Internet Marketing For Personal Trainers

Hey there, hope you are doing great.

Many fit pros out there want a website, and it makes sense.  A website:

• can make you look more professional.


• can generate leads for your business.


• can make you money online.

The Operative Word is "Can"

It can do these things, if done RIGHT.

1. The first issue is that most websites get NO TRAFFIC!  It akes a ton of work to get traffic to a website, and you want to be a fitness professional, not an internet marketer, right?


2. Second, people looking for trainers aren't really going to pick a trainer they found online.  Maybe 1 in 10,000 people will do that (so you need hundreds of thousands of visitors to your website), but think about it, if you had to find a massage therapist for your mother (a similar personal service that is also very intimate), would you go online or would you get a referral?  You might do some preliminary research online, but chances are you will get a referral from someone you know, like, and trust.  The majority of your client getting efforts are better spend elsewhere, not on internet marketing.

So in order for your internet marketing efforts to be effective, your website needs a ton of traffic and needs to look great, 2 things that take quite a bit of time/money.  Well there happens to be a website that will do both of these things for you...

The Ultimate Traffic Solution

Instead of building a house a mile from the river and then trying to dig  a ditch to divert the river to your house (so you don't have to walk a mile to go fishing), just build your house next to the river.  Think of the flowing water as traffic.  Just set up your website next to the river, instead of in outerspace.

In other words, use social media, in particular Facebook, Facebook Fan Pages, Facebook Groups, and whatever the next cool thing Facebook comes up with!  Everyone on the web is on FB, for the most part, in pact Facebook is becoming the internets social glue.  If you haven't already, check out my post on creating a Facebook fan page.

Word of Mouth Marketing Will Always Trump Internet Marketing

The fastest way to get clients and build a lucrative, secure, and rewarding career in the personal training industry is to constantly educate yourself, deliver better and better results to your clients, and then get more fitness clients through referrals from your existing clients.  One way to do that is to get a killer personal training testimonial from your fitness clients.

Make your fitness clients so thrilled by you and your services that they happily and willingly tell everyone about it!  But many trainer want to use the internet to get clients, and why not, it can be fun and we are riding the wave of the future.  Just be sure to focus on word of mouth referrals first, and then use your time effectively online, instead of creating a website that is lost in cyberspace and only costs you money (I have been there, its not fun!)


One cool website that may make creating your own website pretty cheap, fast, and easy is Yola.  You can check that out here: http://www.yola.com/

Keep in mind, I am not saying websites are bad, I am saying wasting your time on something that doesn't work is bad.

Warning: Randomly Clicking on Cool Profile Pics Will Get You Nowhere FAST!

Hey, its cool, we all do it from time to time, but you need to be effecient and effective with what you do online and on Facebook, otherwise you will be clicking around on links and the next thing you know an hour has gone by and you haven't completed anything on your list of business initiatives.

That is the power of Facebook! It is so sticky, so easy to just click around, so easy to lose an hour of your day doing really nothing.  So instead, create a plan and stick to it for your business initiatives that use Facebook.

The Facebook Insider's Blueprint For Personal Trainers

1. Set a goal for your time on Facebook before going on.  (Create a fan page, post valuable content your audience will appreciate, ask questions, engage users, use the FBML application to add an optin form to your fan page so you can collect email addresses, etc)


2. You can learn how to do some of that stuff here: creating a Facebook fan page


3. Schedule a set amount of time to use FB for that business initiatives.  FIGHT the urge to click on any links that do not move you toward your goals.


4. Reward yourself with some casual browsing of the site another time, but only after you have completed your goal, and set a limit on the amount of time you will do that (And keep it seperate from your business initiative time.)

Ask & Ye Shall Receive!

Ask a question in the comments below and I will reply with an answer, what questions or problems do you have when it comes to using social media to generate more clients for your fitness business?  What do you think of internet marketing for personal trainers?  How do you use social media in your fitness business?  Let us know!

Until next time, keep your business fit.

Johnny Fitness