As a personal trainer, when word of mouth is your most important tool for growth, building strong client relationships is key. The majority of your leads will come from existing clients, so make sure they’ve got great things to say about you and your brand.
However, growing your fitness brand online can be a little tricky. You may think that once you’ve created engaging content, you’ll automatically start attracting more clients. However, it’s important to remember that your clients will not just be buying into your product, but into you, as a brand. To do this, you will need to create a strong personal brand.
Personal Brand? What’s that?
Developing a personal brand as a personal trainer is an excellent way to proactively manage your own career development. As a Personal Trainer, you work directly with people, and how you represent yourself and the services you offer is what makes business relationships truly valuable.
Personal branding involves developing a recognisable impression around who you are and what you do. This impression streamlines your image and gives you the opportunity to communicate with potential clients in a way that is exclusive to you.
In turn, this exclusiveness draws people in to learn more about your products and services. Because your personal brand is unique to you, you automatically create a personal experience that your clients can associate with you when compared to other personal trainers.
Creating a personal brand that your audience can easily relate to, like this one, will help attract new clients.
A good personal brand will set you apart from the competition, and engage potential clients to explore your services. It’s very important to control your personal brand instead of allowing others to control it for you – if you don’t establish your brand the way you want to, you never know what perception others might create about you.
So How Can I Build a Great Personal Brand?
There are a number of techniques you can use to build a great personal brand. Just follow the steps below and you’ll be on your way!
Find Your Own Identifier
What sets you apart from other personal trainers? What is the one thing that you know you’re exceptionally good at or positioned to offer?
Identifying your niche will help shape your personal branding. This process is called brand discovery and involves determining what sort of goals and values you want to represent as a Personal Trainer.
Think about all the skills you’ve worked on throughout your career and how they distinguish you from the competition. Or, perhaps you’ve had an experience that will help others relate more closely to you? For example, do you specialise in helping clients new to exercise to lose weight, or do you train experienced athletes? Maybe nutrition is your passion? Whatever it is, determining your specialty is the best way to establish what makes you unique as a personal trainer.
Your goal here is to build a community of peers, influencers, clients and employers, and thinking about your strengths and weaknesses as a personal trainer can help you target your branding to a specific audience. If you’re stuck on this, it can help to ask peers or colleagues for feedback.
Nurture Your Brand Persona
Who are you, really? Create a persona that centres around you and your unique strengths. Answering some of the questions below can help when crafting your brand persona:
– What’s your personality like? Do you tell great stories and are super funny? Or are you serious and sarcastic?
– What’s your story? How can others relate to your story?
– Why would people be naturally attracted to your brand?
– What emotional appeal do you have?
– When it comes to your brand, how do you want people to see you?
Once you know your persona, all of your content, whether it be written articles, videos, podcasts, etc. can be used to emphasize these traits.
Audit Your Brand
Have you ever Googled yourself? If the answer is no, then you’re missing out on valuable information as to how you are perceived online. The best way to begin to build a branding strategy is to take stock of what’s already out there. Consider setting up Google alerts for your name to keep this information up to date.
Create Your Platform
If you haven’t already created a website to market yourself, now is the time! Your website should be your full name – it’s the best way to rank your name in search engines. Have a common name? Try using a middle name or initial to stand out from the crowd. Your website doesn’t need to be complicated; a simple landing page with a brief bio is enough to get you started.
Videos are a great way to introduce your brand to potential clients. Also, a catchy slogan works. This is not saying that using a brand name for your business is a bad idea, but marketing something like, “Your Better Body Fitness” is so generic and less memorable than simply branding your business with your own name.
Strengthen Your Assets
Once you’ve identified your unique identifying characteristics, don’t stop strengthening them. The more of an expert you are, the more clients will trust that you know what you’re doing, and the more enthusiastic they will be to come on board.
Find ways to add value to your audience by creating or reposting content that’s in line with your brand. Learn and share to deepen your relationship with your followers.
Share Your Secrets
Speaking of sharing, becoming an expert is one thing, but it’s pretty useless if you keep all that knowledge to yourself. Use what you’ve learned to share your knowledge with your audience.
There are plenty of fun ways you can do this: via social media, podcasts and videos, or by creating an exciting blog with engaging content. Use your platform to show off what you know and gain traction from your audience.
Use Social Media
As for social media, you should be active on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Think of LinkedIn as your virtual CV – it’s a great platform for professional engagement. Twitter and Facebook are best used to engage with colleagues, peers and friends. Try using a Twitter tool like Twellow to find users interested in topics relevant to your brand.
Get Networking
Get some business cards made and don’t be afraid to use them! Hustle to give your brand an audience by attending seminars and conferences, and don’t be afraid to reach out to brands you admire via social media. Get your elevator pitch down and get ready to shake some hands.
Stay True To Yourself
It’s really important when building your personal brand that you stay true to yourself. No one likes a fake. Every personal trainer is different, and everyone has a different style.
Stay true to yourself and your own story, and clients will automatically be drawn to your authenticity
Be confident in your own style and what sets you apart from the others, rather than trying to do what every other personal trainer is doing. This is how you differentiate yourself from the crowd.
Set Your Goals
Having a clear idea of your goals (both personal and professional) will help you identify what to spend your time on and what new projects to take on board. Use your personal values as a guide to help you align your activities with your persona and your skill set.
For example, you may set a goal of writing for certain magazines or websites that will help establish your personal brand. Maybe you’ll aim to appear on local television, in a newspaper, or on a certain podcast. There are endless ways to increase your personal brand exposure. Set your goals to direct your efforts.
You’re All Set!
A great personal brand takes some time and effort to create, but in the end it’s definitely worth it. Done right, your personal brand will result in clients being attracted to your authenticity and interested in your expertise.
