There are over 100,000 health coaches currently working in the United States and over 200,000 personal trainers.
As a business owner, you know that marketing is essential if you want to attract new clients and keep the doors open (or your website running, in the case of internet-based entrepreneurs).
Separating yourself from your competitors isn’t always easy to do, though. If you’re not sure where to begin when it comes to improving your personal training or health coach marketing strategy, keep reading.
Explained below are tips from 10 incredible marketing experts. These great lessons can help personal trainers and certified health and wellness coaches learn how to promote themselves and grow their businesses for years to come.
1. Establish an Online Presence
Every business owner needs an online presence, even if they run their business out of a traditional brick-and-mortar office or clinic. Having a strong online presence will help you to reach more people, provide more value to your existing clients, and stay relevant long-term.
It’s especially important to focus on your business’s online reputation. In other words, it’s not good enough just to have a website. You also need to make sure people are talking about your business in a positive way online.
According to Jonas Sickler, the marketing director for ReputationManagement.com, one of the best marketing steps you can take is to work on building your brand’s reputation.
Encourage your clients to leave reviews on Google or Yelp after working with you. Make sure you’re posting content that bolsters your online reputation, too. For example, you can share verified information from other fitness experts to show that you’re a trustworthy business owner.
2. Use Calls to Action
Whether you’re writing a social media post, an email, or a blog post, it’s imperative that you include a call-to-action at the end. A call-to-action gives the reader a specific job to do after they’ve consumed your content and increases the likelihood that they’ll follow up.
Maybe you can ask them to sign up for your email list so they can learn about new fitness challenges or health coaching opportunities. You could also encourage them to order supplements from your line or make an appointment for a free training session. The possibilities are endless.
David Campbell, Right Inbox’s marketing strategist, says that you should go so far as to include two calls to action—one at the beginning of the content and one at the end. He encourages business owners to use A/B testing with their calls to action, too. This allows them to figure out which format is the most effective and appeals most to their target customers.
3. Be Their Guest
Darren Foong, the growth editor for ReferralCandy.com and Candybar.co, explains that a great way to make connections within your industry and reach more people is to be a guest.
There are lots of ways to do this, from being a guest on a podcast or YouTube channel to guest posting on someone else’s blog.
As a guest, you have an opportunity to talk about your services and get people interested in what you have to offer. You also, by default, get an endorsement from the person who’s hosting you.
By having you on their show, they’re telling their audience that they trust you and stand by your personal training or health coaching methods. As a result, their audience will be more inclined to learn more about you and even become a client.
4. Educate Your Audience
All day every day, people are bombarded with social media posts, emails, videos, and blog posts.
According to Jimmy Rodriguez, the COO of 3dcart, if you want your marketing content to stand out to your target audience, find a way to educate them and provide them with value. When they come to know you as a source they can trust for reliable and useful information, they’re going to be more likely to turn to you in the future when they need help with personal training or health coaching.
The great thing about educational marketing content, too, is that it’s evergreen. You can reshare it again and again because it’ll always be relevant.
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5. Follow the 90/10 Rule
The 90/10 rule states that you should spend 90 percent of your time on marketing efforts that you know are effective and appeal to your target audience. You can spend the remaining 10 percent experimenting and trying new things.
Andrew Pickering and Pete Gartland, co-founders of Andrew and Pete, swear by this approach. It makes sense, too. If you’re always jumping from one thing to the next, you’re going to end up overexerting yourself.
This, in turn, will result in you doing a bunch of things kind of well and not excelling at anything. That’s not a great strategy if you want your personal training or health coaching business to stand out online.
6. Focus on Quality Over Quantity
According to marketing and speaking coach Bas van den Beld, it’s better for business owners to focus on the quality of quantity when it comes to marketing and content creation.
It’s important to be consistent and share new information and advertisements on a regular basis. At the same time, though, it’s also important to make sure you’re putting out relevant, useful information instead of posting just for the sake of posting.
Your audience will be able to tell if you’re doing the latter and will be less inclined to take notice when you actually do post something of a higher quality.
7. Use Social Media to Connect
Make sure you’re using social media to make true connections with your audience. Julia Bramble, the social media strategist for BrambleBuzz, emphasizes the importance of treating the people who follow you or try to engage with you on social media like friends rather than just potential customers.
Doing this helps you to forge deeper relationships and build a sense of trust with your audience. As a result, they’ll be more interested in working with you in the future because they’ll remember that you took the time to answer their questions or delivered a genuine response to their comment.
8. Audit and Refresh Your Content
Ian Cleary, a tech marketer and marketing consultant for RazorSocial, also encourages entrepreneurs to get more out of their existing content. He encourages regular content audits so business owners can get rid of blog posts and other forms of content that aren’t performing well and providing value to their audiences.
It’s a good idea to re-release content that has performed well in the past, too. You can use it to reach new people and keep your website relevant in the eyes of the search engine algorithms.
9. Tell Stories
No, we don’t mean make up tall tales to promote your business. We’re talking about telling stories that resonate with your audience and inspire them to take action toward living healthier and fitter lives.
Evan Carmichael, a tech entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and business guru, often speaks of the importance of telling compelling stories and, specifically, telling your own story.
People are going to be much more inclined to work with you and utilize your personal training or health coaching services if they feel connected to you on a more personal level.
Share your story of how you finally lost the weight or transformed your health by making over your diet. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable and share the details of what has led you to where you are now.
10. Update Your Approach to Email
Email marketing is a great way to stay in touch with your existing clients, as well as those who have shown an interest in your personal training or health coaching services in the past. However, if you want to get people to actually open and read your emails, you need to adjust the way you write them.
Dennis Yu, CEO of the digital marketing company Blitz Metrics, recommends writing your emails like social media posts.
People scroll through emails very quickly, especially since the majority of them get opened on smartphones and other mobile devices. If you want people to retain the information you’re providing, it needs to be in bite-size chunks that they can easily see and digest.
This is where writing your emails like tweets or Facebook status updates can come in handy. Keep your paragraphs short and sweet. It might be a bit of an adjustment to do this at first, but you’ll be glad you did it when your open rates and response rates start to improve.
Start Marketing Your Business Today
As you can see, there are lots of steps personal trainers and health coaches can take to market their businesses and share their talents with a broader range of clients.
It’s normal to feel overwhelmed when it comes to promoting yourself and your personal training, health coaching, or nutrition business. If you remember these lessons, though, you’ll feel less daunted and will have an easier time putting together an effective marketing strategy.
Become a health coach and make a difference in the lives of others by completing AFPA’s accredited health coach certification program.
Which one of these fitness business marketing lessons are you going to implement first? Comment below and let us know!
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