Marketing your personal trainer website can sometimes feel repetitive. Once you’ve mentioned it on your social media, and put the link in your email signature, you may be left wondering what else you can do, on top of those normal, day to day promotional activities, to direct people to your website.
There are a few “outside the box” strategies that you could try to drive traffic to your personal trainer website and to get people to engage with the content once they’re there. In this article, we get a little creative with our marketing strategies.
1. Integrate Your Social Media And Your Website
You’ll have already put your website link in your social media bio, but asking people to leave one platform and check out your content on another is creating friction. That click out of Facebook or Instagram might be too big of an ask for people that are distracted by their social media feeds.
That’s where user-generated content comes in. You can feature user-generated content, like their reviews, photographs, testimonials and transformation blogs on your website. This sends a powerful message to your current clients: you’re proud of them, and you consider them a valuable part of your community.
That’s where user-generated content comes in. You can feature user-generated content, like their reviews, photographs, testimonials and transformation blogs on your website. This sends a powerful message to your current clients: you’re proud of them, and you consider them a valuable part of your community.
The things they say about your training, being part of your community and the progress they make under your guidance are things which you feel comfortable showcasing on your website. That’s a strong message of thanks to your clients.
But most trainers miss out this next step: sending a personal message to the client and tell them that you’ve featured them on your website. That means they’re more likely to navigate to the site to see what you’ve said about them. It also means they’ll talk positively about your services more often as they know you’re paying attention and value their feedback.
Next, talk about what you’ve done on your website on your personal social media account (not your Facebook business page, but your personal wall as far more people will see it), and tag your client by name in the post. That means not only will they see it, but provided you’ve remembered to make the post public, their friends will see it too. An important tip to remember: Keep the link to your website in the comments rather than the main post and anyone that likes the post - be sure to follow up and make sure they found your site and the post that references their friend.
You can use this exact same technique when you ask clients to make testimonials about your personal training services. You could even overlay your website name as a subtitle on the video, or ask your client to mention it in their review. The power of this method is in the follow-up, so while it might not be quick or glamorous, it is highly effective.
But most trainers miss out this next step: sending a personal message to the client and tell them that you’ve featured them on your website. That means they’re more likely to navigate to the site to see what you’ve said about them. It also means they’ll talk positively about your services more often as they know you’re paying attention and value their feedback.
Next, talk about what you’ve done on your website on your personal social media account (not your Facebook business page, but your personal wall as far more people will see it), and tag your client by name in the post. That means not only will they see it, but provided you’ve remembered to make the post public, their friends will see it too. An important tip to remember: Keep the link to your website in the comments rather than the main post and anyone that likes the post - be sure to follow up and make sure they found your site and the post that references their friend.
You can use this exact same technique when you ask clients to make testimonials about your personal training services. You could even overlay your website name as a subtitle on the video, or ask your client to mention it in their review. The power of this method is in the follow-up, so while it might not be quick or glamorous, it is highly effective.
2. Make The Website Interesting
Once someone is on your site, use a short video with no sound as a header to engage the visitor and prolong the duration of their attention. This is interesting, dynamic and extends the length of time a new visitor is on your personal trainer website. Check out the header of one of our Managed Website clients, Stay Decided Fitness and see what this means.
When someone lands on your personal trainer website, trying to keep them on the site for as long as possible will be important. Videos can really help to reduce the bounce rate from your site, and can help to give your visitor a subtle glimpse into the type of people you work with and the sort of results they may expect.
3. Social Media: Temporary Content, Savable Content, Hashtags, And GIFs
On social media, you can promote your website on temporary content rather than in posts. Stories and reels are a great way to get in front of your audience and often have a far better reach than posts in your feed. You can even hashtag or name tag people in your stories so that they can re-post your content to their stories.
Adding custom hashtags and .gif content can be an incredible way to boost your brand and to encourage your clients to use them to foster a sense of community spirit. You could also create valuable “savable” content, like checklists, that people are likely to save for later. Social media platforms will push new people towards your content on their discover pages if it’s getting frequently saved.
Adding custom hashtags and .gif content can be an incredible way to boost your brand and to encourage your clients to use them to foster a sense of community spirit. You could also create valuable “savable” content, like checklists, that people are likely to save for later. Social media platforms will push new people towards your content on their discover pages if it’s getting frequently saved.
4. Using Podcasts To Market Your Personal Trainer Website
Podcasts are an outstanding lead generation tool for personal trainers and the opportunity to position yourself as an authority on the platform is considerable. Starting your own is free (after the cost of buying some equipment) as is appearing on other people’s shows. Consider which podcasts your ideal clients listen to, and reach out to the host about collaborating on an episode of the show with a pitch the same way you would if you were guest blogging.
Podcasts are free to relatively low cost to get started with, and can afford you a highly personal platform to communicate with your audience. They’re an efficient way to build goodwill with your audience as every episode is valuable content marketing for your personal trainer website. People listen to them while commuting to and from work, while cleaning the house and doing chores, or while working out. To get set up, you’ll need a method of recording, editing and hosting your podcast, and ideally, also a microphone to keep audio quality high.
Podcasts are free to relatively low cost to get started with, and can afford you a highly personal platform to communicate with your audience. They’re an efficient way to build goodwill with your audience as every episode is valuable content marketing for your personal trainer website. People listen to them while commuting to and from work, while cleaning the house and doing chores, or while working out. To get set up, you’ll need a method of recording, editing and hosting your podcast, and ideally, also a microphone to keep audio quality high.
Content for a podcast is simple; plan it the same way you’d plan a post of your personal trainer blog. Start by thinking about what your ideal customer wants and needs to know about, and start to research around that idea. Listen to other podcasts yourself, and decide on the style you enjoy most. If you like longer or shorter episodes, or if you like just a host or an interview style.
5. Real World Marketing
If you have a small budget, you could consider using physical merchandise that’s been printed with your personal trainer website address. This could include apparel, training logbooks, and even custom resistance bands.
Making donations to charities, and philanthropic causes close to your heart in the name of your business, such as local sports teams can be a fantastic marketing tool for personal trainers who want to direct a particular quality of traffic to their personal trainer website.
You could even advertise locally in the newspaper or on local radio. This can be especially effective if you’re providing face to face personal training services, and you have a set gym premises to operate from. Directing traffic to your personal trainer website can be a place to simply provide additional value, reinforce that relationship of trust and to funnel people into your mailing list for additional offers, not necessarily to sell online training services.
Making donations to charities, and philanthropic causes close to your heart in the name of your business, such as local sports teams can be a fantastic marketing tool for personal trainers who want to direct a particular quality of traffic to their personal trainer website.
You could even advertise locally in the newspaper or on local radio. This can be especially effective if you’re providing face to face personal training services, and you have a set gym premises to operate from. Directing traffic to your personal trainer website can be a place to simply provide additional value, reinforce that relationship of trust and to funnel people into your mailing list for additional offers, not necessarily to sell online training services.
Conclusion
Directing traffic to your personal trainer website can feel like you’ve tried the basics but there’s little more to be done. Once you have the link included in your email and social media bio, it can feel like a struggle to know how else to leverage your community to think outside the box to get people to visit your website. But with the time and effort you’ve put into building incredible resources on the site, that’s worth a little extra effort.
