Preventative health, self-care and wellbeing are top priorities for individuals all over the world as consumers seek to protect, promote and maintain great health.  

More people than ever before are making the transition from physical, in-person expenditure to buying their health products online. The growing collection of online health stores make up a large proportion of the global wellness market, now estimated at $1.5 trillion in revenue each year.  

To help you position your business for long term growth, here are nine proven ways to competitively market your health and wellness store. Together, let us support our wider communities with vibrant health and optimum vitality.   

1. Customer-centric marketing  

TIP: Know what your customers want.   

The age-old saying “the customer is always right” stands true and firm across all industries and businesses. Ensuring that your customers have the best experience will help you improve customer retention, improve customer satisfaction, increase cross-selling (and upselling); and ultimately help to grow your business.  

Having a customer-centric approach involves asking questions such as:  

● What does your customer want? What are they looking for?  
● What are their challenges or difficulties?  
● How can I remove friction, and make their decision to buy effortless?  

Marketing guru, Neil Patel, walks you through the research steps to knowing what your customer wants. For the shy and inexperienced, asking for honest feedback can be a daunting undertaking. Try the path of least resistance and incentivise the feedback process with gift cards, vouchers, coupons, and rewards.  

You may find that loyal customers are more than happy to give you critical feedback, or may even have health products or brands that they would love you to add to your range. Customer surveys can help you to gain valuable insight, personally connect with customers, hear their stories, allow for critical feedback, and build trust.    

2. Promotions  

TIP: Set your promotional calendar in advance.  

Promotions can help you to drive volume or refresh stocks, launch new products or celebrate your best sellers. Whichever avenue fits your marketing strategy, it is an opportunity to be creative. There are many great low-cost ways to share your value, and with restrictions in place to keep COVID-19 at bay, online promotions will remain a key marketing channel for many e-commerce health stores. There are also virtual pre-launch parties, online tours, previews, or social media demos that can help you promote your offering and connect with your customers.  

Plan your promotional calendar in advance, and take advantage of the millions of people kick-starting their Christmas shopping during the “Black Friday” sales, which falls on Friday 26th November this year. Coinciding with a favourite U.S. holiday - Thanksgiving - Black Friday and Cyber Monday are now the largest online selling events globally.  

In 2020, Black Friday raked in a cool $14.13 billion in online sales alone. (Source: Adobe Analytics). For retailers in the UK, Europe and Australasia, this trend has accelerated and it has overtaken Christmas shopping in terms of expected online spend. (Source: Statista)   

Many e-commerce stores will launch their promotions earlier in the month, to try to get ahead of the market. It’s a great time to start planning now and also to stock up on key products, so you can prepare to make this holiday selling period your biggest yet.  

3. Search engine marketing - organic search  

TIP: Blend organic and paid search strategies to bring high-converting traffic to your website.  

Even for customers that already know your webstore, a large number of purchase journeys will begin with a Google search. 93% of customers start their product searches on digital channels (Source: Klaviyo), and customers want to make sure they are getting premium health products at the best prices.   

Google continues to dominate with over 90% of the search engine market share worldwide in the past 12 months. (Source: StatCounter, Aug 2021). How can you make sure that customers find your website when searching for health products? Combining both organic and paid search strategies will help to make sure health-focused customers can find your store online.  

Organic search (aka SEO) strategies involve building high-quality content and backlinks for your pages, which requires an ongoing and long-term approach. However, there are short-term tactics that can improve your organic search performance. Quick wins to improve SEO performance include:  

● Reviewing and addressing any SEO errors via a free tool such as Uber Suggest. 
● Ensuring your SEO Site map is implemented correctly, and tending to any technical SEO factors you may have on your site.   
● Reducing the size of any large images on your pages by using a free image compressor such as JPEG Optimizer or Compress Now, to achieve a faster page load time.  

Reductions in page load time and site speed not only improve user experience, they also impact positively on search rankings and can help your store appear higher up on the search engine results pages (also known as SERPs). More than 200 ranking factors determine your position on Google search results, but Google has made user experience the number one priority for how web pages are ranked.  

Site speed is particularly important for mobile users, who now make up more than 50% of all web traffic. If you’d like to know how your site is performing on mobile, you can test this directly with Google by clicking here.   

4. Search engine marketing: Paid search  

TIP: Check your return on ad spend.    

Paid search strategies (aka Pay Per Click - ‘PPC’) allow you to bid for keywords that your target audience may be searching for when looking for health products online. Unlike SEO which is a long-term strategy, paid search can bring immediate users who are intending to purchase. However, this comes at a cost, in terms of Google ad spend, which needs to be budgeted for and carefully managed.  

For any marketing channel, one of the most important metrics to manage is return on investment (ROI). Within Google Ads, you can look at the ROI for each and every one of your campaigns by using the “Return On Ad spend” (ROAS) metric. This is calculated by dividing conversion value by campaign cost.  

ROAS is expressed as a ratio, for example, if you have a ROAS of 10: 1, that means for every dollar/euro/pound you spend on advertising, you are getting 10x that number back in revenue. Your own specific target for ROAS will differ depending on your overheads and cost base, but if you do have some underperforming campaigns, here are a few things to try:  

● Review your targeting, and make sure the ads are relevant for the audience.  
● Refresh your ad content and keywords to make sure the ads showing are relevant and impactful.  
● Alter your bid strategy to one that focuses on revenue or lead generation (e.g. Target ROAS, or Maximise Conversions).   

5. Social presence 

TIP: Maximise the power of influence through social media.  

Social media has an iron-strong clasp on how we create, share, and exchange information. You will be familiar with the leading platforms: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and there are a slew of shiny new platforms now on offer. Which one is right for your business? And how can you grow an organic audience, without the need for expensive paid social campaigns? Download your Free Social Media Strategy Guide from Hootsuite to develop your social media journey.  

The true strength of social media is in influence, which has been a key driver of educating and helping people with their health journey. There are now 4.48 billion social media users around the world, and research shows they favour authentic content from real people.  

Engaging with influencers and affiliates who talk about their own personal experience, or unique health journey can help you to market your health products to a wider audience. Launching an affiliate marketing programme, or investing in influencer outreach can get people sharing their experiences, helping more people with their health and wellbeing.  

From the comfort of your kitchen window, you can tune into Instagram Live and deliver real-time updates globally, and collaborate with your industry’s influencers or thought leaders to tap into previously untouched demographics. But, at the end of the day, it is about the human connection. Communicating authentically and transparently will build relationships for both your brand and the health brands you have selected for your store.  

6. Email Marketing

TIP: Trim, target and strategically organise your customer email database. 

Did you know, 99% of consumers check their emails every day? (Source: Hubspot). Email marketing remains one of the highest return on investment strategies we have available in the marketing toolkit. Rather than send one big blast to everyone on your list, segment your audience and use automations to create a highly personal touch and create demographic-specific marketing strategies. Got a rebranded product? Try tagging customers who previously purchased this product and let them know of the brand changes. Your customer base is hard-earned, so keep them informed and maintain momentum.  

As our daily lives become increasingly more technological, customers will expect smoother automations, easier transactions, and effortless customer service. Optimising your contact lists can do exactly this. Removing inactive customer emails and qualifying your loyal customer lists goes a long way to generating leads and directing traffic to your site, maintaining relationships, refreshing customer buyer journeys, and closing more deals. Download Hubspot’s The Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing for a great overview of email marketing strategy. 

7. Text message and push notifications  

TIP: Implement text marketing alongside your email campaigns for the ultimate tailored customer experience.  

90% of customers will read a text message within just three minutes of receiving it. Adding SMS into your marketing channels can help to build better relationships and grow revenue,  because of the way they can be tailored to the individual customer journey.  

While email marketing can provide in-depth content, text messages are short and sweet. The immediacy of text makes it a great way to communicate about flash sales and promotions, changes in delivery times, back in stock notifications, or even when a customer has abandoned their cart during the purchase process. Text marketing platforms such as Klaviyo or Twilo have anti-spam compliance built-in, with seamless opt-in and opt-out features available for your customers.  

With recent changes in data privacy rules, text and email marketing are set to become more important than ever as a way of communicating with your audience. As an e-commerce health business, you have a much greater level of control over your visibility and costs for these channels. This is particularly evident when you compare an email or text campaign with your paid search or social media channels where Google and Facebook will be acting as an intermediary.   

8. Content Marketing  

TIP: Share innovative ideas. Write simply.  

It is well worth your resources to consider a content creation plan. Why? Businesses with blogs achieve 67% more leads than other companies. (Source: Profit Well). Your customers want to engage with highly relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and images to verify and promote their values and beliefs. By nurturing your client base through each stage of the sales cycle — from awareness through consideration to purchase — you position your business as a leading expert in the field.  

Fresh content will promote brand awareness, generate value, and make an excellent case for your product or service when someone is researching what to buy. Creating useful, relevant content is also an important component of any SEO strategy. Remember: consistency is key. Whether you intend to outsource excellent, content-creators in your industry, or upskill your writing ability, make sure your plan is manageable and sustainable. Check out Mailchimp: Content Marketing to get started.  

9. Customer review and Testimonies.  

TIP: Let the ‘social proof’ speak for itself. 

Capturing customer attention with witty copy-writing, authentic posts, and Instagram worthy images are some compelling (and successful) ways marketers move their product. But, nothing quite does it like a good, honest customer review. Shifting the spotlight from the salesperson to the people deepens customer trust and encourages emotional connection – it gives them someone to relate to.  

Take the heat off yourself and encourage original content creation straight from your community. Do you have a cult product? Let your audience scream it from the rooftops! How you can help is to create further anticipation with teasers, exclusive insights, and clues. Passionate product lovers are likely to be posting about it on their personal social media channels, so take this opportunity to share natural user-generated content for your official Facebook, TikTok, Instagram or email campaigns. When reposting raving reviews, ask for permission and share the good vibes by highlighting your brand ambassadors. Advocating honest customer feedback and reviews empower customer advocacy and generate effective word-of-mouth followings.  Want to know more? Find out what Forbes experts have to say: 11 Ways To Leverage Customer Testimonials And Brand Ambassadors

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We hope these tips help you and your team in implementing strategies for growth. If you have any feedback on this article or would like to know more, please get in touch.