8 Top Personal Trainer Digital Marketing Strategies

As a personal trainer, digital marketing can be a powerful tool used to attract more clients to your business. 

To ensure the best possible results, this article will cover 7 strategies with real-life examples to show you how effective they can be.

Earning an advanced qualification, notably by enrolling our Level 4 Sports Nutrition Course, will allow you to market a specialist service to your clients. As a result, you can attract a new demographic of customers and increase the revenue your business generates.

Download OriGym’s FREE course prospectus here to learn more about our qualifications! 

#1 - Running Paid Ads On Meta Platforms Is An Exceptional Personal Trainer Digital Marketing Strategy

When discussing digital marketing for personal trainers, using Meta’s ad management software will allow you to target key demographics of your choosing, across Facebook and Instagram.

Choosing to advertise here means you can access a huge audience. Insider Intelligence reported that Facebook is the still most used social media platform in the world, and with this larger audience comes a greater chance of attracting clients to your business.

To control this software, you will simply provide Meta’s ad manager with the following information:

• Who your target demographic is (i.e., the kind of clients you want to train)
• The location you wish to target 
• The age and gender of your chosen demographic 

You’ll then fill in this information on a form that looks like this:

After this, you’ll tell Meta what the purpose of your ad is. There are many different options to choose from (as seen below), all of which can affect the final appearance of your ad.

According to Meta’s Business Support, campaign objectives operate with the following purpose:

• Awareness - Create awareness for your business, this will help you reach large numbers of people who are most likely to support your brand of training. 
• Traffic - This will increase traffic to an online page of your choosing. For example, if you’re offering discounted personal training packages, you can direct visitors to a sales page.
• Engagement - Find customers who are most likely to engage with your business - Specifically clients who will reach out for further information via platforms such as Messenger 
• Leads - Includes links to sign up pages where clients can provide their contact information to generate leads.
• App Promotion - If you work with your clients on a specific fitness app you can include a link in the ad for them to download it on their mobile or tablet device.
• Sales - To promote goods or a service, the ad will link clients to a location where they can make a purchase.

Meta will then ask you what style of ad you wish to create, with the following options being available to you:

• Photo Ads - This clean and efficient method allows you to describe your services through photos and canvases. 
• Video Ads - These can be up to 60 seconds long, and promote the service on offer.
• Carousel Ads - Allows you to add multiple videos and pictures in one place, with potential customers able to swipe in order to learn more about your PT business.
• Stories Ads - These are specifically for Instagram Stories, allowing you to create immersive full-screen ads for users of the platform's unique feature.
• Ads in Explore - Advertise to those outside your target audience with ads that reach individuals looking to expand their interests beyond accounts they follow.

If you don’t select a preference, Meta’s algorithm will automatically select a platform for you, based on data they think will reach your target audience.

To gain a better understanding of digital marketing for personal trainers, we’ll take a closer look at Meta ads that OriGym has paid for. For example, a Photo Ad from Facebook can be found below: 

Here OriGym’s target demographic can see exactly what services we are providing to our customers, all of which is conveyed through text and a picture. 

We then decided to make this ad actionable by including a call to action (CTA) accompanied by a link to a landing page. 

Once clients interact with this link, they’ll be redirected to a page where they can sign up for a personal trainer diploma.

Similarly, using a Instagram Story Ad will produce results that look something like this:

Instagram users can choose to ‘Swipe Up’ in order to interact with these Story Ads. Following this, they will then be redirected to a contact form, which will look something like this:

Having these contact pages connected to your ads allows you to acquire the name and contact details of leads which you can use to get in touch with them directly - making it much easier to secure a sale.

If you wish to implement this digital marketing strategy, you’ll need to pay a set fee. To appear in the feeds of your target demographic, Meta charges £0.78 per click, meaning you only pay based on the success rate of your campaign. 

For this reason Meta ads are regarded as cost effective form of advertising, but if you’re looking for a greater sense of control you can cap your spendings with the budget management tool:

Once your daily budget has been reached Meta will reduce visibility of the ad campaign until the following day, at which point the budget can reset. 

To demonstrate how successful this approach to digital marketing can be check out the results from one of OriGym’s Facebook Ad campaigns:

This highlights just how effective paid ads can be, as our approach to digital marketing allowed us to reach 352,090 people, and generate 92 leads in a matter of 9 days.

But, while they’re hugely effective, Meta Ads aren’t the only form of paid digital marketing for personal trainers.

#2 - Supercharge Your Personal Trainer Digital Marketing With Google Ads

As arguably one of the most effective forms of digital marketing for personal trainers, using Google Ads can see your business ranking among the top 3 results on the first page of Google searches (for a specific term).

This can be regarded as a huge benefit for your personal training business, as a report by Search Engine Land indicated that business websites that fall onto the first page generate 80% of enquiries for that specific term. 

By purchasing a Google Ad you can therefore increase the likelihood of generating a sale thanks to this increased visibility.

As a personal trainer, this digital marketing technique can be implemented by placing a bid on Google Ads for a specific term. 

The fee you pay will vary depending on the demand for the ranking position, and the overall popularity of the specific term among Google users.

Google only has a limited number of ad space available per search term. Some of these are highly competitive, as evident from this example for ‘Personal Trainer Birmingham’

As all of the following ad spaces are taken, personal trainers who are interested in taking one of these places would need to outbid the business on Google Ads.

Terms that include a specific location are referred to as ‘local searches’ as clients who are within that specific location are likely to be searching them. Examples of these types of searches could include variations like:

• Personal Trainer in Birmingham
• Birmingham PT
• Personal Training Birmingham
• Birmingham Personal Trainer 

Targeting these terms can significantly benefit your business in multiple ways. For instance, they will be significantly cheaper to bid for in comparison to holistic terms such as ‘personal trainer’. 

In addition to this, local searches are regarded as being high intent, as users searching them will already have an idea of what service they want to invest in. 

Therefore, by placing a bid for these terms you can target a demographic who is more likely to invest in your personal training business. 

This isn’t to say that every local search will be competitive. For example the term ‘Personal Training Nottingham’ currently has no ads ranking at the top of Google:

We’d always recommend testing out multiple relevant local searches for your business. In doing so, you can reduce the amount you spend on bids whilst still reaping the benefits of appearing at the top of Google’s first page.

For example, our research indicated that over 200 people search ‘Personal Training Nottingham’ every month. By securing an ad space on that search page, you can generate a significant amount of targeted traffic to your website.

To understand how beneficial this digital marketing strategy is, take a look at the results from one of OriGym’s Google Ad campaigns. From the graphic below, you can see that, through ads, our landing pages generated over 497,000 clicks and 20,000 leads.

You should now be able to see just how effective Google Ads can be for your business. As a personal trainer this digital marketing strategy can help to significantly expand the visibility of your business and generate a higher income.

One thing to keep in mind is that you may need to conduct some keyword research of your own. This can be done as you’re setting your ad up - all you need to do is sign up for Google's Keyword Planner.

In doing so, you will be able to determine which local searches will draw the most attention to your business.

#3 - Registering On GoogleMyBusiness Is Essential for Personal Trainer Digital Marketing

Staying on the topic of using Google as a means of digital marketing for personal trainers, this section is specifically dedicated to using the FREE application ‘Google My Business’. 

Signing up for Google My Business allows you to create a listing for your personal training business. Once set up, this will appear on Google’s maps feature for local searches, like these PT businesses in Bristol:

The three examples that appear underneath the map are referred to as ‘The Local Top 3’ and are a highly coveted position to have on Google. These are businesses that Google has determined to be the best options for the person conducting the search.

Ranking in this position can make your business appear more legitimate. This is backed up by data collected from Renolon, who stated that 63% of searches are likely to trust the local Top 3 over businesses listed below.

Should your business rank in the local top 3, it will therefore have a higher chance of generating sales and increasing your revenue. 

It should therefore be a priority to ensure that your business ranks in the local top 3. To achieve this goal, Google analyses the information present within your Google My Business profile to see if it meets the following criteria: 

• Relevance - Refers to how well the profile matches the user's intent. To ensure relevancy, you must ensure that the information you include about your brand is as detailed as possible. 
• Location - Is simply about the location of your business. When creating your profile, you must ensure to include where you operate.
• Prominence - Business that are well known will rank favourably for prominence. This can be influenced by the likes of reviews and how often your business is mentioned by others. 

Should your business rank in the local top 3, it will have a higher chance of generating sales and increasing your revenue. This is due to the fact that it will be one of the first results clients see when searching for a local term.

Now that you know how effective this personal training digital marketing strategy can be, we’ll walk you through how you can set up your own profile. 

Step One - Set Up Your Profile by Registering on Google My Business

This will require you to set up a Gmail account and corresponding password. If you already have an email account registered with Gmail you can use this too.

Step Two - Entering the Name of Your Personal Training Busines

This must adhere to Google My Business strict guidelines. For example, your name cannot include any additional key words! 

For example, if your business name is Joe’s Personal Training, you must register it as so. You will not be able to register any of the following variations:

• Joe’s Personal Training Manchester 
• Manchester Joe’s Personal Training
• Joe’s Manchester Personal Training

Including the additional keyword will violate Google My Business’ terms of service and can get your business account suspended. There will be plenty of time to register your location at a later point, so don’t include it in your name! 

Step Three - Provide Information About The Location of Your Service

If you have a fixed location you will be asked to provide the following information:

If you don’t have a fixed location, you can register as a service based business. In doing so you can provide Google with information relating to the areas you’re willing to work in.

Keep in mind you cannot register locations that are already claimed, meaning that if you primarily work at a popular gym, you cannot choose this site. 

Step Four - Verifying Your Personal Training Business 

This is done by sending a postcard to an address of your choice. This will contain a pin number that can be used to confirm your account’s registration.

You will typically have to wait 5-14 working days for this to arrive. Whilst this may be inconvenient to wait for, the process is actually valuable as it helps weed out fake business. 

Once your PT business has been verified you can then register the following details:

• A description of your business
• Your working hours
• The date your business was founded
• Relevant photos and videos 

As a personal trainer this digital marketing method can benefit your business by increasing its visibility to potential customers online. The best part is that you don’t even need to spend any money on this, as the process is entirely free!

If you’d like to learn more about how to optimise this digital marketing tactic check out our blog post on How to Use Google My Business as a Personal Trainer.

#4 - Digital Marketing For Personal Trainers Should Include An Effective Email Marketing Strategy

When it comes to promoting physical fitness, this personal trainer digital marketing technique can help to convert potential leads into paying customers. 

In fact, statistics gathered by experts at Tidio found that over 60% of small business owners stated that email marketing was the most effective strategy for generating sales. This beat out the likes of:

• Social media marketing
• Landing pages
• Push notifications

From this statistic, it can be stated that using email marketing can help to increase your business’ revenue through increased sales. 

In fact, this is something we take advantage of, too. Our own email chain currently has over 23 thousand subscribers, which are regularly converted into paying customers.

To start fitness email marketing, you’re going to need to capture potential clients' personal contact information. One of the best ways to achieve this is to offer something in exchange for free on platforms such as your website or social media accounts. 

This offer must be relevant to your business. For example, at OriGym we offer prospective customers a video guide that informs them how a PT Business from their homes:

This is what we call a lead magnet.

Customers who want access to this lead magnet provide us with their contact information, which will then inform us that they are interested in learning to become a personal trainer. 

We then send them emails that will promote our business further, with the final goal of being to sell our personal training courses.

One thing to keep in mind when using email marketing as a personal training digital marketing strategy is to not push for a sale immediately. This will likely drive potential clients away - instead, you want to gradually push them towards a sale by highlighting all the benefits your services offer.

For example, once OriGym customers have downloaded our 9 week guide they will first be sent a welcome email. This will be followed by several other emails that highlight the value of courses, such as PT salary information and how you can get clients.

There should always be a gap between these emails, as this will ensure that your business is not bombarding potential clients with messages, which could be misconstrued as spam.

For reference, our email marketing chain looks like this:

Once a potential customers have received multiple emails discussing the benefits of our service, we finally send a sales focused email which looks something like this:

Essentially, as a personal trainer, this digital marketing strategy should be used to gradually push potential clients further down the sales funnel, convincing them to invest in your business.

Now, the example we provided was for our own personal training courses, so let’s discuss how you can implement this for your own business.

First you need to decide what you will offer the client that will get them to part with their personal contact information. 

A good example of a lead magnet comes from Precision Nutrition, who offers clients a bespoke dietary calculator and request their personal information as a means of receiving their results:

Once this information has been captured you should create an email marketing campaign of your own, using platforms such as Campaign Monitor. 

A ‘chain’ refers to the different emails that are sent to clients once they have provided their contact information. The creation process allows you to gradually funnel clients down towards a sale, a simple example for a PT could look something like this:

• A welcome email
• 2 Day Gap
• An email that discusses the benefits of your services - e.g. client success stories 
• 2 Day Gap
• Another benefits email - e.g. highlighting the effectiveness of your bespoke programmes
• 2 Day Gap
• A final benefits email - progress photos of previous clients 
• 2 Day Gap
• Sales driven email that promotes your personal training services

Remember, the purpose of this personal training digital marketing strategy is to gain more clients. Therefore, you should strive to make your business appear as appealing as possible during these emails.

- - - -

If you’re interested in learning more about personal trainer digital marketing tactics, then you should check out the following OriGym articles:

• How To Get More Clients From A Fitness Blog: Step-By-Step
• Personal Trainer Video Marketing: Step-by-Step & Tips 
• How To Make A Personal Training Website: 7 Simple Steps

#5 - Optimising Your Website For SEO Is A Must For Personal Trainer Digital Marketing

If you intend on promoting personal training with digital marketing one easy technique you can implement is ensuring that your website's content is SEO focused.

For those who are unfamiliar with this term, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation.

Websites that have been created with SEO in mind will rank higher on Google for search terms that are relevant to your business. This will help to bring relevant users to your site, increasing the chance of generating leads and making sales.

We’ve already discussed the benefits of ranking on Google’s first page, but to reinforce this, Small Biz Genius estimates that 75% of searches never pass to the second page of results. 

As you can see from the following example, these personal training business have optimised their sites to be suited for the term ‘Personal Trainer Bristol’ -

The following tips can be implemented in order to improve how your website performs on search engines like Google.

Include Keywords To Boost Your PT Website's SEO

By including keywords in your website, you’re essentially telling Google what your business is about, and the services that you offer. 

Using tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner and Ahrefs can help you find keywords that are specifically relevant for your business. 

We’d specifically recommend finding keywords that are high in traffic and relevant to your business/services, but have a low competition score, as this will increase your chances of ranking on Google.

Grace Fitness is an example of a trainer who has ensured to optimise keywords relating to geographical location. This can be seen in the screenshot below where she uses ‘Personal Training Bristol’ a total of 7 times -

Through the optimisation of keywords such as these, Grace Fitness has managed to rank on Google’s first page for the ‘Personal Training Bristol’ -

To Optimise Your Website’s SEO, Use Short Paragraphs and Lots Images

When creating your personal training website, you need to keep in mind the amount of time visitors will spend on any given page. The more time they spend on your site, the higher Google will rank you.

Visitors to your website are likely to be put off if they’re met with a large chunk of text. Instead, if you want to keep their attention, you must ensure to keep paragraphs short and include plenty of images.

Since we know Grace Fitness ranks so well on Google, let’s take a look at how she breaks up her homepage with short paragraphs and photos:

This layout is easier for visitors to read and digest, meaning that they will be more likely to stay on your page for longer periods of time.

Include Your Social Media Links On Your Webpage 

When it comes to digital marketing for personal trainers if you wish to optimise your site for SEO, another feature you must include is social media links on your webpages. 

This will prompt visitors to engage with content on your website which will push you up Google’s rankings. Again Grace Fitness implements this into her own website, with a direct link to her Instagram:

This works both ways as including a link to your website in your Instagram Bio can help to improve your website’s SEO for personal trainers.

Include Links To Your Other Pages Improves Your SEO

An ‘internal link’ is a hyperlink on your website that will direct visitors to another page of your site. For example, you could include a hyperlink on your homepage that directs visitors to your sales page.

For example, Grace includes a taskbar into her website with hyperlinks to various different webpages:

Again, this will ensure that visitors to your website stay on there for longer periods of time, as they will be going from one page to another to learn more about the services you provide.

With the information available in this section you will now know how to optimise your personal training website for SEO purposes. 

Keep in mind that this process will take time, effort and dedication on your part to ensure that your site is as strong as possible.

#6 - Content Marketing Should Be Included In Your Personal Training Digital Marketing Strategy

When analysing the importance of content creation, HubSpot estimated that 60% of marketers owed the success of their sales to their content creation strategy. 

If you’re interested in creating content as a means of exploring digital marketing as a personal trainer the best method to do this is through blog posts. In doing so, you will be able to display your knowledge and expertise to potential clients, which, as HubSpot proved, will help to boost sales within your business.

For example, Coach Sean’s blog displays his advanced knowledge of nutrition through multiple healthy recipes:

Through the creation of blog posts such as these, you can show clients that you know what you’re talking about in relation to your specialty. In doing so you can increase the likelihood of them signing up for said service.

For example, if you’re a personal trainer who holds a Nutrition qualification, you could take inspiration from Coach Sean’s approach to content creation and display recipes on your own blog.

Check out Bumps & Burpees for another example of a personal trainer who writes blogs about their chosen speciality,  This site specifically caters to clients who are interested in pre and postnatal training:

As a personal trainer this digital marketing strategy can be implemented through the creation of your own blog. One popular platform that many content creators use to fulfil this is WordPress.

This website design tool will guide you through the process of starting a fitness blog that gets traffic from your desired clientele.

The creation of this blog can tie back to the optimisation of your website's SEO. By incorporating keywords into the content you create, you can ensure that your posts rank well on Google, and are easy for your target demographic to find.

This can be seen below, where Bumps and Burpees ranks favourably on Google, along with one of our own blogs for the keyword ‘Pregnancy Personal Trainer Blog’ -

Taking time to research keywords relating to your chosen speciality will also give you an idea of what content your target audience is interested in. 

This in turn, will inform the type of blog posts you’ll write, as you will be able to cater to the demand of your readers.

#7 - Building Up A Consistent Presence On Social Media Is an Effective Personal Training Digital Marketing Tactic 

Through consistent posting on social media you can generate a dedicated base of followers who are engaged with the content you’re creating and posting to social media accounts such as Instagram.

As a personal trainer this consistent approach to digital marketing can benefit your business in multiple ways:

• Allows you to directly engage with your clients through direct messages
• You can reach new audiences through targeted posts using tools such as hashtags 
• Provides you the opportunity to establish a brand identity - something that clients can immediately associate with your business

Through consistent posting your number of followers will gradually increase, which in-turn will act as a form of social proofing for your business. 

This will attract even more clients to your personal training business, as they will see your large following and trust the content and advice you’re providing is legitimate. 

One way to ensure that your social media posts are consistent is to use a scheduling software such as Sprout Social:

When in use, this tool will allow you to create content that posts automatically at a designated time of your choosing. 

This will provide you with the time to plan coherent content on schedule, rather than rushing it out manually to meet your own personal deadlines. 

Through dedicated planning, your account could look similar to this example from Connor Williams Fitness:

From just one glance at this account you will be able to instantly get an idea about Connor’s brand of personal training. Not only does he have a recognisable colour scheme, but from all three posts we can see that he specialises in body transformation and weight loss. 

This dedicated approach to content creation has clearly worked in Connor’s favour, as he has amassed a following of over 3,000 followers, which again helps to social proof his business for future followers.

If you take one piece of advice away from this section in regards to digital marketing for personal trainers, it should be the importance of planning your social media posts.

Creating content with a highly specific intent will always help to capture the attention of your target demographic in a more effective manner than simply posting without thought or reason. 

#8 - Respond To Journalist Requests To Boost Your Personal Trainer Digital Marketing Efforts

One final personal training digital marketing strategy you can implement is to respond to journalistic enquiries regarding health and fitness related topics. Should you decide to implement this tactic, you’ll start to see you and your business quoted across the web.

Responding to these messages from journalists will help to establish you as a credible source within the fitness industry.

Think of it this way. If a client sees your name in these large publications, they will know you’re trustworthy and will be more likely to contact you in regards to your services.

This can be especially beneficial if the journalist works for a well known organisation. For example, a quote associated with OriGym can be found below from The Mirror:

Getting the name of your PT business listed in other publications can also affect how you rank on Google. This relates back to the three aforementioned influencing factors of:

• Relevance
• Location 
• Prominence 

Specifically, getting the name of your business listed in these publications increases its prominence online. 

To implement this strategy, you will need to sign up for sites such Response Source and HARO. Once your account has been created you’ll begin to receive emails from journalist with questions about health and fitness, which will look something like this:

These emails can appear at various points throughout the day and can come from a variety of outlets. 

In addition to this, they will typically be about a wide range of topics, meaning that you won’t necessarily be discussing the same subject every time. 

Be aware that replying to these journalistic enquiries is not mandatory. You can pick and choose which ones you wish to respond to. 

To increase the likelihood of being mentioned in a media outlet, we’d recommend answering enquiries that you have a vast amount of knowledge in. This will allow you to display a level of expertise that can present you in a professional manner. 

Before You Go! 

Now that we have covered 7 strategies for personal trainer digital marketing, it’s up to you to decide which examples you work best for your business.

To attract a wide range of potential clients we’d recommend experimenting with multiple approaches to digital marketing.

Remember, clients with specialist interests can be targeted through completing advanced courses, such as our Level 4 Sports Nutrition Course. This qualification will provide you with vital skills and knowledge that can be marked as desirable attributes for clients.

You can also download our course prospectus here for FREE!