Online Fitness has been the newest trend in the fitness industry. When the pandemic hit and everyone were stuck at home, the industry needed to adapt and thus Online Fitness was born!
With this, thousand of Personal Trainers found a way to start their Personal Training business through the internet. Many were quick to jump on the trend with PTs setting up online programs and posting on social media. But it was also found that running an Online Training business has its challenges, and for most of them, these are the reasons they failed.
It’s important to know that when you want to start a business, you need to understand the common problems you may face to meet them head-on and thrive. That’s why here are some of the most common issues a Personal Trainer faces with Online Fitness Training.
Having a Poor Marketing Strategy
When it comes to running a business, especially one that heavily relies on gaining and nurturing clients, you will need to have a proper marketing strategy. But not every Personal Trainer can come up with one from scratch which leads to the business not being able to start in the first place.
There is a solution to this, two actually! The first one involves hiring a marketing agency to help you out. Now, although you will be spending money on this, by hiring professionals and specialists to help you and your business you’ll be able to focus more on training actual clients while they focus on getting your name out there. Of course, you’ll need to make sure you have enough first to avail of their services, but when you do, you won’t ever have to worry about marketing your Online Training Business.
Another way to combat this problem, and one that’s a bit more budget-friendly, is to use and optimize social media. On average, people spend about 2 hours of their day scrolling through their phones. So what if you were able to pop up on the phones of those who are looking to lose weight or gain muscle? Then they’ll want to reach out to you for inquiries or you can reach out to them to try and get them as clients. You can also simply post selfies, promote your own programs, or get testimonies from previous clients and the Instagram or Facebook algorithm will take it from there. You can also learn more about using social media online for better optimization!
The Feeling of Burnout
Having a personal training business can be really exhausting. You’ll be doing one on one online training sessions, creating fitness programs for clients, handling inquiries or concerns from current to potential clients, getting in a workout yourself, taking care of your own nutrition, and so much more. And oftentimes, this is the main reason why a lot of personal trainers quit their online fitness business.
So how do you deal with this? Every business owner can relate to feeling burnt out, but the best way to combat this is by having a structure for your business and planning ahead. By making the proper preparations you can manage your time and energy a lot more efficiently, which will lead you away from feeling burnt out.
You don’t even necessarily have to plan months ahead, you can start by planning out next week, scheduling your client’s workout schedules, when you’ll be focusing on your own workout when you’ll be handling inquiries and concerns and etc. It’s all in your hands so all you need to do is manage your time to prevent burnout.
Customer Support Challenges
Since your personal training business will primarily be online, you will find it a lot more difficult to make sure your client is keeping track of their fitness journey. Of course, you won’t be able to be there and see them do the workout or check the results so how do you keep your client on track?
The best way is to show your clients how to do certain exercises to help them out. Record videos on how to do the proper burpee or how to do side crunch the right way. By giving your clients a visual presentation of the workout, they’ll be able to follow in your footsteps and finish their workout the right way.
Another way is to do a live call with your clients. You can do one on one online training where you can see them do the workout live as well as give them motivation if necessary. By doing this your clients will definitely feel a lot more comfortable knowing that you are still training them in this online format. You can even join in to help them out!
Lastly, you may want to invest in a personal training software or app that you and your clients can use to help with progression, scheduling, workout videos, and even notes or rewards. A fitness app can help you manage your and your client’s time and focus a lot better. And as a personal trainer, looking out for your clients well being and fitness journey is the number one thing we need to always focus on, so no investment should ever be too much for them and for yourself!
With that being said, personal training software can be a bit difficult to use and understand, especially if you’re just starting out. But with Hapori, we are always looking for the best ways to get you up to speed! Below you can watch a video on how PT and Hapori Coach customer Jen Murray easily set up an online personal training business going from zero to generating thousands of pounds of extra income per month. What we love about jen’s story is that she isn’t an influencer or does tons of social media. She literally just started building her online offering in conjunction with her existing PT business. Check it out.
An online training business can be a lot of work, and you will definitely make a few mistakes here and there. But as the saying goes “It’s not how many times you fall, it’s how many times you get back up that matters.”
Online training is here to stay and online trainers are going to need all the help they can get in learning how to start and run their business.
