Want to get more personal training clients in 2024?
Today we are going to discuss how to build a personal training sales funnel and go over three personal training marketing strategies that you can use to drive traffic to it.
We will also share the story of one of our users who made over $1,000,000 online as a personal trainer!
Why You Need to Niche Down
Look, we’ll be real with you:
The fitness industry is extremely competitive. You are not going to get anywhere as a generic personal trainer. Those are a dime a dozen these days.
And don’t look at the fitness influencers who started their careers more than a decade ago thinking that you can use the same strategy now.
With all due respect to what they have accomplished…
The reality is that back then you could build a following simply by posting videos of yourself doing calisthenics in your backyard and sharing basic skill progressions on YouTube.
But if you type “pullup progression” into YouTube’s search now, you’ll see videos from massive channels with high production values that have hundreds of thousands of views. You can’t compete with that.
That’s why you need to niche down. You can do that by specializing in:
- Working with a specific demographic following a specific training method (e.g. calisthenics for women, weight lifting for the elderly, etc.).
- Solving a specific problem (e.g. rehab from knee injuries, helping skinny men gain muscle, helping obese people lose weight, etc.).
- Teaching specific skills (e.g. flexibility skills, handbalancing skills, advanced calisthenics skills, etc.).
Niching down like that will make it much easier for you to develop real expertise, get your clients the results that they want, and establish your credibility with social proof.
And that is what you need to do if you are serious about building a personal training business!
Example #1: The Knees Over Toes Guy (Rehab, Prehab)
Ben Patrick, also known as the Knees Over Toes Guy, wanted to become a basketball player when he was a kid.
He was serious about it so he trained a lot. Unfortunately, he ended up damaging his knees, which led to several surgeries and put an end to his dream of playing basketball at a professional level.
However, having to recover from his injuries made him think a lot about both rehab and prehab, which eventually led to him developing his own system for that and building his Knees Over Toes and ATG brands.
He has since branched out to full-body rehab and prehab, including not just the knees but also the back, shoulders, elbows, and wrists.
With 1.45M YouTube subscribers and 2.3M Instagram followers at the time of writing, Ben Patrick is arguably the most influential person in the rehab and prehab niche.
Interestingly, his system also helps to drastically increase one’s vertical jump, so now people are seeking out his advice on that as well!
Example #2: Coach Bachmann (Handbalancing)
Sascha Bachmann, also known as Coach Bachmann, is a hand-balancing expert.
He has performed hand-balancing acts on stages all over the world with companies such as Cirque du Soleil, Cirque De Demain, and Palazzo.
He now specializes in teaching hand-balancing through his online programs, live events, and one-on-one coaching.
With 111k subscribers on YouTube and 294k followers on Instagram at the time of writing, he’s one of the most influential people in the hand-balancing niche.
Build a Personal Training Sales Funnel First!
Marketing is about generating traffic.
But where should you drive that traffic in order to maximize the ROI of your marketing spend?
We recommend building a personal training sales funnel and then using the marketing strategies that we are going to discuss later in this article to drive traffic to it.
What is a Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel is a system designed to convert visitors into leads, leads into customers, and customers into repeat customers.
The Value Ladder Sales Funnel
We believe that the best way to sell anything online is the Value Ladder sales funnel.
This sales funnel is based on three key ideas:
- Selling requires trust
- The more expensive the offer, the more trust you need in order to close the sale
- The best way to build trust is to provide increasingly more value while simultaneously asking for increasingly more investment in exchange
That’s why the structure of your sales funnel should follow a progression from your least expensive offer to your most expensive offer.
In fact, you should start with a free offer where all you ask in exchange is the potential customer’s email address and then take it from there!
How to Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel for Your Personal Training Business
We understand that the Value Ladder graph above might seem overwhelming.
Fortunately, you don’t need a bunch of different offers and a continuity program to get started, you can build a basic Value Ladder sales funnel in just three steps:
Step #1: Create a Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is a freebie that you offer to the potential customer in exchange for their email address.
If you are just starting out as a personal trainer, then you might want to offer a free consultation as your lead magnet.
This will give you an opportunity to talk to potential customers and learn more about their goals.
If you believe that you can help them achieve those goals, then you should pitch them your least expensive personal training package at the end of that free consultation.
As your personal training business grows, you will eventually reach the point where you can’t use this approach anymore due to time constraints.
Then you should create an information-based lead magnet, ideally a video lesson where you teach potential customers something that will help them achieve their goals.
For example, hand-balancing, mobility, and flexibility expert Matthew I. Smith uses a free hour-long mobility and flexibility masterclass as his lead magnet:
Step #2: Build a Squeeze Page Funnel
A squeeze page funnel is a lead generation funnel that you can use to promote your lead magnet.
This funnel consists of two pages:
- A squeeze page where you present your lead magnet and ask for the potential customer’s email address in exchange for it
- A thank you page where you thank the potential customer, provide instructions on how to book their free consultation, and tell them what they can expect from you in the future
We recommend using ClickFunnels to build your squeeze page funnel. Our template library includes a squeeze page funnel template that has been optimized for conversions. All you need to do is customize it with our drag-and-drop visual editor!
Step #3: Set Up an Automated Welcome Sequence
Once you have the potential customer’s email address, we recommend sending them this automated welcome sequence:
- Day #1: Who are you? – Introduce yourself to the new subscriber.
- Day #2: Where do you come from? – Share how you got into fitness and why did you decide to become a personal trainer.
- Day #3: What do you do? – Explain what you specialize in and what that entails.
- Day #4: How did you gain this expertise? – Explain what makes you qualified to be a personal trainer – Mention relevant education, athletic achievements, professional experience, etc.
- Day #5: Who do you do this for? – Explain who are your dream customers and share a case study on how you helped someone like that achieve their fitness goals.
- Day #6: How can you do it for me? – Encourage the new subscriber to book a free consultation with you and direct them to your appointment booking page.
ClickFunnels has an email marketing functionality that makes it easy to set all this up!
Best Marketing Strategies for Personal Trainers
Here are three marketing strategies that you can use to drive traffic to your sales funnel:
Personal Training Marketing Strategy #1: Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is the most accessible marketing strategy when you are just starting out because it doesn’t require any financial investment.
All you need to do is pick a platform, create an account and start posting content that provides value to your dream customers.
If you continue posting high-quality content consistently day after day, week after week, and month after month, you will build a following sooner or later.
At first, it might feel like you are posting into the void but if you stay at it you will eventually reach “escape velocity” where your follower growth will start accelerating.
Keep in mind that the larger your following becomes, the faster it will grow due to more and more people engaging with your content and sharing it with their own followers.
Also, it’s probably safe to say that the vast majority of personal trainers who start posting on social media fail to do so consistently.
This means that you can probably outcompete most of your social media rivals simply through consistency alone.
Realistically speaking, your first 1-2 years on social media are probably going to be somewhat of a tedious slog, but it should get easier after that.
And if you can stick with it for at least five years, you will have a decent shot at building a sizable (100k+ followers) following!
Personal Training Marketing Strategy #2: Facebook Ads
Facebook is an advertising platform that has a massive user base and incredible ad-targeting capabilities.
You can buy a reputable Facebook ads course on Udemy for less than $20 during one of its regular sales.
There are several highly-rated courses available, the most popular of which has 33,000+ customer reviews at the time of writing.
It probably doesn’t matter which course you pick because they all cover the basics that you need to know in order to get started with Facebook ads.
What matters is that you go through the course, learn those basics, and then start running ad campaigns.
Just keep in mind that you will inevitably end up losing money on ads until you figure out how to run them profitably. And that might take a while. Consider it your tuition fee!
Personal Training Marketing Strategy #3: YouTube Marketing
We believe that it’s still possible to build a niche fitness channel on YouTube.
Vanessa Lau provides a great overview of everything you need to know in order to get started on this platform:
Here’s a strategy that you may want to consider:
- Build a social media following first – Instagram is the best platform for those who are better at creating visual content and Twitter is the best platform for those who are better at creating written content. Capitalize on your strengths!
- Then leverage your social media following to grow your YouTube channel by driving traffic from your social media to your channel.
Example: Coach Bachmann (100k YouTube Subscribers in Less Than a Year)
It appears that the previously mentioned hand-balancing expert Coach Bachmann posted his first YouTube video on July 16th, 2023.
He then managed to grow his channel to over 100k subscribers in less than a year. Incredible!
However, he has 294k followers on Instagram at the time of writing so we assume that he leveraged his Instagram following to grow his YouTube channel.
He also did an interview on FitnessFAQs, a popular fitness channel with 1.8M subscribers.
This interview was published on April 19, 2023, almost three months before Bachmann uploaded his first video on YouTube.
At the time of writing, this interview has 295k views with overwhelmingly positive comments from the viewers.
It’s probably safe to assume that once he created his own channel, this interview became one of its sources of traffic. Why?
Because when someone watches an interview on YouTube, finds the content valuable, and wants to learn more, they go and check if that person has a YouTube channel of their own!
This means that you can leverage your social media following not just by directly driving traffic from social media to YouTube but also by doing interviews with popular fitness YouTubers.
Finally, creating viral videos can help you grow your channel faster, though of course that is easier said than done.
Still, the previously mentioned hand-balancing, mobility, and flexibility expert Matthew I. Smith managed to pull it off with his very first YouTube video and then repeat it with two more videos later on.
Example: Matthew I. Smith (6 Videos in Total, 98k Subscribers)
Matthew I. Smith launched his channel with this viral video that has 2.8M views at the time of writing;
He has another viral video with 1.5M views at the time of writing:
And also a third viral video with 596k views at the time of writing:
What’s interesting is that although in the four years since he launched his channel he only published a total of six videos, he has 98.4k subscribers at the time of writing and will almost certainly reach 100k eventually.
This suggests that investing in a few super high-quality videos can help you go viral and drastically speed up the growth of your YouTube channel, especially assuming that you also maintain a consistent posting schedule, unlike Matthew!
It may be worth experimenting with if your budget allows it and you can afford to lose that money if it doesn’t work out. Worst case scenario, if you don’t go viral, at least you’ll have some really cool videos on your channel!
Also, we don’t know if Matthew I. Smith did this or not, but if you create a video designed to go viral, you can use paid advertising to promote it on social media.
That initial paid boost can make it easier to gain organic momentum where people see it and start sharing it and discussing it!
Case Study: This Personal Trainer Made Over $1,000,000 Online With Sales Funnels
When Brandon Carter was a kid, his mom got mugged at gunpoint while walking him to school.
This made him realize that he needed to become strong if he wanted to be able to protect himself and his loved ones. So he started working out and building muscle.
Over time, as his strength increased, he noticed that his mental toughness, focus, and ability to set and achieve goals improved as well.
Eventually, he started helping other people with their training, and seeing them experience those same benefits got him hooked.
He realized that this was what he wanted to do with his life and decided to pursue a career as a personal trainer.
Of course, as you are probably already well aware, making a living as a personal trainer is a challenging endeavor, to put it mildly.
Brandon soon found himself working crazy hours just to make ends meet. It started dawning on him that this simply wasn’t sustainable.
He was about to give up on his dream…
But then he had an idea that changed everything: what if he took his business online instead of working with clients in person?
Since then, he has made over $1,000,000 online as a personal trainer!
Want to Learn How to Build Sales Funnels That CONVERT?
Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.
He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?
His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything that you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert.
This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating.
But you can also get it directly from us for free…
All we ask is that you pay for shipping!
So what are you waiting for? 🧐