The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Personal Training Business

If you’re serious about growing your PT business, you’ve come to the right place. In this guide, we’ll cover:

1. The importance of a business plan 📝
2. How to financially plan for your PT business 💰
3. How to find and grow your Personal Training niche 🎯
4. How to plan your Personal Training services and packages 📦
5. How to attract new clients to your PT business 🤝
6. Enhancing the client experience ✨
7. Software to help your business grow 🚀

It’s important to stay focused on continual growth and keep looking for ways to harness innovation to facilitate that growth. There are many tactics you can employ to build momentum when growing your PT business, and in this guide, we’ll dive into them. Keep this guide handy — bookmark it — and keep referring to it, as it will help you focus your efforts and hone your growth strategy.

A successful Personal Training Business is one that starts based on a solid business plan. You wouldn’t build a house without an architectural plan, and it’s the same for your business. The first and most fundamental task you need to do when you begin to write your business plan is to have a clear business strategy in place. Ask yourself the following:

• What do you hope to achieve?
• What are your goals?
• What’s the purpose of your business?
• What is your business structure—are you a sole trader, a partnership, or a company? Most personal trainers will be sole traders, but you may well be setting up the business as a partnership with another personal trainer.
• Where will your business be located, and what strategic advantage does that location offer? Will you be based out of a gym, at your clients’ houses or will you have your own location?

Everything contained in your business plan will revolve around and support your strategy. When you write your business plan, remember to:

• Keep it short and sweet — the process of writing your plan will help you focus, crystallize your ideas and identify priorities, saving both time and effort.
• Keep it realistic — assumptions, being overly optimistic or un-necessarily negative will not help you to produce a plan that’s an accurate outline of how you intend to start and run your business.
• Keep it close at hand — review, revise and update your plan regularly. This will keep it relevant as a roadmap for your business.

In order to grow your revenue stream, you need to make sure you’re charging accurately for your services. If you haven’t already you need to figure out your break-even point, and then you’ll have a better idea of what you’ll need to charge in order to grow your business.

To help you figure out how much you should be charging, and to determine your break-even point, crunch the numbers with our hourly rate calculator for personal trainers.

If you're going to borrow money to finance your growth plans, your bank or financial provider is going to want to see the numbers, so your financial plan should include:

• Your break—even analysis
• A cash flow forecast — accuracy and objectivity are essential here. Drill down into the details and be as objective as you can when working out the numbers
• A sales forecast — evidence that you’re able to sell your personal training service
• A clear growth strategy for the long and short term, illustrating what your goals are and how you plan to achieve them

Software to Help You Keep track of Your Personal Training Business Expenses , Profits and Loss

It’s essential to monitor your finances regularly to ensure you're on track for business growth. Many small business owners find the accounting side of things tedious, difficult or frustrating, and they start to let things slide—a sure-fire way to slow down or prevent business growth.

The good news is that it doesn't have to be that way, not if you have a business management solution on board. When you’re on the hunt for one, make sure it has these accounting must-haves:

• An overview of expenses vs income
• Tracking and recording payments from clients
• Managing subscriptions/ recurring revenue
• Invoicing
• Robust reporting on financials

One of the key features of PTminder is you can get a visual on your earnings with just a glance. This is one of the most popular features of the PTminder solution and one that our clients rave about. Having that information at your fingertips whenever you need it is essential for the health of your finances.

If you decide to apply for a small business loan to grow your business, you’ll know exactly what you can afford in terms of repayments.

This feature also enables you to spot trends. Are you making more some months than others? What factors might be contributing to that and is there anything you can do to increase your earnings on those lower months?

These snapshots of your earnings mean you’re in a better position to make decisions for your business. Depending on how well you’re earning, you may decide to grow your PT business by expanding your premises, investing in more equipment, developing a new niche or bringing new technology on board.

Just because you occupy one niche doesn't mean you have to stick to it. It's where you are when you start out, but you can grow your business significantly by considering other niches that interest you. If you can identify fitness trends you can use to plan your service offering, you'll attract a larger market share and realize greater profit.

How Do I Find a New Niche?

What can you offer your clients that no-one else can, or what is it you can do better than anyone else? Ask yourself:

• Who do I like working with? Think about who your ideal client is and what they want to achieve. Who's likely to get the best results from you?
• Where does my interest in fitness lie? Sure, you might have trained in a specific area, but do you want to limit yourself to just that?

Try to think beyond the traditional. Now more than ever, new fitness trends are emerging and if you keep up with them, you’re bound to become inspired. Thinking of ways that you can grow, e.g. incorporating Group Fitness classes and group training options for your clients, is key to successful growth.

Because the fitness industry is so wide-ranging, you have an almost unlimited number of options of niches to choose from. There are no barriers to occupying more than one niche in the fitness industry. Although almost all PTs will start out with one specialized area, the ones that successfully grow their business do so because they've found ways to expand their offering.

Successful growth requires innovation. That means regularly evaluating the services you offer and determining if they’re contributing to the growth of your business. When you started, you’ll have defined your core offering – weight loss, body building, injury rehabilitation, sports coach etc.—but have things changed since you started? Could you expand your offering, or perhaps ditch a service that hasn’t gained traction, in favour of one that might prove more popular?

Remember that just because you've started with a specific offering doesn't mean you're limited to it—in fact, if your business is going to grow, you need to look ahead and determine if you can build your client base by expanding your offering.

Extending your Personal Training Services for Online Clients

The notion of online training is not a new one, but the trend has accelerated since the advent of Covid-19 and is still gaining in popularity. Offering virtual services is a wonderful way of growing your business because it means your clients can work out with you anytime, from anywhere. Consider these options:

• Live streaming classes — a variety of video messaging apps like Zoom, Google Hangouts or Skype mean that your clients can still take your classes from home, whether they're group sessions or one-on-one workouts.
• Workouts on-demand — pre-record your workout routines to share with your clients and take the time to produce a high-quality video. Then your clients can work out with you as their schedule allows.
• Start up a YouTube channel that includes not only workouts, but nutritional guidance, health advice, recipes (you can even showcase your cooking skills!) and techniques for managing stress or frustration.
• Ramp up your social media use — now more than ever, you need to remain connected with your clients. You can chat with them on Facebook or Instagram and continue to provide support and guidance. Offer resources across your social media platforms and organize challenges and competitions that get everyone involved.

Embracing the online solution opens up more opportunities for you to grow your personal training business. Online training is great because it gives you plenty of time flexibility and it allows you to recruit clients internationally. You can also use many strategies to automate the process, which means you can work with hundreds of clients at any given time.

It's not enough to just develop a marketing strategy, it's something that you should continually refer to if you're going to grow your PT business—you should always be thinking of ways to market it. In the very beginning, and as part of your business plan, you need to get the fundamentals right:

Marketing Fundamentals for Your Personal Training Business

• Market analysis and demographics — it’s important to have a clear understanding of your target client and to build an Ideal Client Profile (ICP)
• Identify your competitive advantage, which is what do you do better than anyone else. You need to differentiate yourself from your competitors, and you do this by finding a niche that works for you and your ICP.
• Plan your advertising strategy so that it targets platforms your clients frequent
• Spend time researching your competitors, so you have a clear idea of how to differentiate yourself from them
• Stay up to date with industry best practices and market trends. Don’t be afraid to pivot with the changing landscape
• Social media—this should be a part of any marketing mix. Plan your social media strategy so that it reaches as many of your target demographic as possible.

Once you're sure you’ve ticked all those boxes, you can then move on and consider other ways to market your business for continual growth.

Tried and Tested Tactics to help you Maximize your Marketing ROI

Once you've defined your differentiator—what makes you different from the PTs in your gym, city, or accounts you see on social media—it's time to build and hone it with these strategies:

1. Invest in a really good website. When people search for anything these days, they start with Google, and the same is true of any PT business. There are lots of online platforms that will enable you to set up your own website, but it’s worth investing in a professional, if you can. They’ll make sure it’s got great SEO, navigation and contact
2. Make sure people can find you on social media. Use these platforms to drive potential clients to your website, to communicate and converse, and to keep tabs on what’s happening in the PT industry.
3. Showcase yourself as an expert — no-one else has your mix of skills. You need to make sure they’re clearly visible, so that potential clients see you as a star of the PT world, an expert in what you do with measurable results.
4. Harness appropriate technology — not only will this make your business more efficient, but it helps you to build a better relationship with your clients.
5. Form alliances — if your business is based out of a gym, you’ll need to come to an agreement with the gym’s owner. That relationship can be crucial to your success, because if you’re providing a top-level service to your mutual clients, the gym will promote your PT business as part of their services.

Remember: there’s a lot of choices out there when it comes to personal trainers. That’s why establishing and promoting your competitive advantage is essential.

How to Define Your Customer Base

Consider your target client — you've determined their age, work background, location, motivation and goals. The next step is to use these characteristics to create the ideal customer profile to drive your marketing tactics. Marketing to everyone is the same as marketing to no-one, as you simply can’t cut through the noise. Figure out what your ideal potential clients want to know and give them that information.

Next, list how your best clients prefer to be contacted, and what worked when you originally marketed your PT business to them. Using the profiles of these ideal clients, you’re in a better position to find more that match. Set a marketing budget and develop a shortlist of targets that have potential for your PT business.

Why You Need to Generate Positive Word of Mouth

This is one of the simplest tools available to attract new clients, and the most effective. For a service-based business like a personal trainer, what people think of you is key to gaining new clients and retaining existing ones. Studies show that while 75% of people don’t trust advertising, 90% believe in recommendations from friends.

Word-of-mouth referrals flow when your existing clients get outstanding service and value from you, so it’s crucial to provide an outstanding customer experience that not only delivers results but does it in a way that they find enjoyable.

Start Gathering Client Testimonials

This is a more formal version of the word-of-mouth tip above. When you’ve had a particular success with a client — hitting a goal weight, winning a competition, completing a programme — ask them if they’d be willing to provide you with a testimonial you can put on your website. There are two key ways to do this:

1. A simple quote — you can transcribe it and include it on your website in a prominent spot, so that when potential clients land on your website, a glowing testimonial from a satisfied and happy client is the first thing they see.
2. A case study — these are client success stories that are detailed accounts of the journey you and that client have been on together.

Don’t be afraid to ask your clients to share their success to help grow your business. More often than not, they’re happy to not only help you in return for helping them, but it’s an opportunity for a bit of mild showing off. And why shouldn’t they when they’ve worked so hard to achieve their goal?

Share Your Expertise—Offer Tips & Tricks

Spending time with your clients and charging them for the benefit of your expertise is one thing and of course, the end goal. But to attract new clients it’s a good idea to offer them something upfront on your website, for free. This could include:

• Regular how-to videos, such as demonstrations of effective weightlifting or swimming techniques.
• A meal planner that clients can tailor to suit their goals.
• Demonstrations of, and your thoughts about, a new product such as new athleticwear brands or fitness equipment.
• A regular blog on your website.

All they need to do to access your expert advice is provide their contact details. This is an effective way of growing your email list, so that you can tell them about a new service you’re offering, or a discount, e.g. buy a block of classes and get a special deal.

Business growth is just like physical improvement — you must do the preparation and the work to get the results. One of the most effective ways to grow your client base is to add value for them.

One of the ways you can do this is by harnessing digital technology, so you can provide your clients with some autonomy over how they interact with your business. Your existing clients will love it, and they'll tell others about it — the all-important word-of-mouth tool.

Incentives and Loyalty Marketing

Offering client loyalty incentives is often sadly overlooked as a marketing strategy, but the reality is it's very effective. When you implement one, you'll:

• Have an excellent way to personally recognize your client’s efforts. This can be in the form of a point system, a free training session, special discounts or even gift certificates.
• Have a means of channelling your client’s incredible progress into referrals and encourage them to bring in more people.
• Be able to organize events like bootcamps, challenges or classes with different exercise forms for your clients and the local community to add variation to their routine and maintain a personal touch.

Having the right business management software on board isn't just a nice-to-have, it's a must-have in this digital era. The reason, of course, is that the right solution will streamline your admin processes, help you better communicate with your clients, and make sure you keep track of your finances, so you can spend more time with your clients, growing your business.

What this means is leveraging business management software that:

• Allows clients to book classes online giving them an option to select their preferred classes and manage their sessions online.
• Gives clients visibility around timing in the form of an online calendar.
• Has a smartphone app option—a business app is important to keep you connected to your clients anytime, anywhere.
• Allows for an automated payment process so you can take control of your income and cash flow.
• Supports customized SMS alerts, push notifications and session reminders to keep clients in the loop and stay engaged and informed.
• Can track progress and measurements to ensure your clients stay motivated. After all everyone loves a trophy (especially true on a fitness journey!)

PTminder is a Business Management System for Personal Trainers to make running your business easy and efficient. It has everything you need in one place. Whether you're an independent personal trainer running your own group fitness studio or have a team of personal trainers working out of your gym, PTminder is the perfect all-in-one solution to grow your business, because it frees you up to focus on your clients.

From keeping track of clients’ information including their bookings, payments and progress to letting them book and pay for their next appointment — it’s all there.

How to Use PTminder to Boost Client Engagement and Retention

One of the key elements of business growth is gaining new clients and keeping them. That means building strong client relationships, and PTminder can help with its super-convenient client relationship management abilities, such as:

• Streamlined client-trainer communications
• Simplified online bookings
• Straightforward payments for sessions and packages
• Customized training and nutrition programs
• Tracking progress and keeping motivated

PTminder will act as your virtual gym buddy. The spotter you need for those heavy squats and fancy manoeuvres. That friend who's always there to keep you motivated and on track.