In our blog post How to Create a Marketing Framework for your PT Business we spoke about how the marketing framework gives you the tools you need to run an effective marketing plan.

In this follow up we will look at the “What” of the marketing framework and how this can help you create a value proposition for your online personal trainer business.

Marketing Plan: “What” - Core Components of a Business

Understanding the “What” in the marketing framework helps you understand what exactly it is that you're going to market. In the case of your Online Personal Trainer business this could be:

- Your business (Brand awareness)

- Products (Fitness and Nutrition services, plans, and products)

A good marketing plan starts with an understanding of the core components of a business. These components are:

- Revenue Sources – How are you going to make money, how will you price up your fitness, or nutrition packages.

- Costs: What does it cost you to produce or offer your product or service

- Packages / Products: What packages/products are you going to sell? How does it benefit your potential customers

- Customers: Who are they? Are they consumers, or business owners? How will they interact with you? (Online, offline, social media, your website and email.)

Example Online Fitness Brand

Let's look at a fictitious Online Personal Trainer brand “Coach Liam” and go through each of the business components:

Company Name: Coach Liam.

Revenue Sources: Coach Liam’s revenue source is the sale of fitness packages.

Costs: Coach Liam’s costs include certifications, equipment and marketing costs.

Packages/Products: Coach Liam’s products are his fitness packages.

Customers: Coach Liam’s customers are men and women who want a personal trainer or online coach.

How to create a Value Proposition

The details we discussed above will help you understand what your business does, but to be honest they only give us an overview of your business. As a business owner you will want to explain why you should be attractive to your target audience and articulate the benefits of your online fitness business to them.

To achieve this, we can create an online personal trainer business value proposition. A value proposition will help you answer the following questions about your company:

1. What are you selling?

2. What is the benefit of using your product?

3. Who is the target customer for your product?

4. What makes your product unique?

It's important to create a value proposition for your business as it helps make sure you know exactly what your company is trying to achieve.

Value Proposition Template

To help we have added the easy-to-use template below. The template was created by digital marketing expert Geoffrey More. This template can really help you understand your PT business value proposition.

So, let's take our example company, “Coach Liam” and look at each stage of the template:

For:

The first line helps you understand who you are talking to. This is the person you think about when talking about your ideal customer.

Who:

The Who specifies the state that your ideal customer would be in when needing your product.

Our:

This line gets to the bottom of what your fitness package or service is. This allows us to categorize your fitness product in a generic way.

That:

The fourth line is where we nail down your primary benefit, this is the thing that tells you about the state of mind that your target customer is in to want to purchase your product.

Unlike:

The last two lines help you position yourself against your closest competitor, so unlike is where you add your closest competitor. This could just be someone you think is an awesome PT, or in our example we are going to use face-to-face personal trainers as our competitor.

Our Offer:

Once you have defined your competitor, we can move on to the final piece, where we answer, “Unlike this competitor, our offer is......” This needs to be the primary reason why your package is different from your competitor.

Take a moment and go through the template and come up with your own value proposition. Why is this important? Well, understanding your fitness business will help guide you in the marketing direction you take, this will be translated in a lot of ways. For example, the copy on your website, your social media posts and any videos you create.

Here is how we at PT Distinction explain who we are:

Reach more people, save time and deliver incredible results. Your ultimate online training business starts with PT Distinction.

Let's take the template and use it for our PT Business “Coach Liam”

For: Business owners who want to keep fit.

Who: Need a more efficient way of keeping healthy while managing a busy lifestyle, and their company

Our: easy to use, online fitness packages.

That: Allows people to train online and receive nutrition coaching, while managing their fitness schedule around a busy life.

Unlike: Face to face Personal Trainers.

Our Offer: Allows you to keep fit and eat well all at your own pace while allowing you to concentrate on your lifestyle/business.

In conclusion

The value proposition will help you understand your service, how it solves a problem for your ideal customer, and how it's different to your competitors. Understanding this will help you shape your content, website and advertising.

PT Distinction is the number one rated online personal trainer software. Our mission is to do everything in our power to help you build and achieve your PT Business dream.

Now have a go yourself, take the template above and use it for your own PT business.