Online fitness coaching is one of the fasted growing careers in the fitness industry. Just look at social media or the paid ads in Google and you’ll see an over-abundance of people running ads about their coaching. This is a great thing because clients now have the opportunity to find a coach that fits their needs! 

However, if you want to be successful and scale your business to the size you want, you need to set yourself apart. You need to find your niche!

Find Your Niche
Anyone can find a meal prep document, an exercise circuit, or nutrition ideas on Google. What do you offer your clients that aren’t easily found on Google? When you focus on what you do best, your clients will see the value in joining your program. You need something that makes you exclusive. If you’re just beginning, that specialty or exclusiveness may be hard to define. That’s normal! As you gain clients and streamline your program, find what sets you apart and focus on that. 

Make Them Feel Customized
In order to be a great online fitness coach, there’s more to it than just providing a blueprint to your clients. Remember, each client is a real person, with real problems, struggles, and health issues. You need to be able to adapt your program to fit their needs. Try to make the online experience as personable as possible with Zoom calls, personal consultations, and chats. The questions to ask yourself are:

• Can your program be customized to fit each client’s specific goals?

• Can your clients reach you when needed?

• Do you offer accountability?

• Do you use periodization? 

As a coach, you are in the results business. Your clients aren’t going to care how amazing your programming is if it doesn’t produce the results they want. The best program on paper may not be the best program in practice. Build a relationship with your clients, connect, and build that trust. 

Offer Full-Service Coaching
What is full-service? It’s nutrition and training. Nutrition is a huge part of the puzzle that leads to long-lasting results. You can work out all you want but if the nutrition habits aren’t there, they won’t see the results. The best results come when the entire package is optimized. Most clients who are serious about changing their lifestyle and hitting their health and fitness goals seek out nutrition advice anyway. 

Get Educated
There are so many fad diets out there, and the media does such a good job of putting out misguided and flawed info, your potential clients are bound to ask you why your program is better than Keto, Intermittent Fasting, Flexible Dieting, Low Carb, Paleo, etc. You need to be ready to clearly and concisely stand by your product. 

Get the Title of Pro
What does “pro” mean? In athletics, turning pro is defined by an athlete that is paid to play their sport. In the fitness coach world, it means the difference between amateur habits and professional habits. You need to have the reputation and aptitude for:

• Showing up every day

• Committing to your clients

• Being patient

• Always seeking order

• Accepting no excuses

• Not taking failure or success personally

• Not hesitating to ask for help

• Never stops learning

• Enduring adversity

• Being confident in their field

• Reinventing themselves as necessary

• Being recognized by other professionals

Being a professional doesn’t mean just working from home whenever you want. It means holding yourself to a standard and working by a schedule. 

Never Stop Learning
The truth is that everyone can “claim” to be an online trainer, just you have to have the education and knowledge to back that up. Having a background in health, nutrition, anatomy, physiology, kinesiology, biomechanics, and even psychology can be helpful in this industry! You can attend online courses, seminars, webinars, and tests for certifications. You don’t have to have these things, but they can open you up to new ideas and also serve as an excellent marketing tool. 

The education doesn’t only include fitness and nutrition. As an online fitness coach, you wear many hats. You need to excel at psychology, philosophy, sales, marketing, and personal development. 

Social media marketing is another area where education is needed. There are many social media platforms and you need to know which are most visited by your clientele and how best to utilize outreach on those platforms.

When it comes to marketing, how to connect with the audience through blogging, email marketing, referrals, and nurturing leads online is essential. If you don’t feel this is a strength of yours, outsource it! 

When it comes to online ads – either through Facebook, Instagram, Google, or any of the others, it’s important to understand the algorithms that are constantly changing to effectively run ads that turn over leads and don’t waste money. 

It’s Not ALL About the Money
It’s a given that everyone wants to make money – but it can’t be all about the money. If you look at online fitness as an “easy way to make money” instead of seeing your clients as real people who are looking to you for results, your success won’t last.

Of course, showing a profit has to be a goal of any business, but taking the time to build your business with a solid business plan, a marketing budget, and building out processes are what is going to help bring you that profit. If you’re looking at online coaching as a “get rich quick” scheme, then maybe this isn’t the career for you.