I am a private personal trainer.
I used to work at corporate gyms and was pretty sick of them taking a 1/3 split, so I bolted. I was also sick of minimums and the possibility of losing my job at the drop of a hat.
So I left, and now my clients pay less and I make more, but without the gym, it isn't easy keeping a steady flow of clientele, as we all know. There are only a few gyms in the country that cater to us private trainers, but I plan on changing that soon enough.
I tried the whole "look at my pretty website deal" for years... and like 99% of all the other private personal trainer websites on the internet, it was quite ineffective and taking up far too much space on the world wide web.
I am not saying this to discourage any one who has their own site in any way... but I've been there and done it, and know hundreds of others who have done the same. It's not worth it (time, money, energy, thought). Clients very, VERY rarely shop online for trainers, it's just strange and unusual. Websites and people that try to convince us otherwise are liars and do not understand human behavior inside of the personal training industry.
Clients are obtained primarily 3 ways:
1. Stalking the floor on a floor shift at a corporate facility and pitching members
2. Getting a lead and doing a free-bee or assessment for a member at a corporate facility
3. Referrals from existing clients
These are the 3 primary ways trainers get clients. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, but these 3 are by far the most effective in the industry.
But since private trainers do not have a corporate facility to help us out with the first two options, it cuts us down to the last option... referrals.
I've thought about this very carefully, for a VERY long time...
How can I actually utilize social media to effectively gain clients online using some kind of referral system?
Referrals are very effective, but on YOUR website, they are not going to work very well... at least not to the extent you would like them. Why? Because very very few people are going to go to your website to read them. You and your service needs to be seen by everyone all the time, so you need to be where everyone is on the internet...
Facebook is everything when it comes to online marketing... because that's where EVERYONE is... including your existing clients and their hundreds of friends.
Yet Facebook Advertising is one of the most ineffective ways of advertising on the internet, with an average click through ratio of somewhere around 0.007% last time I checked. BUT the average Facebook "shared" link gets 3 clicks from their direct network of friends.
The traditional idea of advertising doesn't work anymore. It's garbage. But if my personal training service is something being posted regularly on my client's walls, shared by my clients, I will certainly have the attention of their friends, especially if it's in the form of something interesting, and not a sales pitch.
I decided to combine two things: the trend of Facebook "Check-Ins" and the results the clients were getting.
So I created a website myself that I use to track all of my client results, their workouts, etc., that also allows me to check-in with each of my clients every time we train (at their house, at the park, where ever).
This automatically generates a Facebook post to their wall that shares their results they got training with me for that day. For every 1 session I train, I'm getting hundreds of quality impressions on my client's Facebook wall. Just like a referral, my client's "check-in" comes in the form of "shared" or "approved" content.
Statistics say, 3 people will click that link every time its posted, guaranteed. If I have 7 clients and train each 3 times per week and each client has 200 friends on Facebook, that's 4,200 impressions I'm making every week just doing my job. I don't have to think about advertising ever and it costs me ZERO dollars.
Clients didn't come immediately, but over time, as my clients' friends saw these posts over and over, and the progress being made, when a few finally decided it was time to train, they came to me.
My existing clients act as a bridge, and my business keeps going. I don't have to advertise, buy business cards, or waste time doing anything besides my job. Traditional advertising is dead, and we need to embrace that.
(advertising removed)
I used to work at corporate gyms and was pretty sick of them taking a 1/3 split, so I bolted. I was also sick of minimums and the possibility of losing my job at the drop of a hat.
So I left, and now my clients pay less and I make more, but without the gym, it isn't easy keeping a steady flow of clientele, as we all know. There are only a few gyms in the country that cater to us private trainers, but I plan on changing that soon enough.
I tried the whole "look at my pretty website deal" for years... and like 99% of all the other private personal trainer websites on the internet, it was quite ineffective and taking up far too much space on the world wide web.
I am not saying this to discourage any one who has their own site in any way... but I've been there and done it, and know hundreds of others who have done the same. It's not worth it (time, money, energy, thought). Clients very, VERY rarely shop online for trainers, it's just strange and unusual. Websites and people that try to convince us otherwise are liars and do not understand human behavior inside of the personal training industry.
Clients are obtained primarily 3 ways:
1. Stalking the floor on a floor shift at a corporate facility and pitching members
2. Getting a lead and doing a free-bee or assessment for a member at a corporate facility
3. Referrals from existing clients
These are the 3 primary ways trainers get clients. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, but these 3 are by far the most effective in the industry.
But since private trainers do not have a corporate facility to help us out with the first two options, it cuts us down to the last option... referrals.
I've thought about this very carefully, for a VERY long time...
How can I actually utilize social media to effectively gain clients online using some kind of referral system?
Referrals are very effective, but on YOUR website, they are not going to work very well... at least not to the extent you would like them. Why? Because very very few people are going to go to your website to read them. You and your service needs to be seen by everyone all the time, so you need to be where everyone is on the internet...
Facebook is everything when it comes to online marketing... because that's where EVERYONE is... including your existing clients and their hundreds of friends.
Yet Facebook Advertising is one of the most ineffective ways of advertising on the internet, with an average click through ratio of somewhere around 0.007% last time I checked. BUT the average Facebook "shared" link gets 3 clicks from their direct network of friends.
The traditional idea of advertising doesn't work anymore. It's garbage. But if my personal training service is something being posted regularly on my client's walls, shared by my clients, I will certainly have the attention of their friends, especially if it's in the form of something interesting, and not a sales pitch.
I decided to combine two things: the trend of Facebook "Check-Ins" and the results the clients were getting.
So I created a website myself that I use to track all of my client results, their workouts, etc., that also allows me to check-in with each of my clients every time we train (at their house, at the park, where ever).
This automatically generates a Facebook post to their wall that shares their results they got training with me for that day. For every 1 session I train, I'm getting hundreds of quality impressions on my client's Facebook wall. Just like a referral, my client's "check-in" comes in the form of "shared" or "approved" content.
Statistics say, 3 people will click that link every time its posted, guaranteed. If I have 7 clients and train each 3 times per week and each client has 200 friends on Facebook, that's 4,200 impressions I'm making every week just doing my job. I don't have to think about advertising ever and it costs me ZERO dollars.
Clients didn't come immediately, but over time, as my clients' friends saw these posts over and over, and the progress being made, when a few finally decided it was time to train, they came to me.
My existing clients act as a bridge, and my business keeps going. I don't have to advertise, buy business cards, or waste time doing anything besides my job. Traditional advertising is dead, and we need to embrace that.
(advertising removed)
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