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Best Instagram Marketing Practices for Personal Trainers


If you think using conventional marketing tools like flyers and posters will get you the client base of your dreams, you need to re-evaluate your marketing strategy. Since the internet, and more recently, since the social media boom, advertising has metamorphosed into its most potent form yet: social media marketing.

What was your main goal while starting your personal training business? Was it to display your expertise and skills to a large audience? Or did you want to motivate and help new clients reach their fitness goals in the best way possible?

To gain those new clients, you need to first work on cultivating your brand’s identity and popularity. You need people to know what you’re capable of and that you’re approachable. The only effective way to do that is through social media marketing. 

Now you may be wondering which social media platform has the most effective marketing strategies and tools best suited for your business. The simple answer to that is ‘Instagram.’ Instagram is the perfect social platform for attracting a broad audience and generating leads and potential clients. Its visual content base is ideal for a personal training business as it can aptly display your service details and nature of work. 

Still not convinced? Below, we’ll talk in detail about why you should choose Instagram as the go-to marketing tool for your business. We’ll also cover some of the best marketing tips or practices to use this platform to its full potential, so you can generate revenue and strengthen your customer base. 

What Makes Instagram Marketing So Effective?

In its strategic marketing efficacy and ability to capture maximum user engagement, Instagram beats all other major social platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Here are the main reasons it should be the top choice for your marketing agenda. 

Suitable Target Demographics

According to popular sources, about 600 million people on average use Instagram daily. Being a popular choice for the youth and young adults, more than half of this number of users are aged between 18 and 29, and about 25% of users are between the ages of 30 and 49. With those numbers, Instagram has massive potential in terms of followers and engagement. 

The age groups are who you should ideally be targeting as your potential customers. Young people are more inclined towards personal training as a fitness choice than other workout options like swimming or golf. 

Instagram takes the credit for making fitness trends and photos viral among young social media users. With a surplus feed of inspiring visuals and exciting fitness challenges, Instagram is the breeding ground for fitness-related things. 

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More User Engagement Than Other Platforms

With over 600 million users consuming its content daily, Instagram has the highest user engagement compared to other major social platforms like Facebook and TikTok. This can be attributed to the nature of its content, which is visual and thus highly engaging. 

Recent studies show that Instagram’s user engagement is 58 times more than its counterparts, and it alone generates up to 4 billion likes in a single day! You’d surely not want to miss out on this vast customer engagement potential that Instagram offers.

Convenient CTAs

From a business perspective, Instagram provides the most options and features that enable users to make favourable CTAs (call to action), like diverting to a website, requesting more information, and making direct contact.

Research indicates that the Instagram audience engages with content and performs actions necessary for an eCommerce setup to generate sales. Instagram thus enables users to convert to leads and eventually new clients. This is great for new businesses with limited followers and insufficient investment to fund a sophisticated marketing campaign. 

Surveys indicate that around 65% of people interact with business profiles and use Instagram to shop. So you have a great platform to gain new customers and improve your brand’s visibility across a broad audience. 

Visual Content

The impact of an excellent high-quality image, can never be underestimated. We’re all familiar  with the old saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” In the case of Instagram marketing, that is the case.

Nothing sells faster than visual content. Consumers gravitate towards a page through the appeal of its pictures. Suppose the photos are high-quality, have good lighting and sharp resolution, and are perfectly treated. In that case, the profile will automatically draw users’ attention and result in many new followers. 

Visuals are the lifeline of Instagram, contributing to its effectiveness as a marketing tool. Many businesses prefer setting up Instagram profiles to showcase their products and services and grow their client following. Consumers prefer looking at images before making a purchasing decision. If they’re captivated enough by the picture, they’ll take a step further and read the company’s bio and contact information. 

Images are a vital selling point for a personal training business. Nothing entices people more to work out and purchase training packages than awe-inspiring photos of sculpted abs, chiselled chests, and well-toned legs. 

Consider your visual content your primary selling tool. So invest in a good professional camera or photographer to get the best shots for your Instagram feed. 

Targeted Paid Marketing

Instagram’s paid marketing is one of the best on the internet and social media. It provides you options to choose the profile of the users who you want your ad to be targeted at. You can select your target audience’s age, location, gender, interests, and more.

For a set amount of money, Instagram promotes your post for a specific period to these users. There are flexible options for personalizing your preferred call-to-action responses to the ads. You can decide whether you want people to visit your page directly, request more information, or call you. 

So we can safely say Instagram is the most efficient social media marketing tool for your personal training business. Not only will it help showcase your services and client success stories to new people, but it’ll also enable those people to get back to you.

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Instagram Marketing Tips for Personal Trainers

Are you ready to learn how to best use this fantastic social platform to promote your personal training business successfully? Read on to find out.

Create a Business Profile

There are two user profiles on Instagram – personal and business. Personal profiles are what we all use. To launch your personal training business, however, you must set up a professional business profile.

Business profiles are fully optimized and geared with tools and features to ensure the smooth functioning of your profile. These include paid marketing options through targeted advertising. You also get insights into how well your content performs in terms of engagement. Call-to-action buttons also enable your customers to contact you or perform actions like clicking on your website’s link. 

The business profile acts like a fully equipped landing page for you to handle all aspects of your business, from pushing advertisements to interacting with customers and tracking your content’s progress. The best part is, it’s free to set up. 

Make an Impressive Bio

Your profile’s bio is potential customers’ first contact point. Take some time and consideration while filling it out. You only have a 150-character limit for the bio, and within that limit, you need to create a lasting impression on your customer, enough for them to want to know more about your offerings.

There are two things to focus on while writing your bio. First, it should have all the required information users look for, such as your business name, services, hours, and contact details. You’ll risk losing a potential lead if any of this is missing in your bio.

Second, you have to work on your content. Your bio should be short yet sweet, concise yet informative. Within 150 characters, it should comprehensively state your business goals, services, and other relevant information. The description should be catchy and unique enough to grab your profile visitor’s attention. 

Here are a few examples of well-crafted descriptions for bios;

  • “I enjoy helping people lose weight and fit into their old size”
  • “I motivate people to become the best version of themselves” 

To optimize your bio for search results, ensure that there is no information gap and that your username and name align. Instagram also offers the use of specific hashtags for profile bios that help your profile reach a more significant number of people looking for similar stuff. 

Integrate Your Profile With Other Social Media Channels

It’s always a good idea to integrate your social media accounts if you use multiple ones. For instance, if you link your Instagram account to your Twitter or Facebook one, all your Insta posts will appear on your other social media channels. This feature enables your content to reach audiences on multiple platforms. 

Create a Variety of Interesting and Relevant Content

Your content is your profile’s backbone. It’s the only component that will retain audiences, generate leads, increase engagement, and build your followers’ network. So content has to be many things.

To begin with, your content has to be original and authentic. There’s nothing quite captivating and impressive for the audience than organic, authentic content. On top of that, you need to craft pieces that are informative yet entertaining. 

As a personal trainer, your Instagram posts must be motivational and inspire your followers to get up, take action, and make a positive change in their lives. Whatever you post should be relevant to your specific niche. If you’re a Zumba instructor, focus on Zumba-related content, not general weight loss images. 

Diversity is another aspect you must look into while posting content. Always maintain a nice mix of different content pieces. You can incorporate attractive visuals with mini videos. Throw in inspirational quotes and funny pictures for some entertainment now and then. Other ideas could include workout and meal tips, guidelines on corrective postures and techniques, behind-the-scenes stills, tags and reposts. 

Add High-Quality Visuals

About 45% of Digital Marketers agree that original organic images and infographics have the highest engagement rate. Photos speak volumes and aid your marketing efforts more efficiently than textual content. So the quality and style of your pictures is something you must put deliberation into and not just post mundane generic stuff for the sake of posting.

Let’s come to the quality of your photos. Instagram is a visual content platform. The quality of your visuals will make or break your brand’s image. Ensure you upload high-quality, well-lit, sharp resolution images only. Use image optimizing tools to optimize these for better SEO and functionality of your page. 

If your Instagram feed has a nice blend of great photos with perfect treatment, it will enhance your brand’s image and credibility. Your images help display your services, your product, and its results. So it’s a good idea to put your brand logo as a watermark or stamp on your images.

Use the Right Hashtags

Hashtags are like the nuts and bolts of social media, and Instagram is no exception. Hashtags are preprogrammed search links that allow you to reach posts by users outside your network. They allow you to become part of trending industry-specific topics and join important conversations.

You must have heard the buzz around hashtags. Anything that needs to trend has to be hashtagged. Well, it makes content viral and allows millions of users to access posts outside their social followers’ circle. 

Try using hashtags and see how your following grows. For starters, research the top trending hashtags related to your industry and niche, and join these. This will allow you to stay on top of all the latest updates and industry trends. You can engage and interact with different posts on these hashtag pages through comments and shares to reflect your expertise to a larger audience and land you more followers. 

Alternatively, use a nice amount of trending hashtags on your own posts. This pushes your content to new users and spreads the word about your business. Landing lots of likes and re-shares on your content will do wonders for your brand image and following. Be mindful, however, about the number of hashtags you add to each post. Too many can spoil the effect, so don’t go overboard playing hashtags. A reasonable number of 3 to 15 hashtags is good enough to get going. 

Be Regular in Posting Stories and Highlights

Instagram offers spectacular engagement tools for its users. This is handy for business owners and startups striving to build their customer base slowly and gradually. A prime example of these tools is Instagram stories and highlights. Both these features work as nice add-ons to your page, sprucing up its engagement factor by constantly springing on top of people’s feeds.

Stories are temporary and appear at the top of the users’ feeds. You can put special moments, quick nuggets of information, or general entertainment features in your stories. These quickly grab people’s attention and help people constantly connect and interact with your page. When you post stories about behind the scenes, or moments from your personal life, it breaks the monotony of your usual professional content by giving a human face to your business. People feel good about relating to a trainer who has a normal life just like them. Followers also love to learn how their favourite trainers spend their time. So stories are a great place to engage with your followers on that level. It’s also the best tool to promote contests, polls, surveys, and resharing member tags. 

While talking about contests and challenges, these are important and need a separate section dedicated to them. So we’ll get to the part of engaging your followers through such initiatives later in the post.

Highlights are pinned stories on your profile. When you convert a story to a highlight, it becomes a permanent feature instead of disappearing after a few hours. Highlights are quick reference points for users looking for specific information on a company. To meet that requirement, consider which stories you post in your highlights. Some great content examples include previews of new package launches, promos, deals, sneak peeks, client success stories, and reviews and feedback. Highlights are a fantastic way to add more content to your page and keep your followers engaged. 

Collaborate With Fitness Influencers and Brands

Influencer marketing is a major component of Instagram Marketing. Influencers are social media celebrities who have gathered thousands to millions of followers. Through different brand endorsements and lifestyle practices, these influencers impact their followers’ lives, from what they eat, dress, and drive to where they shop and holiday. 

The massive following of these influencers is a great resource to tap into for your marketing campaign. They aren’t called influencers for nothing. These celebrities have the power to influence their followers’ choices and purchasing decisions. If they endorse a fitness brand or a personal training business, be sure their followers will want to do the same. 

Starting new, advertising your brand through influencers can help land you many new followers and generate some leads. Some of these people even work for free. Especially the nano and micro-influencers, who have lesser followings, will be easier to approach and won’t charge you 

for a collaboration. You just need to send them free merchandise or a free training session, and they’ll create content covering your brand and its offerings for their followers to see. 

Mega influencers are ones with a massive following in the millions and billions. These people might be hard to approach, or they may charge you a hefty price. Well-established brands with bigger budgets choose to work with these mega influencers for their advertising campaigns. You can do so once you reach that point in your revenue stream. 

Research the top fitness influencers and brands within your niche and follow them. Interact with their posts through likes, shares, and comments. This will increase your visibility to them and their followers and help future collaborations. 

Add Social Proof and Success Stories

As a fitness business, your most crucial selling point is the authenticity and effectiveness of its workouts. As a personal trainer, you’ll only manage to build a loyal base of long-term clients and a constant stream of new ones if you post social proof of your brand. People need to know that you’re a credible brand and that your sessions will help them achieve their goals. 

You can request your clients for feedback and testimonials that you can post on your page to build your social proof. Instagram is a visual content platform, so post clients’ before and after pictures, client reviews, and experiences with your brand. 

Nothing will bring you more leads than inspirational images of people who have reached their goal weight through your help. These will establish your brand’s authenticity and credibility and inspire more people to approach you. 

Engage Followers With Contests and Challenges

Famous fitness challenges like The 42 Day Challenge, 30 Day Challenge, the Plank Challenge, or the Burpee Challenge have been instrumental in driving significant traffic to social pages and getting new followers engaged and motivated to work out.

Social media is great for getting people together through such contests where more and more followers are encouraged to take up the challenge, post and share photos, and engage with the brand’s page. If you want your followers to be excited and motivated, start your own fitness challenge. You can offer the winners a free session or collaborate with a fitness brand to design your own merchandise as giveaways and prizes to winners and participants. 

Health and fitness challenges, polls, and quizzes are great initiatives to gain new followers and motivate your existing followers to start a conversation, compete, and work out, which is fantastic for your brand identity. 

Paid Ads

When your budget allows, you can avail Instagram’s Paid Ads feature. The flexibility of customizing such ads is the best part. You get to set your own marketing budget and decide the number of days you want the ad to run. You can also tailor the target demographics for these ad promotions. 

With Instagram, you can be sure your ad will reach your target audience at the right time and enable them to make a favourable call to action. So with new leads coming in, consider the money spent on paid Instagram ads as money well spent. 

Use Instagram Marketing Today: Build Your Brand Identity and Generate More Leads 

Instagram Marketing is a foolproof way to establish people’s interest in your personal training business. You can count on getting a whole new bracket of new clients, and potential leads through inspirational visual content, fun fitness polls, and challenges.

Tapping into Instagram’s marketing campaign will be one of your wisest business decisions, providing you with a consumer base of over 600 million users and a massive engagement rate to work your magic on.

Last modified on: January 9th, 2024

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Mehreen is a content writer with an added experience in proofreading and editing. She is a history buff who loves her book collection, especially South Asian history titles. While she is a good swimmer and a fitness freak, she also finds her zen painting and embroidering.

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