Personal trainers are often seen as the go-to experts when it comes to fitness and health. They’ve trained their bodies, studied countless amounts of research, qualified in special courses, and have the grit and determination to try and change other people’s lives to reach their fitness goals
But even after all of that, it can be tough to run a personal training business. Training clients are mostly the easy part, but what if you don’t have any clients to train? No client base to pull from? Where will all the years of knowledge and training go to?
Sound familiar? Read on. This is one of the most common problems personal trainers face but there’s some things you can do to be prepared for it. We’ve heard it often when we chat to PTs, which is why we wrote this guide on the 4 biggest mistakes personal trainers make when trying to get clients.
Avoid these and you’ll be on your way to attracting more quality leads.
Not Having A Niche
As part of being a personal trainer, creating training plans is part of the job. It’s how you get the clients from where they are now to where they want to be in their fitness journey.
But keep in mind that not everyone is the same. Every person is different, from how they grew up, what type of bodies they have, mindset, goals, age, etc.
And with that many differences in people, it’ll be pretty difficult to create the right plan for every one of your potential clients.
This is why not having a niche to focus on is the first mistake PTs make when trying to get more clients.
Let’s take a look at some names here:
1. Aimee Victoria Long – Pilates Instructor and has been seen in Cosmopolitan, Forbes, and the Evening Standard.
2. Mark Ireland – Uses an athletic approach to improving your mobility and increasing your strength and conditioning.
3. Shona Vertue – Incorporates Yoga with her own style that mixes cardiovascular fitness, resistance training, and yoga with meditation.
Just from the names above, you can already see that each successful fitness trainer has its own niche to focus on. Whether it be what you teach, how you teach it, or mixing in your own approach, by excelling in a chosen field you will be able to focus more on who your audience is supposed to be.
This will allow you to know exactly what you need to do in order to pull more clients into your niche. And aside from that, you’ll be doing something you truly enjoy!
Not Creating Valuable Content
Most PTs might be thinking “What does content have to do with being a personal trainer?” or “Is content really that important?”
And others may proceed to not utilize content in their business and then proceed to fail in getting quality clients.
Plenty of trainers fall into this idea that content in your social media, websites, apps, etc. is not that important, when in fact in today’s world it is one of the driving forces for a business to succeed.
If all you have is generic content that people have seen and read over a million times already on the internet, then you won’t be able to get the interest of many potential clients.
By providing informative and quality content that speaks to your audience, you will be able to give them something new or captivating that will get them hooked and more interested in your business and personal training services.
Not Building Relationships with Potential Clients
Has a random person on the street ever tried to get you to try and sell you a product or service? And how did that work?
Now, picture yourself in that scenario again but this time you’re the one trying to get someone to sign up for your personal training sessions. It’s not a good look, is it?
This is another problem that a lot of PTs face when trying to market their business in the physical world and online. When PTs don’t build enough relationships with their possible clients, they fail to gain their trust which only hurts the business more and more.
Providing your personal training services is important but it is also important to know who exactly your clients are. What they do, what their goals are, their family, friends, workplace, and pretty much anything they are willing to share with you.
Knowing this allows you to bond with your potential clients on a deeper level than just your standard customer relationship. And in having that bond you’ll also be able to gain a proper client.
But it’s definitely easier said than done, building relationships can be extremely difficult for a lot of people. So, make sure to look at different tips and tricks on how you can market your business while also being able to gain the trust of your clients.
Not Networking with Other Professionals
There’s only so much one person can do when trying to run a business. There are also so many relationships we can build with potential clients. And this entails the last biggest mistake a lot of fitness professionals make when trying to run their business.
Not networking with other professionals only limits your capability to do much more and can cause many more problems to your business in the long run such as:
– Lack of knowledge to grow your personal training business
– Not having people to support you and your PT business
– And a lack of growth and expansion in your fitness business.
So, learning to reach out to like-minded individuals is not an investment for your business but also for yourself. There are a lot of benefits that come with being in a community that motivates you and keeps you accountable.
Networking can be tough of course, especially if you’re starting your business out. But there are plenty of ways to network with others without having to spend hours upon hours doing it. Especially these days where everyone can be messaged or reached out in only a few seconds.
There are plenty of personal trainers out there who would love to connect and share your wins and mistakes, it’s just a matter of reaching out to them.
More than PTs, we are also human and we make mistakes along the way. That is a part of the process, it always has been. But with everything that you’ve read here, you will be able to not only get more clients to avail yourself of your personal training services but also help in maximizing and growing your business.
