Dietary supplement digital marketers have a very bright future.
More people are buying dietary supplements than ever before in history. According to the Council for Responsible Nutrition, 75% of U.S. adults take dietary supplements.
It’s easier to reach these people than ever before.
And it’s easier than ever to get started as a dietary supplement digital marketer…
But, if you’re an offline old school print mail direct marketer in the dietary supplement industry, your future is not so promising.
Dietary supplement digital marketing has a lot of nuance, but that’s the least of your problems as a direct response firm.
The biggest hurdle you may be facing, as an old school print mail direct marketer is your culture.
That old school culture may not just be holding you back. It may be the very thing that’s squeezing the life from your company.
If your direct mail marketing team is not doing digital then your company is not growing or learning. There’s no faster way to get left behind, if you’re not growing and learning new skills.
It Was All Roses and Champagne
With the advent of the Internet, people have changed the way they buy supplements and you need to keep up.
There was a time when dietary supplement direct mail was a great business. But today, that’s no longer the case.
One reason is the age group and cohort that direct mail targets is shrinking. They are literally dying out.
Plus, fewer and fewer people are actually buying from direct mail pieces these days, despite people touting how much easier it is to get into physical mailboxes vs. the digital email box.
It’s not deliverability that’s the problem. It’s a growth problem.
There simply aren’t many new customers to tap into.
A steady stream of new customers, is the key driver of growth for a dietary supplement business online or offline.
Without a steady stream of new customers, there is no business.
Secondly, the costs of printing is not only getting more and more expensive but you can’t gain any economies of scale with print marketing.
Once you print and mail, that’s it. To send any message to that list again you need to go to print again.
Third, direct mail is slow. Not only is the time to print and get your magalog or direct response piece delivered slow, but the time to test different copy in print is super long.
So your reaction time is also slow. Restricted by the snails pace of the post office and the printing press.
Fourth, when it comes to learning about your customer, you’re very limited with print marketing.
With digital you can tell how much copy your prospect read, where they dropped off and became uninterested. How they interacted with the sales letter and more. All leading to insights and improvements to conversion that you can never possibly get in a print world.
When you look at the situation from those perspectives, moving from print to digital, seems like a no brainer.
But, If Your Not a Dietary Supplement Digital Marketer It’s Not All Bad…
There are a few areas where the old school direct marketer has an advantage over dietary supplement digital marketers.
Unlike a digital supplement business start up, the old school marketer already has a backend.
Not just a backend catalog of products but also the operations side and customer call center side of the business.
It’s just a matter of bolting on the digital expertise onto a direct mail print business to take advantage of it.
Where the old school direct mail business is crippled however is the ability to acquire new customers.
Unfortunately this is the life blood of how success is made in the direct to consumer supplement industry.
Dietary supplement digital marketers really have the upper hand here.
The ability to leverage a nearly limitless amount of online traffic coupled with properly structuring an online funnel for maximum effect is what really makes digital work.
Not only can a good front-end funnel capture leads and buyers but, if done right, it can maximize your return on ad spend (ROAS).
This enables you to acquire buyers at a low enough cost to gain momentum much faster than you ever can offline.
Additionally digital has the added benefit of being able to leverage continuous communication though email.
Thus nurturing buyers and further establishing their relationship with your brand, in addition to selling them more products on the backend.
This increases their Life Time Value even further which also brings up the return you get from every ad dollar spent on traffic to your funnel.
Is There a Silver Lining For Dietary Supplement Direct Mail Marketers?
According to the latest 2018 Council for Responsible Nutrition, customer survey on dietary supplements, the use of dietary supplements among U.S. adults increased 10% over the past 10 years.
It’s easier to reach the right potential buyers than ever before with the ease and reach available through Facebook and Google.
And never in history has there been a time where you could build an online supplement business, practically overnight, with off the shelf software and product formulation companies.
Plus the technical aspect is the easy part.
That’s the good news.
Dietary supplement digital marketing however, is the hard part. It’s more of an art than a science.
In this respect it’s a lot like its print direct mail counterpart.
Both use many of the same principles.
Both can be measured mathematically for success. (It’s a numbers business after all.)
And both have the same underlying business model of up-sells and monthly subscriptions to leverage higher customer lifetime value.
The science is the same. But the art is where they differ.
People buy health supplements differently online than they do in print.
There are friction points that don’t exists in print that need to be addressed online.
Even the way the copy is written does not translate directly from print to online.
It’s not as easy as porting over your print material online.
The “art” is the critical piece to make digital marketing work for dietary supplements online.
Discover the 3 funnels that can help your health supplement business succeed.
Listen to the Health Supplement Business Mastery Podcast for for dietary supplement entrepreneurs and marketers.
