The health and fitness industry is not just a lucrative field but also a rapidly expanding one. With projected growth from $6.3 trillion in 2023 to nearly $9 trillion in 2028, this industry presents unique challenges and opportunities for personal trainers. The increasing demand for their services is a clear indication of the rising trend of individuals embracing a healthier lifestyle and the need for professional guidance in achieving fitness goals.
Qualifying as a personal trainer is a career that can include your love of working out while helping others achieve physical health. And over 900,000 personal trainers are working in the US right now, supporting the fact that this is a highly demanded career.
With a significant number of people in the same profession, the question arises-how can you set yourself apart? To attract and retain clients, and make your career successful and profitable, it’s crucial to find your unique selling points and elevate you and what you do above the competition.
Boost Skills
While your qualifications and understanding of the science behind training are crucial, your ability to communicate effectively is equally important. A significant part of your success in this field hinges on your interpersonal skills. If you can’t connect with a diverse range of clients, you may struggle to retain them or leave them unsatisfied before they reach their fitness goals.
As a personal trainer, your success is not just about your technical skills but also about your ability to connect with your clients. Empathy, concern, and effective communication are key. Understanding and appreciating the struggles your clients face, as well as being able to convey what they need to do to maximize their workouts, are essential aspects of your role.
It can be beneficial to work on interpersonal skills; you can undergo additional training on this if you want to, boost your analytical skills to address issues clients face and barriers in your way, improve how you treat individuals, improve your business acumen, and develop your creative and flexible skills to assist you in meeting the diverse needs of your clients.
Marketing
These days, social media is a vital tool for all fitness professionals. People consume fitness content online voraciously, and you need to make sure your content is appealing to your target audience. You need to be, relatable, and able to deliver your specific content in a way that engages your audience and boosts your marketing efforts. Take some tips from other influencers in your sector to see what does and doesn’t work for them. You can hire an external marketing team or a content creator to help you with your content, but social media needs to be part of your marketing efforts.
You also need to look at who you are marketing to help you find other avenues for marketing. If you are not working in person in your local area, you need local marketing efforts in places where people can find out more about you, i.e., gyms, health food stores, local fitness organizations, etc. For online trainers, you can use a range of SEO, PPC, and content marketing to boost your online visibility.
Expand Your Skills
As you already know, the market is somewhat saturated. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t find your perfect audience and target clients in a more specific way to grow your career and be successful. While you might have gone back to college and gained your personal training degree, why stop there? You can go back to education and learn different skills and boost your knowledge in a wide range of areas. Whether you hone in on nutrition so you can offer nutritional and fitness advice or you learn more about therapeutic training or movement training to assist those getting back on their feet post illness or injury, or you decide to work with one section of the public, i.e., obese clients, kids or seniors, meaning you undergo more extensive training to help them more efficiently, find an area you can dive into and create your position in a niche that sets you apart from others.
PT Software
As you grow your business, you need to be able to deliver tools and support for all your clients, be it in person or virtually. This means utilizing software that can assist you in elevating the behind-the-scenes part of what you do and providing a complete and comprehensive service.
The benefit of using personal trainer software is that you can keep all information in one central location for all clients and foster the same experience across the board. You can deliver tutorial advice, create tailored workout programs and meal plans, create assessments, track progress, and so much more.
Focus on Coaching
Sometimes, it’s all about how you treat people. We discussed those additional skills above, but you can’t underestimate how well you coach others when elevating your personal training career.
Knowing what to say and when is vital to deliver the support and encouragement to help people reach their goals. You can do all the exercises you can alongside them and give people all the advice and support, but if you can’t coach and are only going through the motions, then you won’tl be getting the right results in the right way.
You need to develop the skills to change your life and habits, and successful coaching is a massive part of this. You need to be able to employ effective coaching to improve your life and the lives of those you are helping.
Be Authentic
It can be all too easy to be the person we think others want us to be or think we need to be successful, but the people who can make the most difference do it for the right reasons and do it authentically. This means being you, displaying your qualities, what you offer, and how you are. This will appeal to a lot more people than putting on a persona or trying to be someone you are not. Lean on what you know and what you are good at, and focus on how you can help others and what sets you apart and use this to your advantage.
