How Personal Trainers and Coaches Can Benefit From Nextdoor.com
With the Coronavirus pandemic forcing over 100,000 small businesses in America to shut their doors, more and more citizens are making strong commitments to supporting their local businesses, considering that they are the backbone of the US economy.
Of course, as a business owner, your experience may have taught you that while people often say they want to support local businesses, doing so can be challenging when there isn’t enough information on what businesses to support, and how. This is where platforms like Nextdoor.com come into the picture.
What is Nextdoor.com?
Nextdoor.com is an online platform that connects local businesses with their target consumers through a simple search. The platform also bridges the gap between people living in the same neighborhood, promoting a sense of community and reliance while doing so.
How Can a Training or Coaching Businesses and Benefit from Nextdoor.com?
Using the platform is incredibly simple, thanks to our intuitive UI, built-in marketing tools, and easy steps. As a small business, here’s how you can use Nextdoor.com.
Start by creating a profile for your business. The sign-up process is free, and all you need to do is select a description that best describes you – a neighbor for hire (this is apt for people who want to offer services like babysitting, dog-walking, and so on) or a professional service provider (this is apt for people with small businesses such as restaurant, fitness coaching institute, and so on).
Once you have selected the right type of business category, you can sign up with your e-mail and password to create a business page.
A business page is like a mini-ad for your business and must contain all the pertinent information that a consumer may need to know. For instance, you can add information regarding your opening hours, menu, services provided, special deals and discounts, and more, based on the service you offer.
Once your business page is created, we urge you to ask existing customers to add recommendations to your page. This is because we’ve noticed that business pages that have a minimum of 5 recommendations from customers see a boost in engagement by 30%!
Keep in mind that simply having a business page is not enough – you must create regular business posts every 2 weeks to remind your customers of your existence. Think of these posts as a cross between Facebook updates and LinkedIn posts – you must keep the tone engaging and inviting, while also maintaining a professional air. Additionally, add relevant pictures to your post so that customers can see what to expect from your business.
Nextdoor.com offers a range of built-in marketing tools that can help you expand your reach and grow your audience. As the platform connects you with customers near your area, you can interact with them, build their trust, and foster positive relationships. Nextdoor.com lets you create targeted ads shown to a predefined customer group, so that you can ensure you’re not wasting funds on advertising that yields low ROIs.
Keep in mind that Nextdoor has a strict policy regarding verifying addresses, so you can bet that the customers you see interacting with your business page live near you. What’s better than getting an entire bank of business leads that will surely pan out in a sale?
How Can Fitness Trainers Benefit From Nextdoor.com?
With gyms and fitness centers seeing very little business during the pandemic, it is essential to do all you can to ensure business is booming once again. Here are a few tips that trainers and coaches can use to boost your business by using Nextdoor.com.
Create a business page for your services and make sure you add pertinent information regarding your contact details, work experience, areas of expertise, and how you will keep your gym sanitized at all times.
Create targeted ads for deals and discounts that you can offer to local customers.
Offer at-home training and online training services and include information regarding the same on your business page. This will ensure that you can still form business relationships with local customers who do not want to step out of the comfort and safety of their own homes.
Create posts every 2 weeks and ensure that your customers gain value from it – a great way to go about this would be to create simple ‘how-to’ posts that customers can read and learn something new from. This will help establish your expertise and will build trust, thereby boosting your business.
How Can Nutritional Consultants Benefit From Nextdoor.com?
With a pandemic on the rise, it is important for people to ensure that they are actively taking steps to boost their immunity. As lockdowns are leading to a shortage in food supplies, and people are more likely to snack endlessly at home, spreading information regarding your services as a nutritional consultant is more important now than ever. Here are a few tips to keep in mind to increase your clientele by using Nextdoor.com:
Create a business page for your services and include all the information that your clients will need to know such as your working hours, contact details, area of expertise, office address, and so on.
Start asking older clients to write recommendations for your business to boost its visibility and engagement on the platform.
Create separate offers for the different services that are on the table – weekly meal planning, nutrition plans for a vegan diet, diet plans for weight-loss, and so on. This information should be a permanent part of your business page; however, you can also create regular deals and promote them based on the discounts you’re willing to offer. The frequency of such posts depends entirely on what you are comfortable with.
Upload enticing pictures of food, as customers often base their decisions on visuals.
You should also upload regular business posts to remind your customers of your services and expertise.
How Can Sports Coaches Benefit From Nextdoor.com?
While fewer people are playing sports at the moment, one simply cannot overstate the importance of keeping up with one’s training. As a sports coach, no one knows this better than you. However, with the current health scare, it’s natural for people to avoid venturing outside. In such a situation, you can benefit quite a bit from using Nextdoor.com. Here are a few tips you can keep in mind while using the platform.
Create a business page for your services, with relevant information about the kinds of sports you coach, the age groups that you work with, your timings, and affiliations to local schools or training institutes, if applicable.
Ensure that you get a minimum of 5 recommendations from people who have already worked with you. This will help foster trust amongst other potential customers near you.
Create long-term deals for sports and local gymnasiums to benefit from, and short-term deals for individual clients who may want to avail your coaching services on a weekly basis.
Create regular business posts that offer customers an insight into your expertise. As a sports coach, you can create a series of posts on local students you have worked with, and what they went on to achieve in their field (for instance, “Mr. Smith grew to be the captain of the team”). Doing so will increase a sense of connection between the local customers and yourself, as they will be able to identify with your posts on a personal level.
Share pictures of trophies your teams have won along with posts to establish your expertise in the field.
Offer deals such as at-home training for discounted prices, so that your customers can feel safe at home without having to pause their training for a long time.
Collaborate with other small business owners that are pertinent to your field, for instance, a nutrition coach who can help your clients buff up.
Why Should You Use Nextdoor.com, Instead of Solely Relying on Your Own Social Media?
Nextdoor.com offers you access to local customers who are committed to supporting local businesses. As a result, your business posts and information reach an audience of people who are incredibly likely to buy your products or services.
Here’s how it works – customers input a search item, such as “personal training” or “health coach”, after which they are shown search results in the form of businesses that are near them and meet their requirements. They then scroll through the business page to look at the information, recommendations, and available deals, before booking a service, as needed.
As these groups of customers live within the same neighborhoods, you can bank of age-old marketing tools such as word-of-mouth to help boost your business. In fact, customers are more likely to trust brands and businesses that their loved ones tend to trust, as opposed to businesses they just happen to see online on social media.
It’s time to get out of the financial slump and enjoy a booming business once again!
Getting Started
Check out this list of fitness careers that let you follow your dreams which includes what it takes to start a career in personal fitness training. This is your most affordable and fastest way to become a highly qualified personal trainer.
Is your re-certification coming up? Learn more about earning your CEU credits. You can find the full list of CEU courses here.
If you are ready to start your online personal training or coaching business, don’t forget to learn more about our online coaching course.
One of the most popular and fastest ways to get started working with clients while you travel is to coach/train online. You will want to learn more about GymGo. GymGo lets you work with clients and make money in different ways: online, live-streaming virtual training & on-demand training. Use our link to get yourself a free 14-day trial >>> https://www.gymgo.com/nesta
Remember, NESTA and Spencer Institute coaching programs are open to anyone with a desire to learn and help others. There are no prerequisites!
That’s it for now. Take action!
PS: Click here to see many helpful business/career resources
NOTE: When you take your fitness business home, you can also work with clients outdoors as you operate your business from your kitchen table and even coach clients online from home.
