The Complete Guide to Google Ads for Personal Trainers

If you want to know more about what Google Ads can do for personal trainers, we’ll run through everything you need to know to get started!

In this article we’ll cover:

• Why You Should Be Using Google Ads for Personal Trainers
• Step 1: Set Up an Account to Create Google Ads for PTs
• Step 2: Decide on the Right Style of Google Ads for Personal Trainers
• Step 3: Set the Budget for Your Personal Training Google Ads
• Step 4: Use the Keyword Planner in Your Google Ads for Personal Trainers
• Step 5: Design and Create Your Personal Trainer Google Ads
• 3 Key Tips on Creating Effective Google Ads for Personal Trainers

Before we start, one of the best ways to boost your business is by finding your niche with advanced personal trainer qualifications such as a Level 4 nutrition course.

You can find out more details of all of our personal trainer courses by downloading our course prospectus for free here.

Why You Should Be Using Google Ads for Personal Trainers

Before we get into how you can design Google Ads for personal trainers, we’ll run through exactly what they are!

Google Ads are paid advertisements that target a specific 'search term' or 'keyword'. For a PT business, a relevant search term could be something like 'personal trainer near me'. 

We’ll cover which keywords to target in more detail in Step 4 and Step 5, but for now, here's an example of what Google Ads look like.

Here’s the results for ‘personal trainer courses’, a keyword that we’ve targeted in our own Google Ads:

As you can see, our website is the first result that appears when a user searches this! 

So, now you know what Google Ads for personal trainers look like, what are the benefits of using them? Why would you want to be the first result that appears when a user searches for a personal trainer?

With over 99,000 searches per SECOND on Google, advertising on Google puts your business in front of a huge audience. 

Here are some statistics to show how successful these Ads can be as part of personal trainer advertising strategies:

• Google Ads have a click through rate (CTR) of upto 6% - so just under 6% of users who search your target keyword will land on your website!
• People who click through a Google ad convert (turn from visitors to a page to paying customers) at the rate of 4.2%, compared to 0.55% for other Google results

Though some of these figures seem small, when you consider the amount of people using Google at any given moment, that’s a lot of potential clients!

For example, if we look briefly at a keyword you might target, such as ‘personal trainer’ and your location, we can see how high a CTR of 6% actually is:

As you can see, between 100 and 1000 people Google this term a month! Even if this works out at 500 people, that still translates to nearly 30 clients clicking on your website from this keyword alone! 

Thanks to the pay-per-click (ppc) structure, which we'll discuss shortly, you'll only actually pay for your Ad when somebody clicks on your page, making this a cost effective strategy, too.

That’s why investing in Ads is a great way to get more clients as a personal trainer and boost your business! 

Step 1: You Need to Set Up an Account to Create Google Ads for PTs

In order to start designing your Google Ads for personal trainers you’ll need to create a Google Ads account.

First you’ll be prompted to choose whether to create a new Ads account or use an existing one:

You’ll need a Google account to be able to create a Google Ads account, using a Gmail email address.

If you’ve got a Google email address you can click on ‘new google Ads account’.

You’ll then have to confirm the basic details needed for your Ads and your business:

Once you’ve confirmed how you’ll pay and what country you operate from you’ll have access to some of the other tools you’ll need:

Once you’ve set this account up you can explore the different options for actually designing an ad!

We’ll run through each of these steps now so that you can design the most effective Google ads for personal trainers. 

Step 2: Decide on the Right Style of Google Ads for Personal Trainers

Now that you know a bit about how Google Ads for personal trainers can help your business, we’ll explain which kind you need.

The first step for designing Google Ads for PTs is choosing the right payment method and style of ad that will work best for you.

There’s a few different styles of ad you can choose from, depending on the style of your business:

• Search campaign
• Display campaign
• Shopping campaign
• Video campaign
• App campaign 

A search campaign is the one we’ve discussed already, which will show at the top of the first results page.

This will be the most useful model for personal training Google Ads as it’s the most effective method for gaining new clients.

Most people will go to Google search in order to look for a personal trainer so you want to put your efforts and money into these Ads to target this market!

Other methods such as shopping campaigns and app campaigns work better for e-commerce and aren’t a good fit for a PT business. 

Much like fitness Facebook ads and other social media advertisements, the right style of payment to choose is ‘pay-per-click’. 

There’s a few different payment options with Google Ads, depending on the outcome you want:

• Pay per click
• Pay per mille 
• Pay per engagement

You can read this from Hootsuite to find out more about each of these methods in general but the only one that you’ll need to use is pay-per-click!

This means that you only pay when the ad works and somebody clicks through to your chosen web page.

If you choose the page where clients can sign up for your services, you can use the copy and keywords in your ad to generate leads for clients and encourage them to sign up.

The amount you pay-per-click works is determined by how much you ‘bid’ for certain keywords. Google will then figure out for you your actual cost per click (CPC). We’ll cover this process in more detail next!

Step 3: Set the Budget for Your Personal Training Google Ads

Whether you’ve already written your personal trainer business plan or you’re working on it currently, you’ll need to have a section about your marketing and advertising budget.

Knowing how much you have, and are willing to, spend on Google Ads for personal trainers will form a fundamental part of this section of your plan.

Once you’ve decided how much you’re willing to spend overall, or on a daily basis, this translates to how you design the ads themselves. 

You can set a certain budget with Google and, as we mentioned earlier, they’ll calculate your actual CPC (cost per click) so that you can track and monitor your ROI (return on investment).

So, how exactly does the budget and bidding system work for personal trainer Google Ads?

We’ll cover this in a little more detail when we look at actually designing your Google Ads for personal trainers.

Briefly though, Google will allow you to set an average daily budget for your ads letting you choose between a recommended amount or one you set manually:

This may not look like much of an investment but Google Ads for personal trainers can be scaled as you earn more and your advertising budget increases.

As we mentioned earlier too, you can see the returns on even small spends when you target the right keywords with enough volume.

You do this using Google’s ‘keyword planner’ which tells you how much a certain keyword will cost to target for your Google Ads for personal trainers. 

If you use this tool you’ll be able to choose the right keywords and see how much it will cost you and how many people search for it per month - we’ll look at this process now!

Step 4: Use the Keyword Planner in Your Google Ads for Personal Trainers 

You may be familiar with keywords already if you’ve been using SEO for personal trainers for other platforms such as:

• Your PT social media ideas
• If you’ve started a fitness blog on your website

A keyword is a phrase you can target in order to reach the exact audience that will be interested in signing up for your services.

Google’s keyword planner allows you to search for keywords to use for your ad and will tell you the frequency of search as well as how much it will cost to target.

You can search for ones with high average searches a month and then decide which ones to use based on this and budget.

First, you’ll be asked to make a choice, either searching for new keywords or looking at existing ones to see how they’re performing in terms of volume and how they’re forecasted to perform in the future.

If you're new to creating Google Ads for personal trainers, it's best to start by clicking on the 'discover new keywords' tool.

With this tool, you can do trial and error, searching various relevant terms and keywords to find one that is:

• Relevant to your business, and
• Within your budget

As you can see, you can input potential seach terms into the search bar, and the tool will pull up a list of exact matches as well as suggestions for further keywords or different ones that are related and potentially target a similar demographic (see 'keyword ideas).

It will also show you how much you can expect to pay-per-click for Ads targetting these keywords under the 'top of page bid' tabs).

The 'Get search volume forecasts' tool is also useful, both when creating and managing Google Ads.

This tool allows you to keep tabs on your keywords and adjust your ads accordingly should you need to target new ones or different ones! If you look at the forecast this will help you see what your return on investment is likely to be:

You can also look at different metrics over time, such as the impressions on different devices:

You can see which are the popular months for engagement and this is when you can alter your ads and capitalise on different keyword trends.

For example, in January you can make the most of people’s new year’s resolutions and target your ads at people who aim to get fitter or lose weight!

This is how you can use both tools and options on the planner to decide on the best keywords for your personal training Google Ads.

Once you’ve decided on your budget you may want to adjust based on what you find in your keyword research.

This will be a process where your research informs your budget and vice versa until you start to scale your ads and get a more consistent idea of what works and what doesn’t. 

We’ll cover this in even more detail in tip #1 in our final section!

Step 5: Design and Create Your Personal Trainer Google Ads

Once you’ve completed this research you’re ready to start designing your Google Ads!

The first step will be to put in the name of your business:

Then you’ll be prompted to enter the web page you want your ad to lead to:

For example, you can choose a particular page on your website or a personal trainer landing page you’ve designed for people to enquire about your services.

The next step is one of the most important. You’ll be asked to choose the goal of your personal trainer Google Ads.

You’ll have a few different options to choose different styles of company and the outcome you’re looking for:

When you’re starting out you’ll want to choose ‘get more website sales or leads’ as this is the best way to gain more clients!

Then you can press ‘get started’ to make further decisions within this section on sales and leads monitoring:

You can choose between sales and leads. To get the most out of Google Ads for your personal training business, you should choose generating leads:

You can then use your conversation with potential clients to upsell your services and find a way of working with them that’s best for them as well as the most lucrative for you.

This option will create a lead usually by clicking through to an enquiry form or an email template requesting a call back to discuss your services!

This is why it’s a great option for when you’re designing Google Ads for personal trainers because they’ll be more streamlined in directing people to sign up for your training.

The next step is to actually include the best keywords in your personal training Google Ads and write the text:

You can choose the headlines to include some of the keywords to tell people exactly what it is that you offer.

You can then write the description which will provide more detail and keywords. This should also be the part where you include a CTA, or ‘call to action’.

This is a word or phrase that encourages people viewing your ad to take a certain action when they click through to your web page. 

For example, you should include something encouraging people to sign up for your services when they click your personal training Google ad like ‘enquire now!’ or ‘request a call back’.

You will then choose keyword themes to match your ad to a wide variety of searches. This is where you can add all of the relevant keywords that you found in your research using keyword planner, beyond what you’ve included in the copy for the ad itself:

Then you’ll be asked to choose a specific area to target so that you’re only advertising to people who are able to sign up for your services.

You can enter a specific postcode or you can choose areas using Google maps:

If you want to become an online personal trainer or you operate some services online, you can give a wider radius to include everyone you want to cater for.

Being able to choose a location for in-person sessions, though, means that you can narrow down who you’re targeting with your personal trainer Google Ads to people who can actually sign up!

Then you’ll reach the stage we mentioned earlier, setting a budget chosen by you or Google’s recommended amount:

As you can see, you’ll get an estimate of how many clicks this specific amount will lead to.

They will also set a monthly max which is the most you’ll ever pay, including a small buffer for what they call ‘overdelivery’.

Because of fluctuating online traffic, Google will sometimes allow you to spend slightly over your daily budget but this only ever costs you a small extra amount a month and will have resulted in more clicks.

You can find out more about this from Google here.

And last but not least, you’ll be able to review your ad and make sure everything looks right before paying for it and making it live!

You’ll be able to review the: 

• Keywords included in the copy and the title
• Website address that the ad will link to
• Name of your business
• The goal of the campaign
• Any contact details included in the ad

Once you’re happy with all of these things, your ad is ready to make live and start generating leads and get you more clients! 

3 Key Tips on Creating Effective Google Ads for Personal Trainers

Now that you know what each step of designing Google Ads for personal trainers entails, we’ll run through some tips on how to make yours excel!

If you implement these tips you should give your ads the edge over the competition and ensure you’re designing the best possible personal trainer Google Ads.

#1 Include a Mixture of Specific and Broad Keywords in Your Personal Trainer Google Ads

As we mentioned earlier, Google designs their ad platform so that you can specify by location in terms of who you target.

This can also be something you focus on with your keywords to ensure you’re directing your Google Ads for personal trainers at exactly the right people!

These are called ‘long tail keywords’: they’re usually longer and more specific, and won’t just be the main phrase or word that describes your service.

For example, it’s much more helpful to include ‘personal trainer Nottingham’ than it is to just target ‘personal trainer’.

Having something vague will mean you’re in competition with everybody offering personal training services, even those offering a completely different style of service in another part of the country.

Location specific keywords also have a higher conversion rate, meaning people who are doing these searches on Google are more prepared to sign up for your services.

Somebody just searching ‘personal trainer’ might want to know what a personal trainer salary is or other things about the job description. 

However, somebody including a location in their search is much more likely to be looking to hire somebody!

Keywords specific to location also have far less competition too because you’re only competing with people who also practise in your area.

As you can see, there’s still plenty of volume for these specific keywords:

You can also use the keyword ‘find a personal trainer near me’ or ‘personal trainer near me’.

Though these don’t have a specific, explicit location in the keyword, Google uses the IP address of people searching to help prioritise the right results.

This means that if people live in your area and they make this search they’re still likely to find your ad as long as the ad ranks well. 

How many clicks you get depends on where your ad ranks and the keywords you include, not just how much you pay.

You will bid for certain keywords but you will also be given what’s called an ‘ad rank’ which is a metric Google uses to judge the quality of your ad and website.

This is why if you bid for the top spot in the Google Ads section of the results page, you could still edge out somebody offering more money!

This will happen if your ad is better designed or you’ve got more traffic to your personal trainer website, making it stronger.

This is something to be aware of when you’re choosing the right keywords and clustering them together.

We’ll look at this in more detail now!

#2 Group Your Personal Training Google Ads to Get More Leads

When it comes to choosing keywords for Google Ads for PTs, you want to make sure you’re streamlining them and creating groups as best you can.

You can have several ad groups within one campaign if they’re targeting the same people and you want to set the same budget.

The example that Google gives is if you’re selling a range of products but you can easily group them together under a certain theme:

This translates to personal training as well, especially when you’re at the start of your career. 

This is because you can group together keywords for different services but pay for them under the same campaign.

This means that when you’re starting out with services such as nutrition or training disabled clients, and it’s not a large part of your business yet, you can fit it under one budget.

This means you don’t have to pay for a whole separate campaign but can still target people based on keywords related to this particular service!

For example, you could target keywords like below under one ad group:

If you’ve completed your level 4 nutrition course and offer fitness nutrition services you can target these people separately but within the same campaign.

This might be because the bulk of your income comes from standard PT clients because you’ve only just started to offer nutrition. 

So, whilst you build up your nutrition portfolio and source more clients for this service, you can target people without shelling out for a separate campaign!

You could then have another ad group for keywords related to personal training like this:

These would both target different demographics but could fall under one campaign so that you don’t have to pay separately whilst being specific about who you’re advertising to.

#3 Use Analytics to See What Works About Your Google Ads for Personal Trainers and What Doesn’t  

As we’ve hopefully already alluded to, this process is one of trial and error where you’ll have to assess what works and doesn’t about your Google Ads.

For personal trainers, like any other business, trends will fluctuate and change and you may need to adjust your ads to match these.

As part of that you should keep an eye on analytics and how your ads perform based on different metrics.

By linking Google analytics to your ads account you’ll be able to assess:

• What people do after they click through your ads
• How long they’re staying on the page
• How many are actually being converted into enquiries, leads, or paying customers

Paying attention to these things will mean you can improve your ads as well as your website and make them more effective! 

If you want to be a successful personal trainer you have to be constantly vigilant about viewing what works and what doesn’t about all of your marketing strategies.

This will then make room for you to improve and form a vital part of your business’s growth and development! 

Before You Go!

Hopefully now you know how to design successful Google Ads for personal trainers and you’re prepared to start using Google Ads for your business!

Don’t forget that one of the best ways to attract as many clients as possible is by having a strong USP!

You can develop one today with our industry leading level 4 personal trainer courses.

Find out more by downloading our full free course prospectus!