The Beginners Guide to Facebook Ads for Personal Trainers

​Paid advertising is where you pay for traffic to get directed to your personal training service. It's different from organic marketing, where you rely on the natural reach of your audience to take action on your posts. 

Paid online advertising is becoming more and more popular compared to offline advertising options like paper, local radio or the TV, and it's no accident. It's affordable; you can start immediately, reach an enormous audience, and by understanding these principles, you can apply them to all advertising mediums.

All online advertising will have the same first objective: to grab the attention of the person who is absent-mindedly scrolling on their phone.

That means you're looking for a few of standard features:

• Something visual that's eye-catching enough to "stop the thumb". A picture or a video.
  
• If you're using video, make sure it is understandable without sound (communicating a simple story, or including subtitles).
  
• Some written element (known as a copy) that explains the benefits of your offer.
  
• A call-to-action, often a button, that tells the viewer what you want them to do next (learn more, visit your website, download something, like page etc.)
  

Types of Paid Online Ads

The number of types of available on various social media platforms may seem overwhelming first. Once you understand what purpose each of them serve, you'll be able to pick the one that's best for the goal of your campaign.

Post Engagement Ads

Sometimes you'll post something which naturally gets a lot of attention. You might choose to advertise that content to get even more engagement and reach more people. 

This option may be right for you if: you want more people to see one particular post which is already performing well. 

Immediate Experience Ads

If you offer something in your personal training business that you'd like people to try before they buy from you, this type of ad can generate leads. It might feature a unique benefit of training with you, such as a training app or a widget on your website to help people to calculate calories. 

This option may be right for you if: you can offer a trial on your fitness services.

Video Ads

Video adverts are some of the best-performing ones. Since so many people browse on their phones with the sound off, the video needs to make sense without sound. Using a subtitling service such as Veed can help with this. When creating your advert, make sure you're familiar with the preferred aspect ratios, and maximum duration of the platform you're using. 

This option may be right for you if: you're comfortable on camera and can explain yourself quickly and engagingly.

Event Ads

These adverts can drive awareness of your personal training services in a targeted geographical location. You might consider this type of advert to promote a special offer, or an event you're running. 

This option may be right for you if: you provide face to face services in a specific location and want to talk to people in a radius of your gym.

Offer Ads

You might be running an offer to potential personal training clients. Get summer-ready, back to school, or new year offers are always popular. To promote this particular training offer, you might promote it via a paid ad where the call-to-action is to redeem the offer on your website or to learn more from you. 

This option might be right for you if: you're running a short term offer to promote a particular service.

Lead Generation Ads

Ordinarily, you'd send someone to a landing page to complete their application to work with you or to download a lead magnet. However, some platforms, such as Facebook, can capture lead information right there within the app. This might be preferable so that people don't lose interest during the time they navigate away from your advert. 

This option might be right for you if: you don't have a personal trainer website yet where you'd want to generate traffic.

Page Likes Ads

When your audience likes your page or your profile, they will be shown what you post organically. You might run a paid campaign to generate more likes for your fitness business page so that when the paid campaign is over, you'll be speaking to a broader audience. 

This option might be right for you if: you put a lot of effort into making content which drives engagement. 

Slideshow & Carousel Ads

These are moving, animated images that work a little like a billboard. Often you can use stock footage and music to make the slideshow quickly. They have a quicker loading time than video but still allows you to tell a story or provide some value. 

This option might be right for you if: you're creative and can provide an interactive experience. 

Image Ads

These are probably the most basic version of an advert. The image should be high quality and interesting enough to "stop the thumb". They are likely to come with a short amount of text, known as "copy" to explain a bit about your personal training business and offerings, and a call-to-action - which could be any number of things, based on what you want to achieve with the ad.

This option might be right for you if: you're looking for an effective advert without the bells and whistles.

Paid Ads Tips For Best Results

Many trainers try using paid ads and report they get no return on their invested money and time. If that's you, understand you're not the only trainer in that boat. There my be a number of reasons why your ads aren't performing they way you expect them to. Check the following checklist to see where you could improve it.

1. What's the goal?  

Your advert needs to support the goal of the campaign. Goals might include increasing traffic to your website, getting more people to see your post or page, or getting people to download your lead magnet so you can add their email to your list. Being clear on what result you want your ad to achieve will make it more effective.

2. What type of ad is most relevant for the goal?

The types of the ad were outlined above. There are often multiple ways to achieve the goal, so consider carefully which one will work best for your audience. You might choose to test the performance of one type of ad against another.

3. How to design the ad?

This refers to designing the visual content (video or images) and writing persuasive copy. You can hire people to do this for you. Most platforms have ad manager tools built in that will help you with the specific formatting options of the ad, including a selection of different call-to-action buttons. 

4. Who to target?

Targeting relates to who that platform shows your advert to. There are options relating to gender, age ranges, and radius from a location at a minimum, and sometimes the targeting can be far more sophisticated depending on the platform you're using.

5. Test, analyse, repeat.

Online advertising is all about testing, analysing, and tweaking future ads based on what you learned. This means that each time you run an advert, you need to check how it's performed based on what you were looking to achieve. 

What works for one audience might be different from what works for you and your audience. It involves actively looking for useful aspects of your campaign and tinkering for future adverts. There are strict rules about what different platforms will and won't accept in their advertising copy.

For Facebook, for example, personal trainers are well-advised to stay away from language relating to weight loss, diets and fat loss. These differ between platforms and so reading the term and conditions carefully mean your adverts will be more likely to be approved.