Home » General » 10 Marketing Ideas for Personal Trainers

10 Marketing Ideas for Personal Trainers

The fitness industry is often one of the first to suffer when there isn’t enough money to pay for all the bills a household may have. If you’re working as a personal trainer, you’ve got to market the value that you can provide someone so they might want to remove a different expense before removing you! If you’re feeling the financial crunch right now, here are a few marketing ideas that can help you increase your community’s awareness of who you are and what you do.

The beginning of this process involves honesty. Be forthright about the services you provide and at what cost. People want to see value in what you’ve got, not some gimmick to rob them of their hard-earned cash. Follow through on that value and you’ll have the ability to make any of these marketing ideas find a level of success.

Top Ways to Market as a Personal Trainer

1. Offer a Guest Pass
Offering your clients a guest pass, even if it’s only one per month, can help you quickly grow your business. There are lots of family and friends that your clients have who would like to try your services, but may not be able to afford it at that given moment or have the time to do it. Have the guests come in, sign the waivers of responsibility, and then give them a good workout in return. You’ll plant a seed that will likely grow into a paying customer in the near future.

2. Provide Incentives
Your customers love to get free stuff, so why not provide them with an incentive that will have them keep coming back? Offer a free workout after so many paid sessions is a useful way to encourage loyalty and it’s also a great way to show your gratefulness for the business. You can also offer additional freebies, like nutritional tips, shopping guides, and even 1-on-1 informational sessions that will help encourage healthy choices and your financial success.

3. Give Families the Chance To Workout Together
There are a lot of parents out there who would workout more, but can’t because they have parental responsibilities that keeps them out of the gym. If you can offer days where you focus only on this family demographic, you might be surprised at home many clients you could sign. From the stay at home parent who just wants to get out to the busy working parent who wants a fun way to spend extra time with their kids, this marketing effort solves problems for both families.

4. Offer a Wellness Incentive
If there’s one thing everyone has in common, it’s that they like to save money. By instituting a wellness program, you can give people the chance to earn discounts on your services, free products, or even cash back if they can achieve certain goals. You can tailor the program to meet specific needs of each client as well, so you can include everything from nutritional changes to weight loss to time at the equipment.

5. Create an Internal Competition
Nothing creates more impact on a client-to-client basis than a little friendly competition, so create your own internal games for your clients to play. You could create your own Biggest Loser competition, have a strength contest, or even have a formula in place that awards points for inches lost. You can coordinate with other businesses to offer rewards, creating networking opportunities for everyone, and your clients will be inspired to work harder because there’s a potential reward to be earned.

6. Group Classes Drive Profitability
Group classes offer people the chance to get involved without the same level of financial commitment. These classes can also be tailored to specific demographics that might not normally come to see a personal trainer. You could offer classes for children, for example, or a seniors class that gets people out in the pool for a low impact workout. The benefit of doing this goes back to the wellness incentives, except this time you can benefit because many health insurance plans will pay for classes like these, costing your clients nothing.

7. Get Out There and Talk With People
They say that cold calling is dead and that people hate telemarketers, but you’re not a telemarketer. You’re just the local personal trainer looking to speak with people about their health needs. You don’t have to sell, but you do need to pound the pavement and get your name or your business out there for people to know what it is that you do.

8. Blog Like Mad Crazy
Today’s world is about information and value and you can provide both to people in the form of a fitness blog. Run it from your primary website [and set one up if you don’t have one yet] and you can offer tons of valuable tips for free. From exercises to stretches to healthy eating habits, there is no end in sight to the amount of valuable tips you can provide. This will help to get your name recognized, you’ll be seen as a fitness expert over time, and that will drive appointments for you on a daily basis.

9. Offer a Sliding Rate Scale
Determine what a fair rate for your services would be and then implement a sliding scale for people who might not be able to afford the full rate. You could call it a scholarship program or some other inviting name that won’t make everyone think someone else is getting a better deal! Make the base rate an amount that you can live with and then build up from there to the full rates you want to charge. This way more people can get fit, you’ll stay busy, and everyone will be happier overall.

10. Give Free Demonstrations
People love to workout, but they don’t like to necessarily pay a personal trainer for help in working out. You can still market to this audience by offering free demonstrations and personalized advice on a limited basis. This will provide people with value, so much so sometimes that they’ll seek you out for paid advice and help when they encounter a problem in the future that cannot be solved.

Personal Trainer Industry Growth

About The Author
Although millions of people visit Brandon's blog each month, his path to success was not easy. Go here to read his incredible story, "From Disabled and $500k in Debt to a Pro Blogger with 5 Million Monthly Visitors." If you want to send Brandon a quick message, then visit his contact page here.