web visitor to prospect.

Another way to improve conversions in the testimonial section, is to use real video testimonials. Using real videos of your clients as they give their testimonial, is a convincing and compelling way, to make someone attach credibility to your name.

If you do not yet have clients and are just starting out, do not worry. It simply means you will have to sell yourself as best as you can, to attract your ideal prospect.

By having a beautifully-designed website is the first step to selling yourself.

Services

In your services section, you should list what personal training services you can provide and their prices. This makes it easy for a prospect to become familiar with your services and price and helps them take that step of reaching out to you, if they consider your price point reasonable.

Contact Me

This is one of the most important categories you should have on your website. Some websites have contact forms embedded on a website for this purpose, but I recommend you include an email address, physical address and contact number if you have one.

Blog

If you want new website visitors, I strongly recommend having a blog. What is a blog? It is a section of your website where you regularly provide updated content that is informational (just like this one that you’re reading).

This is called a blog post.

As a personal trainer, your blog post should be used as a way of showing your expertise. You can use a blog to write helpful content that is useful for the viewer. For example, you may want to post challenges, recipes or health and wellness tips.

The reason why a blog is crucial to you finding new visitors, is because, if written well, can play a part in your website being found in the search engines.

If your website is found in the search engines, for keywords or key phrases that people are typing into Google or Bing, then you will continue to expose your name to new prospects, which will grow your audience.

Haven’t yet started a website or blog for your personal training business?

I have a free blog course which will guide you through the steps of starting one and getting you on the right track.

In this course, you will learn:

• How to start a blog
• How to get people to find your blog
• What to blog about
• The best ways to monetise your blog

2. Have A Lead Magnet To Attract Subscribers

Once you have set up a website, one other way to attract your ideal clients, is to first build a relationship with them.

Even though people would visit your website, you must take additional steps to convert them into subscribers or leads.

A subscriber or lead is likely to be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars to your business once they have converted to a client.

In order to convert them to a client, you must attract them as a subscriber or lead first.

How can you do this? One way to do this, from your website, you can add a subscriber opt in box, otherwise known as a lead capture form.

This form, will be a means to collecting your prospect’s details (typically their name and email address), in exchange for your lead magnet.

A lead magnet, is any free offer that you give away, such as a PDF report, a video training series or worksheet, for the main purpose of gathering your prospect’s contact details. 

So as a personal trainer, perhaps you can give away a free fitness challenge, a free PDF report on the types of food to eat to burn muscle fat, something like that.

Click here to learn how to create your first lead magnet and the best format for your lead magnet.

Once you have received your prospect’s contact details, you will be able to communicate with them through email, SMS or messaging services, like chat bots, so you can start building a relationship with them.

Think of this, as having a conversation with your ideal clients, since we know that the road to creating client relationships, starts with conversations.

When you build a relationship, you are basically offering content about you as a brand, providing helpful information and even selling yourself.

To see how to do this, click here to read how to warm up a cold lead for sales.

3. Build A Social Media Presence

Social media is a huge platform where your ideal audience may be hanging out.

You want to show up in places, where your target audience may be present the most and these days, this is on social media sites like Facebook or Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and even Pinterest.

You do not need to have elaborate tools to show up here. You simply need to have engaging, helpful and interesting content, that gets people to recognise you.

For example, if you decide that you want to use YouTube, to show up to and attract your ideal audience, you can create simple videos talking about a number of various topics that you feel would matter to people who you want to attract.

For example, some topics that you may want to focus on, can include:

• Your own personal journey to losing weight and why you want to help other people
• Your own client’s success stories, after they used your services
• Health and fitness tips that make people healthier or lose weight

For Facebook, you can use posts or live video to share your content.

For Twitter, because of the limited number of text you can use, use tweets that has a link back to another platform with your content.

For Pinterest, share pins that are connected to helpful blog posts (this is where your website comes in).

When you prepare content for these platforms, it is important that you take it seriously and you remain consistent.

Also, one important tip that you should remember to include in these videos and posts, is a call to action at the end of your content, inviting your viewers to join whatever program you have for them.

Remember to also post a link to your website, which if you followed my advice above, has a lead magnet with a sweet giveaway, so you can acquire leads to follow up with.

4. Take Part In Online Forums or Groups

As a personal trainer, you may already be a part of a forum where you have answered other people’s questions and have been helpful.

Maybe you are seen as the go-to person for fitness. If that is the case, these places are where you can polish up your profile to attract your ideal clients.

When you are seen as an authority, people pay attention and may secretly have you on their radar, checking out what you do.

If you are a member of these online forums or groups and never thought to create an attractive profile, now is the time.

Here are some pieces of information to help you build an appealing personal trainer profile:

• Include your real name
• Include a way for visitors to contact you, whether that is a website link, a social media profile link or an email address
• Make it absolutely clear, what your mission statement is – what is it that you do and which group of people do you serve? For example “I help women over 50 become more healthy and fit as they age”

If you are not part of an online forum or group, then you can start now. However I do not recommend joining a group with the mere purpose of selling your services.

You will definitely sell out yourself.

Instead, join a group and in the first month or two, only provide helpful advice.

Answer questions and be approachable so people can get to know you and then like you.

Once you start showing up in these forums or groups consistently, people will recognise you and start checking you out.  

How do I promote my personal training business

If you have built a website or blog or have created video material which gives more information about your brand, then it is time to promote your personal training business.

You are not going to get any new clients or even recognition, if you do not promote your personal training business.

When you promote your personal training business, you are simply letting other people know that you exist and that you are open for business.

Here are a few ways, free and paid, that you can promote your personal training business:

1. Social media advertising

The best way to reach a massive number of people in a short space of time, is through advertising.

Whilst there are places like Craigslist, classified ad websites or online marketplaces, you want your ads to show up in places that is likely to make a huge impact and give you a return on your investment.

The best places you can confidently spend your money and get a great return on your investment is with:

• Facebook or Instagram
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Pinterest

If you intend to use any of these platforms, it is a good idea to learn how they work before you spend any money on ads.

A good place to start for Facebook Ads is with the Social Traffic Blueprint course by Jon Penberthy and Jubril Agoro. This course helped me increase my revenue for my business by ten times and helps me acquire thousands of leads every month.

2. Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing can be very effective, if you have a website and lead magnet and you target keywords or keyphrases that your ideal prospects may be searching for.

Search engines, give you the opportunity to tap into a huge market of people who search Google, Bing or other search engines like Pinterest, for answers to their questions.

If you can answer that question properly and thoroughly or you can provide some solution to their problem, you have a higher chance at acquiring that visitor and converting them to a lead.

Once that person becomes a lead, you can place them in your email sequence to work on converting them to a paying client.

If you do not have an email list and you want to learn how to start one from scratch, then I recommend that you start with my blog post, How to Start An Email List From Scratch. 

If you do not want to use either social media advertising or search engine marketing, you can use the following free methods however, it is important for you to understand, that it may take longer for you to see results.

3. Search engine optimisation

When you use search engine optimisation to promote your personal training business, you are simply improving your website content, by using different on-page and off-page strategies, to improve your chances of being found in the search engines.

If this sounds too technical for you, but you are interested in learning how to use SEO to improve your website’s discoverability and especially if you want to get free visitors to your website in the long term, then I recommend the Complete SEO Training Masterclass for beginners to help you get started with SEO.

Search engine optimisation is more of a long term strategy to getting significant results on your website, so if you want to build a clientele now, then I would recommend that you use paid methods which I discussed above.

4. Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing has become a very hot topic in recent times, especially with the growth of social media personalities.

There are many social media account holders or even bloggers, vloggers or podcasters, who have a huge audience that you can rent, to expose your brand to.

For example, one creative way to do this and which is a win-win for most influencers, is the provision of content in exchange for an appearance to that influencer’s audience.

For example, many podcasters, vloggers or bloggers are always looking for new content. You can help provide that content in the form of a blog post, an interview or video material.

This way, you have pretty much done all the work for them – you have created the content – and all you need to do is deliver the content and show up.

Influencers love this. They are content creators and you are making their work easier since you are helping them fill their content calendars – and as a blogger, this is not an easy or interesting thing to do.

To get started with this, I recommend that you do a quick Google search of fitness, health or wellness blogs that have a high volume traffic, then find the contact details for the author and pitch your request to them.

Do the same for podcasters and vloggers.

Here’s a simple hack that you can use, to find relevant blogs and podcasts using Google.

Use the keyphrase “blog inurl:”keyword” to find relevant blogs.

Use the keyphrase podcast inurl:”keyword” to find relevant podcasts.

Take a note of each blog or podcast owner, their contact details, then work on contacting each of them and pitching your idea.

Just one opportunity on a highly-trafficked podcast or blog can increase your following and open up so many opportunities to meet new prospects.

How do you generate leads for personal training

A lead is someone who has raised their hand and expressed an interest in what you have to offer.

So whilst you may be present with a website, on social media or acquire visitors from borrowed platforms such as podcasts, bloggers and vloggers, you must make it your focus to always convert your audience into leads.

There are two ways you can do this, manually or automatically.

1. Manual lead generation

This is where you get leads without the use of any tool or software to acquire and store them.

To get leads you may buy them from a lead generation marketer, where you now have to contact those people and introduce yourself whether by phone, email or post.

You may get leads through a referral or word of mouth. You must still follow up to convert these type of leads by phone, email or post.

You may get leads from your own content, where people comment on that content expressing an interest in working with you or simply engaging with you.

If someone interacts with your content in this way, it’s a good idea to reach out to them personally, whether by messenger, if they are part of your social circle or by email, if they have left an email address and communicate with them to see if they have any need for your service.

2. Automated lead generation

This type of lead generation is my favourite since it does not require a lot of effort on your part and most of the connection is via inbound means.

That is to say, people that are interested in working with you, actually reach out to you and ask for more information and the process of sharing that information with them, is done automatically.

Automated lead generation requires a system, set up with various tools which include:

• A Domain
• Lead capture page
• Email autoresponder or messenger chatbot
• Lead magnet  

The great thing about this method, is that once you have set it up, you can forget about it and let it do its job.

Here is how this works in practice.

Domain

Your domain is what will identify your website on the internet. When choosing your domain, you may wish to use a niche domain that is related to fitness or health and wellness.

For example your domain could be healthcoaching101.com or fitnesscoaching101.com

Your domain could also be personally branded, such as your name. For example dawnmarienesbitt.com or workwithdawnmarie.com.

Lead capture page

Once you have your domain you need to connect it to a website. Your website is what will have your lead capture page on it.

Email autoresponder or messenger bot

Your email autoresponder will be connected to your lead capture page and will store pre-written emails that tells your leads more about your brand, your services and provide some education on personal training.

This is where your leads get to know more about you and why they should work with you.

Lead magnet

Finally, your lead magnet, is the hook that will attract people to your lead capture page.

Once everything comes together, you can then share your domain URL with the world through the various channels where you distribute your content, such as YouTube, Facebook or Instagram.

Always remember that when you share your URL, include a call to action in your content, so you can tell people what to do, and how they can work with you.

How do personal trainers get clients fast – A case study

Personal trainers, who understand online marketing, are using various strategies to transition from being a personal trainer at the gym, to an online personal trainer.

The benefit of having an online personal training business is that it:

• Reduces your overhead costs
• Expands your reach locally, nationally and even internationally
• You can grow your income exponentially
• You can be location-independent and still run your personal training business
• The price of your product can be more competitive since you have reduced your overhead costs.

This is exactly how Nick Garcia, a personal trainer, who opened his first gym in 2014, was able to make over $250,000 a year by transitioning his business online.

He eventually closed his gym in 2016.

How did he do it?

Nick used Clickfunnels, an online software tool that helps you create specialist specialist sales funnels to build websites, generate leads and communicate with your most targeted prospects via email, to convert them into paying clients.

Nick first started an online bootcamp from his website Upgraded Health, where he generated over 100 members, paying $99/month for a monthly membership and every 3 weeks, he ran a 6-week fat loss challenge that generated him an additional $3000 – $6000 in revenue.

With Clickfunnels, Nick now brings in over $10,000 per month and in one month in 2018, he made $24,000 selling digital products in the online fitness and weight loss space.

If you want to learn how to use Clickfunnels to build your own personal training funnels or even a supplement funnel and get clients really fast, sign up for the free webinar that Nick used to get started. 

How to use Clickfunnels to sell online fitness programs

One way that Nick has been able to make over $250,000 per year, was by selling online fitness programs.

Can you package what you know into an ebook or video series?

If yes, you can create these products, known as digital products, set up a sales page to sell these products, then create an automated email autoresponder to deliver the product as promised.

Even if you do not know how to do this, Clickfunnels trains you and helps you to create this entire system which you can then make functionable, by posting your Clickfunnels website link on your social media platforms, your personal branded website or blog or even send it to people that you speak to daily.

When you sell your digital fitness programs online, you can even generate sales when you are away from your computer, when you are out and about or even whilst sleeping.

That is the magic of using automated systems.

If you want to copy the sales funnel that Nick personally used to go from personal trainer at the gym to online personal trainer click here to join a free webinar that teaches you how to do so.

Wrapping Up

Getting personal training clients, does not have to be difficult, if you have the correct systems and tools in place.

I hope that this blog post, opens up your eyes, to give you ideas on the current ways to build your personal training business, get personal training clients and establish yourself as a reputable brand.

Branding and acquiring clients do take time, but once you remain consistent and focused on the goal, it can definitely be done.

With the help of Clickfunnels you can accelerate your business as well.

If you watched the webinar, let me know what you think and whether you are on your way to setting up your first personal training funnel.

Cheers