How To Use TikTok To Promote Your Personal Training Business

The power of social media as a means of reaching an audience and building a relationship for a fitness business is undeniable. Many personal trainers don’t have a website at all and instead run all their promotions and marketing through social media only!

While it’s recommended to have a website to direct your traffic to, social media is a great way to build a relationship with your customers and allow them to get an idea of your personality and values as a fitness professional before choosing to work with you. 

TikTok is one of the newest platforms available to create video content. It’s a young and vibrant marketplace so if your demographic is on TikTok - you might want to consider moving some of your fitness content over there. 

This article will help you to consider if this platform will be right for your personal training business.

Why TikTok for Personal Trainers?

According to Oberlo, TikTok has 800 million active users worldwide creating short videos. It’s one of the fastest-growing social media platforms in the world. 
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​TikTok is the most downloaded app on the Apple app store, beating YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger by a considerable margin. 

Get To Know The Platform

TikTok is a free app and available on both apple and android devices, so you might consider downloading it and playing with it yourself before deciding whether to invest any of your time in using it for your fitness business. 

According to Globalwebindex, 41% of users are aged between 16 and 24. If this is a demographic you provide personal training to in your fitness business, you may want to consider the sort of content which is popular on the site so that you can adapt to their culture naturally. 

Create Fun Fitness Content

The content on TikTok is short, easy consumed and shareable. They place a lot of value on well-produced videos so if you’re comfortable on camera and good at editing your video content this could be a real advantage. 

While silly and fun content is popular on TikTok, consider if this is congruent with your personal training style and fitness brand. Keeping your content simple and authentic to your own style will help your potential clients to get to know you. Building authentic, long term relationships will always be the priority. 

People who use TikTok spend almost an hour a day making, sharing and consuming content. These numbers are comparable to Instagram and Facebook, and ahead of Snapchat. This is a powerful statistic if your goal is to engage directly with an aspiring athlete under 25 or advertise to them!

Using Fitness Hashtags Effectively

One method of promoting your personal training business on TikTok is to launch a hashtag challenge. This means you encourage users to create or re-create content and add your branded hashtag to it. 

This not only promotes your personal training business but also drives user interaction and engagement inside the app. It can give you an idea of who is aware of your brand and could also give you some scope for re-targeting your content. 

With 90% of users using the app at least once a day, they are extremely active with 55% uploading their own content but a significant 68% watching content made by others.
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Collaboration With Others

TikTok influencers aren’t really a “thing” yet the way they are on other platforms, such as Instagram. 

However, working closely with someone that your target demographic recognise and already like could be a good strategy for your brand. It could also be easier to achieve this on TikTok while the platform is relatively new. 

You could consider working with other personal trainers, fitness models, nutritionists or even clothing or supplement companies. 

Making sure that the person is a good fit for your business will be important though. Make sure that the influencer’s demographic is the same as your demographic to make sure you’re attracting the right people. Aligning your personal training business with the right people will be important for your customers’ brand loyalty in the long term. 

Advertising On TikTok For Personal Trainers

At the time of writing, there are four types of advertising on TikTok.

1. Native Content: This type of ad is found inside a user’s feed. It is similar to Instagram story ads and supports features such as website clicks or app downloads. 
2. Takeovers: This allows other brands to take over a TikTok account for the day. They might use this to create content with embedded links to landing pages or hashtag challenges. 
3. Hashtag Promotion: You’re able to promote a hashtag to get more engagement as well as using a challenge to increase awareness. 
4. Branded Lenses: Branded lenses are like filters for faces and photos. 

TikTok targeting is precise and allows to reach the exact people that would be interested in your personal training services. 

One of the fastest growing populations on TikTok is the American adult market, with some reports suggesting usage among over 18s is roughly doubling every six months. 

TikTok seems to have found it’s place in the social media marketplace. Early comparisons to Snapchat or Vine have definitely stopped! 

According to MediaKix, while 89% of marketers claim to utilize Facebook for business purposes, only 4% admit that TikTok is part of their company’s social strategy. This might reveal there’s a gap in the market which your personal training business may be able to take advantage of. 

Is TikTok Right for Your Personal Training Services?

Social media trends change rapidly. 

One disadvantage of other platforms (such as Facebook or Instagram) is the shift towards “pay to play” formats. This means unless you’re prepared to put some money behind boosting your posts, they may not get seen due to the algorithms used.

TikTok is still new enough where there’s a lot of organic growth and a clear marketing message can still get through to your audience. You might want to capitalise on the wave of growth. That audience may be perfect for you if you work with people under 30. 

Like all social media platforms, your first consideration may be whether your personal training demographic is even on TikTok.