Do you feel like your fitness websites just aren't generating the kinds of leads you want?
Have you noticed that your website visitor count isn't as high as it used to be?
Do you feel like you've hit a plateau in the kind of content you create, or have you noticed that you've fallen in search engine rankings?
If so, it's time to makeover your fitness websites -- and fast.
However, you might not be quite as good at optimizing your fitness websites as you are at giving your clients the bodies of their dreams. Don't panic. We're here to help.
In this post, you'll learn nine of the best tactics you can use to make your website more attractive to visitors. These strategies will help you to build your personal fitness brand, increase your online influence, and boost your conversion rate.
It's time to start growing your personal training business.
1. Include Video Content
Today, video content is more popular than ever.
Creating short videos introducing yourself, showing potential clients a few of your favorite moves, or even recording videos teaching your viewers how to make a healthy meal are all wonderful ways fitness websites can use video content.
It helps to build a personal connection between you and potential clients, which can make them feel much more comfortable about working out with you.
Plus, they're incredibly shareable, which gets you more clicks, social media followers, and ultimately more customers. Always include a link back to your website in the video description.
Embrace live videos, too. These allow your clients to sweat right alongside you, and help to keep them accountable. For example, not everyone is able to drive for thirty minutes to get to a fitness studio before work. But when they can tune into a live stream of a pre-work workout, they're much more likely to do it.
You can even use live video to answer questions in real time. Especially when you use tools like Facebook Live, your clients can get answers to their most burning fitness questions. You'll have a chance to flex your expertise while building your relationship with your target market.
Afterwards, you can make the videos available on your fitness websites and blog.
2. Claim Your Online Listings
Claiming your online business listings, like Google My Business and your Yelp page, is hugely important for fitness websites looking to boost their lead generation.
First of all, if you don't claim these listings, there's a chance your competitors will. You don't want the personal trainer at your local gym to communicate with clients that are looking for you.
Additionally, these help to get you in front of local searchers, which will likely make up a healthy portion of your client base. This will help you to rank higher in local search engine results, and will help your potential clients to quickly learn more about you.
Make sure you fill out your contact information, list your fitness websites, and fill your listing with lots of photos of you, your clients, and your workout space.
This way, you'll make it much easier for potential clients to connect with you. Keep in mind though, that these listings also include online reviews.
It's important to respond to as many as possible -- especially the negative ones. Keep a level head, but show both current and potential clients that you're willing to take their feedback into consideration.
3. Get On Social Media
Your fitness websites are a major part of your overall lead generation strategy -- but so are your social media accounts.
It's important to conduct a little research first, to get to know where your target market hangs out the most on social media. For example, if you're targeting brides-to-be who want a bridal boot camp, Pinterest might be your best bet.
If you're looking to connect with seniors, they may prefer Facebook. Want to help college-aged athletes to get the most out of their time on the field? You should likely head over to Instagram and Snapchat.
In general, it's a good idea to claim all of your social media accounts across multiple platforms, even if the majority of your lead generation comes from one platform in particular.
4. Know Your Market
Social media is also an effective and invaluable way to learn what your target market will most likely want to see on your fitness websites, your email campaigns, and your own social media pages.
For example, have you noticed that a video you uploaded showing ab routines got the most views? Are you getting a ton of Instagram likes on a photo of you doing yoga on the beach?
Use this information as the foundation for your next blog post, social media update, or campaign. Once you know the kind of content that your target market will most likely respond to and share, you can develop an incredible efficient lead generation tactic.
Also, make sure that you choose your landing pages wisely when you create social media posts. For example, if you're posting about how to motivate yourself for a workout, the link to your website could be a sign-up sheet for your "Monday Motivation" online class.
In addition to being relevant to the topic at hand, you should also link to landing pages that encourage potential clients to give you their contact information. You need their email addresses and even social media handles to give your lead generation strategy a boost.
Engage with your followers as often as you can on social media, and update frequently. It's not just a good business practice. Google and other search engines are now taking your social media profiles into account when it comes to search engine ranking.
5. Monitor Your Site Speed
Things in the fitness world move fast -- but are your fitness websites slowing you down?
If your website takes a long time to load, you're shooting your lead generation strategy in the foot.
First of all, in today's world, instant gratification is everything (we know you're aware of this, because of how often you have to remind your clients that results take time to achieve.)
Recent studies have even shown that humans now have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. This means that if your fitness websites don't load almost immediately, your potential clients are simply going to click away from your page.
More often than not, this means that they'll end up heading to your competitor's.
However, this also impacts what's known as your site's "dwell time." Your "dwell time" is the average amount of time people spend on your website. The higher your dwell time, the higher you rank in search engine results.
If you suspect your site might be slow, use this free website speed checker to monitor it.
If your loading time is way slower than you'd like, remove images, pop-ups, and auto-play features.
6. Start Blogging
Many fitness websites use blogs to increase their web traffic and to build their brand.
Sure, a strong social media presence is important, as is video content. But you need to be able to prove that you're an authority in the fitness industry by creating longer written content that lets you communicate with your target market.
Like videos, blog posts are easily shareable on social media, which means more clicks back to your website, and more opportunities to collect that valuable contact information.
Additionally, blogging gives you a great opportunity to use keywords to boost your rankings. Including these keywords in your blog posts, your titles, and even your image descriptions/file names will all make it easier for your target market to find you.
Be sure you constantly research the most popular and effective keywords in the fitness industry. Also, include long-tail, local keywords in your content, like "best personal trainers in Omaha."
But it's not just the use of keywords in your blogs that can benefit the lead generation strategy of your fitness websites. Blogging a few times a week also tells Google that your website is "frequently updated."
The more often you update your fitness websites, the higher they'll rise in the search engine rankings.
To ensure that you stay on track, it's a good idea to make a content calendar at the start of each month. Dedicate a few days to coming up with potential topics, writing blog posts, and creating other forms of content.
Then, create a publishing schedule for these posts, so you can go on about your day as usual.
7. Work With Influencers
If you're looking to beef up your lead generation strategy, one of the most effective ways to do it is through working with influencers.
Influencers are bloggers, owners of other fitness websites, and social media gurus that have a huge presence and, well, influence in the fitness industry. Working with them
Working with them doesn't just tell your target market that you run with the biggest names in your industry. It also gives you the opportunity to pitch your personal training platform in front of their audience. This is an incredibly effective strategy, because their followers are people who are the most likely to be interested in what you have to say.
Reach out to an influencer and ask them to write a guest post on your blog, create a workout video with you, or even plug your training on their next Instagram post.
You'll likely tap into new markets you didn't even know existed, and gain a huge number of social media followers in the process.
8. Keep Things Mobile-Friendly
In today's world, just as many (if not more) people access your fitness websites from mobile devices as they do from desktop computers.
You make it a point to remind clients to squeeze in workouts whenever and wherever they can -- which is why mobile-friendliness is so important.
It's such a big part of your overall digital presence, in fact, that Google and other search engines are now penalizing sites that aren't as mobile-friendly as they should be.
Do you know how your website stacks up?
If not, use this free mobile-friendliness checker to find out.
9. Make It All About Your Clients
You know that it can be tough to get your clients to work out -- but your fitness website can help.
It's important that you do what you can to make your website design as intuitive to navigate as possible.
This means that you'll need to organize your videos according to length, fitness level, and even specific routines for parts of the body.
To get more leads, you need to make it as simple as possible to contact you. Include social media buttons, as well as your contact information, on every page of your website.
Also, embrace online personal training to increase conversions and get more clients. Create dashboards through your websites for each of your clients, and communicate with them by uploading videos and recommending recipes/workouts.
Remember, it's not just the site navigation that needs to be easy to handle -- it's the accessibility of the workout itself.
Generate More Leads for Your Fitness Websites
Thanks to this post, you now know just a few of the ways you can increase your lead generation strategy by optimizing your fitness websites.
But once you start to get the contact information of potential clients, it's what you do next that makes all the difference. That's where we come in.
Spend some time on our website to learn more about how our online platform can help you to train your clients more effectively. On our platform, you'll be able to send your clients workouts specifically tailored to their fitness level and goals -- no matter where they are.
This helps to keep your clients accountable, and makes it much easier for you to monitor their progress.
Ready to take your personal training business to the next level?
Reach out to us today to get started.