Marketing Channels for Personal Trainers in 2022

As we dive headfirst into 2022, there are now even more ways that a Online Personal Trainer can connect with potential clients. But let’s face it there are so many, it's almost impossible to understand where's best you can get in front of your target clients.

You want to make sure your time and money is focused on the most impactful channels, but without a clear grasp of the most important channels for your PT business, this can be difficult.

Well, there’s good news - understanding the different marketing channels does not have to be too time-consuming. With the correct knowledge and tools at your disposal, you can easily select the correct channel to ensure you're targeting the correct people with the correct message.

The key is to focus on the channel that can help you maximize both your budget and the growth of your PT business, in this post we look at the different types of channels and how each can help you reach your goals.

How to choose the correct channel?

The list below is not a definitive list of available channels, but as a Personal Trainer these are the ones that will help you grow your business

1. Email Marketing
2. Performance Marketing
3. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
4. Display Advertising
5. Social Media Marketing
6. Content Marketing

Email Marketing

Email allows us to have direct communication with our target audience. Be it lead generation, promoting your new fitness package, or just sharing some good news. It ensures you're building relationships with potential customers and even building bridges with old ones. According to Campaign Monitor, email drives $38 in revenue for every dollar spent.

Email Tactics:

- Capture email address’s either on social channels or your website.
- Re-engage with old customers
- Up-sell new products to your customer list.
- Newsletters - Promoting blog posts

Check out our blog post on The 11 Best Email Marketing Software for Personal Trainers to get an overview of the best software to use.

Performance Marketing

Performance marketing is a way of targeting your audience across multiple networks while being able to control the content your customer sees, but more importantly, being able to control the cost you are willing to spend on each click or impression. Examples of performance marketing are:

- PPC - Pay per click marketing on platforms such as Google Ads and Bing
- Social Media Marketing - Target your customers across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, or Twitter.
- Display - This type of advertising allows you to be seen across many websites, and for example, could be used for targeting people who have visited your website but have not converted.

There are many targeting options in performance marketing, and for example, you can target your ideal customer by keywords they type into Google, interests they may have, and also by job title. All of this allows you to get instant results but will cost you money.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO is the process of increasing organic traffic to your website by earning top rankings on the search engine result page (SERPs) like Google, and Bing for a list of your top keywords.

While performance marketing (PPC & Paid social) allows you to get instant results, SEO is the long game. SEO will allow your business, with effort and time to start ranking higher up in search pages, which in turn will allow you to have consistent, relevant traffic for your fitness business.

Search channels are used to target potential customers who have a decent idea of what they want. Your target audience will use phrases like “Personal Trainer near me” or “How to get fit for Christmas” Your plan as a business owner is then to make sure that your content contains these keywords to give you a chance of showing on the search engine result pages.

Social Media Marketing

This is where the world comes to consume content, and is where you will go to start a conversation about your brand, industry, and fitness packages. In 2021, there were 4.20 billion social media users around the world. This is equivalent to more than 53% of the world’s population. So, it is safe to say that your audience is reachable, you just need to create the content to attract them.

The main social channels we believe you should be considering in 2022 are:

- Facebook (www.facebook.com )
- TikTok (www.tiktok.com )
- Instagram (www.instagram.com )
- LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com
- Clubhouse (www.clubhouse.com )
- Twitter Spaces (help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/spaces )

But, most importantly find out where your ideal customers spend most of their time on social media. This is the channel you should be focusing on. You could try some test posts and then check on the engagement to see which social channel is a good fit for your fitness business.

Content Marketing

As we discussed in The Personal Trainers Guide to Content Marketing content is the key of every digital marketing campaign, be it paid or organic. Content marketing is about creating great, relevant content that people not only want to engage with but will also help your potential customers to get to know your brand, and help them decide to choose your product or fitness package.

Your content can be presented in many ways, such as:

- Blog Posts
- Marketing pages
- Videos
- Adverts
- Info-graphic
- Social media posting

The above are just a selection of different channels, luckily you don’t have to use every marketing channel to be successful

Different marketing channels bring different solutions depending on where your customer consumes their content and also what you want to sell to them. But the key is to understand the value of each channel and how it can help you achieve your marketing goals.

Remember that each channel has a strong crossover, for example you could make a great video and post in on YouTube, then, share it on your social media channels and also embed it in to a blog. You could send out an email with a link to your video or the blog you embedded it in to. Done regularly these steps will naturally improve your search engine ranking as well!

Effectively one simple piece of content can help you grow on multiple channels, this is why every successful business in 2022 will create content and share it as widely as you can.