Customer Acquisition for an Online Supplement Business

Customer acquisition is the lifeblood of any successful supplement business.

The more customers a company can attract, and retain the greater its potential for growth and profitability.

Why is a growing customer base crucial for supplement businesses?

At first glance it’s obvious, having more customers means more sales.

But it also allows the business to invest in growth initiatives, such as reducing inventory costs.

The more inventory you can carry the lower the cost of each individual unit. And the supplement game is one of unit economics.

In short, you can’t scale without acquiring customers each and every day.

The most successful direct to consumer supplement brands are gaining 1,000 or more customers a day.

It’s not an overnight journey to 1,000 customers a day. But there is a proven path to get there.

Part of that success depends on the product and the offer.

The product can’t be a me-too product. Or a commodity supplement.

Those are going to be a lot harder to sell and difficult to compete against with a price point that a Krogers, Walgreens or CVS supermarket drugstore can offer.

What the supplement is “solving” also matters quite a lot.

There are a few tried and true health categories that supplement buyers are always looking for no matter what.

The following health “problems” are tried and true and will stand the test of time.

People are always looking for solutions to these.

Anti-Aging (Beauty)
Sleep
Cognitive health (Brain)
Weight-loss

The other part of success comes from testing and optimization.

Testing and optimization is crucial for maximizing customer acquisition efforts. This is where all of the gains are.

Your supplement business won’t scale to 1,000 sales a day without testing and optimization.

You won’t have it perfect at the start or at any time really.

Business is a game of continuously testing, learning and iterating on what’s working.

Conducting, measurable tests to identify the most impactful changes is how you’ll grow.

The Role of Affiliates in Customer Acquisition

Affiliate marketers sell your supplement offer to their email list or with a direct advertisement in exchange for a commission.

Affiliate marketing plays a significant role in customer acquisition for supplement businesses at a certain point.

When you first start out affiliate marketing is not a good fit. Because it’s difficult to get an affiliate to promote an unknown product. You just don’t have a handle on your numbers yet.

It’s better to dial in the sales process and optimize the conversion funnel along with knowing your numbers like the life time value of a customer before getting started with affiliate marketing.

Launching an affiliate campaign that’s a flop because you don’t have your conversion engine dialed in yet is going to destroy your reputation with affiliates.

Many people think this is a free source of sales. But affiliate marketing is a “paid” traffic source like any other.

It costs money to make it work. Many times you’re paying for a visit and not gaining a customer.

Many good affiliates have multiple offers they can promote where they are guaranteed a certain amount even if you’re not getting any sales.

Which is why it comes down to knowing your numbers. The numbers of acquiring a customer is known as, cost per action (CPA). This is how much it costs you to acquire a customer.

The more you can pay to acquire a customer, the more customers you can acquire.

By offering a fixed rate for each purchase made through an affiliate, you can incentivize affiliates to drive traffic and generate sales for you.

But if you don’t know your customer lifetime value (LTV) you won’t know how much you can afford to go in the hole on the first sale.

Supplement marketing is a game of making up the difference between cost per acquisition and lifetime value on the second, third and forth sale.

Additionally, working with affiliates is a continuous game of nurturing relationships for long-term success.

Building strong relationships with affiliates is crucial for sustainable customer acquisition.

At first you have to get your foot in the door and establish those relationships.

One way to do that is by being part of mastermind groups and coaching communities that foster collaboration and support. On Facebook and in person at conferences.

It’s important to be active and participate in conversations, learn about their needs, and offer value beyond just CPA.

Affiliates are just another traffic source like Google and Facebook.

As with any traffic source you have to understand the economics of the business to scale.

Leveraging Email Lists for Customer Acquisition

Email marketing is a powerful tool for customer acquisition in the supplement industry.

The impact of email marketing in acquiring and retaining customers is one of those areas that’s not talked about enough.

Most people think of email as part of the backend, and they are right.

Once you’ve acquired the customer you have their email and they become part of your backend sales.

But there is an opportunity to leverage email for front-end customer acquisition.

You can do this through renting an email list. Similar to the way you can think of renting the email list of an affiliate but without the need to first build that relationship.

There are email list brokers that will rent you a list and email your offer on their behalf.

They are called email drops, because you’re dropping a bunch of marketing messages all at once.

There’s no quicker way to learn because email is very immediate.

An email list broker can send 10,000 emails for you in an hour and you’ll know if your offer and sales message works within a day.

You can also learn very rapidly with email drops as you test, and iterate on the second, third, fourth and fifth sends.

You can tweak the messaging, the benefits, the unique mechanism, the offer and more to see what the audience responds to with their wallets.

By doing multiple drops you can learn and iterate fast before taking your offer to other traffic sources.

Or you can use email drops as a way to support an existing traffic campaign that has maxed out and is struggling to scale.

Scaling and traffic go hand in hand.

The Role of Other Traffic Sources

Beyond affiliates, and email buys, supplement businesses must consider various traffic sources to diversify customer acquisition efforts.

Relying solely on one traffic source is dangerous.

In the beginning focusing on only one traffic source is key, but as you grow and scale to 1,000 buyers a day you don’t want to have all of your traffic eggs in one basket.

If that traffic source makes a change or cuts you off, and if you don’t have another to fall back the acquisition flow will end over night.

And remember customer acquisition is the key. Without continuously bringing in new customers your supplement business will dwindle.

The average lifespan of a supplement customer is only about 3 or 4 months. That is on a monthly recurring basis.

So bringing in new buyers to replace those that churn out of the business is simply how you keep it going.

Customer acquisition is a fundamental aspect of success for supplement businesses.

By focusing on strategies like affiliate marketing, email list optimization, testing, and relationship-building, businesses can attract and retain customers more effectively.

Recognizing the value of a growing customer base and diversifying traffic sources can position businesses for long-term profitability and sustainability in the competitive supplement market.