There are lots of platforms that you can use to market your personal training business, BUT rather than using them all, it’s best to stick to a few and get good at using them. So with that said…

What Are The Best Platforms To Grow Your Personal Training Business?

There are plenty of ways to share your health and fitness content online for example: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Blogging, Pinterest, etc.

Now I’m not going to talk BS and pretend I know what to do on each of the platforms that I’ve just mentioned… because I don’t. The truth is that the one’s that have worked for me, and the one’s I use to market LEP Fitness are: Facebook, Instagram, and My Blog. So these are the platforms that I’m going to talk about…

#1 Fitness Blog 

The LEP Fitness blog has been a tremendous success for me so far! On my website there are over 1000 free articles for people to read. To begin with, I started the blog to help improve website SEO – basically my Google web rankings.

I paid a company to help me improve SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) so that I would rank highly for terms such as ‘personal trainer Sheffield’ and ‘personal training Sheffield’ – meaning that if people searched for these terms I would come in the top 3 on google, and therefore would be more likely to attract customers to my site. 

SEO Tips…

One of the tips the SEO company gave to me… was to add content to my site as regularly as possible, so they advised me to start a blog. I committed to writing at least one blog a week (so 52 a year!) and noticed a big difference to my Google Rankings. I also shared the content that I wrote for my blog on my social media platforms, especially Facebook. 

I saw two main benefits to the blog…

1. It would improve SEO and Google rankings – meaning more potential customers coming to my site. 
2. I could share the content of my blog on social media and build brand awareness and again attract more customers to my site.

These two things alone were enough of an incentive for me to dedicate 2-4 hours of writing content each week. I’ve been doing it since (for around 6 years now) and thanks to my high web rankings I get between 20-30 new enquires per month for personal training (that’s far more people than I can take on!). 

Extra Benefits of SEO…

I also get between 30-50 enquiries per month of people who want to write for my blog, advertise or who want me to write for their website. 

The blog has not only enabled me to attract more customers to my business, but it has also given me an additional revenue stream, where I can make extra money outside of my personal training sessions. Last year for example I made over £10k thanks to the LEP blog – this extra income was a combination of adding guest blogs in exchange for a fee, and also writing for other online fitness companies. 

I would 100% recommend starting a blog, like most things…the results don’t happen overnight but if your persist and are patient they will. Don’t be surprised if you don’t notice very much of an improvement in the first 6 months, it’s all about the long game. Stick at it. I’d say it took me 2 full years before I really started seeing the benefits of blogging. 

#2 Facebook

Now I’ve never done Facebook advertising, because I have no clue what I’m doing! Every time I try to set up an ad…I get lost in the complexity of it all! If you want to start doing Facebook ads then go to a proper agency, I can’t advise on this type of stuff because I’ve never done it. 

That said I have used Facebook consistently for the last 6 years. I use it to share free content. Like I mentioned, I share the content from my blog, but I also share smaller snippets of content: like videos, or before and after pictures, or clients in action, etc. I always aim to post 3x per week (sometimes 5). Again this has enabled me to grow my audience, and to let people know that I’m an expert in my field. 

Give before you receive…

One thing I’ve learned is that if you consistently put out good content people will engage with you and you will attract customers, not always straight away, for example…sometimes you have to put out 10-100 posts before a person will engage with you. But if you build trust with your audience and they like you…they will come when the time is right for them… 

For example a couple of years ago I had one lady who said she’d been following me on Facebook for 3 years, read all my posts, but never ‘liked’ or engaged with any of them (I didn’t know she existed) but then she finally plucked up the courage to get in touch and has been a personal training client of mine for the last 2 years. In monetary terms that’s £7,200 worth of income generated from my regular social media content. 

Pay to Play…

The only problem with Facebook is that you really have to pay to play, it’s been said that only 10% of your audience regularly sees your posts. For example say you have 1,000 ‘Likes’ on your FB page, only around 100 of your fans will see your posts at any one time. That’s a shame but they make sh*t loads of money from advertising – so can you blame them?!!? lol!.

That said I still use Facebook without paying and it’s helped my business grow. Often I will share the posts onto my personal page, this allows me to reach a wider audience without paying. 

Like I said earlier I think Facebook ads can be really effective but I’d be lying to you if I knew what I was talking about. If you want to go this route get some professional advice. 

#3 Instagram 

I’ve only started using Instagram relatively recently (about 6 months ago!) so again I’m far from an expert. That said I have picked up a handful of clients (4) thanks to using the platform. In purely monetary terms that’s approximately £9k worth of clients in just 6 months (not bad hey?). 

Similarly to Facebook I aim to post 3x per week and although some of the content is either the same or similar, I also try and mix it up and keep some pieces separate (to encourage users to keep following me on both platforms). 

I like to use insta for videos, especially free workout tips, and discussing topics to help people with their training. I also use it to show off my personal training studio and clients in action. The other benefit is sharing insta stories, quick snippets of action shots, quotes, free workouts, snippets of my personal life, sharing a bit of humour, etc, etc.

What I like about Instagram is that it’s very easy to connect with people, you can follow pretty much anybody you like and search hashtags, for example I look at things that are happening in Sheffield and engage with people. I look for fitness addicts or people who want to lose weight. I follow people in my local area, local businesses, pages, etc and then try to build a relationship with people who would potentially be interested in my business and what I have to offer. 

It works! 

Again this stuff takes time. Don’t do 10 posts and then give up because nothings happens! It will take time to build your brand, but keep at it. 

Thanks for reading,

Nick 🙂

Would you like more help growing your personal training business?

Would you like to pick up more clients and earn more money?

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