The Q5 2025 benchmarking report for UK protein and sports nutrition brands has just been published. Learn how the top 12 UK Protein and sports nutrition brands perform across the digital space.
The latest Q2 2025 benchmarking report for UK protein and sports nutrition brands has just been published. It covers the largest 12 national protein and sports nutrition brands, including Myprotein, MaxiNutrition, PhD Nutrition, Grenade, foodspring, Bulk ™, Innermost, Protein Works, HERMOSA, Form, Optimum Nutrition, and Science in Sport.
The research gives an inside track on who is winning the biggest share of voice online and quantifies the gaps, risks and missed opportunities for other protein and sports nutrition brands to win brand exposure, drive online views, and win orders. The report highlights quick wins that will improve enquiries from your online strategy and identifies the barriers that may be reducing your site’s ability to optimise digital performance.
To see a preview and contents page of the Q2 report, click here. To get a copy of the full report and the key takeaways, please complete the enquiry form below or schedule a call. 
Q2 2025 WINNERS LEADERBOARD
For a glance into just 6 of the metrics we evaluated these top 12 protein and sports nutrition brands on, check out our quick-look table below; 
Continue reading for further detail on this quarter's best and poorest-performing UK protein and sports nutrition brands or request a copy of the report for the full review.
What The Industry Research Report Covers
The 70+ pages of research benchmarks each brand based on 50+ metrics and indicators of successful digital strategy, including organic visibility, domain authority, paid media ads, conversion performance, technical performance, site speed, universal search, content, social ads, accessibility, and mobile performance.
Driving Optimal ROAS from Paid Media Channels
Some of the leading players in the space are high spenders on paid media channels such as Google, Bing & Facebook - but have a poor or sub-optimal conversion improvement strategy. Without an optimised, sophisticated conversion strategy that maximises the conversion rate, the return on investment is unsustainable or will underperform. Scaling spend on paid media is not achievable unless the conversion rate delivers optimal performance in the sector. Some in the space have paid media spend levels from 30k+ per month but dedicate minimal resources and budgets to conversion testing. Given the cost per clicks on ad networks will continue to rise, we recommend spending at least 10% of your paid media budget on ongoing conversion optimisation testing schedules to ensure your paid media ROI maintains long-term viability, competitive advantage, and sustainability.
Pay-Per-Click Marketing
Pay-Per-Click marketing is constantly evolving, with more and more advertisers being forced to hand over a lot of control to Google's algorithms as the push for automation grows ever stronger. There are still key elements of control that we have though, the main one of these being budget which is ultimately something the algorithms can't take from you. That's why being smart with your budget and ad coverage is essential to achieving strong results and bettering what your competitors have to offer.
For Q2 2025, the average monthly budget wastage across these UK protein and sports nutrition brands was £3,093, with some of the top players in the market spending a considerable amount on areas and audiences unlikely to deliver a return. We can see this in more detail when looking at the average monthly cost per cost-per-click (CPC) amongst advertisers, with the average of this metric being £8 . This highlights how competitive the market is and how important it is to control your budgets effectively.
There are varying monthly ad budgets across the competitors in the report. While this gap highlights the competitive advantage that larger budgets can provide, it's not just about spending more; it’s about spending smarter. By focusing on driving efficiency in campaign management, targeting, and budget allocation, businesses with smaller budgets can still effectively compete with larger players. Investing in data-driven strategies and refining ad performance can help close the gap and maximise the return on every pound spent, enabling growth even in a competitive landscape. Relative to their spend, HERMOSA reported the lowest monthly cost-per-click (CPC) at £0, followed by Myprotein at £2, and Form has the highest at £49.
The report highlights the importance of budget efficiency by comparing monthly ad spend with estimated CPC in relation to your competitors, see who has the highest and lowest CPC. To maximise the effectiveness of your budget, it’s essential to focus on driving CPC down while maintaining or improving campaign performance. In this report, Grenade has the lowest estimate monthly ad spend at £157, and Myprotein has the highest at £126,000.
By optimising targeting, refining ad copy, and leveraging data to identify high-converting opportunities, you can ensure every click delivers maximum value. This approach not only stretches your budget further but also boosts your return on ad spend (ROAS), enabling you to achieve stronger results without simply increasing expenditure.
Technical Website Compliance
Savvy digital marketers know that having a technically sound website is an essential component of a successful fully integrated digital strategy - plus a site capable of maximising conversion performance. For protein and sports nutrition brands, care should be taken that the removal of any products does not impact existing links, such as from blog posts, category pages, or alternate product recommendations.
Maxinutrition is the brand to watch for 4xx errors, reporting 292 errors. It’s important that this protein and sports nutrition brand works to reduce these errors, as visitors can become frustrated with broken links, which can increase bounce rates. Regularly monitoring a website for broken links and including redirect pages can reduce these errors.
Site Speed & Conversion Rate Performance
When 62% of consumers are less likely to convert if they have a negative mobile site experience, ensuring that your site is quick and easy to load makes a significant improvement on your overall conversion rates. In an increasingly competitive market, geared towards high performance in exercise and sports, protein and sports nutrition brands will want to ensure their sites are also quick, easy to use, and give a positive impression of their brand from every touchpoint.
Maxinutrition is the brand to watch for 4xx errors, reporting 292 errors. It’s important that this protein and sports nutrition brand works to reduce these errors, as visitors can become frustrated with broken links, which can increase bounce rates. Regularly monitoring a website for broken links and including redirect pages can reduce these errors.
Building Competitive Advantage with Domain Authority
Domain authority is an essential metric for measuring the effectiveness of SEO performance, and helps create a reliable overall gauge of how effective your site is at achieving organic traffic, i.e. ‘free’ traffic that isn’t gained through sponsored ads. Protein and sports nutrition brands should be continually pushing to improve their DA, and could collaborate with leading fitness publications and bloggers in order to build this authority.
A ‘good’ DA really comes down to how your competitors are performing, however it’s generally considered average between 40 and 50, good between 50 and 60, and excellent above 60. The DA score for this quarter ranged between 76 and 28, with HERMOSA reporting the lowest score. Earning high-quality backlinks from reputable websites is one of the most effective ways a brand can increase their DA score, which could involve guest blogging, building relationships with websites that have a similar audience and more.
Organic Performance – Mobile & Desktop
A strong organic performance is strategically important as it ensures your site ranks above competitors for key, transactional keywords. When 93% of your customers won’t go past the first page of Google, your absence or lack of targeting for essential keywords will cost you conversions. With sports and fitness remaining an ever-growing sector, we expect protein and sports nutrition brands to be able to capitalise on these growth opportunities.
Six brands reported a decline in organic traffic on desktop, with Maxinutrition seeing the biggest decline (-38%). Meanwhile, 7 brands reported a decline on mobile, with Optimum Nutrition seeing the biggest decline (-51%).
Universal Search Opportunity
Google Universal Search Results is an evolving opportunity to make your pages visible on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Universal results often appear before traditional listings and are eye-catching for users. Universal search results refer to rankings on a SERP that are not the traditional ‘blue line’ Google link, and a brand can appear for universal search results without being strong in standard rankings. Protein and sports nutrition brands should be utilising all universal search features as their customers will be interested to see how previous customers have found their experience via 'reviews', 'FAQs', and 'people also ask'.
Myprotein secured the most Universal Search appearances (14,973), with the majority of these appearances coming from ‘images’ (11,600). HERMOSA reporting the fewest results for ‘images’ (4) and should ensure they’re including alt information for all images to help search engines interpret their images.
The Longtail Keyword Opportunity
Longtail keywords are often considered high intent and potentially more likely to convert as a searcher is being more specific. Optimising for longtail keywords also puts your content strategy in a strong position to rank for brand new search terms as they enter Google’s index. Protein and sports nutrition brands should look at high-conversion potential terms when expanding their longtail keyword portfolio, in order to improve, not only general visibility and traffic, but sales stemming from organic traffic.
Myprotein secured the most longtail keyword appearances for position 3 (3,620) and positions 4–10 (7,045). On the other hand, HERMOSA received the fewest keyword appearances for position 3 (1) and positions 4–10 (4). This protein and sports nutrition brand should ensure they’re using a keyword tool to research the best phrases to use to reach their target audience.
Facebook Adverts
With the number of Facebook users in the United Kingdom (UK) hitting over 44 million users in 2023, it is not surprising that companies have jumped at the opportunity to advertise on the social media platform. Facebook’s UK digital advertising revenue has been estimated to have breached 2.6b GB pounds in 2019. Facebook adverts are an opportunity for protein and sports nutrition brands to expand the reach of their organic content, and highlight new and key products.
We’ve included screenshots of Form’s sponsored Facebook posts. This UK protein and sports nutrition brand included vertical images to cater to those accessing social media from their mobile (which is the majority of users).
Top Social Shares & Content
When it comes to social media and on-site content strategies, it is important to release content that has a longer shelf life. An article is considered 'Evergreen' if it has maintained its relevancy to an audience for longer. It's great for your brand engagement, but great for Google too, who will recognise content that achieves traffic over a long period of time. Protein and sports nutrition brands can create content across the full spectrum of fitness and sports content - topics which are likely to engage a social media audience and win social shares.
Myprotein has the most Facebook Likes (2.4 million) and the most Instagram followers (1.1 million). All brands should ensure they’re utilising social media platforms that their target audience uses and following a strategy so that they’re posting content that interests their target audience.
Website Readability & Accessibility
20% of people in the UK have a disability – 2 million of which are people living with sight loss. In addition, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some degree of colour vision deficiency. When websites are not designed to meet these needs, brands lose customer interest as they turn elsewhere. Protein and sports nutrition brands, which are likely to sell many similar products with only slight differences, must ensure that their site is clear for users with any vision deficiencies to navigate.
Protein Works flagged 394 accessibility alerts, with Innermost at a close runner up (219 alerts). Additionally, Myprotein reported 477 contrast errors — the most of all brands. It’s important that brands reduce their accessibility alerts and contrast errors to improve the web experience for users accessing their website from any device and/or with a disability and/or colour vision deficiency.
GET THE FULL 70-PAGE Q2 2025 REPORT
To get a copy of the full report, please complete the enquiry form. If you want to talk to us about accelerating your digital performance, please call us on 01543 410014 or schedule a call with Mike Movassaghi
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