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As a personal trainer, clients are essential to growing your business. But finding them can be a challenge if you don’t know where to look.
If you’re wondering how to find clients as a personal trainer, here are five tips — from building a website to leveraging word-of-mouth marketing.
Tip #1: Build a Professional Website to Attract Clients
- When Can I Start? Today
- How Impactful is it? High
- How Much Will it Cost? Low-Medium
The first step to getting clients for your personal training business is setting up your website. A professional website is essential for growing your business and helping potential clients find you.
Not only do websites increase your online presence and visibility, but they also act as a central hub of information about your business. When potential clients find your website, they can learn more about you and your services, and decide if they want to book a training session with you.
The key to growing your personal training business and getting clients through your website is to maximize its value. Use every website feature as an opportunity to increase your visibility, build trust and authority, and make it easy for clients to work with you.
Here are a couple of ways to get the most out of your personal training website.
Build Your Website With Durable
Durable’s AI website builder makes it easy to create a professional, optimized site in minutes with customizable templates, built-in SEO, and mobile-friendly designs.
All we ask is for some basic information about your business, and our AI will use that to create a website for you in seconds — from images, content, and coding, we handle everything.
Want to get your personal training website up and running today? Use Durable’s AI Website Builder to generate a professional website in 30 seconds.
Optimize for SEO
When people start their search for a personal trainer, one of the first places they’ll turn to is Google. If you want to increase your website’s visibility in search, then be sure to optimize it with target keywords.
Keyword research is a major part of creating a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Target keywords are phrases and terms that your potential clients use to find you, like “personal trainer near me.”
These keywords should be used across your website — in page titles, body copy, meta descriptions, and blog content — to increase your website’s search ranking.
And the good news? Every Durable website comes with built-in SEO opimization tools that work in the back ground to help your turn up higher in Google's search results.
Want to learn more about SEO for service businesses? Check out our ultimate guide to SEO.
Start a Blog
Creating a blog on your website is another great way to increase your site’s authority and attract clients.
Your blog can be a central resource for anyone looking for personal training advice, wellness tips, and educational content about the personal training industry. Not only does blog content help you educate clients before they book a session with you, but it can also boost your website’s SEO ranking by driving organic website traffic.
You can even use Durable's AI Blog Builder tool to generate and automatically publish blog content on your site.
Use your blog to explain your training methods, educate potential clients on exercise techniques, or showcase client transformations and success stories.
Tip #2: Use Social Media to Build a Community
- When Can I Start? Today
- How Impactful is it? Medium
- How Much Will it Cost? Low
Social media is one of the easiest ways to market your personal training business. It’s free to get started and there are many channels to choose from, including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or LinkedIn, to name a few.
If you want clients to find you on social media, you need to be active on the channels they spend time on. Create content that resonates with your ideal client and represents your personal training style so they get an idea of what to expect when working with you. Having a strong social media presence can help clients find you and encourage them to reach out.
Let’s go over a few ways to use social media to grow your client base.
Share Short-Form Videos
Short-form videos have exploded on social media. In fact, 73% of consumers prefer watching short-form videos to search for products or services.
Whether you’re active on TikTok, Instagram Reels, or YouTube Shorts, take advantage of the power of short-form videos to get the word out about your personal training services.
Create entertaining, educational, and trending content that appeals to your ideal clients. Here are some short-form content ideas:
- Share easy workout routines
- Explain the importance of good form
- Share your equipment recommendations
- Create healthy meal ideas
- Share a behind-the-scenes of your typical day
If you offer on-demand videos, you can also repurpose them into short clips to share on social. Don’t forget to encourage viewers to watch the full video on your website.
For even more social media marketing ideas, take a look at what your favorite fitness influencers are posting on their channels.
Direct Followers to Your Website
Social media is a great way to reach new audiences and engage with them on a consistent basis. But if you want to convert those followers into clients, you need to direct them to your website.
Make it easy for followers to learn more by adding a CTA to your social posts to check out your services or book a training session with you. You can do this by including your website link in your bio, or using a link in bio tool like Linktree to house multiple links.
Discover how you can launch and promote your business with Durable today →
Tip #3: Use Email Marketing to Directly Connect With Clients
- When Can I Start? Today
- How Impactful is it? High
- How Much Will it Cost? Low-Medium
Email marketing continues to be an effective way to grow your business. 53% of small business owners rely on email marketing to find new clients and maintain client retention. This strategy is a direct way to speak to your potential clients and share important resources and information about your business.
Keep in mind that while you can start your email marketing strategy right away, it may take time to build your email list. Unlike social media, newsletters aren’t as easy to discover. You have to actively encourage people to subscribe. Make it easy for people to subscribe by creating a dedicated page or section on your website for people to enter their emails.
Here are a couple of ways to grow your email list and get more clients.
Create a Lead Magnet
The best way to grow your email list is by creating a lead magnet.
A lead magnet is a resource people get in exchange for providing their email. Your lead magnet should provide value and be relevant to your services so potential clients receive useful information.
The best part about having a lead magnet is that after people download it, they’re on your email list, which means you can continue to market your services to them.
Here are some ideas for a lead magnet for a personal training business:
- Guide to meeting your fitness goals
- Workout plans
- Nutrition plan
- Equipment checklist
- Fitness challenges
Below is an example of a lead magnet from personal trainer and wellness coach, Elethia Gay. She offers subscribers a free wellness journal with exercises in exchange for joining her email list.
Start an Email Newsletter
Email newsletters are slightly different from typical email marketing. Rather than directly selling your services to subscribers, a newsletter is an opportunity to showcase your expertise and experience. Thought leadership helps build trust and authority in your industry.
You can use your newsletter to share regular content about personal training, health and wellness, nutrition, and anything else that relates to your business.
Sharing your insights for free increases your “Know, Like, Trust” factor. This is a concept that the more customers know about a brand, the more likely they’ll be to buy from them. While you may not land a client after sending a single newsletter,
Tip #4: Word-of-Mouth Marketing to Build Referrals
- When Can I Start? Today
- How Impactful is it? High
- How Much Will it Cost? Low
People trust recommendations from real people. According to Statista, word-of-mouth marketing (WOM) is the leading source of brand discovery in the US.
WOM marketing is organic awareness of your brand. This can happen when people talk about your business, mention it to their network, and share user-generated content (UGC) on social media. It can also happen via referrals, which is a more direct form of word-of-mouth.
Ask Existing Clients for Referrals
Your clients are the strongest brand advocates for your business. They can speak to your training style, your quality of service, and the results they’ve achieved from working with you. Their testimonials are a great way to increase new client acquisition.
Start by asking your existing clients for positive testimonials that you can display on your website and in marketing materials. You can take it a step further by asking them for referrals.
Client referrals are when your existing clients recommend you and your services to others.
You can even incentivize them by offering discounted services in exchange for referrals. You can also offer free trial sessions to new customers to sweeten the deal.
Connect With Industry Professionals
Another great way to increase your word-of-mouth marketing is by organically growing your network. Your network should include other personal trainers as well as people in adjacent industries, such as nutrition, wellness, and lifestyle coaching.
By connecting with other industry professionals, you can expand your pool of potential clients and get organic recommendations.
You can join a gym to meet other health professionals. There are also online groups or local community organizations where you can meet like-minded professionals.
Tip #5: Paid Advertising for Finding New Clients
- When Can I Start? Today
- How Impactful is it? Medium
- How Much Will it Cost? High
Finally, if you have the budget, consider exploring paid advertising. Paid ads on social media or Google is a direct way to reach your target audience. The key to finding success with paid advertising is having a deep understanding of your client demographics, a strong CTA that converts clicks, and a website where people can go to learn more.
Social Media Paid Ads
Getting discovered organically on social media channels can be a challenge these days. If you want to get your content directly in front of potential clients, paid ads can be a good option.
Pricing for ads varies and depends on how long you run your ad, how targeted your audience is, and where your ad placement is. For example, Meta ads start at $5 per week, but you can easily spend hundreds or thousands depending on your goals. You can start with a small budget and adjust your spending based on the results.
Google Ads
If you want to show up higher in Google search results, then consider paying for Google ads. Google ads are the search results that are labeled “sponsored” at the top of the search results. These ads are pay-per-click, which means the price you pay depends on how many clicks your ad receives.
Many small business owners have found success focusing on local ads. Local ads are ones that target local searches such as “personal trainer near me” and pop up on Google Maps results.
Before you spend money on Google ads, make sure to optimize your Google Business profile. This is a free business listing tool that makes it easy for customers to find you online through Google Search and Google Maps. Not only can you control what information about your business shows up on the profile, but you can also include reviews from customers to help showcase your credibility.
Getting clients for your personal training business can be a challenge when you’re getting started. But following these simple steps can get you there.
Once you have experience with a few clients, leverage that experience by showcasing their results and testimonials on your website to attract more clients.
Use Durable’s AI Website Builder to generate a professional website in 30 seconds — and start attracting clients to personal training business today.
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