What makes you unique as a personal trainer?
Two things can happen with this question. That you spend a long time thinking about how to correctly respond to what makes you truly unique as a personal trainer or, that you respond immediately by saying that what makes you different from the rest is your logo, the name of your business and probably what you do exactly. If you have thought that the second option is correct, then we regret to tell you that this is not the only thing that differentiates you from other personal trainers. In fact, we could say that this is only 25% of what your business represents for your target audience or audience. What makes you unique as a personal trainer is your brand essence and in this article we are going to teach you what brand essence means, how it is built and the benefits of having a well-defined brand essence. Let's give it!
Brand Essence or brand essence of a personal trainer
The essence of a brand are all those values and principles that represent you as a personal trainer. What you define as Your values they should remain unchanged over time, that is, they should not change over time (only be perfected) and, nor should they be ignored in every communication or action involving your fitness business. Thus, the essence of a brand is considered intangible since it has been your client's perception of your services and their experience with you as a trainer. In fact, the essence of a brand is that element that complements your communication strategy, having it well defined will allow you not only to attract new customers but also to build loyalty among those who already trust you and your services.I tell you, defining the essence of your brand is not an easy task, any action that is related to differentiating yourself from the rest of our fitness competitors takes hours of work and effort, but no one has mentioned that it is impossible so let's hit it off!
“How do I build my brand essence if I'm a personal trainer?”
To begin to define the essence of your personal brand, you will have to determine what truly makes you different and build the foundations of your own meaning that you can share with your audience. According to Philip Kotler The essence of a brand is discovered following the process of the ladder, which basically refers to scaling up as you set attributes to your personal brand.
But wait, there's more...
To establish the essence of your fitness brand, you must also take into account that (the essence) must meet these characteristics proposed by Brian Solis, digital analyst, speaker and award-winning author.
#1 → Firmness
The essence of your personal brand should be reflected in a word or two at most. If it were to consist of more than two words, it means that the brand is not really focused and this translates into weakness. Their values must be so clear that they must be able to be reflected in the visual elements of the fitness and health professional's brand.
#2 → Intangibility
A person is no more than others because they carry more weight on the bar, but somehow they make them feel that way. This is what the essence of your personal brand is all about, being able to give your customers or audience a sense of well-being when doing your workouts or following your work closely.
#3 → Exclusivity
To define your fitness brand essence, you should look for what really makes you different from other personal trainers. Surely you offer a specific service for a specific group... think, analyze and capture it! In the end, if you have well defined the differentiating factor of your brand, your customers will feel truly unique and special, since your services provide them with much more than any other (service) in the fitness market.
#4 → Experience
The essence of your fitness brand must be able to capture the feelings of your client while they interact or experience your services or content.And to offer them a good user experience and build loyalty, you must provide them with something different from your main service, for example, you can complement their workouts with a complete diet plan + monitoring sessions and evaluation of results. Remember, a series of exercises can even be obtained on YouTube, but a coach who is as committed as you are to your goal and that it is aligned with your values, is already a little more difficult.
#5 → Consistency
If a brand defines itself as “fun” and then doesn't behave as such, then in reality fun is not part of its essence. The essence is not only represented through words, here actions play a very important role as well. Define correctly what essence will represent you and transmit it to your customers as is, without embellishments or blunders. But wait, not only are you in charge of transmitting it, if you have a team in your training business, they must also know the essence of the brand and know how to communicate it at all times. To be consistent, you have to start by being coherent and being consistent with the rest of the team.
#6 → Authenticity
If your brand essence is not credible, your customers or your audience will end up rejecting it and we don't want that, right? Well, you should check if it is credible or not through direct questions to the customer. There's nothing wrong with doing this, behind the screens there are people and those people will feel unique and listened to if you dare to talk to them regularly. Ask what they think of your services, what you can improve or even what they expect from you soon, this will help you reinforce your image and the most relevant aspects that complement it.
#7 → Durability
Once the essence is warm, it is almost impossible to alter it (or cool it down, heh). In the end, the essence of a brand is forever engraved in consumers' minds when it is clear and consistent, so we must take it into account every time we are going to initiate a communication or action that engages the brand.
#8 → Relevance
If you want your brand, your services and your content to be relevant to your customers, then you should look for ways to connect emotionally with them. The way is simple, it's about providing value through those services or content (they have to be interesting, able to attract their attention). However, the “what” it depends on you. Study well the common profile of your customers to truly respond to their needs and desires. That way you can establish where you want to position yourself and what type of philosophy you are going to follow.
#9 → Scalability
A brand should advance at the same time as technology or society, if the market changes, you must change, simple as that. Your personal training brand should avoid stagnating. And here's a simple example: After the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses had to be digitized, including those in the fitness sector. Those who stayed in person at 100% probably don't exist today or don't have a significant number of customers. What was the fastest and easiest solution? To have a software to manage your training business to continue offering their services but online. This solution proved to be (for many fitness and health professionals) the perfect opportunity to get even closer to their clients and even reduce daily working hours due to the fact that everything is automated. Returning to the topic of scalability, the essence must be adapted to the possible extensions of your personal brand and its growth in the future. In the end, it's about adapting to what the market demands, to its habits... (that is, what your customers are crying out for).
Benefits of defining the essence of your personal brand
The essence of your brand is able to link what you are with what others think you are. And if for a moment you think that this is not such a positive thing, then it will be up to you to make that bond, that combination of one thing and another, positive. How? Well, working on it day by day and taking it on the right path. But now let's see the benefits that are indisputable:
- It reinforces the possibility of positioning your personal training brand, in the not too distant future.
- It exposes the main point of your brand's value, in a more attractive way.
- It acts as a revealer of customer desires.
- It is a source of inspiration for the activation of your brand.
- Facilitate the growth of your training business through what the brand represents and communicates.
We're almost done, but first, I would like to make a very important mention. The relationship between emotional marketing and brand essence.
Let's talk about emotional marketing and its relationship with Brand Essence
Emotional marketing seeks to connect with your target audience through experiences and sensations or feelings generated by a certain product, service or even the brand itself as a whole. Meanwhile, Brand Essence seeks to highlight the attributes of the brand, whose formulation is based on the results of emotional marketing. It sounds like a tongue twister, we know, but we just want you to be left with the fact that this fact, when it reaches its maximum splendor, translates into increased sales. Emotional marketing is undoubtedly a powerful tool, capable of retaining your customers and attracting those who are not yet part of your training team, through the memory and recognition of the brand. When they want to purchase a product or service, they seek pleasure, follow trends (in some cases) and even achieve happiness because they have achieved a goal.Something The important thing to keep in mind is that most of the purchases people make are made on impulse and not because of a reasoned decision. This is when emotional marketing comes into play, as it seeks to stir up the feelings and motivations of the target audience. And for this, the essence of your personal brand must be defined beforehand, taking into account the emotions or concerns of the people you are addressing. (We have repeated it so much throughout this article, that I think it has already become quite clear to you
). As I'm sure you've already realized, simply establishing an attribute that defines your personal brand is the first step in achieving a brand that arouses feelings in your audience and, there is no greater benefit for your training business than this, other than sales.
Let your work team also know and communicate the essence of the brand
We close this article by reminding you of the importance of sharing with your work team (if you have one), that brand essence that you have defined. In fact, going back, the ideal would be to build it together from the outset. This will help everyone to be in tune and whenever you talk about the brand or what your training business offers, you refer to values and essence, through words. You could even create a Storytelling, Telling a story within a document that reflects your purpose, your values, the essence of the brand and the buyer persona; Thus, whoever reads it will know and clearly identify with your fitness brand immediately. And do you know what this translates to? In a great competitive advantage that no one can match! But wait, there's one other thing that can help set you apart even more. To have a platform for managing your training business... AND... Do you want to know which one is the best? We tell you, Harbiz (obvious
).Try the platform for 30 days free of charge and without registering a credit card. GO!
