5 Ways to Get More Media Coverage For Your Fitness Business

​If you’re a personal trainer offering in-person or online training sessions to people in your local area you may want to consider advertising your service in a local news outlet.

Advertising through formal media channels tends to be overlooked as they can sometimes involve a small upfront investment. But if you’re able to offer a valuable and useful personal training service that people will appreciate, the investment usually pays for itself in a short time! 

There are likely to be websites, newspapers, directories, TV stations and radio stations which cater to the immediate geographical area in which you live. 

Getting on the local news in any format can be a massive boost in terms of reach, and being featured on news websites, radio stations or even a social media news site can do wonders for your reputation. Here’s how to get started.

1. Local News Sites

​Local news sites are always story-hungry, and this is particularly true at the moment where the amount of news they are reporting is quite limited. If you have an uplifting story through a unique perspective, they may be interested in covering it and your fitness business as well.

The number of each of these outlets will probably be relatively small, so consider approaching not only the ones in your immediate town but also in neighbouring counties too.
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​Your first step could be to make a list of what’s available in your town and nearby, so you can stay organised about your progress while contacting people. Pay particular attention to any outlets which mainly feature health, fitness, nutrition or related topics. 

In the example below one of our Managed Website clients, Emma McGlen from Pilates and Yoga Studio in Whickham and South Shields appears in the local gazette. The topic is quite mainstream as her free online sessions can help people locked in their homes do something for themselves daily to work on their mental fortitude.
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2. Written Media Coverage

Written media is likely to fall into a couple of categories which you might like to prioritise based on your target demographic. 

• Local papers: these are newspapers only distributed in your town or city. 
• Educational publications: this could mean university or college papers. 
• Community magazines: this can be more difficult, to begin with, but allows you to be more precise in targeting your demographic. ​

3. Local Radio Stations

Your local radio station may be interested in conducting a short interview with you on air if you’re running a particular fitness event. It could be a brilliant way to promote something for charity or to increase awareness of the personal training services you provide. 

If you’re unsure what your local radio stations are, you can enter the postcode of where you live or work here, and it will search for stations near you.

4. Local Facebook Groups

​Local Facebook groups are all dedicated to posting content aimed at your local area. To find them, simply Google or Facebook search the name of your town. 

Due to this narrowed focus, you’re only targeting people who live or work in the area you operate in and the relationships you build there are likely to be facilitated by having mutual experiences. 
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​​However, a word of caution. If you join the group and start spamming its wall with your personal training business, you may be in breach of the group rules and get a poor reputation for yourself. 

Be respectful of the rules in place; often, they limit advertising to a particular day or contain it all in the same thread. It might be a more reliable long term strategy to be friendly and helpful when people ask questions that you can help to answer for them. The relationship is often built in the comments. Indeed, it will take longer to establish yourself this way, but don’t underestimate the power of giving first and building relationships. Often with this method, you’re demonstrating your expertise for more people than just the original poster who asked the question.

5. Make Contact With the Right People

Making contact with the right person in the media outlet can speed up the process and make sure that your communication isn’t ignored. Finding a reporter in your particular niche will be a strong starting point on building that connection.

Here are some tips on how to reach the right person.

• Check the website’s Contact Us or About pages and look for info on their fitness, health or sports correspondent
• If you want to contact a particular person, be sure to review their previously published articles first. 
• Signal Hire is a chrome extension which searches for phone numbers and email addresses via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
• LinkedIn may be an excellent way to make a professional connection, as many companies use this for networking.
• Phone the outlet directly. You could save a lot of time by calling, and it gives you a great chance to build some rapport. Be polite to the people managing your call; they could become a great ally. 

When making written contact via email, it will improve your chances of getting a positive response if you follow a few simple rules.

• Make it personal: even if you’re sending quite similar cold emails out to several news outlets, it can help if you can include a sentence or two making the email personal to the individual you’re addressing. Bonus points if you can bring up a mutual friend or interest!
• Subject lines: keep these short (fewer than 35 characters) and to the point. Creating a sense of intrigue is a good idea. The only goal of the subject line is for your recipient to open the email. 
• Content: the body of the email should stay brief; under 200 words is a good rule of thumb for your first email. Tell them who you are and what you’re offering. Tell them how to get more information with a link rather than an attachment. 
• Sign off: remember to provide your contact information (email, phone number) and a link to your personal trainer website. This way, you provide social proof of what you say you can do.
• Follow up: There’s a saying that the magic is in the follow-up. Here, I’ve found it useful to say that you’ll email/ phone again on a given date unless you hear back from them sooner. You’re showing that you’re serious and if you do have to call back - you can say that they are expecting your call. 

Promotion could be in the form of paid advertisements or an article discussing an aspect of your fitness business in more detail. 


That’s it! Getting featured on a local news site, radio, blog or social media page isn’t easy, but it can be well worth it. Usually, getting your foot in the door is the hardest part, and after that, most outlets will be happy to feature you regularly so long you provide them with value.