The gym profile board can provide a place people can start to get to know a bit about you and gain details to be able to contact you, without the scariness of approaching you in person. How it is written will start to influence the people who read it before you even know they exist.
It can be the start of your relationship or a place for people to confirm they’re making the right choice. Either way, you want to make sure people find what they are looking for. Let them see what they could expect from you and give them a glimpse into you and your personality. Like any communication, the key to gym profile boards is to consider the reader and what they are looking for.
What Does An Effective Profile Look Like?
Example 1 (how not to do it)
If you look at most profile boards you’ll see a number of variations on example 1. The key thing to note is it’s all about the trainer. What they have achieved, what qualifications they have and what they can do. Most clients have no idea what the list of qualifications mean and what they want to know is if and how you can help them!
Example 2 (better)
If you look at example 2 you can see it is a complete contrast to the first one. There’s no mention of the trainer‘s achievements or qualifications except in relation to the achievements of the clients. Everything is focused on the potential client.
The language used should suit the type of client being targeted, this example is clearly aimed at female weight loss, but the principle is the same whoever you are aiming at. e.g. If you are aiming for males who want to get shredded you wouldn’t refer to toning.
How To Make An Effective Profile
1) Use language the client would use and let them know how you can help them. Address their concerns if you are aiming for people who are unsure what they are doing in the gym or acknowledge existing strength and knowledge and show how you can add to results if aiming for a more experienced gym goer.
2) Give readers a sense of who you are and how you train. Make sure you haven’t removed all traces of personality in an attempt at being professional.
3) Testimonials are brilliant as they provide loads of information in a relatable way. Make sure you use testimonials from people who represent who you are trying to attract. Where possible include a smiling image of the person giving the testimonial. You want people to think “oh that’s someone like me and they’re doing great, maybe it could work for me too”.
4) Give people a reason to speak to you. You want to move this relationship forwards and that will only happen if one of you makes contact. Make sure you are appearing approachable, both on your profile and in person.
Note: This all means that you can’t try and appeal to everyone. If you attempt to do that you won’t be able to use language that resonates with anyone and will end up appealing to no one. Don’t worry though, aiming for a particular demographic doesn’t mean you won’t ever get to work with anyone else. You’ll still find you can attract a range of people.
Whilst the best advert you can have in a commercial gym is the way you behave, both with and without your clients, it also helps to have something available when you aren’t there!
Our New Trainer Start-Up Guide available here contains information on setting up your gym profile board and plenty of other helpful information for new personal trainers. This is free to members by using the code available from the announcement post in the Facebook group here. Not a member yet? You can get access to all our resources on our 2 week free trial.