How to create a marketing plan for your personal training business

Having a well structured marketing plan in place for your personal training business will ensure that you keep on top of your content creation, consistent posting and will in turn lead to more enquiries and personal training clients.

If a marketing plan is missing from your personal training business – create one today!

Do you want to gain more clients for your personal training business?

Do you want to give yourself a bit of a pay-rise this month, and subsequent months?

Do you want to improve your brand awareness and reach a wider audience?

The answer to achieve the above is simple, create and apply an effective marketing plan…. And importantly, be consistent with it.

Here are the 3 steps to creating an effective and motivated marketing plan.

1. Create your schedule

Decide when you will want to be posting over the week, on what platforms, and with what content.

See our example below:

There is no right or wrong answer to the amount of posts you should be doing, this comes down to your own time availability. But obviously; the more content you post, the more the algorithms will favour your content and put it in front of more eyes and a larger audience.

For example. If you were to post once or twice per week, the algorithms won’t push your content to as many users on that platform than if you were consistently posting daily, or even multiple times per day.

The more consistently you post and engage with your audience, the more your content will be pushed to more accounts (you can see this in your account tracking statistics). Because of this you will have an increased chance of finding new followers and essentially new clients.

As you can see from our example, utilising different platforms (not just the one that you prefer) will ensure you can reach a wider audience base, and by adding the same content to different platforms at different times ensures that those users who flick between platforms every time they reach for their phone will get the opportunity to see your posts at different times (increasing the chance of them reading/watching/engaging with your content).

You could also consider daily/weekly themes (such as training, nutrition, mindset) and don’t forget to ‘advertise’ your services… consider a monthly offer with a reason to take action (limited availability, deadline of an offer expiring).

Action: create your weekly schedule.

2. Find your inspiration and create some content

Remove the imposter syndrome, start looking for content that inspires and interests you, and use this as a blueprint to help you create your own content.

All ‘influencers’ or content creators start from the same position. They have a business, product or service to promote so they will look to others who have achieved success in their ‘similar’ field for inspiration to create their own content. Look at Joe Wicks as a good example of someone who found a style for their content and then consistently put it out there again and again. (Note: Joe wasn’t an overnight success, it took him a lot of hard work and ‘consistent’ posting to gain the reach that he achieved).

You should do the same.

Start with doing some research, get ideas for your own content and start creating a content library:

• Blogs
• Short pieces of copy to go with images
• Videos/reels

The important thing to remember when creating your content is that it should showcase your service/product in the most professional light.

For example; if you are trying to gain more personal training clients think about what would your target audience would want to see? Countless selfies and pictures of food? Or content that shows how you work with your clients? Consider this content as a ‘shop window’ into what you do.

Of course it is great to show others your own achievements and what you do to reach your own goals… but the key thing is to show what treatment and service your future clients will receive from you if they decide to invest in your personal training.

My advice here would be to block out some time next week and get someone in place who can take photos and videos of you working with your clients (note: don’t do this in a clients ‘paid’ session… ask some of your willing clients or friends/family members to play the role of being a client for this content).

If you do this, you will start creating a great library of content that will be invaluable to utilise in your consistent weekly posts. 

The key to great content is to be able to offer ‘free’ value and information that can benefit people. Such as ‘How to train for weight loss’ or ‘How to get more protein in your daily intake’… just these two topics could fill a whole week of content – from blogs to reels.

Always remember to advertise around these posts too… special offer, testimonials (why you should invest in my services), start working with me today…

Action: book some time out of your diary next week to take some photos and film some video content.

3. Work out what platforms you will be using and start posting.

When you have your schedule set, and you have started to create some content, it is time to start putting your content out there…… this is where many hit a wall and don’t follow through with their intention.

The reason for this is because it can be daunting, imposter syndrome can come into play, you may feel that people won’t want to see your content!!! 

Just ignore this and get posting.

You will be offering an insight into a business and service that will benefit so many people… you are giving them an option to be able to improve their health, fitness and wellbeing. So start promoting yourself ‘professionally’ and give the people what they want!!!

As soon as you start doing this, and I’m talking from experience here, you will very quickly stop worrying about what people may think, and you will start to consistently post out your content without a second thought. Having a schedule (step 1) really helps with this…. Without a schedule you will find yourself scratching your head and looking around for ideas and ultimately will lead to putting out no content at all.

Use the most common social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram… consider platforms like X, Tik-Toc and Linked-In if it is relevant to your business.

Don’t forget that not all individuals are on social media, so to reach these you should be using a mail list and also ‘old school’ methods such as posters, banners, leaflets…

I would also highly recommend using paid services too such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads.

Then finally, you have the amazing platform of YouTube!! This can really help grow your audience very quickly.

Action: start posting!!! 

Hint… want some ideas? Ask your current audience what they would like to like to see…..

So there you have it, in a brief overview that is where you can start with creating a marketing plan to grow your audience which will essentially lead to more clients and an increased income.

GIVE YOURSELF A PAY-RISE

One of the key motivations for me when I was a full time personal trainer was to give myself a mini pay rise each month. For example, if I advertised more and promoted my services and picked up a new client who would want to invest in me by training twice a week… this would result in a £80 a week pay rise (based on £40 per session)… an extra £320 per month… 

Use that as your motivation.

We will be following up this blog with a YouTube video and a Podcast… so make sure you that subscribe to these platforms so that you won’t miss these.

If you would like to know more about building a succesful business as a personal trainer, have a look at our FREE eBook:

HOW TO BUILD YOUR BUSINESS AS A FITNESS PROFESSIONAL

This eBook will give you a great idea of what foundations you need in place for your current or future business, including:

• How to use social media platforms
• The importance of a professional looking wevsite
• Cashflow projections of what you can realistically earn
• and much more…