The Beginners Guide To Setting Up a Lead Magnet for Personal Trainers

Advertising on social media can be tough - with so many personal trainers in the market place, how can you stand out? You want to deliver an awesome service to your clients but you need to show them what you’re capable of - and that you care! Giving them something - for free - to show how you can help them to achieve their goals is a great, low cost way to help your potential client.

What is a Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet is something that you give away for free in exchange for contact details like an email or phone number. It can be an eBook or video that solves a problem that your audience is having. ​

It might come in the form of an e-book, video series, podcast, recipes or even a checklist. If you consider all the free content that you consume on the internet - the chances are you’ve probably downloaded someone’s lead magnet this week! 

They are an extremely powerful marketing tool to help personal trainers to develop their audience and give something helpful and valuable to a potential client.

Do Personal Trainers Need Lead Magnets?

Lead magnets are brilliant for a number of reasons. Not only are they becoming more popular than print year by year, but having a lead magnet allows you to help your audience for free, usually before they have bought any personal training services from you. ​​

This positions you as an expert - one who is demonstrating that you have knowledge and understanding of them and their problems. By giving them the lead magnet, you have an opportunity to communicate your skills and build rapport without them spending any money. It’s a way for them to get a feel for whether you’d be a good fit in working together.

It also creates a psychological sense of reciprocity - you’ve already given something for free and so when you ask for something in return - like their e-mail address, they are more likely to hand it over because they understand that you’ll use it to send them things which are helpful to their journey.

How Lead Magnets Work

Gary Vaynerchuck puts this nicely in his book Jab Jab Hook. He talks about how you should give, give, give before asking for something in return.

So if you give potential clients a free product which solves a problem for them, adding them to a mailing list where you can give them free advice, maybe sending them something else which is relevant to their interests, such as a calorie calculator which would help a weight loss client - all this is done before you’ve asked for them to spend any money at all.

But - and this is an important point - giving without any expectation of anything in return is the crucial part. Personal training is a service industry - with a heavy emphasis on putting the needs of your client first. 

That means that we must not approach giving away information from a transactional perspective. We’re asking people to trust us with managing their health and the lead magnet is a way to earn that trust before the client buys from you.

How to Create a Lead Magnet

A good lead magnet will reassure your potential client that you understand how to solve their problem, that you are the right person to help them to do it, and that the time to take action is now.

Figure out what it is they care about by actually speaking with them directly - either face to face, or online. Once you know this, you can create something valuable which will solve their problem quickly and in a way that they have never tried before. 

• You could create a single page cheat sheet, check list or blueprint for their success.
• You could record an video recorded interview with a client who has had a successful journey like the one your client wants.
• You could publish a podcast, allowing you to connect with your audience directly.
• You could create an e-book of recipes, exercises or mindset exercises. 
• You could create an e-mail campaign which drip feeds lessons like a course. 

You can use a number of free online services, such as Canva, to make your product, or free hosting, such as YouTube or Google Drive to store the content. Then you’re ready to publish your content with a Call To Action - download the product, watch the interview, listen to the podcast

Where Do I Put it?

Your lead magnet (the thing you’re giving away for free) lives online on a page called a landing page. This is where you’ll send the website visitor so that they can decide if it’s something they would find useful.

You can set up a landing page on your personal trainer website or  through your mailing list software. Examples of email marketing softwares include Aweber, Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor and MailerLite. 

It’s essential to use a mailing list software because once you’ve been given your clients email address they’ll have the option to unsubscribe should they not want to hear from you again. To prevent this from happening, you’ll make regular contact with them through e-mail. Regular, helpful, entertaining e-mails will be one way your client will come to Know, Like and Trust you. 

Maintaining a consistent e-mail schedule will be important to keep you top of mind for your client. Each time that person thinks about getting fit, getting in shape, or about that twinge in their knee they wish would disappear - you want to be the name they think of as someone they trust to help with their issue.

The point of the mailing list isn’t to sell to your client all the time, but rather just to maintain a relationship and keep them associating personal training services with you.

How to Promote a Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet is usually part of a larger marketing "machine" that includes several parts to work effectively. These parts might include your website, blog page, social media channels and email marketing platform.

To promote your lead magnet, try to use all of the your marketing assets. For example:

• Include the lead magnet in a blog post
  
• Write a blog post that covers the same topic and link to it
• Create a social media post about the blog
• Create a social media post about the standalone lead magnet
• Send the lead magnet to your current email subscribers
• Promote the lead magnet on your personal page
• ​Ask friends and clients to promote the lead magnet for you

There are dozens of ways to promote your lead magnet but ultimately, it's effectiveness will depend on the quality of the lead magnet itself.

Lead Magnet Ideas for Personal Trainers.

As personal trainers, we’re looking to solve problems for our audience that fall broadly into 3 camps:

1. They want to get fitter.
2. They want to look better - an aesthetic goal.
3. They want to avoid pain. 

You know your own audience best, but the contents of your lead magnet will address one of these areas, and be written with the needs of the client you want to attract in mind. For example:

• 3 Simple Exercises to Improve Your Golf Swing
  
• Drop a Dress Size in 6 Weeks Blueprint
• Double Your Muscle in 28 Weeks

Your lead magnet title and contents will very much depend on the type of personal you're trying to impress and what their problem is.

If you work mostly with people who talk to you about physique, how they look, or aspire to bodybuild in any way - your audience has an aesthetic goal. This could be getting prepped for a family holiday so that they can take their shirt off at the pool, or stepping on stage as a professional bodybuilder. 

If you work with populations who talk to you about how they feel in relation to injuries, or age related issues, your audience is looking to manage their pain. This might be helping someone with their DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) or helping with the rehab team for someone overcoming an injury.

Most people’s goals are related to all three areas and goals change over time. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a lead magnet to address all of these areas. ​