Focusing on the right clients

Marketing is the key to the success of any business. When you are able to reach your customers and potential customers, they will be able to reach you. However, what many people miss in marketing class is the idea of having a strategy to your plan; especially when you're running your own personal training business and finding clients. As a personal trainer, you have specific skills that you are selling to others, so you will need to try something different with your marketing focus.

When marketing for finding clients, you will want to start by assessing who you want your main clients to be. Think first about the skills that you have to offer and what that might mean for a client. If you're someone that's interested in marathons and you've trained for several, you might be a good personal trainer for runners. Or if you've taken part in a weight lifting competition, you might want to think about marketing for your weight lifting skills. What you're trying to do is match yourself with the ideal client, right from the start. Ask yourself the following questions:

What skills do I have?
What am I good at teaching?
What can I offer a client?
What have I done in the past?
What have I been successful with in the past?
What equipment do I have?

But that's just about finding the client that matches your skills and training. Once you've established their fitness goals (hypothetically speaking), you will need to go into more detail about whom these new clients will be.

Are they business professionals?
Are they athletes?
Do they need training every day or at different intervals?
Are they out of shape to begin with?
Are they in great shape, but want to increase their fitness?

When you see this list, you might think that you just want to take any client that needs a personal trainer, but that's not going to work very well for your marketing strategy.

In order to effectively advertise in getting clients, you need to be able to address a specific need that your prospective clients want. Once you've nailed down this need (with the above questions), you can start to market to them in a manner that will be successful.

For example, if you're looking to get clients that are bust moms, you will want to create advertising that goes where they go; maybe you will have flyers at grocery stores or at daycares. If you're looking for athletes, you can advertise (with permission) at gyms and training centers. Think about where these folks already are and where you will make the most impact.

What about the internet? Building a website for your marketing needs is simple, inexpensive and it can answer a client's questions before they even call you. This is a great tool for you to use and most clients expect everyone to have an internet presence of some sort, so you should certainly look into it. List your services, your contact numbers as well as answer any questions that you might think that they have. Talk about the hours that you are available and what you are an expert in.

Another good tool to use is the local newspaper and radio. While this might seem a little costly at first, you will reach a wide audience without much effort on your part. If your city is focused on fitness and health, these techniques will work even better.

Marketing is about getting your name to the people that really want to use your services. Here are some other ideas that you might want to consider:

Mailing out business cards to various medical fitness centers to hand out to patients that are looking for personal trainers

Handing out free session coupons to those that shop at health food or supplement stores

Talk to sports equipment stores to see if you can post flyers or business cards

Go to health conventions and advertise your services

Talk with gyms and fitness centers to see if you can work from their facilities until you build a client base

But how much of your time should marketing take up? In the beginning, you will need to be spending most of your day marketing to people. While you can start with word of mouth advertising through family and friends, you will need to find new locations to post your information and constantly revise your advertisements until you find something that works. Create brochures that illustrate your services, go to fitness related events to get your name into everyone's minds; in short, become visible so that people that want a personal trainer think of you before going to anyone else.

When you offer the things that your customers are looking for, marketing is simple. Figure out who you want as a customer and try to advertise only to them.