Being a personal trainer is great, but you must get the message out about yourself. Failing to do so can lead to poor client acquisition and a lack of business success.

Fortunately, this post is here to help. We discuss how creating a content distribution system will generate a torrent of clients, allowing you to take your company to the next level. Here's what to do.

Step 1. Decide Who Your Target Audience Is

First, you'll need to decide who your target audience will be. Think about the people most likely to benefit from your services and whom you can reach online. Defining your target audience lets you tailor your content, style, and tone to suit their needs and preferences.

Identifying your ideal fitness coaching clients requires research and analysis. However, this process is easier than you think.

Start by looking at your existing clients or followers and find out what they have in common. Then, take a deep dive into their demographics and characteristics. (For example, age, gender, location, fitness goals, challenges, interests, and values). You should be able to build a picture of the type of people who use your services.

You can also use tools to help you find your online audience. Widely used solutions include Google Trends, Facebook Page Insights, SurveyMonkey, and Typeform.

Step 2. Review Past Content Success Rate

The next step is to determine which content is already working for you. This approach lets you learn from your successes and failures.

But what is a content success rate? The definition is personal and relates to your objectives. However, most personal trainers judge success by how well their online fitness classes, videos, blogs, social media posts, and other forms of content attract, engage, and retain their audience.

Reviewing previous posts brings a host of benefits and lets you:

- Identify the most popular types of content loved by prospects and clients alike.

- Compare the performance of your content with your competitors and industry benchmarks.

- Change your content marketing strategy and goals depending on the data insights you generate

- Track your KPIs, such as views, likes, shares, conversions, retention, and revenue.

Step 3. Decide What Channels You'll Use

The next step is to decide what channels your content distribution strategy will use. This part of the process is particularly critical for personal trainers since success is often platform-dependent.

Generally, the choices are:

Owned – content published on a channel where you have 100 percent control, such as your blog, email newsletter, or social media profiles.

Paid – content promotion on a platform you pay for, such as banner ads, social media ads, Google Ads, etc.

If you have a larger budget, including paid options that target your ideal clients can result in an instant increase in new leads. In addition, working on your owned channels consistently will help you provide value to past, current, and prospective clients.

Choose one or more content distribution channels that align with your audience's preferences. For example, your blog and email marketing is great for written content, while Instagram or TikTok is best for visual resources.

Step 4. Identify The Type of Content You Will Create

After you've decided on your audience, the next step is to determine what type of content you'll create. Content marketing for personal trainers is all about showcasing your expertise, engaging your audience, and motivating them to take action.

Here are some examples:

Infographics: Use these to make blog posts more visually attractive. For instance, you could display fitness stages pictorially or provide a run-down of the ideal diet.

Fitness articles and blog posts: You can write about topics related to fitness, health, and wellness, such as nutrition tips, fitness trends, success stories, and personal insights. You can also use these to answer your audience's FAQs instead of responding manually.

LIVE video: Live video is a great way to bring presence to your communications with your audience.

Recorded video: These are great for evergreen social media content or a video library for on-demand members.

Podcasts: You can also record audio episodes where you share your knowledge, opinions, and experiences on fitness-related topics. Inviting guests to your show who are experts or influencers is also an excellent idea.

Step 5. Set Fitness Content Marketing Goals

Setting fitness marketing goals is another critical part of distributing content. The basic idea is this: you need to know what success looks like when you get there.

When setting goals, ensure you use objective marketing metrics. Furthermore, ensure you use the SMART framework, ensuring your goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Just like when you help your clients set SMART fitness goals, you'll need to follow the same principle to be able to measure the success of your content marketing strategy.

Here are some examples:

- Increase website traffic by 20% in six months (metric: website visitors)

- Convert a specific % of leads into paying customers (metric: sales revenue)

- Boost customer satisfaction by 15% in one year (metric: feedback surveys or reviews)

- Generate 50 new leads per month (metric: email subscribers or contact forms)

All of these examples meet the "SMART" criteria.

Step 6. Create Your Content Calendar

The next step is to create a content calendar. You have many options, including Google Calendar, Trello, and Asana. These help you manage your tasks and curate your content strategy to make it easier to meet your goals.

Remember to include all the channels and the type of content for each when putting together your calendar. If you'd like to automate some of the posting schedules on social media, you can use a tech solution like MeetEdgar, Recurpost or Later for your evergreen posts.

Step 7. Develop Your Content

The next step is to develop your content with your goals, channels, and content types in mind. Anything you create should reflect your brand identity, expertise, and passion for fitness.

General rules include:

- Researching your niche and audience and finding out more about their needs, interests, and pain points

- Using as many relevant keywords as possible for SEO purposes

- Regularly monitoring your content performance and analytics and using the data to improve quality and relevance.

- Playing with various formats to diversify your content and see what your audience wants

Step 8. Distribute and Promote Your Content

Once you've created your content, the penultimate step is to distribute and promote it online. This part can be tricky, but many approaches are available. For instance, you could:

- Post your content on your blog, optimizing it for search engines and user intent

- Share your content on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok

- Create an email list and send updates and newsletters to your audience

- Partner with other personal trainers or brand influencers to get your message out to a new group of prospects

- Use paid advertising methods like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.

Step 9. Track and Analyse Goals

Lastly, you should track and analyze your content to see if it meets your goals. You can do this with Google Analytics or analytics tools on your social media dashboard. Use a regular schedule to check your content's performance. (For instance, every week or month).

Once you have the information on what performs best, focus on creating more of the same type of content and promote it using the most engaging channels.

Wrapping Up

Like any other marketing effort, understanding your ideal clients is crucial for your content marketing to convert audience members into leads successfully and, ultimately, into paying clients.

Now you know what it takes to build a content strategy for a personal trainer. Use this process to win and if something doesn't work, tweak and test to find what will work.