Does Your Dietary Supplement Marketing Need A Better Unique Mechanism?

Selling online in the health market is very competitive. With any mature marketplace like natural health supplements, it operates at a higher level of marketplace sophistication.

What level of sophistication your market sits in partially depends on the particular health condition. But the dietary supplement market generally sits among stage 3 and 4 of awareness. Which is where we see unique mechanisms more and more within health marketing.

Furthermore, prospects are different at each level of awareness. And each awareness level needs to be crafted and A/B tested in a different way. Which is why we take a marketplace-centric approach to split testing health products.

If your market is in stage 3, your prospects have heard the same or similar promises many times before from multiple health marketers. It’s at this stage where marketing shifts from “the promise” to adding a unique mechanism. We’ll unpack the unique mechanism, further in this article. But first let’s look at stage 4.

If your market is in stage 4, your prospects have seen the same promise and unique mechanism many times before. You’re dealing with a savvy buyer in this stage. And the marketing message of the unique mechanism gets expanded as a result of that.

In either case, both stages 3 and 4 are where the unique mechanism enters marketing and optimization.

Which brings us to a deeper look into…

The Unique Mechanism

The unique mechanism is the solution to your main marketing story.

It is the “thing” found within your product, that delivers the promise to your prospect. It is the reason why your product works.

It gives your prospect hope. But how do you expand the mechanism, in terms of hope, if you are in a stage 4 market?

To do so, means that your particular mechanism wasn’t in all the other products they bought that failed them. In this way the unique mechanism is a very market driven approach in addition to a creative one.

Marketing with a unique mechanism also helps to insulate the dreaded “Buy on Amazon” problem, so common in health offers online. Because with a unique mechanism, you’ve differentiated your product, making you the only one offering it. You’re not selling the generic version, so prospects can’t search for it and buy it on Amazon.

Your unique mechanism does not exist anywhere else but in your product. Or at least that’s the ideal situation. If you’re marketing is not there yet, the first step is understanding the different types of unique mechanisms so that you can decide which to test with your market.

3 Different Types of Unique Mechanisms

The most common example in the health space is what I call a Scientific Unique Mechanism.

You might think of this as either the “mechanism of action” or “mode of action” of your health supplement.

In pharmacology, the term “mechanism of action” refers to a biochemical interaction of a drug that produces its pharmacological effect.

A “mode of action” describes a change, at the cellular level.

In comparison, a mechanism of action describes such changes at the molecular level and a mode of action happens in the cell.

Both are interchangeable in terms of a scientific unique mechanism for marketing a health supplement.

Let’s look at an example using the mechanism of action for penicillin.

Penicillin kills harmful bacteria by specifically inhibiting the final step in the cell wall formation.

Again, the Scientific Unique Mechanism based off of a “mechanism of action” or “mode of action” is how your health supplement scientifically works. It’s usually tied to a unique ingredient or proprietary blend of ingredients unique to your formulation.

The Second Type of Unique Mechanism

The second type is the Process Unique Mechanism.

There are processes that go into making a health supplement formulation that are unique to each particular dietary supplement. This could be anything from a proprietary blend to the story around where or how your ingredients are sourced.

A lot of times these processes are not special to the dietary manufacturer since lots of other competitors are also doing the same thing.

But these can be great opportunities to become a Process Unique Mechanism, if they are not being talked about in the marketplace. Thus they can become “unique” to your prospects, because they have never heard them before.

The Third Type of Unique Mechanism

The third type is the Turnover Unique Mechanism. This takes something ordinary and transforms it into something unique and extraordinary.

This is a variation of the second type of unique mechanism, process. Except, it is not limited to process or ingredients.

It’s created out of thin air as a marketing invention and transformed from an ordinary feature into something more marketable, like the packaging of your product.

For example the use of a dark colored bottle to keep light from breaking down supplements potency could be turned into a unique mechanism.

Almost any feature of your health product that seems ordinary can be transformed into something unique.To add extra punch you can give it a unique proprietary name to further differentiate your uniqueness.

It’s All Connected To Marketing Dietary Supplements

Using a unique mechanism or combination of them in your marketing messaging is vital in a savvy marketplace at stage 3 and 4, such as health.

One area most marketers overlook when optimizing for the health space is the opportunity to A/B test the unique mechanism itself. This can be what tips many prospects over to buy your product and it can certainly tie into the overall marketing messaging and story of your dietary supplement product.

Therefore, marketing a dietary supplement that does not have  a unique mechanism integrated into its marketing is missing out on sales.

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