Before I became a personal trainer I had a very successful online business selling sports nutrition supplements, protein powders and workout drinks etc. In fact at one point I was turning over close to 7 figures a year (just over £780,000 to be exact). I'm not telling you this to impress you but I want to point out the fact that it's fair to say that I have an idea what I’m talking about when it comes to selling products and services online.
The thing is though that most fitness professionals and personal trainers don’t really know what they are doing when it comes to this selling their services online. To be fair most personal trainers are into fitness and personal training and not internet marketing or web design (one of the reasons why you shouldn't be doing this stuff yourself).
If you were to look at most personal trainer or fitness websites you would see a case of the blind leading the blind. Everybody is essentially copying everyone else but no one knows what they should be doing to ensure that visitors to your website become paying clients. Great trainers are also taking advice from Web Designers who are designers and have no understanding of marketing, so this.
Here are the 8 most common mistakes that I regularly see on personal trainers websites that are costing good trainers thousands each year on missed clients and lost business.
1. Making Your Personal Trainer Website All About You
There is a personal trainer in the same town as me (Manchester) and on his flyers and even on his website he has pictures of himself topless, showing his six pack. Now this guy’s target market is mainly females who want to lose body fat so why would they want to see a picture of a half-naked dude and some fitness models?
The majority of your potential clients in my opinion don’t care how ripped you are. They don’t even care that you have an NVQ in functional movement screening level 4 or whatever. The truth is that all they want to know is whether or not you can get results for them. That's it!
Your website visitors and potential clients don't care about you, they only care about themselves. The don't care what yo do, they only care what you can do for them,.
It will intimidate potential clients and might even scare them off. Do you really think a 40 year old woman with body issues is going to be seduced by this? Hell no, not a chance.
2. Not Asking For An Email Address
If you don’t have an email capture form on your website then you are leaving a shed load of money on the table and losing a lot of potential client’s. Most people who visit your site are really only browsing and once they click the back button you will have lost them forever………..unless you can get their email address that it. To do this you need to give away something of value, like at free week at your boot camp or a weight loss plan or a series of videos.
Asking for an email also give you the opportunity to build up a level of trust with your potential clients as well as add value and proving that you are the real deal.
3. Using DIY or Free Website Services
It's 2016 and websites don’t cost the earth. In fact my first website for my fitness business only cost me $100 (£65). That’s was roughly the cost of 1.5 hours training time for me. That has to be a no brainer but you would be surprised how many personal trainers try to do their own websites (and flyers for that matter). You guys are personal trainers so go out and train people, let the designers do the designing. They cost less than you do and they will do a 100 x better job than you or your girlfriends kid brother. Would you rather spend hours trying to figure out how to do a website or train a couple of clients?
4. “Welcome to my website”
Most people in the fitness industry suck when it comes to what to actually put on their website.
How many times have you clicked on to a site and the first thing you see is “welcome to my website”. This is one way ticket for your potential clients to hit the back button. You have less than a second to make an impression and welcome to my website just isn't going to cut it, especially when there are loads of other trainers in your area offering the same services.
You need to have a compelling headline that is benefit rich and by benefit rich I mean you have to tell the view what they are going to get. This will depend on who your target market is of course but the truth is that it’s your one chance you have to get their attention and get them to read the rest of the page.
5. Not promoting it
So you have built this great site which you are proud of, but how do you go about getting visitors.
The most effective way of doing that is to get ranked on Google. I mean what could be easier, getting to page 1 on Google and sitting back and waiting on clients flooding in. Thats normally what the web deigners will tell you to do, but it very rarely works out like that.
This thing is though that that there are loads of other people who want to rank on the big G for the same terms as you and it’s pretty crowded out there. You need to get links from other sites back to your and the more related the link are then the higher you will rank. My own personal training site used to rank pretty well for the terms personal trainer Manchester. In fact at the time of writing this post it was at number one on Google still. But here's the thing: This didn't happen by accident and had taken a couple of years for me to get there but I now get pretty much all of my clients this way, but it's not the only source of traffic (visitors) to my personal training website. I've done this by getting links by writing articles and guest blogging (just like this one). Google is not just going to give you a high ranking because some SEO guy has fixed your keyword tags. You need to get out there and earn it and the way to do that is to write great content. It’s a cliche that content is king but in 2016 and beyond in terms of SEO content is indeed king.
I also used paid traffic sources such as Google Adwords and my favourite which was Facebook ads as well.
6. No Call To Action
If you want someone to pick up the phone and call you or email you or fill in your contact form then you have to tell them. People need to be told what to do and if you don’t tell them what to do next then you risk losing them to the dreaded back button. Use commanding language in your copy and tell people exactly what you want them to do.
Read on to learn some more common mistakes……………(see what I did there)
7. No Social Proof
People like to buy especially if they can see that people like them have been in the same position and gotten great results. Text testimonials are not as effective as they once were so you need to include plenty of before and after pictures and if you can it will be even more effective if you can get some video testimonials of your clients talking about how their lives have changed since they started working with you. You need to make this all about feelings. Yes most of our clients do want to look better, but the reason they want to look better is because they want to feel better. Focus on the feelings when it comes to testimonials.
8. Selling Personal Training
I’ve left the biggest mistake to the end. Too many trainers are selling personal training and fitness on their website. The problem is that Joe and Jane public don’t really want fitness or personal training.
Most of us in the fitness industry love all that shit and love getting smashed in the gym but the general public don’t.
They want to look better, feel better and be happier. You need to sell that. Sell the feeling and the result not the vessel for getting there. Do this and your website conversion will increase exponentially.
Liam Thompson
Internet Fitpro
Personal Trainer Websites That Guarantee Leads