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Internet Marketing for Personal Trainers

08/01/2013 11:24 AM
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 Any Personal Trainer (PT) knows that marketing is an important aspect of building the business.  The core of successful strategy is to clearly build and communicate unique differentiated value. After settling on a strategy on how we are different and better than the competition, the next task is to promote the company into the identified market where you provide most value (Ex. Elders, young people, bodybuilders, etc).   This is an area where one can spend enormous amounts of money with little benefit, but this article will show that a smart PT can gain significant interest by using the appropriate promotion tools.

Let’s start with a list of the major available tools for promotion:

  1. Basic Signage: Business cards, Sign for your car/office, and simple marketing literature  

  2. Outdoor Advertising: Billboards at various locations

  3. Media:  Commercials in various media (Magazines, TV, Radio, Newspaper)  

  4. Directories:  Yellow Pages, chamber of commerce, or internet directories.

  5. Internet Search:  Content and Advertising

  6. Networking:  Physical (Chamber)  and Internet (facebook, linkedin, etc)

For Trainers, the most effective methods for promotion/placements in priority order are:

  1. Referrals: Nothing beats word of mouth

  2. Internet Search:   Given that most consumer research begins on the internet, becoming visible to the internet search engines is exceedingly important.  Spending advertising dollars on search engines can provide some short term results, but a far more effective strategy to blog and be social online. 

  1. Internet Networking:   Gaining clients through networks builds the trust which will encourage a potential client to engage with you.  In this context, health and fitness pages, social media, blogs can be very effective

  1. Internet Directories:   Listing on the appropriate internet directories helps to build a broader presence, and provides other mechanisms for search engines to discover your business. Typically, advertising investments in platforms such as YP.com do not make sense, because these limited search engines are generally not as effective as global search engines such as Google/Bing.

Done correctly, the above four techniques can be incredibly effective, and as shown in the following article (How to start a PT business in under $100. and beat the rest), cost as little as $50/month.  As for the other promotion tools,

  • Media and outdoor promotion can be helpful in building general branding, but can also be very expensive. Unless you are willing large amounts of money, the benefit is limited.

  • All the physical tools (Yellow page book, Chamber networking events, etc..) have limited value and are generally not very efficient.