Tips for Launching Your Nutraceutical Business
If the COVID-19 crisis has taught us anything, it’s that health is something people are willing to invest in. Launching your nutraceutical business is both rewarding and profitable, and the timing for starting it online couldn’t be better. With or without the pandemic, the market for supplements is expanding – projected to reach $349B in the US by 2026. This article will go over three tips and tricks to ensure your nutraceutical businesses launches successfully and hits the ground running.
Tip 1: Strategically Identify Your Target Market
In a sea of nutraceutical businesses, how will yours stand out? The answer to this question begins with your target audience.
Once you’ve identified who they are on a surface level (athletes, mothers-to-be, millennials, minimalists, vegans, etc.), it’s time to dig deeper. What are their goals, desires, and fears? The more you understand them, the more value you can add for them specifically. The more value they believe you offer to them, the more likely they are to give your supplements a try (and tell their friends to do the same).
The best way to get to know your customer segment more deeply is to engage with them – actually talk to them and try to get answers to your questions. You can use tools like social media, Reddit, Quora, or other online communities to ask questions, peer into their conversations, and see what resonates.
You’ll uncover details about your customer quickly and be able to make educated inferences. Things like, would they prefer to fill out an online survey to have their supplements customized (or “prescribed”) for their needs? Or would they prefer to hunt and research the best things for themselves? Different customers will have different preferences, so there’s a lot to be said for showing up and delivering your product to them the way they’d like to find it. Rely on data, not hunches or assumptions for best results.
Tip 2: Nail your packaging
Sadly, more often than not, the ultimate decision-making factor for the purchase is the first impression of your package. This means you have mere seconds to capture the attention and earn the trust of your potential customer.
Your customer research will come in handy here (in fact, it will come in handy everywhere) to ensure the factor that is most important to your target customer is the clearest message on your packaging.
The details on your label (like colors, text size, and font choice) communicate literally and subliminally who your products are for and whether or not they’re worth the time to look into further.
A quick note for illustration:
In general (though not exclusively), warmer colors (red, orange, or yellow) are seen to communicate vibrance, energy, and passion, and cooler colors (green, blue, or purple) are seen to communicate earthliness, tranquility, hope, and peace. Choosing colors on either side of this spectrum for your packaging may communicate a message before your customer even realizes that they’ve looked at your product.
Review the packaging you’ve created pre-launch and ask for feedback from your target customers. Questions like, “What was your first impression?” or, “After looking at the bottle for a few seconds, is it clear what we offer?”, “Did you feel the product was made for you?” or perhaps most tellingly, can they recall anything about it once they can no longer see it?
Remain flexible to feedback and tweak your packaging until the point that you feel you’ve nailed it.
Tip #3: Create a buzz
One of the best ways to test a product idea while building a buzz around it is to create a simple landing page and promote it through ads on Facebook or organic social media marketing as you’re getting the details figured out behind the scenes (this can be months before launch).
The landing page should showcase a mockup of the product you’re looking to launch and offer a discount code in exchange for an email address. As you gather email addresses, you’re creating a buzz around your product and its pending launch. You’re also building an affordable list of warm leads to sell to once you’re ready – a list of people who have already expressed an interest in your product specifically.
You can use this process to test packaging and targeting by creating an A/B test – two slightly different landing pages. Which one resonated best (gathered the most clicks/leads) with your audience?
In the weeks leading up to the launch, start your email marketing campaign to generate buzz around the anticipated launch date. Some other ways to build buzz beyond the email could include promoting a virtual launch party, hosting a Facebook/Instagram live, or building a Facebook group of loyal early birds. These methods should be chosen based on your target customer research (do you see a theme here?) – i.e. where will they be most likely to participate and engage with you?
There are countless ways to build buzz around your product(s), so have fun with it – use this as an opportunity to define your place in the nutraceutical industry.
Concluding Thoughts
We hope you’ve found these tips useful and actionable for building a nutraceutical business launch plan. By deeply defining your customer, perfecting your packaging for that customer, and generating buzz around the launch date, you’ll be well on your way to success in the growing supplement industry through and beyond these trying times.
