How to Get More Clients as a Personal Trainer

In today’s fitness world, personal trainers do more than count reps. Beyond guiding workouts, they may grapple with the question of how to get clients for personal training in a highly saturated market.¹ 

Exploring both digital and traditional marketing methods can help personal trainers not just find, but genuinely connect with, their next clients. Let’s dive into some personal trainer marketing ideas that blend the best of both worlds. 

4 Ideas to Get Clients for Personal Training

1. Launch a referral program.

You could spend hours researching personal trainer advertising examples. While this research shouldn’t be discouraged, try looking first to those whose trust you have already earned. If you’ve helped a client reach certain goals, consider asking them to share their success story. A personal training referral program can help turn existing clients into ambassadors for your business.²

You also can consider offering an incentive to share their experience, such as discounted sessions or a gift card to a local sports shop.

This word-of-mouth marketing can be a powerful advertising tool. The opinions of friends and family can have significant influence³ over purchasing decisions. 

2. Use social media for fitness narratives.

When someone’s thinking about training with you, they’ll probably peek at your social media first. Try not to just flex on them, though. When it comes to where to advertise personal training, you may want to check out using social media apps as personal training storytelling platforms, such as Instagram. 

Here are some ideas for stories you may want to share: 

• Has a client achieved a lifelong milestone? Post and tag them on Instagram. Maybe ask them to challenge others the same way you challenged them.
• Have you developed a fitness routine and do you want to dare the public? This makes for a great example of a personal trainer social ad.
• Just finished a high-intensity training session and the energy is electric? Capture that moment, post it to your blog, and ask your community to reply with their own post-pump videos.

Personal stories, especially transformation journeys, can resonate deeply, turning passive scrollers into engaged followers.

A final tip here: Use video rather than a photo as often as possible, as video engagement rates tend to soar in comparison to their still-frame counterpart.⁴ A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a video is worth a million pictures.

3. Maintain a physical presence.

As a personal trainer, you’re probably no stranger to working one-on-one with your clients. That same idea can apply when it comes to where to advertise personal training to attract and maintain clients. A few prime examples are personal training business cards and personal trainer flyers.

They can often punch above their perceived weight class. On average, business cards can lift sales by 2.5% for every 2,000 cards you pass out.⁵ But it’s possible to boost this statistic even further. 

Handing out a business card and having an elevator pitch ready to go with can be a great way to make a strong impression and quickly tell your story. It’s the real-world equivalent of a social media direct message, except you are the message. 

Speaking of the online world, business cards have more than 5x the conversion rate of the average website. 

Flyers can take this idea even further.⁶ Like a business card, they’re easy to keep with you and hand out. And they can showcase your training facility, feature client success stories, highlight your credentials, feature offers, and more. That’s quite a workout for a piece of paper.

4. Foster growth through community.

Along with tapping your clients for reviews and recommendations, you also may want to look to fellow business owners as a way to promote your business — and theirs. This really can be effective when the businesses are closely related and could help the same types of clients, such as a personal trainer and a nutritionist.    

Working with different businesses in your community can be a lot like working different muscles in the body: They all can contribute to a better overall result. We’ve got some ways to help you get started and get involved in your local business community here.

Getting Your Business Insurance in Shape

Whether it’s the right type of warmups or ensuring proper exercise form, you make sure you do all you can to help your clients thrive and avoid injuries. You can think of insurance for your personal training business much the same way. 

Here are some types of coverages we recommend for personal trainers: 

• General Liability: This typically covers third-party bodily injury, property damage, and accidents. For example, a client who trips over some equipment, gets hurt, and sues you for their medical bills and time off work.
• Workers’ Compensation: If you have employees — even part-timers — there’s a good chance you may be required to have workers’ comp insurance to cover the costs associated with employees who get sick or injured on the job. For instance, one of your trainers breaks a finger re-racking weights and needs medical attention. 
• Professional Liability: Training is often about overcoming challenges, but if a client gets hurt in the process, you could face a negligence claim. Professional liability is designed to help cover any damages and legal costs.

The bottom line? Insurance gives you peace of mind — and a sound mind and body often go hand-in-hand in personal training.

Growing Your Business? We Can Spot You

You know that your clients need the right instruction and coaching to feel better, grow stronger, and live healthier lives. That’s what you do. 

It can be much the same when you look to add more clients to your roster. Having some guidance and direction can go a long way. That’s one of the reasons we’re here. Sure, we specialize in financially protecting small businesses, but we want to see those businesses thrive and grow. It’s good for them, and for us.

That’s why we offer a free online Resource Center. It’s filled with tips, tools, and articles like this one that you can use to grow your personal training business — all without a lot of heavy lifting.

References:

1. Learn more at Traineracademy.org.
2. Learn more at Trainerize.com.
3. Learn more at Qualtrics.com.
4. Learn more at Porchgroupmedia.com.
5. Learn more at Smallbusinessrainmaker.com.
6. Learn more at Mypthub.net.