If you’re questioning ‘how to get online personal training clients’, it’s safe to assume you’re looking to grow your business in a significant way.
There are a number of ways in which you can learn how to find online personal training clients, most of which we will cover within this article.
But first, one way to attract clients is to develop a specialist area of interest, which can be developed through Level 4 Fitness Courses, most notably our Sports Nutrition Course. Help clients see results much faster by combining personal training with nutrition advice.
Download our free prospectus to explore the full range of courses we offer and what exactly you can offer clients.
Define Your Target Audience For Your Online Personal Training Business
Defining your target audience is hugely important, but can present an early hurdle for new PTs. Fortunately, there’s just two simple steps you need to take to outline who you want to reach with your personal training.
Outline Who You Want To Target
Essentially, a target demographic gives your marketing strategy a sense of direction, and can further influence just about every aspect of your personal training business plan.
What you should take into consideration during this process is a client’s:
- Age
- Sex
- Current Fitness Level
- General Location
- Fitness Goals
By knowing this information ahead of time you can help to ensure that your brand captures the attention of your target audience.
Decide What You Want This Target Demographic To Do Next
We all know that the end goal of this process is to get online personal training clients, but you need to determine how exactly you want to go about this process.
For example, do you want your prospective clients to:
- Sign up straight away?
- Make an inquiry?
- Book an initial consultation?
We’ll now break down each of these approaches, discussing how they can lead to an increased rate of online personal training clients.
For example, a personal training consultation is likely to be the most effective way of generating new clients. This is essentially a glorified sales pitch, in which you meet with the client to create a bespoke training programme.
This approach costs neither client or trainer any money, but it can help to ensure you sell your training services. Popular brands that use this approach include MBPT Fitness:
Please note how they ask the clients for just enough information to establish initial contact. You don’t need to know a lot of information prior to a consultation, as this can all be established during the meeting itself.
Alternatively, sites such as Ultimate Performance use the inquiry approach, with a box being placed at the footer of each of their pages to allow users to express an interest in their training.
By creating an inquiry box for clients to fill in, you can capture their personal contact information such as their phone number and/or email address, allowing you to get in touch with the prospective client directly.
Finally, you may opt to sell your training directly through immediate sign-ups. This helps to get you more online personal training clients through direct sales.
In order for this to be a direct sale, you will need to include a payment method within the sign-up. An example of this can be found below from Forge PT:
Note, this may work better for trainers who are already established and popular within the industry. This is largely because clients may be less likely to immediately sign up for personal training that they have little to no knowledge about.
Learning how to sell as a personal trainer can be a challenging process, so regardless of what approach you choose, you should plan diligently in order to ensure that you can successfully sign the client up.
Please keep all three of these approaches in mind when reading through our tips on getting online personal training clients.
9 Tips To Get Online Personal Training Clients
#1 – Create a Website or Landing Page With Clear Calls To Action
One of the key steps in how to get online personal training clients is having a strong online presence, and at the centre of this plan should be a well-developed personal trainer website.
Think of this website as an additional way of advertising yourself, and when learning how to get clients for online personal training you should seek to promote yourself in the best possible light by implementing a variety of techniques as this will be crucial for you to make money as a personal trainer.
Whilst designing an entire website may seem like a stressful process, as an online personal trainer it should be the core of nearly every strategy you implement to attract new clients.
A website is a perfect way to present your chosen method of attracting new clients – e.g. inquiry forms and consultation requests.
In order to clearly highlight these methods, you should be sure to use a call to action (CTA) that directly instructs users of what they need to do in order to sign up for your service.
For example, on your personal trainer website, you may wish to put CTAs such as:
- Sign up today!
- Inquire about our training here!
- Download our app to set up a consultation!
This will lead to an increased rate of online personal training clients as you are directly showing clients of all the perks you offer, before giving them exact insight on how they can take the next step to become a paying customer.
However, a strong use of CTA is not the only tactic you can implement to attract new online PT clients – you should also strive to ensure that your landing page is effective in targeting your desired clients.
A landing page is essentially a follow-up to any promises that you’ve made in your content – it’s the page that should convince a prospective client to buy into your service.
This could be a deciding factor in whether you make a sale, so your landing page should therefore convey your entire brand.
One example of a trainer who does this incredibly well is Joe Wicks: Body Coach. The site’s landing page prominently repeats all of the perks of signing up for The Body Coach before encouraging users to directly sign up through multiple CTAs.
The website designing tool Wix is a great option for designing a professional looking website or landing page.
Once this has been achieved, many budding PTs (such as Doxie.Fitness) use the free program Linktree, which allows you to present everything you’d like a potential client to see in one place.
Note how the account has multiple landing pages specifically aimed at clients who want to achieve different goals. However, you could easily display your one chosen method of attracting clients.
By implementing this method of advertisement you can guarantee that clients will be directed to the landing page you’ve specifically designed to lead to a sale.
#2 – Make It as Easy as Possible for Potentials Clients to Enquire and Sign Up
Think about how many times you’ve been about to pay for a service only to be put off by a lengthy sign-up process.
You’re not alone. No one likes these lengthy processes, which is why we’d advise keeping things short and simple to obtain more online personal training clients.
The best sign-up forms will capture the bare-minimum information required to ensure that a client can be contacted. For example, if there is no financial transaction involved, you can simply ask for a client’s:
- Name
- Phone Number
- Email Address
For example, at OriGym we ask our potential clients to input the three aforementioned pieces of information to view our complete course prospectus:
A member of our sales team will then personally get into contact with this prospective client to discuss the finer details of our courses, following which they will be able to decide whether they wish to make a purchase.
This ensures that clients can learn more about the course from someone who personally knows the brand and what we have to offer, which is far more effective than giving the potential user a large chunk of information.
However, if you wish to opt for a payment service during this sign up process, you should only ask for the minimum amount of information required by the chosen credit card processor. An example of this approach can be seen in Scott Laidler’s website:
Please note, that personal trainer payment methods can vary from site to site, so be sure to conduct your research to access what information will be required of your clients.
How This Helps You Find Clients For Online Personal Training
When implementing this process you should have one word at the forefront of your mind at all times – simplicity.
A complicated signing-up process creates the opportunity for a client to change their mind and look elsewhere.
The purpose of simplifying this process is to lower the entry barrier as much as possible – you don’t even want potential clients to think during this process! They should be able to simply enter their necessary information and sign up for your services.
#3 – Run Paid Ads on Facebook and Instagram to Get Online Personal Training Clients
You could also ensure that your sign up process is linked throughout your social media presence. This can be amplified through the use of advertisements that direct clients to your landing page or website, where they can then provide you with their personal information.
These posts are inorganic, meaning that you will have to pay for them to appear on the social-feed of prospective clients. In order to set up these ads on both platforms, you will need to use Facebook Ad Manager
With this platform you can learn how to get clients for online training in easy-to-follow steps, ensuring that the advertisement is up and running in under 20 minutes.
Facebook Ads as a platform is multi-purpose, meaning that you can create content that targets a specific purpose, all of which can be found below:
For example, when questioning how to get online personal training clients, we would recommend implementing any one of these advertising options as each one could lead to an increased rate of clients.
But how can we ensure that Facebook will target the right clientele? Well, as a collective Facebook has more data on its user base than any other site on the internet. It knows:
- What we like
- How we shop
- How we interact
- Where we live
Through setting up these ads you can take advantage of this data and target your exact audience.
For example, if you’re a personal trainer in Leicester who trains women interested in weight loss, between the ages of 30-60, your setup will be something like this:
How Will Targeted Facebook Ads Get You More Clients?
Facebook Ads will ensure that your target demographic sees the type of services that you have to offer. However, in order to make these ads actionable, you MUST ensure that these promotions lead clients directly to your sign-up pages.
For example, once clients click on your ads they could be redirected to a landing page that requires them to sign up for a consultation.
This is a strategy we personally implement at OriGym, as you can see from the statistics for a previous ad campaign we’ve included below:
The aim of this ad was to divert individuals to our sales pages, in order to submit an inquiry about training with us.
This resulted in 23-course sign-ups and a healthy profit of £24,022.75.
You can take this further by monitoring your click-to-conversion rate. This is essentially a percentage of how many people go from clicking on your advert, to completing the action you want them to (e.g. completing your inquiry form).
Once you have observed the click-to-conversion rate you can directly monitor what kind of content your clients respond better to. This will help you when it comes to creating future advertisements, as you will now know what they respond better to.
For further insight into personal training advertising strategies, be sure to check out our YouTube video dissecting this topic in detail:
#4 – How to Get Personal Training Clients Online Using Google Ads
Whilst on the topic of creating advertisements, Facebook isn’t the only platform you can use to attract more online personal training clients.
As a resource, Google is responsible for almost 75% of the world’s traffic. With this in mind, why wouldn’t you want to learn how to get clients for online personal training through advertising on the search engine?
Google Ads should be your first major priority for advertising as an online personal trainer, as they can help to generate leads, equires, and most importantly sales.
For those unfamiliar with how Google Ads operates here is a simple rundown of the process:
- You pay Google to rank at the top of a specific page/s on a cost per click (CPC) model.
- Every time someone clicks on an advertisement for your online personal training service and is directed to a landing page, you will pay Google a sum of money.
- For each search term, Google will allow up to 4 adverts to be displayed. The position of these adverts is determined by the amount said company bids per click
For example, if you search the term ‘Online Personal Trainer’ into Google, you’ll notice that the website designing company Wix is the first advert to rank.
This will be because they have a higher bidding price than the other three companies that are beneath it.
These kinds of searches are often referred to as ‘high intent’, which means that users know exactly what they’re looking for.
How Can Google Ads Get You More Online Personal Training Clients?
According to Search Engine Land, 80% of high intent searches lead to sales, a site visit, or a consultation within 24 hours. Furthermore, this research also states that 92% of customers will choose one of the first three businesses listed.
Therefore, we can see how valuable landing among these first 4 ranking sites is, and if you wish to know how to get more online fitness clients, you should highly consider making this investment.
These bids don’t have to be too expensive. The following phrases can be bid for quite a low price:
- Online personal training
- Virtual personal training
- Personal training online
Anyone searching these terms will see your training advert, and since the words are of high intent, those searching for them will likely already be within the buying stage.
Therefore, if you choose to implement Google Ads into your marketing campaign be sure to follow a similar strategy to what we mentioned in the previous section on Facebook Ads.
These Google Ads should lead directly to your page, which prompts clients to sign up for your online services.
Remember – they are already at the buying stage, so directly leading them to a consultation request will likely lead to a successful sale.
Additionally, you can choose to leave these advertisements up from month to month, with little to no maintenance required. Just to be sure to check up on them to ensure that you’re still getting inquiry volumes and a cost per inquiry which suits your business.
Whilst it is a somewhat pricey investment the rewards will be plentiful, just look at our Google ad revenue in 2016 compared to 2019, and see how our click/conversion rate increased when we bid a higher price.
Therefore, we can say those researching how to get more online personal training clients should highly consider investing in Google ads. We can guarantee that when bidding a higher price on specific keywords you’ll notice a drastic increase in your click and conversion rates.
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If you’re enjoying our analysis of how to get online personal training clients you may also find these other OriGym articles to be insightful:
- Online Personal Trainer Marketing Techniques
- How to Price Online Personal Training
- How To Make Money As A Personal Trainer
#5 – Get Online Clients for Personal Training by Demonstrating Your Value on Social Media
As we have discussed at length throughout this article having a strong online presence is simply essential. Therefore, if you wish to learn more about how to get clients for online personal training you’ll need to have a strong social media presence.
This will allow you to visibly demonstrate the value of your service to prospective clients, enticing them into signing up for online training.
Now, you can do this through a variety of platforms including:
- TikTok
If you’re trying to determine how to get online training clients through social media, there are a variety of techniques you can implement in order to highlight your value, these include:
Posting Images that Will Pique a Specific Interest
The vast majority of social media is visually driven, meaning that you’re going to need to pay attention to photos and images that are being shared from your business accounts.
This is where knowing your niche comes in handy, as you can post content that will purposely pique the interest of this specific group. These images can directly highlight the effectiveness of your training, which is likely to lead clients to sign up for your service.
One way in which you can do this through Instagram is to display pictures of your training process, and existing clients’ progress.
An example of this approach can be found below from the Newcastle-based trainer Lee Dunbar, who specialises in gaining muscle mass.
We can clearly see that Lee is displaying several examples of his workout strategy to show clients what they’re buying, whilst also displaying existing clients before and after progress pictures.
How Can Displaying Pictures Get You More Online Personal Training Clients?
By following this method, you can successfully highlight the value of your training by directly showing how it works, and how it has benefited the lives of your current clients.
This is a method of social-proofing, with prospective clients being able to visually see the effectiveness of your training.
To make these pictures actionable you should include a description that leads potential clients to your landing pages. For example, look at how personal trainer Allister McMaster does this:
We can clearly see that through these pictures, Allister is displaying how his training can have helped improve a client’s physical fitness. He then makes it actionable by redirecting his clients to his bio, in which there is a link to his website.
Your bio link should redirect clients to your website or landing page, where they can then sign up for your training through the means we have already discussed (such as a consultation or inquiry form)
Go Live!
Similarly, you could also use applications such as Facebook and Instagram’s ‘Live’ feature, to stream taster sessions to your dedicated followers. An example of how this can be advertised can be seen below from PSYCLE London:
The Live feature can allow you to:
- Highlight your personality
- Demonstrate workouts and teachings
- Interact with clients in real-time!
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If you want more resources to help you enter the fitness industry as a personal trainer, give these a read!
- Selling Your Services As A Personal Training
- Essential Personal Training Resources
- How To Stand Out As A Personal Trainer
How Can Going Live Get You More Clients?
Essentially, you should treat the live sessions like free-taste sessions. They don’t necessarily have to belong, but they should seek to highlight all of the positive aspects of your online personal training business.
In doing so, clients will know exactly what to expect when signing up for your personal training service.
During these live sessions just be sure to mention how clients can actually sign up to your service. This can be done simply by stating something like:
If you guys are enjoying our live workout, be sure to click the link in my bio, where you can instantly sign up for a consultation!
Therefore, we can say that when learning how to get online personal training clients social media can act as your greatest ally. If implemented correctly, you can directly highlight the value of your services to clients, who will in turn be more likely to sign up.
For further advice on how to start a fitness Instagram account, click here.
#6 – Become An Active Member of Relevant Facebook Groups
As an online personal trainer, you will need to target virtual spots that are likely to be filled with fitness enthusiasts.
Therefore, another way in which you can highlight your value through social media is by interacting with Facebook groups dedicated to health and fitness. These will be prime locations in which you can promote your business and scout your ideal potential clientele.
These groups are completely free to join and can be found by simply typing into the site’s search bar.
However, we’d strongly recommend joining groups that show an interest in your area of specialty e.g. if you specialise in weight loss, join groups centred around dieting and weight loss.
Keep in mind that this process will take time, which is why we specifically stressed that you need to be an active member of the group. You can do this by:
- Regularly interacting with members on a friendly basis
- Creating your own posts relating to your fitness journey
- Recommending advice/products when questions are raised
By becoming an active member in heavily populated groups you can establish yourself as a go-to expert in your industry.
In some ways this will benefit you in the long run, as other members or admins may begin to recommend you to others without your direct involvement.
Only when you have established yourself over the course of time should you begin to promote your services – do this too soon, and you could be kicked out by the group’s owners or administrators.
This could be something like the screenshot below, taken from a fitness group for British citizens who have immigrated to Warsaw:
Here we can see that the personal trainer in question is advertising her services to over 2,000 active members of the group.
The information provided is detailed and tells the members exactly what they need to know in order to sign up for her services.
We’d advise always including:
- A little bit of personal information about you
- What areas of fitness do you specialise in
- How interested parties can contact you – e.g. Direct Facebook message, landing page, website, etc.
- Pricing Packages
Remember, though – for this to be most effective you need to regularly interact with the group, and this venture will ultimately fail if you rush into the process.
How To Get More Online Personal Training Clients Through Through Facebook Groups:
Becoming an active member of these groups will allow you to reach members within your target demographic.
Think of this as a form of self-advertisement – not only will you be interacting with like-minded people, but you will be establishing yourself as an expert within the given field.
Once clients know that you are an expert within your field, they are more likely to trust the advice and information you provide. Hence, when it comes to recommending your own service clients will be drawn to signing up, as they already have direct experience with you.
As with the aforementioned point on showing value through social media, once you have established a reputation within the group you must provide a way for clients to actually sign up for your online training.
This could include creating posts that include a link to your website or Linktree, from which point they can be immediately redirected to the likes of an inquiry form.
#7 – Ask for Reviews and Feedback
Whilst a lot of the tips we have mentioned within this article require you to be proactive in your own career, when researching how to get online clients for personal training you don’t always need to do all the work yourself.
By asking your existing clients to leave a review for your service, you can create a sense of peer trust among consumers. This user-generated content (UGC) is free and can be seamlessly implemented throughout all of your platforms.
When discussing the benefits of UGC, Instapage argued that:
Good UGC adds value to the brand. It can show people the capability of a particular product or service, spread awareness, and boost social proof during the purchasing process.
Furthermore, according to TrustPilot:
- 92% of consumers read online reviews
- 80% of consumers trust reviews as much as personal referrals and recommendations
Therefore, we can state that consumers are more likely to invest in a product once they know how effective it is.
For example, if you saw an Amazon product was littered with 1-star reviews, would you want to invest in it? No, you’d instead opt for the more trustworthy 5-star rated product, as this is the product which has greater value.
Therefore if you’re wondering how to get online personal training clients, we’d recommend advertising these reviews prominently throughout your website and social media.
This can be done through personal trainer testimonials, which can be implemented into websites like this:
And social media pages in a manner similar to this:
How Can You Use Reviews To Attract More Clients for Online Personal Training?
These reviews seek to add value to your business by highlighting how successful your training has been. New clients will see this value and will be more likely to sign up for your service, as they are hearing direct reviews from someone similar to themselves.
You can even display these reviews on your landing page/website to immediately reinforce the effectiveness of your training. This method can be seen below and was implemented by PGPT – Mobile Personal Trainers’ site.
Displaying these reviews on your landing page helps validate everything you have promised and reassure new customers that they are getting a valuable and trustworthy service.
Therefore, when asking for these reviews it may be worthwhile to specifically ask the client to refer to their goals, and how your service has helped to achieve them. That way, you can specifically appeal to like-minded new clients who are questioning whether to sign up for your service or not.
#8 – Encourage Existing Clients to Refer Family and Friends
As evident from this list, the question of how to get personal training clients online can have multiple different answers, but arguably one of the most effective methods is through referrals.
The act of referring itself can boost confidence in your business in the eyes of potential clients who have yet to sign up, making it easier for them to approach. Just think, how many products/services have you bought following a shining recommendation from a friend.
The American business Nilsen stressed the importance of referrals from a customer perspective they noted:
Therefore, we can see how effective recommendations from family and friends can be. But how can you benefit from this process?
According to Entrepreneur, a business’s total earnings could increase by 10-20% following the implementation of a referral program.
Furthermore, this particular study also found that said businesses are likely to experience up to 86% worth of experience growth.
However, if you’re wondering how to get online clients for personal training through referrals you must first have a dedicated following of clients. These should be your most trusted customers, those who will happily recommend you to their inner social circle.
Those who aren’t close to you may be put off by this request, so steer clear of asking this of newer clients, or those who you are less familiar with.
Once this is built they may still take some convincing, and you will therefore need to incentivise them to make this referral. In exchange for this recommendation you can offer them:
- Money/gift vouchers
- Free branded merchandise
- Free bring-a-friend sessions
- General sale discounts
Ultimately, clients are more likely to provide a referral if there is something for them to gain from the process, so be sure to reward them accordingly.
For example, Atrium Fitness lists how their benefits improve with increasing referrals, meaning that clients could actually receive multiple incentives:
There several ways in which you can ask for referrals, these include:
- Through email
- Face to face interactions
- Social media
- Affiliate marketing
If you’d like to learn more about how to get more online personal training clients through the use of this technique, be sure to check out our detailed analysis of getting personal trainer referrals.
In the blog post linked above we discuss each method in great detail, ensuring that you know exactly how to go about asking for these beneficial referrals.
How Can Referrals Generate More Online Personal Training Clients?
As discussed within the statistics provided at the beginning of this point, referrals help to boost social confidence in your business.
New clients who have yet to sign up will feel more at ease within your practice as they have been directly recommended by a family member or friend. This makes the entire process far less intimidating and depicts you as someone who is trustworthy.
Simply put, people are much more likely to trust the word of family and friends, and are therefore more likely to use your services when they come recommended.
One way to ensure that these referrals lead to more online clients, is to ask those who are currently in your service to share a link to your site or landing page.
This will ensure that the prospective client leads to a direct sale, rather than being unsure of how they can sign up.
#9 – How To Get Online Clients for Personal Training by Blogging
This article on ‘how to get personal training clients online’ is just one of many blog articles that we as a company publish on a regular basis.
These published pieces attract readers from across the world, and provide key insight and information relating to the fitness industry.
Think of it this way – blogging provides legitimacy before a client even spends a penny on a service.
From looking at our blog, prospective clients will be able to see that we know what we’re talking about, and will therefore be regarded as a reputable provider of personal training qualifications.
You too can capitalise on this, and create your blog feature to go alongside your website, but before you begin writing you should keep one thing at the forefront of your mind ‘your prospective clients’.
These are the people you want to read your blog, therefore you must create content that appeals specifically to them. Therefore, be sure to research trending topics within your industry, so when someone searches the term they will be met with your blog.
You can find trending terms through sophisticated software, such as:
How To Get Clients As An Online Personal Trainer Through Blogging
We’ve already discussed how this can help to legitimise your business by presenting you as a professional.
However, from a purely SEO perspective, we can say that blogging can help to drive new clients to your website through an improved ranking.
Tech Client stated that websites that utilise blog posts have a 434% chance of ranking higher on search engines. But for this increase to happen, the information you provide your clients with must be legitimate.
Just think about how many more clients you could potentially reach, just by inputting your knowledge of personal training onto your computer screen.
Another added benefit of creating a personal training blog is that it will last forever, and won’t fade into obscurity or be forgotten as easily as face-to-face conversations.
This means that you can have a piece of information that is perpetually available to clients. For example, a client could find a year-old blog post but still decide to inquire about the back of it.
To process this inquiry, be sure to feature a data entry field to ensure that the client’s information is processed correctly.
At OriGym, for example, we use capture boxes on our blogs that look like this:
You can implement a similar technique, ensuring that ways for clients to inquire about your training are scattered throughout these blog posts.
For a more detailed look into how to create a personal trainer blog that generates traffic, click here.
Before You Go!
While not all of these tips will be beneficial for your specific business and some clients may respond better to one method over another, you should try multiple techniques to find which ones are most effective about your specific business model.
Remember, OriGym’s Level 4 PT Courses provide the perfect opportunity to find your niche. Check out our Sports Nutrition Course to develop your knowledge and expand the services you offer.
Contact our team today to find out more and download our course prospectus here.