On a trip to metaverse, if you search for best diet for weight loss, you will encounter a zillion ideas. Virtually, every website you visit will have some unique combination of diet foods. There will be some commonality of course, but you will see a myriad of new suggestions. For one, I was surprised to read this – Hing (asafoetida) water can help in weight loss. I was surprised because it was something new to my circle of awareness, and maybe it does. And then there was an article illustrating how drinking alcohol in a proper way can help in weight loss goals. Again, it is something one has to discuss with a good dietician, probably there is some grounding to this. But the challenge here for manufacturers and suppliers of weight loss products is – How do you market them in a digital world that is overcrowded by hundreds of competing brands and alternative therapies. What is the best D2C marketing strategy for diet products?
A May2021 research report on the “Weight Loss and Weight Management Diet Market” pegged the projected value as $295.3 billion by 2027, registering a CAGR of 7.0% from 2021 to 2027. The researchers have identified the global rise in lifestyle related health problems and increasing disposable income driving the demand for weight loss and weight management products. You can request sample pages of the report for more insights – Source: Himanshu Vig, Allied Market Research.
Diet Food, Market Challenges
There has been a significant rise in lifestyle related health problems among the urban population across the globe. Some reports say, this is also seen in the relatively rural clusters as well. With changing work habits, food cycles, and increasingly sedentary lifestyles… health issues like diabetes, infertility, cardiovascular diseases among other problems are eating into human lives. And given the penetration of digital media in our everyday lives, people have started realizing the importance of health management and fitness. This spread of consciousness has given rise to demand for better foods, wellness centers, and weight management plans. So the market has responded with a plethora of diet foods and weight loss products. From local manufacturers, wellness practitioners to global brands, there has been a deluge of supplies. And this necessitates exploration of the right D2C marketing strategy for sustainable growth in a complex, dynamic worldwide marketplace.
Here’s a quick checklist that users can refer to while purchasing new diet foods. You can use it to prepare a comparison chart for your store. This will help your clients take informed decision and generate more sales for your business.
For buyers, it poses graver challenges. How to identify and invest in a brand that is not a cheap imitation that could spoil their health, or worst, cause dangerous complications. So newer brands have an uphill task to build their position and influence their target audiences positively. Surely, it boils down to availability of right resources for challenger brands when it comes to building a strong and sustainable market presence, isn’t it?
And then again, for newer / smaller / local brands, where there are a number of government rules and regulations to comply with, the other challenge comes from adhering to digital marketing norms. For example, many leading marketing platforms like Facebook prohibit the advertising and promotions of certain products. Here, they require skilled teams to help build their online presence. While taking care their big budget advertising to compete with the #BigBrands doesn’t hurt their chances of success.
This complex marketing challenge is solved by Aidasinc’s free marketing service. Take a look.
“The wellness industry is a huge opportunity for our company. The challenge was to get noticed online when people are searching for natural diet foods. But we were short of right team skills and hence registered with Aidasinc.”
Manpreet, Health & Wellness Store
Best D2C marketing strategy
To design a D2C marketing strategy for diet food brands and wellness products, it is important to understand your target audiences – Who’re these people and why are they trying to lose weight. See the infographic on the main motivations according to the 2017 study in Obesity Reviews:
Get Audience Insights
Yes, identifying your target audiences’ priorities and preferences is key to define the right digital marketing strategy for your D2C business.
A good place to start getting information is a survey that could be built around some of the following leads,
- Active number of people exercising in the target region
- Food consumptions habits of people in the region
- Popular fruits, vegetables and beverages
- Number of fast food outlets in the region
- Awareness levels about negative effects of sweets
- Low calorie food brands that are popular amongst TG
- Hours of television they watch every week and so on…
This information will be a goldmine to help define a number of aspects of your digital marketing strategy.
Build a Digital Store
The next logical step would be to build an online platform wherein you can showcase your products and services. Although a number of new brands and suppliers have been ignoring this aspect, it is important to invest in an independent store right away. And among the many reasons to do so, one is the ability to engage your custom audiences in a personalized discussion with your brand. Unlike an eCommerce platform like Amazon, wherein your brand can get lost in the melee.
Here are the top 10 eCommerce platforms where you can build (or get built) your store. Some are real cool plug and play, while some will require technical skills.
- Wix
- BigCommerce
- Sellfy
- Shift4Shop
- WooCommerce
- Volusion
- Square Online
- BigCartel
- Magento
- Squarespace
- Prestashop
- PinnacleCart
- Shopify
- AidaStore
Start Collaborative Marketing
Depending on the data and insights available from your market research, it may be a good decision to invest in some collaborative marketing strategies. For e.g., if your target audiences are found to have heightened interest in weight loss programs, you can tie-up with local businesses, clinics and wellness practitioners to start Online Consultations. Prospects can be asked to register at your store and join Webinars & Seminars that are designed to make it worth their time and money. This will not only help your brand establish itself as trusted experts in your field, they will also enable you to generate a constant inflow of highly interested prospects.
Get Noticed Online
With your store ready and your collaborative tie-ups in place, you now have the most challenging task of getting noticed by your target audiences. And there are may digital channels and D2C marketing strategies that can help you reach your most promising audiences, without the frustration of wasting good money over unqualified audiences.
Earned Visibility
Engaging your target audiences on social media platforms and online communities is a well tested strategy. And you can get this done organically, without spending on advertising.
As long as you’re doing it right, with right copywriting and creative visuals, you will keep reaching your audiences. And with increasing number of social engagements, not only will your brand visibility grow, the traffic and conversions on your store will grow too.
If you are creating videos, then platforms like YouTube and Vimeo are great for organic branding and traffic generation.
Then of course is SEO. The free and organic way to get noticed on search engine results pages like Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Then there are the benefits of social referrals, or digital word of mouth referrals, and traffic from product reviews.
Paid Visibility
The alternative to gaining earned visibility, and an understandably faster route to reach your target audiences online is – pay per click ads or banner ads.
Here are the top advertising channels that are most commonly used by diet food and wellness product brands.
- YouTube
Paid visibility campaigns ensure your brand get’s qualified traffic and leads from pre-determined geographic locations. And if designed well, with the right audience profiling and copywriting with defined funnel, it’s efficiency and success can be amzing.
Today there are new influencer marketing channels that are growing on top of paid promotion channels. Here, a plethora of micro or nano influencers who can turn your products or services into champions in their respective local markets.
Integrate. Optimize. Retarget.
While working on the various ways listed above to drive people to your store, it is important to build a unique position for your brands, that help people differentiate your store from others. And this is one aspect that many stores fail to identify.
“The real key to successful diet foods and wellness marketing results is to weave in your online store with creative content and integrate with search marketing, social media, email marketing, and video platforms” says Manpreet. “Once you have clients’ visiting your store, you can stay in front of them and stay on top of their minds, wherever they visit with a unified marketing communications strategy. And that is the power of integration.”
Aidasinc helps business use the power or organic digital tools and techniques to tie together all their digital points of presence. Business owners can start free and pay after results with the free marketing plan.
Building Online Reputation – A core part of the above marketing strategy, is to build a strong online reputation for your brand. This will help your store find higher acceptance from the masses, as compared to an unknown store. Where hiring brand ambassadors or influencers is a good idea to get fast engagements, it may be quite expensive. Hence, it is important to start with a growth hacking strategy offered by Aidasinc. It helps your store get online marketing results faster, and you can pay after results. Check out this link for integrated Digital Media Marketing plans for Wellness Stores and Brands.