Getting into the fitness industry can be pretty intimidating. When you first start out, you normally have to go to a big box gym and work the floor. The club tells you to talk to people to see if they want training. Well this can be worse than cold calling someone. Now you are now randomly talking to strangers as they try to get their workout in. When you are going to school or getting your certification for personal training or strength and conditioning, they talk about everything training. But they forget to explain that you have to figure out how to talk to, market to, and sell clients.

In this article, we are going to discuss how we at Level Up Fitness Business teach our clients to get their first 10 fitness clients.

FRIENDS AND FAMILY

• I would always start with anyone you know in your inner circle. Use them in 3 ways.

  • 1) See if they themselves would want to be a client

  • 2) Use them for referrals and convince them to bring anyone they know for a workout

    • Offer these people either a few free training sessions after they try it out

  • 3) Have them post on their social about their friend starting an awesome new gym and the great deal you’re offering. Maybe having a specific day or couple days for them to recommend for the friends to come try it out.

LOCAL TARGET FACEBOOK ADS

• Facebook ads are a relatively cheap way to get leads. Now these leads aren’t the most quality, they are normally pretty cold, but the nice part is you can get the targeting down to a very close area to where you train people. If you don’t want to spend a lot of money, it’s worth narrowing your target of distance and picking some specific demographics that way you don’t spend money on people who are going to take too long to convert.

  • This is the beginning strategy, long term you’ll want to have a larger budget and attack more area but right now, just to get 10 people under your training this is a good starting point.

GOOGLE LOCAL LEAD SERVICE ADS

• This is a new service Google added in 2022. It is really good if you are a personal trainer because it’s set up for that type of marketing avenue. But it can work great for gyms with semi-private but also group. All you have to do is just have a sales pitch that if someone reaches out why your style of training fits an individual looking for personal training.

• The great part about LSA is you only pay when someone actually contacts you. So you are technically paying per lead. This can be nice especially when starting out because you have at least a chance to communicate directly with someone that searched for you.

IDEAL CLIENT

• Figuring out who your ideal client is can help you figure out where to find them. If you know who your ideal client is, what they like to do with their free time, where they work and what their kids do, you can figure out exactly where to put your marketing tactics. Whether it's doing a seminar for a business, putting flyers at a coffee shop or putting a leads box at a hair salon, you need to put your info somewhere the right people see it.

GODFATHER OFFER

• Create your offer and make it a no-brainer. We call it a godfather offer because it's an offer they can't refuse. Do free stuff such as free fasting guide if they sign up, a 15 min nutrition consult, a video to a seminar you once did, etc. You just need to package it as it's this amazing thing that they'd be stupid to not take you up on.

• As a fitness business you should always have a giveaway guide to use as a lead magnet. This way you can collect new leads and all you have to give up is a guide of tips that you were just going to teach them anyway. So now you have their contact info and they know the basics of what to do when they start.

LOCAL FACEBOOK GROUPS

These aren't groups that you created for members, these are local ones in your community that you should join to develop relationships and position yourself as the expert.

• Respond to people in local Facebook groups, build a relationship inside that group as someone that adds value to the community. Try not to push your business at all for the first few months. Be consistent at checking the group and liking, commenting and responding to people in there to show that you are in the group to add value to their life. Then after the trust has been gained, you can periodically put your business post in there, but try to be strategic, only push it when it makes sense to do it.

• Find the groups where your ideal client is. Don't join a group of powerlifters when you don't do powerlifting at your gym.

• Engaging in people on social media is a great way to build rapport. Obviously you don't want to be controversial, but just having conversations. Many get it wrong with social media posting, they want to post and get all the likes but really the value is in the conversations your posts create. These are the opportunities for you to actually get clients.

JOINT VENTURES

Teaming with local businesses or events is a great way to get your first 10 fitness clients. Pair with a business where your ideal clients spend their time. Maybe it's a dance studio where the mom's drop off their kids to dance and they need to do something for an hour. Pair with that business to get those mom's into your fitness facility.

If you want an even more in depth take on this topic, listen or watch our Level Up Fitness Business podcast and we dive deep into each topic.

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