How To Get More Clients From A Fitness Blog: Step-By-Step

Whether you’re just starting out as a personal trainer, or you’ve been in the industry for some time, it’s always a good idea to invest some of your time into learning how to get more clients from a fitness blog. 

This article will show you how to do exactly that, covering:

• Why You Should Create a Fitness Blog
• How To Convert Readers into Clients: Step- by-Step
• 5 Ways To Get More Clients From Your Fitness Blog
• Frequently Asked Questions

One key thing to remember about writing any fitness blog, though, is that the more you know, the more you can confidently write about. 

And with a Level 4 Sports Nutrition Course with us, you’ll develop new skills, learn new concepts, and be able to provide much more content for your readers, ultimately bringing in more fitness blog clients. Find out more by downloading our FREE course prospectus!

Why You Should Create a Fitness Blog

Before we discuss how you can get more clients from your fitness blog, it’s important to consider why you’d start working on one in the first place. Let’s look at a few of the main reasons why you’d establish your own fitness blog.

#1 - It Increases Your Brand Visibility

First and foremost, brand awareness and visibility is vital when it comes to promoting a reliable business. 

The importance of brand visibility should not be underestimated or overlooked, if you are consistently seeing a brand performing as a top ranking web page or a specific logo you’re more likely to remember it.

Thus, when it comes to a potential customer coming across your website or brand, you are the best option thanks to the reputation you have built up from simply increasing your brand visibility.

Brand awareness and visibility are the first instance to focus on for any business and especially in your case if you’re trying to learn how to start a fitness blog and make money as a personal trainer. This is where your leads come from and eventually these leads turn into paying customers. 

However, the only way you are able to even get leads is by creating trust between you and your audience, which is of course through increasing your brand visibility through your blog being consistently updated and of a high standard.

#2 - Shows You’re Present and Contactable 

Speaking of being consistent with your updates, you should definitely be aware of how if you lack consistency, you also lack contactability. 

Here’s a scenario we’ve seen countless times. You find a blog page that has all of the right things such as a phone number, email address and all the details of how to hire this person as a personal trainer. 

However, they haven’t updated their blog in over 6 months. Now, the assumption is that either they have forgotten about their blog or they aren’t even operating as a personal trainer any more!

Not being present online in this day and age is bad news for your business. Stereotypically, clients are less patient since it can be so quick and easy to find all the key information surrounding a business or brand. 

So, regular blog posts, alongside contact information such as live chats, email response times and phone numbers, go a long way.

It doesn’t matter what sized audience you have, regular updates are a clear indication that your business is running well, and that you are available to talk with a potential customer and this is how to start a fitness blog and make money all the while.

#3 - You Can Speak Directly to Your Target Audience

As we’ve already touched on, being present online is how you get in touch with your target audience, which is exactly how you can bridge the gap between someone being interested in your service to them actually taking action to make a purchase.

We will delve into the mechanics of engaging with your readers a little later, but first we want to iterate how a blog space is the perfect place for this. 

There are plenty of widgets that you can add to your blog to make you easily contactable and it isn’t just for them to get in touch with you.

More specifically, we’d suggest looking at widgets that allow you to issue a CTA (or Call To Action), as these can help drive traffic towards the packages you sell, and ultimately convert readers into clients. 

Services like ShopEngine offer tools and widgets that both integrate with your website, and provide additional functionality to allow potential clients to purchase easily from your website.

Blogs also make it possible for you to reply to any interested readers, which makes the engagement even stronger when there isn’t just a one way conversation going on!

#4 - You Can Network in Your Industry

Personal trainer networking is a key objective that you should take into consideration when running a fitness blog. 

This is particularly important if you are a sole trader with little to no help around you, and could do with some help in growing your business. 

For example, you could comment on other similar business blogs and reach their audience as well as the business owner themselves. This is how you could introduce partnerships to make your brand stronger.

You can even exchange guest posts. These are an ideal way to get your brand to another audience in a related field. 

For example, you could feature on a nutritionist's blog page, providing advice on the relationship between exercise and food, and in return, the nutritionist could provide meals ideas and suggestions for your fitness blog clients.

It’s all about getting your brand to further audiences, and your blog can certainly act as a tool for this.

#5 - It Acts as a One-Stop-Shop for Everything Related to Your Business

Finally, your blog is a place where you can pile all of your information into one place. In reality, not many users on your personal training social media accounts are going to want tons of text on your Instagram post, but that’s not to say that it’s not incredibly useful information.

So, this is when your blog comes in handy. You can write informational posts, personal posts and even talk about your clients stories. 

All the while, you’re able to have a place with all of your contact information clearly laid out. You can include a map, phone number, email address and whatever else you wish on a page dedicated to just that. 

These are just a few reasons why you should consider starting a fitness blog, especially if you’re looking for a relatively low-cost way to provide additional value to both future and current clients. 

So, while we’ll get into the mechanics of converting potential clients into paying customers, you should keep in mind these reasons to motivate yourself into investing time and even money into a credible fitness blog.

How To Convert Readers into Clients: Step- by-Step

By now, you should understand the very basics of creating a page that has the ability to get readers onto your blog as the first instance.

With our step-by-step guide, though, we’ll show you how to convert these readers into your paying clients.

Step 1: Plan and Organise

Planning and organising your posts and overall blog is all about creating a strategy that includes the thought and consideration of:

• A well-organised schedule
• The platform you’re going to use
• Finding and planning which topics you’re to write about
• Where you’re retrieving visual aids from
• Market research: who are your competitors?

Now, all of these factors are dependent on your target audience. Who you’re aiming to reach with your content will ultimately determine the platform you use, the subject matter of your blog posts, the graphics you use, and the research you do.

First off, whether you’re the only person running your business or you have a writing team helping you out, a schedule is absolutely vital. 

You should try out various schedules and see which dates, times and frequencies of posting works best for your engagement level and address any problems accordingly. 

Alongside this, using an optimal platform is something that you should decide after researching your options. 

Using a platform that matches your level of experience in website development is important. We’ve compiled a few suggestions that are suitable for first time users:

• Wix
• GoDaddy
• SquareSpace
• WordPress

All of these suggestions offer both ideal budget packages, as well as robust, innovative tools that allow you to build the exact website you want, as well as providing an ideal way to appear professional to your potential clients.

Once you have your schedule and platform in place, you should think about the topics that you’re going to cover in your posts. You should be consistent with your theme and direction of content or your optimisation efforts may suffer. 

Essentially, if your aim is for your blog to show your knowledge on health and fitness, and demonstrate your authority and understanding of that topic, that should be the central theme of your site. 

You should avoid switching between unrelated topics, or changing the focus of your blog suddenly. This only serves to alienate potential readers, and can even negatively affect your search engine rankings and optimisation.

We also mentioned that, in your planning and organising stage, you should find where you can retrieve your visual aids from. 

Having imagery and even video on your blogs are a must, no one wants to read an essay with huge chunks of text, you should break it up often with professional imagery. 

This could be your own graphics or, if needs be, find yourself royalty and licence free images. Resources like The Noun Project and Unsplash offer great options for free graphics to help you get started. 

Another possibility is investing into resources such as Adobe Stock, where you can purchase images’ licence for your own use. This can be very expensive, however, with some premium images and video costing upwards of £100.

Finally, find out who your competitors are. Discover who the professionals are at your level, who the big players are in your sector, and what you can aspire to be.

Search for the best blogs in your niche and look at what they do well in order to get more clients heading in your direction. 

You’ll clearly be able to distinguish which content works, as well as what doesn’t, and you can then make the most of the tools you have to try and get your blog to be actionable for clients. 

Ultimately, the goal is to generate clients from your blog posts and the only way to find out what works, is to see results. 

This can be as easy as a Google search. Our example below uses the term ‘personal trainer blog London.’

Doing this not only allows you to scope out who is doing well in your chosen niche, but also what they’re doing well, and how you can adapt their ideas to better fit with what you want to achieve. 

These ideas can also help you develop a keen understanding of the clientele you want to reach, which we’ll explore in more detail in our next step.

Step 2: Assess Your Target Audience

Next, you’ll need to define in detail the audience you’re aiming to target with the content you’re producing.

You should ask yourself what your ideal client looks like. This is when you have to be realistic in what experience you have and the qualifications behind you. 

For example, if you want to train elderly clients, or those with health problems, you’re going to be much more suited to the role if you have a qualification in Level 3 Exercise Referral.

So, with this in mind, you should come up with a demographic that you can use to direct your fitness blog to the correct clients. You should be considering the following as an absolute minimum:

• Gender
• Age
• Occupation

This is a simple way to narrow down a wide audience to a more approachable size, while also taking into consideration what’s doable for you and your business. 

Since the ultimate goal of your fitness blog is to get clients, it would only make sense to direct your blog to the same target audience as your clientele. 

If your target demographic is younger individuals that want to follow the latest fitness trends, you should definitely be talking about this in your blog posts. 

For instance, the recent popularity of the “12-3-30” treadmill workout has resulted in a huge wave of different blog posts as you can see below. These are all dedicated to the trend, and its substantial impact on the fitness industry.

These are perfect examples of how you should react to trending content that you know will be relevant to the demographic you’re aiming to target. 

Show your target audience that you’re well aware of what is trending currently and why you would be the perfect personal trainer for them.

If setting yourself apart from the crowd is something you’re still unsure of, we have tons of helpful guides to make your personal training business stand out - here are just a few below:

• Starting A Personal Training Business Checklist 
• How To Stand Out As A Personal Trainer
• 45 Essential Personal Trainer Resources 

Step 3: Engage With Readers

Next, once you’ve organised your schedule, and narrowed down your target audience, you should ensure that you’re engaging with your audience. 

We’ve already touched upon the importance of keeping up with current trends, and the topics and ideas that your demographic is interested in, but your efforts should go beyond just writing about the things that are popular at the time of writing

We’d strongly advise against posting a blog, and then never looking at it again, especially in fitness. It’s a constantly evolving industry, and you should reflect on the content you produce, particularly if you write it reactively on current trends.  

You should also offer some form of interactivity for your audience. It’s relatively self explanatory that if you want clients, you need to maintain an online presence. With most large-scale blogging platforms, you’re able to have features such as:

• Live chats
• Email subscription box
• Comments 

Adding these kinds of features make your blog more than a page of information. It makes it a hub for your followers to be able to interact with you, to find out the information they need, and meet other clients and like-minded people in the comments. 

You’re able to make a community and build a platform that people will return to regularly, and come to trust your level of authority. 

Carly Rowena’s personal trainer blog is a great example of how you can create that level of interactivity, as well as creating fantastic opportunities to bring in new clients. 

Offering an option to subscribe to a mailing list is a great way to distribute information about your services and general fitness, especially when it’s coupled with effective web design and a professional approach.

If you’re struggling with designing your ideal website, this could be an ideal opportunity to find a service or company that can do that for you. Learn more in our complete guide to personal trainer outsourcing.

You might also choose to have an open comments section, where your clients and readers can post about their experience, share their own tips, and leave ideas you could pursue with future articles.

Here, you should make sure to reply. Whether you’re responding to criticism, thanking the reader for their kind words, or answering a question, this shows your willingness to participate, as well as gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise.

Step 4: Be Proactive 

Your next step should be to build on the strong foundations you’ve already laid, and take a proactive approach to your comments, your content, and ultimately bringing in paying clients.

The most important difference between simply writing a blog, and writing a blog with purpose behind it, is that you have to work to get conversions. Sadly, they don’t happen on their own, but there are ways you can do this simply and effectively. 

Firstly, ensure that you’re present. We have reiterated the importance of being contactable throughout, but this is where you need to not only be easy to find, but also do some outreach of your own.

Here’s a hypothetical situation to better visualise this. Let's say you had written an article on the benefits of couples personal training on your blog, and you had a comment that read something like this:

“I would love to do personal training with my husband! A little healthy competition never hurt anybody right?!” 

This reader has told you that they would love this idea after reading your post, so take advantage of this. 

You could either reply to their comment if you don’t currently provide that, or ask for their email address so you can inform them that you do offer this service, and send them over some package deals you have for couples. 

This is an example of being proactive when it comes to utilising your blog to convert, which is why all of the stages prior to this one are so important. 

All of these stages work in unison in order to bridge the gap between you and the potential customer. 

Step 5: Analyse Traffic Data and Work Accordingly

Finally, once you have gotten in touch with your readers and are consistently posting on your blog, it’s time to analyse what is going well and what isn’t.

This is how you will improve your service, and it’s likely that you will have to endure a trial and error period for this to work. We’d encourage you to measure the following:

• How many clicks you are generating
• Your most popular topics
• Click through rate (CTR) of your overall site
• How many email subscribers (and which blog post they came from)
• Inbound links achieved (and from which posts)
• Average amount of comments 
• Which blogs equated to conversions

These are key things that you should be tracking as a minimum. It is pretty much a waste of your time pushing out blogs that have previously been unsuccessful, and the only way to know if they were successful is through tracking and analysis. 

Most platforms will give you the means to do this. You should find an analytics section of your website building page and record the metrics necessary.

Alternatively, an external software like Google Analytics or Ahrefs can provide you with a robust overview of your site’s performance, and what you can do to improve. 

You don’t just want to convert readers, you want to retain your personal training clients, and in doing so you want to be consistent with the strategies that are working in your favour. 

Simply put, you should find out what is making you money and conversions, and keep implementing those strategies, while also researching how you can expand. 

5 Ways To Get More Clients From Your Fitness Blog

#1 - Have A Clearly Defined Chosen Topic

First off, you’re going to want to make sure that your topic is defined clearly on your blog. This should run through the title, content and overall aesthetics of the web page itself. 

Of course in this instance, your topic is surrounding personal training. This means that you should avoid going off topic into other areas of content because this is not only damaging for SEO but it doesn’t really make much sense to the end user either. 

So, though it may seem self explanatory make sure you have planned your theme surrounding your blog and ensure that it stays consistent with the ultimate goal of getting clients on board.

#2 - Decide on an Appropriate Name

Now that you have your topic set in stone, ensure that the name of your title is appropriate and displays what it is that you’re trying to sell. 

This is your business so your blog title should display this clearly, but your domain name can (and should) be a little more descriptive of what you do, and what you can offer potential clients and readers.

For example, having a domain that just stated your name may be useful for those who know you to find you, but it isn’t SEO friendly when people are searching for ‘personal trainer’. 

Therefore, a business name is always a good direction to head in rather than using your personal name. 

This is how you create a brand that sets itself apart from you as a personality, and provides you with the ability to build a brand identity of your own.

#3 Quality AND Quantity

It’s often said that we should prioritise quality over quantity, but when it comes to blogging, both are equally important. 

However, it’s absolutely vital to recognise the size of your business, and aim to avoid burnout by overdoing your writing.

This essentially means that, if you are just one person running your business, you’re going to find it extremely difficult to keep posting multiple times a week. 

On the other hand, if your business is growing, you’re likely going to have the ability to hire employees for this job specifically. Whether you’re a sole trader or a limited company, a good way to try and manage this is by creating a schedule.

Recent research into the correlation between company size and blogs found that the ideal number of blog posts for any kind of size was around 11 blog posts per month. 

Now, while this may seem a lot, don’t be discouraged - everybody starts somewhere, and even if you can only commit to one post per week, it’s a great way to kickstart a successful fitness venture.

The research also discovered that smaller businesses can experience just as much benefit from 1 - 4 posts a week as larger businesses can get from multiple blog articles a day.

Nonetheless, this does relate to the goals of your business which we’ll move onto next, as the quantity of your business closely relates to what you’re ultimately trying to achieve.

#4 Setting Goals

If your ultimate goal is to find out how to get more clients from a fitness blog, you should prioritise the smaller achievements that allow conversion to thrive. For example, ask yourself what you’re creating the blog for. Is it:

1. To create brand awareness?
2. Bring traffic to your site?
3. Have a point of contact for potential clients?
4. Inform or entertain a wider audience?

Here, you should be focusing on the first two answers more than anything, but keeping the third and fourth answers in the back of your mind as you create content that caters to your core demographic.

Creating brand awareness is how you’re going to prove your authority in the industry, and ensure that visitors and ultimately potential clients understand your expertise, and what your content (and you) can offer them.

Secondly, focusing on bringing traffic to your site is how you are going to get returning visitors, a rise in clicks on your site and thus, an optimised site that could have the potential to rank highly on Google’s organic search.

Both of these are important but they also require different schedules, and entirely different approaches to devote the necessary time to every aspect. 

According to research from Hubspot, small blogs (which is where the majority of PTs will fall) should aim to post 3-4 times a week to boost traffic, and 1-2 times per week to increase their brand awareness. 

So, depending on which goal you’re focused on, or if you want to combine the two, take these figures into consideration when learning how to get personal training clients onboard.

#5 - Be Contactable!

You must remember to make your blog a point of contact for any potential clients to get in touch with you. 

Without any contact information, you’re unlikely to get any response from the posts you make available, and ultimately won’t be able to transfer some of your readership into loyal clients.

Not only should it be a priority overall, but it should be on every single page. This isn’t to say it has to be overwhelming, though. 

For example, take a look at how we have a point of contact on every blog page of our website:

Our contact number and all social channels are at the header and footer of each page so any potential customer doesn’t have to go looking far to get in touch.

You’ll also notice that we offer the option for a potential customer to leave their details so that we can call them back another time. This is an excellent way to attract business without having to be available around the clock.

These are small details that are vital to the success or failure of a blog. You could have the most informative, aesthetically pleasing blog in your niche but, without a point of contact, you’re going to see very little return.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I Need Money To Start A Personal Training Blog?

This is often a misconception many have when they’re learning how to get fitness clients from a blog, and it’s simply not true. 

You definitely do not need a big budget to start your personal training blog. In fact, when you first start out, you don’t need any money at all. 

As we mentioned earlier, there’s a wide range of platforms and services that will help you to create a professional looking blog page without spending a penny. 

However, one thing we would recommend you do invest in, even if you’re on a very tight budget, is a domain name. It’s a simple yet incredibly effective way to give your blog a level of professionalism.

A registered domain can cost as little as £10 a year, especially if you opt to purchase it through a larger provider, like GoDaddy or WordPress. Alternatively, sites like Wix often offer a domain name as part of an annual membership. 

So in a nutshell, though it may save you time by having a budget to create your blog (as you can get a professional to do the work for you) it is absolutely possible to do everything start to finish by yourself whether you are experienced or not. It will just take time and dedication. 

If you need assistance on this, read our helpful guide on how to start a fitness blog that gets huge traffic here.

Is Optimisation Important?

Optimisation is incredibly important when it comes to a fitness blog to get clients on board, but it isn’t as intimidating as it might sound!

Most blogs will give you direction on how to optimise your blog. For instance, if there are areas missing, they will be sure to let you know, as well as provide key tips on how you can maximise the impact your blog can have. 

You should be considering how you can tackle optimisation by using particular platforms such as Ahrefs and Moz, both of which are helpful SEO platforms that can assist you in keyword research and the all important tracking of progress on how your blog is performing. 

Getting used to this kind of behaviour is important, this is exactly how your site is going to climb rankings on Google and become the first option people click on when they search for personal trainers in their area. 

There are many different areas to consider when it comes to SEO and overall marketing as a personal trainer, so if you want an in depth guide into this, be sure to check out our industry guide on marketing strategies for personal trainers here.

Do Blog Aesthetics Matter?

It may be something you’ve not yet considered, but the way you design and layout your blog can have a far-reaching impact.

In order to get clientele, you’re going to need to show authority and gain trust from readers. Plus, you’re going to need readers to stay on your page and actually want to click through your site and sadly, this isn’t going to be the case with an unattractive page.

We recommend seriously taking your time with your website building and avoid publishing the site when it is incomplete. 

Simply put yourself in the reader's shoes to distinguish if your posts are ready to be live - would you purchase a service after reading that post? If you are even slightly unsure, use that as the catalyst for prompting improvement.

Take inspiration from other successful personal trainer blogs, and cherry pick the aspects of their design that you find attractive or interesting.

The only way to find out what works if it’s your first time building a blog is by researching what has already been done. 

This can be easily done by looking for ‘best of’ lists online. For example, we’ve produced several articles on this, including some of the best personal trainer websites, and our pick of the best yoga teacher websites here.

Before You Go!

With this guide, we’ve outlined everything you need to know about how to get more clients from a fitness blog, from writing your first post, to how best to optimise your site so you’re ranking on Google.

But to truly set yourself apart as a consummate fitness professional, a sports nutrition course is an ideal option. It gives you the additional expertise you’ll need to stand out from the crowd, and write impactful, intelligent content.

For plenty more courses that we offer here at OriGym, as well as why you should choose us to take your career (and your blog) to the next level, download our course prospectus now.