One of the first things you need to consider when building a fitness business is ‘What is my USP’?
USP = Unique Selling Proposition
Your USP is what you offer your clients that your competition doesn’t (or can’t), and why someone should do business with you over every other personal trainer out there?
If you don’t know what your USP is I strongly urge you to think of one, and fast!
Without a USP there is nothing separating you from your competition.
And if there is nothing separating you from your competition, the only thing you can compete on is price… and when you compete on price the only way you can go is down.
The problem with competing on price is there is always someone more desperate than you, willing to charge less than you… it’s a fast race to the bottom that nobody wins.
A USP allows you to position yourself in the marketplace as the ‘expert’ or ‘go to guy’ for that specific service or niche.
When you’re considered the ‘expert’ you are perceived as more valuable and can charge more for your services, plus there is much less competition targeting smaller markets and niches.
Think about it…
If you had a heart condition and needed an urgent operation to save your life would visit your local GP…
…or find the best heart specialist that money could buy?
To give you an example…
When we were creating EPTI we wanted to make sure we stood out in the marketplace and address the problems that existed with the big personal trainer course providers.
So we made a list of the problems, then set about looking for ways to fix and improve on what was already being offered.
Here are a few of the problems that we found;
- Trainers teaching students how to train clients when they are not ‘in the field’ training clients themselves.
- Below average training facilities in an environment not conducive to outdoor training.
- Not offering students a chance to train members of the public during their course to gain experience.
- Large fitness course providers treating students as a number.
- Not teaching students how to successfully market themselves and run a PT business in the real world.
The first thing we wanted to do was to make it clear that both the founders of EPTI are personal trainers with a proven track record of helping clients get results AND building successful fitness businesses.
Then we set about finding the best training campus in Europe, the obvious place to look for year round warm weather was Spain. So we set up base in Denia on the Costa Blanca, found luxury apartments and a top notch gym only a few minutes away.
Next, we set up a deal with the gym to access their database so we could offer our students an opportunity to train members of the public during their practical learning so they could gain real world experience and confidence.
Once we had this in place we put together the most cutting edge training information in our members area, breaking down the course into bite sized chunks that is easily digested during the 12 weeks of theory learning.
Finally, we created the PT Business Supremacy Course. A set of resources teaching students the business systems and marketing funnels that have been used by us and have been tried and tested in the ‘real world’ successfully!
Here’s a good piece of advice for figuring out your USP…
Look at what everyone else is doing and then do the opposite, 95% of the population are always wrong so go the opposite direction and you’ll be right.
Here is my challenge for you, get a pen and paper and make a list of all the reasons why people should buy from you and not from your competition. Then clearly articulate those reasons into your marketing material and website, you will be very happy you did when the phone starts ringing!
Dedicated to your success,
Dan Clay
European Personal Training Institute
P.S Not seen our training campus yet? Check out the video below…