Most personal trainers starting out don’t have a lot of resources to market their business with and that can cause a huge problem down the road. When you’re looking to grow your business and get new clients- marketing is your best friend, and without it you’re missing out on a lot of potential business.

Marketing a personal training business with a limited budget means getting creative and trading your “time for dollars” so that you can eventually end up trading your “dollars for time”. One goal you should try to accomplish with your gym or boot camp early on is to be able to afford to pay someone to do the day-to-day work for you, if you don’t already have a staff on hand so you

But don’t think that you have to go out and hire a giant marketing firm because when it comes to fitness marketing, there are tons of ways to get the word out without having to spend tens of thousands of dollars for a marketing plan from these big wigs. You really can do this on your own- and when you’re a business owner, a lot of the time you’re a marker first, and a business owner second.

You should really try to make marketing a part of your daily operations because you’ll only benefit that much more from it. So with that being said, here are the best low-budget marketing strategies that you should start implementing today:

Speak Up

Building authority is important when you’re a business owner. You want people to know you, like you, and trust you and building authority will help make that process easier.

Speak at local health and fitness events and if there aren’t any in your area, then look a couple of towns over or maybe think about hosting your own seminar on health, fitness, and nutrition and invite other health professionals in your area to speak as well.

Write for local newspapers too. Get in touch with the top newspapers and their editors around town and ask how you can contribute. Same with radio, if you know anyone in radio- ask how you can offer fitness tips and other health related content for a morning show or what have you.

Don’t forget to start blogging. Blogging about health and fitness will easily build up your authority, especially over social media. Starting a blog and updating it consistently with useful content will help you gain attention from those in your area, and that will make them more likely to seek you out when they’re ready to get into shape.

If you’re not confident in your speaking or writing skills, then brush up on it and start practicing. As a fitness business owner- you should aim to be the “go-to” expert in your area because it will help you pull in those customers who have probably tried everything in the past and couldn’t get results.

Get Seen

In addition to contributing to newspapers and starting your blog, you should also start posting Youtube videos of yourself demonstrating different exercises and workouts or sharing a favorite healthy recipe of yours. Those who know you will more than likely share your videos, especially if they’re any good.

What makes a good video? Anything that is helpful, valuable, and compelling to your clients and prospects. This is where “knowing your niche” really comes into play. What does your ideal client do for a living? What keeps them awake at night? How old are they? What gender are they? All of these questions will help you to create amazing videos tailored specifically for your target audience.

You may not be comfortable with putting yourself out there, but being a business owner means that you do have to be social and likeable because no one wants to trained by a boring and awkward trainer. Creating videos will help you to get comfortable with speaking and being a “personality” which, again, helps you build authority.

Mail Out

Email marketing is a big deal and needs to be something that you’re constantly working on because it’s extremely cost effective and a worthwhile client-getting strategy.

The thing about personal trainer email marketing is the fact that most get it wrong. Most personal trainers who are desperate for clients will mail out for special offers and promotions only- causing most people to not want to read, or even open any email that they get from them. And if you can’t get the emails that you send out opened, then you’ve got a problem.

See, a lot of people can smell that desperation even through email so you’ve got to change your methods if you find you can’t get them opened. You do that by delivering value through useful, helpful content that your list would want to actually read.

But how do you build an email list in the first place? Through an opt-in. An opt-in is a something of value like an ebook, a recipe, fitness tips or something of that nature that you trade in an exchange for someone’s email address. This is usually captured through a squeeze page or on the front page of your website so it’s important that your website looks good.

These three strategies are just the tip of the iceberg. There are tons of great fitness marketing strategies that can be rolled out for free or very low cost. Check back often for more business growing tips and tactics.

This entry was posted on April 14, 2014 at 9:45 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Boot Camp Business, Boot Camp Marketing, Boot Camp Strategies, Fitness Business, How To Start a Fitness Boot Camp Business by Steve Hochman | No Comments Yet