Looking After The Health Of Your Consumers And Your Brand
The time, attention, and effort that individual consumers are willing to put into taking care of their health and wellness seems to have jumped dramatically within the past decade. Instagram is constantly cluttered with up-and-coming brands that are promising the next best product to take care of your body and mind, and prevent long-term diseases. With the plethora of health and wellness products at a consumer’s disposal, brands may be wondering what they can do to make themselves standout.
It’s not a lost cause, and in fact, there are multiple ways brands can really help make themselves stand out from competitors. In this blog, Hollywood Branded shares 5 tips for social media marketing in the wellness industry, to help brands up their social media game to engage consumers and drive purchase behavior.
#1: Tell A Compelling Story
If you want consumers to buy your products, you have to develop a sense of trust through your brand’s authenticity. Most consumers do not want to read the scientific reasons as to why your wellness brand is the best for them (although this may be helpful), but instead want content they can relate to and which they feel real connection towards. According to The Global Wellness Institute, the worldwide wellness industry grew by 10.6% to #3.72 trillion between 2013 and 2015, while the global economy shrank -3.6%. The growth of this industry has not seemed to slow, but rather has increased throughout 2017 and 2018. One of the easiest ways for a brand to connect their wellness brand with consumers in this huge industry is on social media through storytelling.
This can be as easy as telling a real story about a consumer who saw positive results from engaging with your brand (all brands love their case studies – and so do consumers!) For example, after seeing a dip in success rates, Weight Watchers made a shift from marketing themselves as a “diet” program into more of a “live-able” program. They now share stories on their social media pages about how their program has positively impacted not only client’s weight -- but their confidence, mental health, productivity, etc. This shift into a more holistic lifestyle brand, along with a major partnership with celeb sponsors Oprah and DJ Khaled, have helped launch their brand back into the media’s headlines and into major money-making success.
#2: Partner With An Influencer
While Weight Watchers has seen tremendous success partnering with worldwide celebrity Oprah, smaller brands may benefit from partnering with the ever-popular (and so much more affordable) Instagram influencer. Nowadays, there are successful Instagram influencers available for partnership within every niche -- from health to fitness to fashion and beyond. Influencer partnerships are useful because these influencers often have a much higher engagement level than your own brand profile may get. Consumers follow influencers because they want to know more about the products influencers use in their everyday lives, and truly take the influencer’s brand recommendations to heart.
One example of a successful partnership is between Aloha protein (an all-natural and plant-based protein) and influencer Rachel Mansfield (@rachlmansfield). Rachel is a recipe developer who specifically mentions using Aloha in her recipes and recommends using it to her followers. Along with this, Rachel does giveaways to her followers offering Aloha products as the prize, and offers a 20% off discount code using her Instagram handle on their website. Which by the way, brands should take note of: instead of coming up with a ton of different and unique trackable codes -- the influencer’s handle is ready made and easy to use!
#3: Reward Your Followers
Like Rachel does with Aloha protein, a lot of brands conduct contests in which followers simply like their page and comment on their picture to be entered to win free product. However, these contests can be made even more engaging by getting followers to do things like post their own photos or stories.
For example, some wellness brands ask followers to post their favorite recipes or explain how they incorporate their particular products into their everyday lives. Once followers submit their posts, a winner is chosen and can be featured on the brand’s profile. Having followers featured on your profile makes them feel valued and important, and offering them free products as a prize allows them to try out what you have to offer and possibly become a loyal consumer. And a loyal customer who will share that through social and word of mouth marketing to their own followers and friends.
As previously mentioned, influencers will often conduct giveaway contests for brands they partner with, but this can be done by the brands themselves as well! For example, Vital Proteins offers collagen protein products that most consumers are not fully educated about. To get consumers to try their brand and potentially become repeat buyers, Vital Proteins partners with other brands and conducts giveaways pretty often (about once a month) rewarding winners with product bundles.
#4: Go Live!
Although wellness consumers are dedicated to finding brands that will help them up their health game, most average people do not know what really actually works and what is just a load of hype and doesn’t. One way to help educate consumers on why and how your brand will help them live their best lives is through live videos in which your team answers follower’s questions or shows them a step-by-step way in which products can be used. When you go live on social media your followers instantly get a notification. Many of them will open up the video to see what you’re talking about -- instantly engaging them with your brand! It is oftentimes helpful to post a separate story earlier in the day to let followers know that you will be going live and reveal the topic at hand. Stories can now be saved on your profile as well, so that even if your followers are busy during live-time, they can watch later on at their leisure.
For example, influencer Lee Tilgham (@leefromamerica) is extremely open about her health and wellness habits, as well as her experience with eating disorders and PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome). She schedules times to go live with her followers and asks them to submit questions they have about her health and wellness habits beforehand so she can address them during her videos.
#5: Offer Great Content
A final, and somewhat obvious, tip for growing your health or wellness brand on Instagram is by consistently providing eye-catching content. A brand on Instagram should look a lot different than a personal profile. Consumers want to follow brands that deliver appealing, attractive photos of their products. It’s not enough to simply post a picture of your product packaging. When posting content, it’s important to keep a theme or color palette in mind. This makes your photos look more cohesive on your profile, and can help to translate your brand image.
As an example, wellness account Tone It Up (@toneitup), typically sticks to a pastel palette. Their posts include a lot of pastel pinks, purples, and blues. Aside from these cohesive colors Tone It Up also ads beautiful natural objects to the photos they post of their products. If they post a picture of a smoothie made with their protein powder, they often surround the smoothie bowl with whole fruits or flowers.
Making the settings of the photos natural is important because many consumers will find this more appealing to the eye and are more likely to engage with the post. It can also be useful to break up your product posts with other kinds of pictures. Think about including pictures of real people from your Instagram contests or pictures of influencers you are partnering with. Another option is adding in quote graphics.
As an example, wellness account mindbodygreen (@mindbodygreen) often posts inspirational quotes or tips or the day among photos of their recipes or product recommendations.
Now That You Are Ready To Up Your Social Marketing Game…
These are just five basic tips for upping your social media game to become a leader in the wellness industry. Remember that it’s important to always remain engaged and attentive to your followers needs and opinions. If you’d like to learn more on how to create an A+ social media presence, be sure to check out these other Hollywood Branded blogs!
- Why Brands Can Benefit From Micro-Influencer Partnerships
- 3 Qualities To Look For In A Social Influencer
- 4 Trends For Influencer Marketing In 2018
- 5 Steps For Brands To Stand Out On Instagram
Hollywood Branded's Influencer Marketing & Brand Partnerships report is an in-depth report for brands and their agencies. This report is chock full of statistics, graphs, analytics, insights and over 300 bite sized direct influencer suggestions for brands to make campaigns run better. Get it now!!
