Personal Training is an amazing career that changes lives in a positive way on a daily basis. Many of our young motivated students coming into FTA are excited about the chance to make an impact on clients lives. In most cases the desire to gain knowledge and experience with their training techniques is there BUT this does not assure their success as a trainer.
Yes I know that sounds twisted, but being the most skilled and knowledgable trainer DOES NOT assure your success in the fitness world. It is important to understand that as amazing as your training skills are, they can not be implemented without the right audience and exposure.
There are lots of mom and pop burger joints out there, but they don’t sell as many burgers as McDonald’s. Nothing against the big mac… but lets face it, there are more tasty burgers. So why is the big mac so popular, heck “popular” may not even cover it, it’s a house hold name. The answer is MARKETING! We have been conditioned to know who McDonald’s is and what they carry. This conditioning is through consistent marketing and branding.
As a Fitness Professional it is now up to you to market and brand yourself. This could be your business (Like FTA for example) or could be yourself. Many times trainers will use their name to market and brand. Either way though, you must get people to know what your brand is and what that brand offers.
Here are a few FREE online options to market yourself and your training business.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Talk about your free exposure! In today’s fitness business world social media outlets are huge! Facebook fan pages, google local business, twitter, instagram, etc… Today’s successful personal trainer has become a master of social media. Not only are the best training businesses creating social media outlets but they are planning in time for consistent updating and posting. Developing your skills with each social media page can greatly enhance your ability to market. Hash tags, Shares, Likes, Comments, Link Backs, Tagging, Etc… All of this plays into the amount of traffic you can drive to your company.
Here are a few common social media outlets you can look into adding to your business
- Google Local Business
- Google +
- SnapChat
BLOGGING
Does blogging work? Well if you’re reading this, I guess so. Blogging is another free outlet online to market your business. There are a ton of benefits to blogging, such as creating a relationship with your followers. By writing blogs, it allows you to share with people your knowledge and passion. They can get to know what you know and what you’re all about.
Though blogging is a great way of getting information out there to your followers, one of the even bigger benefits to blogging is SEO! Search engine optimization aka SEO, is a BIG DEAL. When you create a website for your business, the whole idea is to get people to it! Sure you have a sexy website, but does anyone actually go to it?
Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing all have a way of ranking websites when key words are searched. When someone jumps online to look for a local Personal Trainer, you want to be the business that pops up! Blogging is a way to add more content to the internet which convinces the top search engines to rank you higher.
VIDEOS
The last one I want to discuss is videos. Videos are the new age of content creation. There are hundreds of businesses that are quickly becoming lucrative and profitable through video alone. Learning how to create professional looking videos that market yourself and your business can have a huge impact on the amount of traffic you bring in.
Videos can be tricky and time consuming, but in todays world we have so many options. You can literally shoot, edit, and post a video from your phone. Also almost every social media outlet allows for video now and encourages it. With that being say YouTube is still the big dog and should be used. There are however lots of other options to post your videos
Here are a few to check out
- YouTube (best bet for SEO)
- Vine
- SnapChat
- Vemio
SUMMING IT ALL UP
At the end of the day you want to bring business to you, so that you can better help and serve people. As a personal trainer we can impact a persons life on a huge level, but we have to get them in front of us. You will drastically increase your traffic and ability to help people by using some basic free internet outlets.
Keep that passion strong and always keep grinding
C.J. Woodruff, Founder / CEO, The Fitness Trainer Academy Inc.
We Are Now Offering Student Financing
The Fitness Trainer Academy is now offering student financing at all of our Texas locations. If you are looking to kick off your Personal Training career, contact us to find out how you can start school with a 0% financing option.
Call / Text – 713-435-9504