Introduction

I have chosen to compare 2 nutritional supplement competitors within the health & fitness industry: Optimum Nutrition and Gaspari Nutrition. They are two of the highest rated supplement product suppliers worldwide. Both specialize in bodybuilding products, but offer variations in product and marketing strategies.

Optimum Nutrition

Optimum Nutrition (ON) is a subsidiary of Glanbia, a cheese and nutritional ingredients group. They specialize in nutritional supplements, most recognized for their high grade protein products. The range of products ON offers varies from protein powders, sports beverages, vitamins, essential minerals, to natural herbs. They focus primarily on product quality and customer satisfaction.

Gaspari Nutrition

Gaspari Nutrition was started by Rich Gaspari, a former Mr. Olympia competitor (2^nd place). Gaspari is widely recognized for their bodybuilding products, in particular SuperPump250. They manufacture primarily bodybuilding supplements such as protein powder, creatine, multivitamins, and testosterone boosters. Gaspari is focused on getting the athlete to the top with high grade supplements.

Analysis

I started my listening by following Optimum and Gaspari’s Twitter and facebook pages. These were the easiest for me to monitor consumer perceptions outside of the few bloggers or product ratings. My analysis of Optimum and Gaspari’s Twitter trends through TweetStats and Trendistic showed that Optimum was tweeting a lot more consistently (almost double) and daily. They were also retweeting and interacting with the public more often than Gaspari. Gaspari’s tweets and retweets tended to be business related and not engaging with the public. They retweet their own athletes often and don’t reply to many tweets directed at them. When I tested this theory, Optimum retweeted or replied to 75% of my tweets (3/4), Gaspari shot 0% (0/4).

Next I took a look at the overall online presence of both companies through SocialMention, IceRocket, and Addict-O-Matic. Sentiments towards Gaspari remained at a fairly constant 6-7:1 ratio, indicating mostly positive reviews. Optimum varied from 7-15:1, which shows that they had (at times) significantly more positive reviews online. Overall, Optimum had strength of 12-15%, whereas Gaspari had 1-3%, indicating that Optimum was much more widely discussed through social media trends. While both companies might compete in the same supplement marketplace, I think the biggest reason Optimum has more positive reviews and presence is because of their wider product range. They supply not only bodybuilding supplements, but also general health and nutrition products, opening up to a much broader market.

Both companies use a website blog and news forum. They post top news stories in various areas, include exercise demos & tips, and allow public interaction. However, most of Gaspari’s blog posts or contributions across the web ended up sounding like a sales pitch. Consumers posted rave reviews about both brands through various personal blogs, but most of the chatter was kept to Twitter, Facebook, and multiple bodybuilding forums. Gaspari appeared to be more popular in the bodybuilding world because of their athlete status, exercise programs and high grade muscle building products. They have recently been bringing out free training tools to help novice to experienced athletes improve their performance. Optimum on the other hand had more presence among the health & nutrition advocates because of their high grade natural products. They create minimal company advertising because their customers promote the products for them through the various blogs, supplement award titles, and twitter mentions. Both companies have a strong positive customer perception, but excel in slightly different areas within the supplement market.

I was not able to obtain a specific social media philosophy from each company, but found through my research that Optimum centralized their communication and engaged with the public by replying to posts or comments directed at them. They appear to be there to help the public and interact with them regarding their daily lives and product experience. Gaspari uses many athletes and a main company entity to spread the word of their products, but does more communication within the team (i.e. replying to one another’s Twitter feeds) and product promotion than interacting with the public. It appears that Optimum is there to engage with the public, whereas Gaspari focuses on promoting products and athletes.

It’s no wonder that Optimum Nutrition has some of the highest rated products on the market (according to many nutrition and bodybuilding forums). Their engagement promotes an already top quality product, giving their customers not only a great product, but also support and feedback.

Listening Tools

The free listening tools I used were useful in getting a general perception of the marketplace. However, I found many flaws in the calculations of some tweet trends (missing calculating days with tweets all together) and online presence stats (i.e. Neutral reviews on socialmention). Companies looking to get a broad perspective of their online presence will have some use for these free tools; however, it takes much more detail to get more accuracy. There are great tools that can be used in Facebook, Google, & Twitter, which analyze stats within those sites, but that’s it. In order to get a proper reading through all the other social media applications in the marketplace it takes a more advanced program to classify some of those ‘neural’ mentions or blog posts. This appears to be a bit of a ‘you get what you pay for’ type of situation. While there are some efficient tools out there, in order to get a full analysis all in one place, you might need to spend a few dollars.

Businesses can use these tools initially to get an idea of where they stand in social media, but if they want more specifics or better accuracy they should be paying for a thorough, proper analysis.

My Strategy

Both strategies above have been extremely successful, but they could learn a thing or two from each other. Gaspari has decent customer involvement, but does not engage as much as they do report. They tend to experience higher web presence through multiple athletes and every one of their athletes has a separate voice for the company, but the actual engaging conversation should increase. Optimum Nutrition engages with the customer extremely well, but they rely primarily on their corporate voice. ON should be capitalizing on the image and popularity of their athletes in order to increase their online presence.

I would take a combination of both strategies in order to boost customer engagement and company presence online. An ad in a nutrition or bodybuilding magazine is barely noticed because 50% of the pages are ads in the first place. This is an industry that is being run more and more through online sales because of the deep discounts; therefore an online voice is key to success.

Sources

http://www.optimumnutrition.com/about.php
http://www.gasparinutrition.com/about/company.aspx
http://www.bodybuilding.com/store/
http://www.socialmention.com
http://www.tweetstats.com
http://www.icerocket.com
http://www.addictomatic.com
http://www.trendistic.com