Our marketing experts discuss important techniques for health and nutrition products to set your brand apart from the rest
Your brand is your business. Without a solid brand image, your product won’t go very far. Consumers rely on three R’s in health and nutrition marketing: Recognition, Reliability and Remarkability.
Starting with remarkability: as anyone in the health nutrition industry knows, there are a million products with similar ingredients that make nearly identical claims. If you’ve created a product, and you’ve gotten it onto shelves in a store, that seems like a great accomplishment, but what is going to get it off the shelves?
Having a remarkable product to set yourself apart from the pack is a good place to start. Consumers look for clean, pure, effective ingredients from superb sources. Now, more than ever, a focus on quality ingredients is the most important aspect of developing a product. This product should also be consumable. If it’s a supplement in pill form, it should be easy to swallow. If it’s a dissolvable powder, it should look, smell, and taste like something that should be eaten. If it is an edible, then obviously, it needs to taste good, look good and stand out from the rest in its remarkable quality.
However, even if you have the best health product that has ever been created, if nobody has ever heard of it then it won’t get you sales. Recognition of a brand is the only way that consumers know to purchase your brand above any other product. This starts with developing your brand and packaging in a consumer-friendly way. When marketing a health product, the average Joe should be able to look at your product and immediately know what it is and what it does within 3 seconds. Why 3 seconds? Because studies show that that is all the time you have to grab someone’s attention. Your packaging should stand out and communicate clearly the approximate value and benefits of its product just through the packaging and label designs, before any instructions or ingredients are even read.
If you have, or are looking for distribution for your product, you will likely need an advertising campaign in place to make any serious headway. Advertising can cost millions upon millions of dollars, but it doesn’t have to start out that way. In this day and age, there are as many options for advertising as there are products, and an option that is specifically right for your brand. It is important, though, to keep in mind that advertising is an investment in getting your product into the minds, then into the hands, of your future clients.
Lastly, reliability is imperative because consumers will return to a company that they trust. Health products should live up to the health claims being made on the packaging or advertisements. In the current age of the internet, companies should be aware of their own reputation, as negative public relations issues can travel quickly online. Likewise, customers have a large platform on the internet to broadcast any negative experiences they have had, such as bad customer service or negative experience with a product. Even a repeat customer who has enjoyed the product in the past is liable to have one negative experience that prompts an online review. Studies have found that customers are more motivated by negative experiences than positive experiences to express feedback over the internet. For this reason, your brand should remain trustworthy, transparent in its operations and produce a reliable, consistent product.
The health product market has been experiencing explosive growth for quite some time and is expected to continue to grow at similar rates. Simultaneously, the number of health brands and products has increased equally. To make it in this highly competitive market, understanding and implementing important marketing techniques will be key to your success.
