Getting Referrals For Your Personal Trainer Business

​I'm going to help you to discover a smarter way to manage your personal trainer business. Let me ask you one question:

How much do you spend on marketing your personal trainer business?

Got a rough number? Ok, now where exactly is that money invested. Here a few places you're probably thinking of...

• Personal trainer website
• Leaflets and flyers
• Printing and stationary
• Staff uniforms
• Affiliates
• Charities
• Magazines and newspapers
• Doctors surgeries
• Facebook ads and post boosting...

The list goes on. Now lets suppose you've written a big long list of everything you spend your marketing budget on. How much do you suppose is spent on OUTBOUND marketing? By this, I mean the money spent on things that are external to your personal trainer business like ads, radio, magazines etc. I've been speaking to a lot of personal trainers and it turns out that the majority if us are spending approximately 80% of our hard earned money on outbound marketing.

That means that we only spend approximately 20% of our marketing budget on inbound marketing. Inbound marketing includes delivering value to your fans and encouraging your existing clients to promote your services for you.

Naturally, being the curious little bee that I am, I asked why we seem to loosely follow this 80:20 rule. The most common answer:

"Because that's what the marketing gurus and corporate gyms spend their money on."

It seems as though the majority of personal trainers are trying to walk in the footprints of already successful personal trainers. This, to me, is like a walkie talkie manufacturer advertising the same monthly contracts as the big wig mobile phone companies. Personal Trainer David is trying to fit in to Goliath's Fitness First pants!!

Here's what I think the inbound personal trainer marketing:outbound personal trainer marketing ratio should really look like:

 

20 Outbound:80 Inbound

You probably think I'm a little bit mental right now. What could you possibly spend that much money on internally in your business?

Let's Talk About Growth

It's a very common misconception among personal trainers that clients will feel offended or betrayed when you ask them to refer their friends and family to you. A lot of personal trainers wonder "Will my clients question my loyalty if I'm asking for more?" or "Will my clients think I'm not doing so well and question my abilities?" The simple truth. NO! But that doesn't solve the problem or remove your insecurities does it?

So how do we make this referral process seem less like you're asking for a massive favor because you've suddenly forgotten how to train people effectively and all your clients are firing you as their personal trainer?

Spend time and money on making your business growth a positive thing for your clients too. Get them involved. Celebrate with them when you reach 'X' amounts of hours or when you hire a new PT. Talk to them about it during rest periods. Be excited about it. When your clients see that you are excited, they'll be excited too! All of a sudden, asking for referrals will be an exciting experience and you might even find that your clients will be more pro-active in finding them for you!

The Referral Reward System

I see too many personal trainers rewarding their clients referral generating behavior with the usual extra free session, a t-shirt or a free month of bootcamp. This is all well and good but wouldn't it be nice if your phone company rang you up and instead of saying "thanks for being a loyal customer, here's 1000 free minutes" they said "thanks for being a loyal customer, let's go an a couples retreat!"

Ok, I'm not saying you should be taking your clients on what could turn out to be a five star swingers cruise, but why not break the mold and take it a step further. Take a client out for some food. Spend 15 minutes at the end of an outdoor session on the grass with a little picnic. Even a protein shake! Hell, why not get a group together and do something non-fitness related. It will help your clients to see you're human and reenforce the fact that you're human and excited about progression!

Dance Monkey, Dance!

Another great way to not only encourage your clients to refer their friends to you but also to ensure that you don't feel like a kiss ass is to show off. It's quite likely that your clients think that you're a one trick pony. Afterall, they only see you teaching that same group and yeah, you might change the exercise, sets, reps and tempo but to your clients, it's all the same.

Every now and again, throw in a specialized session. Something you might put together for a sprinter or a even a body builder. You're thinking "why? this isn't going to help my client with their goals" Actually it is and it will help you too. Your clients will get a great new physical stimulus, a knowledge bomb and best of all, they can now refer you for that specific type of training.

Your Personal Trainer marketing Strategy

Personal trainer marketing is a complex business. The constraints of dividing business life and personal life are long gone and personal training has never been so personal. With that in mind, don't forget to be aware of conflicting systems, your personal life and business life can suffer if you don't establish clear boundaries with yourself, your clients, your family and your work.
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