How do I analyze my competence if I am a personal trainer?
Surely you have ever wondered if it is really necessary to analyze your competition if you have a personal brand (and not a large company), because without going any further, the answer is yes, of course you have to analyze your competence whether you are a personal trainer, nutritionist, physiotherapist, yoga or crossfit instructor, in short, a fitness or health professional. Analyzing those companies or brands that are dedicated to personal training will allow you to know and understand what they are doing or offering to their clients, what strategy is working for them to reach more people and, of course, to find out how to live properly with your sector. In addition, to achieve success in terms of sales and reach, it is not exactly achieved by analyzing and knowing your ideal customer profile (Buyer Persona), is achieved by also analyzing your closest competitors to find out how they satisfy their customers so that you can satisfy them in an even better way, thus achieving the difference.
And I'm sure you'll think... When is the perfect time to start analyzing my competition?
Well, the ideal would be to do it soon after creating and launching your personal brand or project. But if you've been with her for a while and haven't done it yet, that's okay, you're still in time to start analyzing your competition. The thing is that you commit to fulfilling this task because, once you start, you can never stop. Many companies or brands are dedicated only to closely observing, on a daily basis, their closest competitors. Either through visits to their profiles on social networks or through specific news that appears on the Internet mentioning them. However, a competition analysis is much more than looking at profiles...
What does competition analysis consist of?
It consists of a study of the strategies, strengths and weaknesses of brands or companies that work in the same sector or area to which your business belongs. Once this is done, the ideal would be to carry out an exhaustive comparison of what those brands and yours do and offer in order to improve your offer.
“How does it benefit me to analyze my competence if I am a personal trainer?”
As we have already mentioned, doing an analysis of other training businesses will allow you to understand their strengths and weaknesses compared to those of your personal brand and thus find a new focus of interest in the market. Here are some other reasons to motivate yourself, today, to start or perfect your competition analysis:
#1 → The analysis of your competition will help you save time, money and effort.
- Tiempo, because once you are clear about what your competition is doing, the task of differentiating yourself will not be an impossible mission (just do the opposite, or the same thing but much better than them).
- Argent, because you won't have, for example, to spend a lot of money on search engine positioning campaigns (such as Google) to make yourself known, since you can achieve this organically with a good SEO, sales and communication strategy.
- AND toil, because you won't have to spend hours and hours thinking, in each communication you design, about how to reach new customers or how to keep those you already have loyal customers happy and active. A good competition analysis will make this work much easier for you simply because you already know how you are going to talk to them and what you are going to offer or tell your customers or target audience.
#2 → It's the perfect opportunity to learn what people expect to find in your brand or training business.
#3 → It will allow you to strengthen the image of your personal brand
The theme of the previous article also comes into play here, the essence of branding, which, although these two concepts are not the same thing, are closely related. Let's first look at what we refer to when we talk about brand image: Brand image is the perception that the public or consumers have about what a business or company communicates. The emotions, feelings and values that the brand transmits or generates in its customers, is precisely what makes it possible to differentiate itself from the rest, and this is achieved through the brand image and the branding strategy, which is when the essence of the brand comes into play. When analyzing the brand essence of other personal trainers, we must take into account the brand territories (topics related to their activity that they usually mention in their different communications), the voice and tone they use. This will allow you to define which tones you should use and to know if you are going the right way or wrong.
#4 → Enhance your value proposition and competitive advantage
Esa value proposition It's just what we talked about in the previous point, what you're going to offer them that will meet their expectations and that will meet their needs. This proposal is not created in a day or a week, it is being worked and built little by little through various analyses and the recording of positive or negative experiences with your clients. Now, The competitive advantage Well, it would be what allows you to be above other personal trainers (differentiate yourself). For example, not only offering training but also supplementing it with a complete meal plan + motivational and support sessions to continue climbing towards your client's goal. Literally, offering such a personalized service, that the person feels that you are more than their coach, let's say, their friend. Another very clear example would be to offer your services in a more professional way, through a management software for fitness businesses.
Now, let's see how to spy on the competition and what to do with that information we've obtained. And yes, without taboos, this is about spying to be better, not to be equal. Let's get started!
Step 1 - Research your industry
Look for profiles that look like you. Just select about 8 or 10 fitness or health professionals to start with the analysis, in fact, Google can help you with this, search with keywords for your activity and your professional area to see who appears. Collect as much information as possible from each of them...
- How do they appear when you search for them?
- What do they offer?
- How do they offer it?
- What are your prices?
- What is the type of your ideal customer?
- What channels are they present on?
HarbiZhack → With all this information, create an Excel table to keep track of and classify your competitors (here if we let you use excel, for the rest, only Harbiz
).
Step 2 - Compare their content with yours
Once you have a list of the personal trainers that seem to be your main and most direct competence, you should analyze their content to verify that they are in fact dedicated to the same thing as you. The key when carrying out the analysis is to detect if these coaches really speak to the same type of client as you and how similar they are with respect to other elements (such as the mission, vision or values that drive them to continue with their project). If the list you had made at the beginning is not significantly reduced, you can rule out those fitness or health professionals who have the most differences with you. Those that you have decided to discard, leave them marked somewhere in a way that differentiates them. In the end, they are your indirect competence and all that information collected will be useful to you later, when you want or need to create new strategies.
Step 3 - Detect your strengths and weaknesses
The strengths of other personal trainers are often opportunities for us to improve and grow. When we talk about weaknesses, we refer to the different opportunities we will have to improve and strengthen our competitive advantage. A tool that can be useful to correctly detect strengths and weaknesses would be the SWOT analysis.
What is SWOT analysis?
Basically, it's a tool that will help you analyze the situation of your business and what you offer in order to make decisions later. With it, you can see how it affects the environment to take advantage of new opportunities or be aware of any type of “threat”. This tool is often used a lot in the marketing area and is very easy to understand and create.
Step 4 - Study your organic positioning (SEO) strategy
Before you give up at this point because you don't understand what we're talking about
, let us explain the meaning of “SEO” to you.
What is SEO? (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO focuses on the results of organic searches, that is, those that are not paid. Practically, it is a process that seeks to improve the visibility of a given website in the organic results of the different search engines that exist in the world. There are many factors that a search engine (such as Google) relies on to position your page among the first, but there are two that you, as a personal trainer, should consider if you have a website. Authority and relevance.
- Authority: This factor refers to the popularity of a website. This concept of “popularity” is supported by content that is shared several times, since what it implies is that one user (or many) found the information useful.
- Relevance: It's the relationship between a page and a given search, that's it. If you are looking “management platform for personal trainers in Madrid”, it will come out Harbiz, for example (is that we have done that positioning task very well, you know
- ).
Returning to the topic, how can you study the positioning strategy of your competition?
To analyze your SEO strategy, you should search for and detect the keywords that other fitness and health professionals use to position their brand, services or content in search engines. Since we are not talking about a large company but a personal fitness brand, you can do it with free keyword search tools. Our favorite for basic analysis is Uber Suggest. Identifying keywords, as you can see, is of the utmost importance. However, if at any time you notice that there are several keywords in which your main competitors stand out and you consider that these topics are not connected with what you offer or what you do, you can always create content for the same business, but that deals with other topics that really connect with the essence of your business.
Step 5 - This is not a one-time thing
We'll be brief. Analyzing the actions of your main competitors on social networks and other communication channels is a task that you must carry out daily. If this is not possible for you, then set aside one day a week or several days a month to allow you to sit down and do this task. You don't have to analyze your competition exhaustively, just follow them on each social network or communication channel (for example, subscribe to their newsletter) to see what they do, what they offer and what they bring to their customers with that content or service.
Step 6 - Finally, create your strategy!
To finish with the analysis of your competition, you must make a global comparison of all the information you collected. This will allow you to detect those aspects in which your personal brand surpasses your competition so that you can then create your marketing strategy. There will be cases in which the competitive advantages you have affect other types of elements that go beyond improving the SEO of your site or the number of followers on your social networks, for example. But in your case, as a personal trainer or fitness and health professional, you should focus on improving the way in which you sell or offer your services and, of course, improving your communication. The way in which you offer your services is linked to how you offer them, no matter if you are more in person than online (or vice versa), a fitness and health professional must have tools that allow him to automate his work in order to dedicate himself to the task that really matters, his clients and to attract new people who want to train with him. And guess what? You've found the perfect item! Here we not only offer you the theory and tools to carry out a good analysis of your competition, we also provide you with a software specialized in fitness business management. It's called Harbiz and you can try it for 30 days for free and without registering your credit card. Are you going to miss this opportunity?
If not, run!
