The Fitness Trainer Who Grew His YouTube Following by 400% with Video [And Doubled His Instagram Followers]
In early 2020, Kalen Norton of KatoTrainMePlease was running his fitness business, training clients, marketing his newly-published book, and working on growing his social media following. And that’s not all. Kalen was also training to break the Guinness Book of World Record for most pull-ups in 24 hours.
By April, most personal trainers had moved their business online. With social distancing measures in place, Kalen realized he needed to do the same. He started by sharing videos on his YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook pages.
In the interview below, Kalen shares why he kept creating videos, and what’s worked best for him.
How do you use video to market your fitness business?
First and foremost, when the pandemic hit, I had to completely alter the way I do business. I was 100% a personal trainer, and when the pandemic hit I had to quickly figure out how to market, advertise, and show people what I do without having to be less than 6 feet away from you.
What’s been your best performing video to date?
I was skeptical before but this video doubled my YouTube followers—doubled—in about five days. I got between 150-200 Instagram followers. One of them said 50,000 reaches. These are numbers I’d never ever seen before.
Note: After we interviewed Kalen in December, he shared 2 more Animoto video ads with a budget of $30 a day. His following continued to grow on both YouTube and Instagram, landing him a total of 800 and 4,325 followers, respectively. That’s over 400% increase on YouTube, and double the followers on Instagram! Over the course of two weeks, the video ad in the screenshot above amassed over 300,000 views and was saved nearly 4,000 times. Since 'saves' is the newly favored form of engagement on both organic and paid content on Instagram, this was a huge win for Kalen.
How have you kept your clients engaged through the pandemic?
Because I’m much better in person, I can do so much more with a video than a photo. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but for me, a video is worth a million times that. Using Animoto and its templates helps me market my fitness business and has been an utter and complete, awesome game-changer.
Do you plan on using video for your business in 2021?
I can’t thank the platform enough for what it did for me. I can’t wait to run my next one, and I’m pretty sure that one’s going to be my best performing video to date in 2021.
Create your own fitness video
Juggling a lot with your fitness business? We've made sure video is the easy part. To create a video ad like Kalen's, just customize our Online Fitness Promo template by adding your messaging and branding. Then, share where your audience is already browsing.
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