It can be tough to keep clients engaged and motivated! We want them on top of progress, and on track with nutrition. Whether your clients are online or on a hybrid program, keeping them motivated is essential to both their success and your own!

Don’t let these lack of motivation negatively impact your business. Try these tips to tackle these unique challenges as an online personal trainer and keep your clients working out and working hard.

📝 FREE CHECKLIST: Scale your personal training business in a personal way—with strong client relationships. Click here to access our client engagement cheat sheet and take these tactics to go!

Build Strong Trainer-Client Relationships from Day One

First and foremost, it’s incredibly important to build close personal relationships with your clients from the get-go. It’s imperative that you encourage them to be upfront and honest about their limitations and objections before they start training. Not only does this allow you to pick a realistic workout program, it also sets the stage that client’s motivation style. Some individuals can execute a plan on their own with little contact, while others require weekly or even daily motivation to stay on track.

A really easy way to make sure you’re collecting this crucial information is to create a custom consultation form. Once you’ve collected the information, you’ll need to analyze your client’s personality and underlying motivations. This will help you determine how often they need your personal attention, and what type of communication will best keep them driven to succeed. Some individuals prefer a simple daily message encouraging them to stay on track, while others may benefit from relevant blogs, videos, articles, or motivational quotes. Make sure to utilize your social media platforms and build your arsenal of online content for optimal client retention!

Keep in Touch with Your Clients

With the initial consultation done, it’s important to decide when and how often you’ll contact you’ll contact your clients. Keeping in touch keeps clients engaged and motivated. It gives them an external push to stay on track for their fitness journey, and motivates them to work hard at achieving their goals. You might not be there with them physically, but if they feel like you’re still watching and accessible, it won’t make much difference.

There are lots of ways to stay in touch with your clients—especially using Trainerize.

Auto Messages and Events

Trainerize comes equipped with a number of automated events and auto message options, that let you set up pre-scheduled messages and send them to your clients on specific days or after specific events, like checking in for their first workout, hitting a personal best, or even their birthday!

Setting these up let you keep in touch with your clients without all the manual work of individually messaging them, and make it possible to always message your clients at the exact right moment without having to have your phone glued to your hand 24/7. Learn more about setting up auto-messages.

Individual Client Messages

If you do want to opt for a manual process of reaching out to your clients individually, it can be helpful to develop a staggered client schedule for follow up. This means choosing a small portion of your clients to reach out to individually every day. Limit your client contact to 5-10 different clients each day. As a result, they will each receive the best possible care and personal attention without overwhelming you in the process.

Group Messages

To save time, contact a large number of your clients at once by using a group message. This lets you share information with multiple clients at once, and it can spark client conversation and social motivation. Plus, with emoji responses, you can see how your clients are feeling and react to their messages in turn.

Get Personal with Video Calls

Video communication provides the personal touch clients crave. Utilizing Skype or Appear.in (both built into Trainerize) are excellent options. Both allow for one-on-one video calls and group chats. For example, you can perform an initial consultation with your client via video chat and then hold a weekly group video call for all your clients. This saves you time and helps build a sense of community for the individuals you train.

Build an Online Community with Groups

Generally speaking, creating a place for your clients to interact, ask questions, and get peer support is a powerfully beneficial thing. So it’s pretty awesome that Trainerize comes fully equipped to build these communities with their Trainerize Groups feature. By creating groups, you’ll be providing your clients with an extra source of motivation and inspiration. This will keep clients chugging 24/7 as the group members interact—even when you’re not available.

Boost Motivation with Challenges

Another way to rouse your community of clients and boost their motivation is to incentivize their training. You can do this by running a monthly fitness challenge! It could be based on the most workouts logged or longest streak for days of nutrition tracking. The options are endless!

And you can get creative with the reward too! Some examples of prizes you can use to get your clients hyped up and moving include: saving money on their monthly training fees, winning promotional t-shirts, hoodies, shaker bottles, bags, etc.

All-in-all, it’s important to take into consideration each client’s individual needs, keep in close personal contact, help build a community of support, and provide incentives often if you want to help your clients stay invested in their training plan and getting the best results possible. When you see your clients engaged and motivated, your business will start to boom!