In New York State, more than 80% of residents are connected to the internet. In New York City, that number is a bit higher. As a personal trainer, if you cannot be found on the internet, you are missing from a space where 4 out of every 5 people start their query for a New York City personal trainer. As a personal trainer, it is important to do all kinds of marketing from a grass roots effort to social media. If you aren’t doing several of them at once, you could be missing out on some new clients and revenue. Rightfully so, you have to be concerned with the cost of these services and their possible return on your investment.

The initial cost of designing, printing, and distributing of flyers and postcards can easily run into the hundreds or thousands depending on how many you are printing and the print quality. Thankfully, over time the cost goes down if you continue to use your existing design. Unfortunately, flyers, postcards and the like have a limited shelf life and once they have been removed or all been picked up they are gone until another distribution is contracted.

You could also consider giving away free sessions to charity events or school auctions. In any case, your session rate times the number of sessions you perform is the cost of trying to acquire a new customer. Even though there is no out of pocket cost, this can be a costly way to advertise. Be careful not to work for free during a desirable time slot when you could be earning money.

The internet is the newest frontier and now a necessary marketing arena. However, this can involve the most capital upfront and ongoing. Search engine optimization includes building a website and optimizing for keywords. There are a number of items you can do for yourself for free, but it takes a lot of time and patience to get your website the way you want it, as well as competitive rankings. Rankings are what you need if you want people to be able to find your website. Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to be a webmaster and a busy personal trainer at the same time. If you go with Google’s pay per click advertising, realize that anything related to NYC personal training is going to cost $3-$7 per click anytime someone clicks on your ad. Even if they click by accident and go right back to their search results, you still pay. That said, 100 clicks will cost you $300-$700. It can add up quickly. As a less expensive and much less technical alternative to building your on website and optimizing it yourself, you may consider joining a fitness community website. In addition to the fitness community membership, you may have event opportunities, blog opportunities, monthly newsletter \”healthy tips\” contribution opportunities, among others. This can provide a lot of value without the headaches of running your own site.

Again, this is just a short list of marketing strategies that a NYC personal trainer should use. They all work well together. Whatever you choose, do not to give up on your marketing strategy too soon. Have a realistic window of time to give your plan time to breathe. Make sure you are properly funded so you can sustain it for a period of time to give it that chance. Finally, don\’t expect everything to happen because you put something out there. Rather, use it as a reason to reach out to clients, prospects, and friends. Tell others what you\’ve done by putting it on your Facebook page. Email every one of your prospects and follow it up with a telephone call. Have your friends forward your link or like you link on Facebook. After all, a personal trainer NYC can never rule out the benefits of receiving a referral.