What Funnel Strategy Is Best For Selling Health Supplements Online?

Your funnel strategy can make or break a direct to consumer supplement business.

As the market becomes more and more saturated the Cost Per Acquisition of buying a customer keeps increasing.

Get your funnel strategy wrong and it’s going to be very difficult to outbid the competition.

Especially for small and mid-size health supplement brands.

If you get your funnel strategy right, then everything clicks in place. Your supplement brand gets traction and sales start to snowball.

But what is funnel strategy?

Direct to Consumer Brands And Funnel Strategy

Funnel strategy is the method in which you acquire a customer.

A supplement business will only succeed if it can consistently acquire customers.

Even if it costs more than you’re making on those customers at first. That’s where the backend comes in. Remember, those who can afford to pay the most to acquire a customer wins.

Direct to consumer brands have the advantage here. They are not limited to any strategy imposed on them by middle men like GNC and Amazon.

The problem with funnel strategy however, is that there are too many options.

Here are just some customer acquisition funnel strategies we use with our supplement clients, but this is not an exhaustive list.

Free plus shipping – Free plus shipping funnels let customers test out products before they commit to a monthly subscription.

Quizzes which deliver personalized results and product recommendations.

Presell or advertorial pages that link to product detail pages or unique dedicated sales pages.

Unique dedicated landing pages that are outside of the traditional eCommerce site structure.

Video sales letters that deliver the sales message via audio and images.

Long form sales pages or text sales pages that are typically over 3,000 words.

Direct to an eCommerce product detail page typically use din the case where the traffic intent is extremely high like a Google Shopping ad or retargeting ads.

The problem is that all these funnel strategies work.

So Which Funnel Strategy Do You Use?

There is no one single funnel strategy that’s best for every situation.

It comes down to a couple of key decisions to help guide which is right for your situation.

The first decision you’ll have to make is about risk and cashflow.

If you have a higher propensity for risk and your business has a healthy cashflow, cash reserves on hand or access to cash through credit lines etc.

Then a free plus shipping funnel strategy may be right for you. As that funnel has a higher risk of returns and chargebacks due to the nature of the offer and the type of buyers it attracts.

On the other hand if your target market is extremely skeptical and has been burned many times in the past then removing the barrier of price for the first bottle with free plus shipping is a great strategy.

Either way though, don’t discount risk. Each individuals propensity for risk and available cash or cashflow is different.

One business that has healthy reserves of cash on hand can afford to use a free plus shipping funnel and wait for the revenue in three or four months.

Another business that has very little available credit or cash reserves may not go for a free plus shipping funnel.

If you’ve ruled out a free plus shipping funnel there are still 5 other funnel strategies to consider.

They include, quiz funnels, presell or advertorial pages, unique dedicated landing pages, video sales letters, long form sales letters and even direct to a product detail page.

The second decision you’ll have to make to find the right funnel strategy for you is about the traffic.

What’s Your Visitor’s Temperature

You’re probably already familiar with cold, warm and hot traffic. If not here’s a link to an article where you can learn more.

In any case, the type of traffic you plan to send to your funnel informs a lot of the funnel strategy.

If your traffic is hot, meaning they are ready to buy, as in the case of Google Shopping, then using the direct to an eCommerce product detail page is best. There’s a ton that can be optimized on the typical eCommerce page however but that’s for another article.

However, if your shopping cart prohibits you due to being forced into a template page or if there is internal friction to changing the product detail page, then using a dedicated landing page where you can expand and control the sales messaging is going to be the better strategy for your funnel.

If the traffic is cold however then you’ll want to consider taking visitors to a presell page to warm them up before sending them to one of the various sales page options.

When considering what funnel strategy to use you should also consider the strength of your sales copy.

If your copy is very strong then taking visitors directly to a long form or video sales page is a good idea.

Finally, you should also consider the complexity of your supplement’s unique mechanism. As well as the skeptical the market is.

A product with a complex mechanism of action, or a more skeptical market would do better with a long form sales letter or video sales letter.

The third decision you’ll have to make to narrow down which funnel strategy is best for you is about the marketplace.

When Others Zig, You Zag

Health supplement customers tend to do research before buying. Or at least they are attracted to information about the problem they are looking to solve.

Therefore they come across many sales pitches.

If the majority of competitors that your market considers are using one funnel strategy then it’s time for you to break the mold and use something else.

For example if your market is being sold mainly via a quiz funnel like the weight loss market, then it may be over done. And your prospects may be tired of quizzes.

Time to switch it up and try pre sell pages or eCommerce detail pages.

It’s not about modeling what’s working here, because you never know what’s truly working for a competitor. It’s about being in-tune with the market, and knowing when one funnel strategy is saturated and on it’s way out.

More Than One Funnel Strategy is ALWAYS an Option

Lastly, don’t think you’re limited to just one funnel strategy. There is no one ultimate winning strategy.

The best vitamin supplement brands use multiple funnel strategies.

They may have a quiz funnel to acquire leads and then take them to an ecommerce product detail page in a retargeting funnel before finally handing them off to a long form or video sales letter funnel to convert those skeptical buyers.

You may not have several different types of funnels to start but building one type at a time and then stacking them over time is the way to win the game.

But no matter what particular funnel strategy you start with be sure to stick with it for longer than you think you should.

And continuously split test that funnel to dial it in before moving on to build the next one.

If stacking funnels is the way to win the game, then abandoning one too quickly is the way to lose.