Copywriting For Nutritional Dietary Supplements

Copywriting for nutritional supplement sales copy needs a big story.

Some breaking new information. 

Some angle that everybody hasn’t already heard about. 

Because health customers are constantly being bombarded with warnings in print magalogs, talk shows, and news channels.  

Naturally, supplement companies hop on the bandwagon of what’s in the mainstream media and incorporate those things into their headlines, leads, and sales copy. (Any good marketer would)

The problem becomes that they are all selling the same story. 

Prospects may buy the first supplement they see that hit their hot buttons, but reading and seeing the same story across different products quickly leads to a decline in sales. 

Too many other people are also talking about the same thing.

And that makes your product the same as everyone else. 

This is also how the marketplace level of sophistication (what prospects have seen, heard, and know) rises over time. 

When the marketplace sophistication level rises and the marketing message does not change your once high-converting supplement copy starts to lose its power and sales start to slip until they come to a trickle. 

Then, there’s no way you can scale that with more ad dollars or more clicks.

Couple that with the fickleness of the average health supplement customer. 

After a period of time, they start to question if they should keep taking your product. 

Perhaps they start to feel better and wonder if they’re getting the full benefit. 

When that happens, they are going to look for something that has a different promise.

This is the point where your supplement sales copy needs a refresh or a new angle.

Now, in direct marketing, there’s a saying — when something works, keep doing it until it doesn’t. 

But, the smart supplement seller gets a head start on looking for and A/B testing different angles from day one. 

Not waiting until a working funnel stops working, because at some point it will. 

Either your competition will catch up to you or the buyers will have heard it before. 

Or maybe you swiped your big story from what’s already working that’s out there. 

In which case you have even less time, because it’s already been out there and will become old news all that much sooner.

In most cases, it comes back to writing better direct-response copywriting to sell. 

When dietary supplement marketers want to move the needle, they typically hire a health copywriter and start from scratch, rather than optimize and improve what they already have that might be working.

Don’t get me wrong, there are instances where you do need a completely new take and a fresh approach if something is not working at all. 

However, so many health copywriters and health marketers leave too much on the table by not simply bolstering what they already have.

This article will cover 4 ways to do just that with 4 quick fixes for copywriting for nutritional supplements.

Copywriting and marketing go together. If you want to learn more about marketing a supplement here’s an article I wrote about that.

Quick Fix 1: A New Headline

The purpose of a headline is not only to grab attention but also to keep the visitor reading the next sentence.

If the reader stops at your headline, your sales conversion is dead in the water.

So it’s pretty important, and an easy copy fix.

I’ve run A/B split tests where all we changed was the headline and got a 10 – 15% lift in sales conversion.

Some things to A/B test within the headline include:

• Test including an element of proof right in the headline (this can either be baked into the headline or added as a sub-headline to support a statement made in the headline itself)

This can be easily done simply by adding a sub-headline.

Here’s an example of a headline with a sub-headline proof added:

Scientists Discover Modern Solution to Memory Problems Hidden in 6,000-year-old Secret
SCIENTIFIC STUDIES SHOW IT BOOSTS MEMORY, SPEEDS UP THINKING, REDUCES STRESS, AND EVEN REVERSES BRAIN AGING!

That little extra bit about scientific studies adds an element of proof to the headline above it.

• Test adding an element of curiosity that implies it will be rewarded by reading onward.

Here’s an example

Secret Flaw Calcium Supplements…

The reader naturally wants to know what the flaw is and thus will keep reading.

You can’t spend too much time developing a headline. 

Good copywriters often spend the majority of time on the headline and the lead, which we’ll get to next.

Quick Fix 2: A New Lead

The lead copy includes the first 250 – 700 words or so. This is where you build your story.

Sometimes it’s built off of a single exceptionally strong testimonial. Telling the story of that customer’s journey. Emotionally based on anecdotal evidence to support your claims in a compliant way.

After running hundreds of A/B tests and breaking down multiple direct response sales copy for health supplements, I’ve identified a clear pattern that works for opening leads.

Here’s the breakdown:

• Introduce the problem
• Intensify the problem (empathize with the avatar)
• Provide hope for a solution (without stating the solution) but it’s not what you think (this keeps them reading and answers the immediate objection of I know what the solution is going to be)
• Provide proof (this is proof about the author since the solution is typically not revealed in the lead)
• Open loop to keep them watching (typically a promise of telling them a key to fixing the problem)

This article would be 10x the length if we broke down a lead and fully paid out how each element worked so in an effort to keep this as a quick read and give you some quick actionable things to do right away, you can match the lead structure above to yours to see what you might be missing to add in to test.

Quick Fix 3: A New Unique Mechanism 

The uniqueness part of the mechanism counts.

Many times, you can key in on an overlooked ingredient that your product already has but no one else is talking about it or talking about it in a new way.

Some things to A/B test around the unique mechanism include:

• The metaphor around the mechanism of action on how it works in the body
• The bridge copy between the problem and the solution of the mechanism

However, sometimes you have a supplement product that is pretty vanilla compared to everything else in the market for the condition you’re targeting.

A plain bottle of Turmeric comes to mind. 

In that case, a new formulation might be needed. 

This will help your product stand out, whereby creating a unique mechanism if it’s too similar to what’s in the market.

I’ve written about the unique mechanism before in depth so if you want to go deeper, you can read more here.

Quick Fix 4: A New Offer

The offer is one of the biggest levers for success. Unfortunately, it gets overlooked by many dietary supplement copywriters. 

They default to trying different headlines and leads overlooking the offer completely.

But what do I mean by the offer?

The offer is NOT the product. The product itself is only one piece of the offer but it’s NOT the offer itself.

The offer is the packaging of value that the prospect is buying.

This includes things like:

• The product (across functional, dimensional, and emotional benefits)
• Bonuses and premiums that added on to increase the overall offer value
• Free shipping
• The discount structure i.e. 20% OFF and or BOGO’s (Buy One Get One) deals
• Positioning of the price against the “Retail” price
• The guarantee (risk reversal)

Here are just a few different broad offer types you can test:

• Soft Offer – This is an offer where the prospect can get your product and pay later, or pay for a part of the total price. For example, pay half now and pay the remainder later, after experiencing the product. (Soft offers will almost always outperform hard offers, but the risk is in collecting the remaining about at a later date.) There are other iterations of this, for example, pay a small shipping and handling fee now and we’ll bill the rest later, or the classic infomercial offer of pay in three “easy installments” with just the first installment due today. Essentially you’re adjusting the terms of payment but not the actual cost. (Although in some cases you may add on a finance charge for installment payments.)
  
• Limited Offer – This is a pure scarcity-driven offer. The trick to making it work is to have a legitimate reason why it is actually limited in some way, for example, a limited supply of items in stock, or the number of seats available are restricted and out of your control, etc. This offer, as well as the Limited-Time Offer below, are critical parts to build trust in my Trust and Belief framework for optimizing health, wellness, and beauty offers.
  
• Qualified Offer – This is an offer that requires an application submission before the prospect is able to buy. The prospect needs to take a qualifying step, which can be submitting an application of acceptance.

These supplement sales copywriting quick fixes are easy places to do big A/B tests that move the needle for our dietary supplement clients. 

In the end, most of the weight in moving the needle comes down to…

Writing Marketing Copy That Effectively Sells Supplements

Good copywriting makes a big difference in your sales numbers.

When done right dietary nutritional supplement sales copy:

• Provides a clear and compelling case to buy.
• Influences skeptical visitors to change how they think.
• And build loyalty over time to continue to keep buying again and again.

A good direct-response health copywriter is worth every penny. Because better copy means more sales that live well beyond the price of the words.

Discover the 3 funnels that can help your health supplement business succeed.