“How can I improve & empower my brand as a personal trainer?”
Whether you are a personal trainer, nutritionist, yoga instructor, Pilates instructor, Crossfit trainer, or just an individual, you need to learn how to stand out from the rest. The key lies in identifying what represents and differentiates you, such as your values, your proposition, and your goals or objectives to be achieved with those who expect something from you.
And yes, we are all a brand. You may not have realized it yet, but if you enter Google or any search engine and type in your name, you will find that there is a lot of information scattered about you out there. You are not anonymous, and this can be either positive or negative, depending on the information available on the internet about you or your training business. So, now that you know this, let’s make those results work in your favor, meaning that they reflect what you want them to reflect.
Proper management of your brand is key to achieving your goals both personally and professionally. And… good news! Having a good personal brand is easy. The challenging part is having a top personal brand, but don’t worry, you just need a bit of routine and the right tools.
In this article, we will show you the steps to follow to improve or empower your personal brand as a trainer or fitness professional. We will also provide a visual example of a good brand strategy to start with, based on the channel you use to communicate or offer your products or services.
Let’s get started!
#1 Research
What do your potential clients look for in a personal trainer or sports center? What are their needs? Do their values align with yours?
The research phase is vital to define the objectives you will pursue with your personal brand. If you know what your potential clients want, the task of offering them a product or service tailored to their needs will be much easier. Additionally, this first step involves seeking inspiration.
To improve or empower a personal brand, sometimes you need to pause and look around… Who is succeeding in the fitness world? Do they have a similar type of clientele to yours?
Identify who those people are and draw inspiration from them. It’s not about copying their image and actions to the letter; it’s about taking note of the things that have made them stand out from the rest in order to define your own style.
#2 Define Yourself and Tell Your Story
Who are you? What do you want to show the world? How and where do you want to show it?
Everyone has a story to tell, and we all have personal and professional aspirations that drive us to strive for more and motivate us to improve ourselves every day. Your personal brand is already created, exposed, and therefore, it needs a story to accompany it since it will speak for you in the media where you have a presence.
We won’t lie to you, writing your story is the most challenging part, even if it may seem trivial. However, we assure you that once you have it, it will help you understand the purpose of your personal brand.
We cannot tell you what to say, but we can give you some guidance… When writing your story, don’t forget to include what inspired you to create and launch your project and what you aspire to achieve with it.
Once you have the answers to the initial questions and your story written, it’s time to define your objectives and the strategy to follow in order to empower your personal brand. Keep reading…
#3 Define Your Objectives
Now that you are clear about what you want to convey, you need to determine what you will use to achieve your goals.
For this step, we have.
To this step, we have taken a very accurate phrase from the article on personal branding by Lucas García, CEO of Socialmood. He comments that everything you do should be directed towards “where you want to be” and “how you want to be seen.”
You need to know your objectives, decide where you want to be, and which tools will be useful to achieve them and which ones will not. You may want to gain visibility, audience, positioning, or reputation, but remember that your resources are always limited, especially time, so make the most of it.
And speaking of time, defining your goals should have a specific deadline.
- Short-term goals: basically, what you need in the next few days or weeks to ensure that your personal branding strategy is on the right track.
- Example: Create a personalized app to reach more clients.
- Long-term goals: those things you would like to achieve in the coming months or years, in other words, the dream you want to fulfill after working consistently and disciplined in your project.
- Example: Offer your services to clients from all over the world and create a training center with a great team.
#4 Enhance the design of your brand
At this point, you will realize that a personal brand must be consistent in every aspect, from its message and content to the product or service it offers to its audience. All of this must have an appropriate design that enhances the development of the brand.
Design is image, and it should always be done professionally, logically, and rationally. Anything you publish or design that does not align with the brand image will confuse your audience and make them abandon any process they are engaged in, from making a purchase to something as simple as following you on social media.
Following this line, we recommend opting for minimalism, simple designs, nothing overloaded. Remember that the design should be consistent across all your communication platforms: website, app, social media…
The typeface, colors, and logo are elements that will be an important part of your personal brand design, so we recommend that you carefully consider what you want to convey with each of them and reflect it in their design.
#5 Make the most of the platforms where you have a presence
Yes, we’re talking about your social media. Try to provide your audience with content that represents you and your brand to facilitate recall.
For a personal trainer or fitness professional, Instagram is the most effective social media platform for expanding brand reach and generating engagement (connection between the brand and the client or potential client).
Ideally, you should complete your profile correctly, including all the necessary information to demonstrate what you do, how you help, and how you do it.
If you decide to have more than one social media platform, you should know that each platform communicates differently. Each one has its tone, audience type, content style, and frequency. Therefore, you’ll need to create a strategy for each platform.
#6 Create a community around your personal brand
When promoting a personal brand on different platforms, the most important purpose is usually to reach as many people as possible, especially on social media. The message that communicates the brand has to capture the attention of the people receiving it, so that they interact and talk about the brand.
Creating a community around the brand is crucial to generate good feedback, capable of attracting more people and with them more sales opportunities.
And now you’re probably wondering… How do I create a community?
Well, to do that, you should create a website or landing page that centralizes your information as a fitness professional, your services, and your content in a way that captures the users’ attention and generates a desire to be part of your community.
You should also interact and stay active on social media, generating content that is always in line with the needs of your target audience and responding to or commenting on your followers’ messages and the content they share.
#7 Create powerful content consistently
Generate content that always caters to the needs of your ideal client.
It should be valuable content that addresses your clients’ needs and, above all, has a tone that is so distinctive and specific that it facilitates their recall of you and what you do or offer.
For this point, it would be ideal to create a content plan, a guide that includes everything you need to ensure your content achieves your main goal… reaching more clients.
You can create a simple content plan by following these steps:
- Research what you want to share based on your clients’ demands (look at the activity of your followers on social media).
- Set objectives for each publication (newsletter sign-ups, product purchases, likes, comments, etc.).
- Write persuasive texts and create accompanying designs.
- Schedule them on a calendar, including the date, time, and publishing channel for each one.
#8 Interact in other communities
To enhance or improve the visibility and reach of your personal brand, you should visit and be part of other communities in your industry or on topics of interest. This involves establishing contact with other fitness professionals who have a good level of influence in the industry and trying to create collaborations that contribute to the growth and reach of both brands.
Other Instagram profiles of interest would be those that provide content on Marketing and Sales. They will be your best allies when it comes to creating content with a specific call to action.
And like any member of a community, you should interact with the brand, give your opinion in a constructive manner, and provide interesting and useful information.
#9 Measure your progress and track your efforts
To know if your personal brand is achieving the objectives you previously set, you need to analyze the results of the actions you are taking.
You can do this with specific tools, for example, those provided by Google, such as Analytics, Google Search Console, and Trends, or Instagram Insights, which are very easy to interpret.
In many cases, you will have to change the course of your strategy, so don’t get overwhelmed; it means you’re on the right track. However, don’t be surprised if you get good results from the beginning; in that case, just congratulate yourself on doing well.
#10 Be consistent and improve your personal brand every day
Your personal brand is not built or developed on its own, so don’t abandon it. Would you be able to give up everything when you have already reached the last step?
We are sure you won’t!
Stay firm and consistent when changing the direction of your actions to make your personal brand strong and attract anyone who sees it at a glance. Otherwise, you will lose the attention of users and, consequently, fail to capture them.
One action that may be successful in giving your brand the boost it needs is digitizing your services. Dare to try the #1 platform in UK for personal trainers for free for 30 days.
