how to become a personal trainer - online
So you’re thinking about how to become a personal trainer but you don’t have the first idea of where to begin to launch online. In these challenging times, believe me, you are not the only one experiencing this.
So let’s break it down, take all the guesswork out of the process of launching an online fitness brand.
First things first, before asking how to become a personal trainer online, you need to ask: should I become an online personal trainer?
While it seems like the direction most trainers are moving right now, that doesn’t mean that it is made for everyone. Sure it seems appealing to be able to work from home, be your own boss, and the easy way out, but that isn’t always the case for online personal training.
With Online personal training is much harder to market than traditional face-to-face PT. With in person personal training, it is much easier to establish trust. Because of this, you may find that there is a longer gap between finding your online clients.
Still think you’re cut out for online Personal training? Below are a few things that we recommend to make the transition from in person training to online personal training as seamless as possible
- You have at least one year of experience working with in person clients. Not only does it give you the opportunity to network and build trust, but if you can’t train a client when they’re right in front of you, training online will be exponentially harder
- You have a niche. If you have followed DoubleUnderscore for a while, you know how much we talk about your niche. If you train anyone and everyone with no clear goal in mind, what’s stopping them from finding a free workout on Pinterest or bodybuilding.com for free? A well defined niche enables you to become an expert and experts get paid more.
- You have some marketing experience or are willing to pay someone who does. As we mentioned, with online personal training, you lose the ability to earn the same level of trust you’d experience with in person training. Manage your expectations and know that online marketing is more difficult that in person.
- You can show up online. Once you know your niche you need to be able to find them and earn their trust. Whether its writing blogs (which we highly recommend), social media content, or a podcast, stay top of mind with your ideal client.
- You have or will have a website. Without a website you won’t be able to make money, find your audience, or be perceived as a professional.
So what if you don’t have these five tasks nailed down? Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s your time to start your online business. Focus on establishing who you are as a brand, perfecting your service and preparing value-based content to appeal to your niche. Use this time as an opportunity to become the best version of your brand you can be.
So you’ve checked off it task, that is amazing, let’s get into launching your brand.
how to become a personal trainer, online
how to become a personal trainer, online
Establish your brand
Your branding is so much more than a logo and your favourite colour. Having a complete understanding of who your brand is will be pivotal to reaching your ideal client. So what do you need to know?
We need to have a solid niche. We have written other blogs that will take you through the entire process of finding your niche, but the shortest way to describe it is by using the following formula:
I help_____ achieve ____ so they can _______
It doesn’t always have to be based on client demographics such as age or income level, in fact we find that stronger niches come from psychographic personality traits such as wanting to be an inspiration, people who are busy and don’t have a lot of time to work out, or people who want to live longer and healthier for their family.
These are much stronger insights that you can relate back to you in your contact to earn trust
Once you have your niche, your brands perception in the marketplace is incredibly important. Because perception is reality there are a few ways to position your brand:
- You can be relatable – almost like a friend or sibling
- You can be aspirational – “i’ve been in your shoes and look how successful I am now”
- You can be the expert – you’re educated and people come to you for knowledge
- You could even be a combination!
The last step in establishing your brand is understanding your services. How are you going to help your clients achieve their goals? With all my training there are a few avenues you can take
- One on one coaching online
- Generic PDFs where clients take more of a DIY approach
- Group transformation program these are great for community building
- Membership-based where they have exclusive access to content and support
- Live workouts via a video streaming service
- A hybrid service where you train clients online and in person
Each other has their perks and each will attract a different style of client, I would look into each of these to determine the best combination for your business.
how to become a personal trainer, online
Technology
Now that you have your brand established and you have your services laid out, it’s time to look at what technology you need to actually operate your business.
First and foremost having a computer that is up-to-date, free of any viruses or malware and is compatible with any programs you need to run your business is absolutely pivotal.
Next, you will need a website.
Get set up with a website you will need a domain, hosting, and a template. If you are not a tech savvy web designer, we highly recommend hiring somebody who can build you a website that you can manage on your own.
There are many user-friendly front and editors that are extremely accessible to those who are not web savvy.
Depending on the services you offer you may also want to look into a member portal system.
These systems are incredibly helpful as they provide you with analytics and feedback on how your services are doing, and they also help manage your clients, most of them even send a happy birthday text to your clients on your behalf.
Some of our favourites include Trainerize for online-based businesses, and ZenPlanner for businesses that have in person services.
And last but definitely not least, is a payment processor.
This usually is built right into your website, if you have a website template that is compatible with will commerce you can set up one time payments, subscriptions and limit the volume of purchases so you manage your workload. If you would like to run your transactions separately, using stripe has given us great success.
how to become a personal trainer, online
Getting clients
This is what it all comes down to. How do you find clients that are within your niche who are willing to pay your rates and scream from the mountain tops about how great you are.
There are two ways to find clients: paid and organic.
Paid advertising is when you invest in different ad services such as Facebook ads and Google ads.
With these services you are able to specifically target a certain group of people based on who your niche is and drive them to a landing page on your website that is designed to convert them into leads and shoppers.
When starting out it is very difficult to find clients, and in order to leverage google and facebook ads, you will need to set aside a budget for paid advertising.
If you don’t have a budget, and/or you are not tech savvy, organic advertising is ways of finding your clients without investing any money.
The most obvious way of doing this is through social media. Using your hashtags, reaching out to your ideal client from your profile, and engaging with your ideal client is a great way to build up your audience and build leads.
In addition to this, having a website that is SEO optimized while consistently creating blogs with carefully researched keywords is a great way to use organic marketing to grow your audience.
And of course, the way that tends to have the highest success rate with organic advertising is utilizing affiliate or word-of-mouth marketing.
Find influencers who are not competition of yours but have a similar audience to you. Allow them an opportunity to try out your service and have them give their honest testimonial to their audience.
Becoming an online trainer is extremely difficult especially when the market is so saturated but if you do it well and you said yourself a part it is a great opportunity to make residual income and work on your own schedule.
how to become a personal trainer, online
what's next?
Not sure where to go next? Still not sure how to be an online personal trainer? Let DoubleUnderscore take the guesswork out of designing your online brand. Click the button below to complete a Brand Breakdown for a free consultation from the team at DoubleUnderscore
