7 Essential Steps for Creating a Personal Training Website That Gets Noticed
You may have noticed scrolling through your Instagram that there’s been a boom in online personal trainers and fitness influencers, since the pandemic. It makes sense. Personal training is a fulfilling career. You get to watch people grow and help them change their lives for the better. The pandemic gave people a lot of time to reflect and decide to start pursuing a career path that makes them happy and also keeps them healthy.
If you’re a new personal trainer or even a seasoned trainer that’s just looking to market yourself more successfully, you may be wondering how to design a website that will add legitimacy to your business and make your services accessible to the general public. Here are seven essential steps for creating a brand strategy for your personal training website, so that your brand identity stands out from the crowd.
1. Create And Purchase Your Domain Name
Your domain name is your website address and page name. It’s often one of the first parts of your website that people interact with, because it’ll pop up in a search engine or they’ll click the link and watch your domain name load. It can be a good idea to have a word related to your business in the domain name, because if someone types “personal trainer” or “fitness” into a search engine, they’ll understand why your website appears and the overall approach to your business, making it more likely that they’ll take the time to explore your site.
2. Define Your Target Demographic And Brand Strategy
Once you’ve bought your domain name, it’s time to create a brand strategy that will reach your target demographic. Who are you trying to reach? Who can benefit from your service? Do you want to work with people who are already fit and are hoping to become more athletic or would you rather help those who are new to fitness and nutrition? Build your website around your target audience. Defining your target audience early on can ensure that you're reaching the correct audience and making the most of your hard work and efforts.
3. Build The Aesthetic Of Your Brand To Boost Recognition
A huge part of your brand strategy is to build an aesthetic that will bolster your brand identity. If you’ve chosen “moms who are trying to get back into fitness” as your target demographic, having a dark website with intense looking text probably won’t catch their eye, because they won’t recognize your brand as something they can relate to.
While working with Prevail Fitness on building and designing their website, the images, font, format and color scheme are all in service of attracting their target demographic: busy people who need to have access to fitness and nutrition on their own schedule. The images on the page feature the founders, trainers and clients working towards their fitness goals. The photos of Prevail clients will help potential customers determine if Prevail is the right fit for them.
4. Highlight The Basics
The text on your landing and info pages should be concise, clear and easy to digest. Important content should be simple to find. You can accomplish this with tabs at the top of your landing page. On your “About” page, answer simple questions, like whether you’re certified, what’s your background and why/how you got into personal training from the start. All other content should be about your client’s fitness goals and how you can help them attain their goals. That’s why the Prevail “Stories” page includes inspiring testimonials that showcase the success of their methodology.
5. Optimize Your Website
After your website is designed, you can’t just sit back and expect it to be seen by your target audience. You have to maintain it using Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You can accomplish this by writing weekly or monthly blog posts that link to outside articles with credibility, like fitness articles from the New York Times or health resources from a major hospital, like The Cleveland Clinic. Linking back to your own website pages/blogs as well as outside sources, and including popular search terms will boost your ranking in search engines and further concretize your brand identity.
6. Integrate Your Social Feed With Your Website
As you probably know, social media reigns supreme. Linking up your Instagram with a widget on your website helps show off the fitness content on your website, too. As a bonus, when real clients tag you in posts, it serves as a real life, unsolicited testimonial.
7. Consider Hiring A Creative Marketing Agency To Build Your Website And Brand Identity
Designing a website, creating a brand strategy and determining a brand identity can be a lot to juggle on your own. That’s why you should consider bringing in a creative marketing team to handle all of that for you. You’ll still be in close communication about your site and content, but your creative marketing agency will handle the logistics and ensure that everything runs smoothly. When you see a bunch of new customers attracted to your website, you’ll know hiring a team was worth it.
Now that you know how to design a website, it’s time to get started. A strong web presence should be the primary component in your brand strategy at this stage. Have fun and get creative!
Need help with your website? Here at McMillan & Phillips we have a team of experts to make all your brand growth a reality. Reach out today and let’s start optimizing your website and ultimately, your brand!