How to use Facebook for marketing your fitness business

Facebook, you could say, is the granddaddy of all social media networks. Although networks such as MySpace came before it, Facebook is undoubtedly the most successful and most enduring.

It’s evolved from its humble beginnings in a Harvard dorm room, and merely being a method for people to keep in touch, to being a platform which allows small businesses to have a presence on the web and not having to put together a formal website to start with.

With around 2.8 billion people actively using Facebook on a monthly basis, this social network provides a powerful platform for your marketing efforts as you’re almost guaranteed to find people who are receptive to your fitness brand on this platform.

Why it’s ideal for fitness businesses

Facebook, like Instagram, is a very visual social media network. Although it is possible to put up purely text-based content, statistics show that posts which have visuals attached to it perform better than their text-only counterparts. And as Facebook allows you to post video, this provides the opportunity for posts to become even more engaging. (Video has the highest rate of engagement than any other form of content on the Internet.)

In the fitness industry, nine times out of ten you’re selling your services – be it personal training, yoga instruction or Pilates teaching. This means that it’s quite difficult to sell because people can’t see the product and what benefits that it holds. This is as opposed to a tangible product, such as a treadmill or spin bike, where you can see how it’s built and can even give the product a test run.

This means that you’re going to need to develop ways in which to show people what are the benefits that they will get when they sign up with you. The best way to do this is by showing them pictures in addition to describing what they are seeing in the pictures.

For example, if you’re a personal trainer and are offering a ten-week course to help people kickstart their fitness journeys, an idea about how to market this on Facebook is to feature a range of your previous clients, show a before picture of them and an after picture (in other words, after they’ve completed the course.) This is to show potential clients what results that they can expect to gain when they train with you.

If customers are not comfortable with showing their pictures, perhaps you can interview them and ask them why they started training with you, what their fitness goals were in addition to what their results were. Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most effective formats of promotion there are out there. This is because if people see that a person they know recommends a personal trainer, they will be more likely to hire that fitness professional should they want to start down the personal training road.

A mini website at a fraction of the cost

As we said previously in this article, a Facebook business page allows you to input all contact details, what you offer as well as ask customers for reviews – in other words, the information that you’d typically put on your website.

The beauty about a Facebook business page, however, is that it’s free to set up and, if you populate it correctly, it will be easier for people to find you. The only obvious other expenditure that you will have to incur is your time but there are tools that are available to help you automate this process.

It’s really a no-brainer for fitness professionals to start advertising on Facebook as this allows people to get noticed very quickly. However, once you are able to afford it we really recommend that you do consider putting up a website – in addition to using Facebook – as this will really help you to shine.