How To Start a Supplement Company

Health businesses tend to have a lower than average failure rate, since the demand for health is high, consistent and steadilyincreasing.

So, if you’re learning how to start a supplement company, you may have an advantage. Fortunately, it’s never been easier to start but there’s more competition than ever.

This article will cover several strategies you can do to make sure that your business stays afloat.

It all has to do with planning things out before you even start a company. Before you open your business’s doors, it is important to figure out your goals, your target audience, supplement label design, marketing strategies, and more. However, the most important thing is to figure out how to acquire customers at breakeven or less in order to feed the growth of your business.

Keep reading and learn more about starting supplement companies below.

Find the Right Audience for Your Brand

Most supplement business start because the founder has a personal health problem or a close family member has a health problem, they are looking to fix.

That’s typically where the target audience of a direct to consumer supplement brand comes from.

A target audience is a group of people who are interested in solving a certain problem.

By marketing your products to a specific audience, those people would be far more likely to buy from you.

You might think that finding a target audience for your supplement company is an easy task.

After all, all you need to do is market your products to people who take supplements, right?

Unfortunately, because the market is crowded it’s best to niche down to a submarket.

A submarket can be part of a larger market that is not being served well or not being spoken to or marketed to well.

To find a submarket first, you need to think about what kind of supplements your brand is going to sell. Or to put another way, what pain point or problem are you going to serve?

Some submarket or niche examples include: weight-loss supplements, heart-health supplements, supplements for hair, supplements for relaxation or energy, and so on.

For each of these specific supplements, there is a different target audience. But many have complementary problems.

For example, the same people who are interested weight-loss are likely also going to be interested in having more energy or reducing joint-pain.

Each submarket has secondary problems that need solving. Which expand your product offering and at the same time narrow your focus on that problems of that specific market.

Finding a Specific Audience

Suppose your business will only sell high-quality weight-loss supplements. You will need to target an audience that is interested in losing weight in an alternative way (with supplements). You will also want to think of the gender, age, and lifestyle of your audience.

For example, women often have the goal of losing weight. But you can narrow down this broad group by finding an audience of women who want to lose weight. The more specific you are, the better.

Let’s say you narrow down to older women, and then even further to women who are post-menopause. That audience has very different needs and the solution is going to be very different than other women.

Or let’s say your audience is women who want to lose weight because of an upcoming wedding.

How you approach each of those two groups is going to be very different.

How you speak to them, how you sell to them and even the solution you sell to each is very different.

Both are narrow examples that have enough people in them to be a strong submarket.

If your target audience is too broad, it isn’t going to get you very far. This is because when you are more specific, you have a better chance of making a sale.

By having a specific target audience, you can also fine-tune your marketing strategy so it fits your audience’s needs and wants.
Again, this translates to more sales.

Figure Out Who Your Competitors Are

Many people who are new to starting businesses have no idea who their competitors are or what they’re doing. This is not a good way to get into the supplement business. People these days are more health-conscious than they ever were before, so it only makes sense that there are more supplement companies than there ever were before as well.

Because there are so many other supplement companies out there, you’re competing with them for customers.

If you don’t know anything about your competitors, you won’t know what’s working for them.

For example, a competitor might have cheaper prices for the same high-quality supplements that you plan on selling.

Yet another competitor might have more attractive packaging or marketing tactics.

To make sure that your business not only stays afloat but becomes successful, you will need to educate yourself all about the details of your business competitors.

You will want to figure out what might make customers go to your competitors instead of you. Is it a matter of the price or perhaps the design of your products, the marketing messaging or the product itself?

It could very well be that your supplements contain ingredients that your competitor’s supplements don’t.

Gaining an Edge Above the Competition

People who buy supplements in the first place, of course, are naturally careful about their health, and many of them will check the ingredients before buying them.

Often in the supplement game different is better than better.

When analyzing your competitors, try to figure out what they have and what they don’t have compared to you. For example, your brand might sell a particular kind of supplement that your competitor does not.

This would put you a bit above the competition. On the other hand, your competitor might have several marketing and advertising campaigns that speak to the desires of a specific submarket. In this case, it makes sense that your competitor would rake in far more paying customers.

Once you figure out the strategy of your competitor, you will have the opportunity to go above and beyond with your brand’s quality or messaging. This may be difficult at first, especially if you don’t know where to start improving your brand.

However, once you get started and make sure that your brand stands out from the competition, you will find that it will be much easier to achieve more success for your brand.

Figure Out How to Lure in New Customers

When you start a supplement company, the hardest part will be finding your first customers. Most potential customers might not even know that your new business exists at first.

Fortunately, there are a few ways you can solve this problem. To start, you will want to create a customer acquisition funnel. Such a funnel involves advertising your brand to bring in traffic or visitors.

Digital marketing is one of the most popular ways you can get your brand’s name out there. Digital marketing comes in many shapes and forms such as pay-per-click advertising, video advertising, and so on.

To learn more read my comprehensive guide on marketing supplements.

You could also try physical advertisements as well such as using trade shows to promote your products. I have a full episode on my podcast Health Supplement Business Mastery about trade shows for supplements that you can listen to here.

There are also some marketing methods you can do mostly on your own. For example, many brands have blogs to promote their products. A blog is ideal because you can write all about your supplements, what they do, and what makes them unique.

Blogging on a regular basis can help promote your brand’s name in general. The more often your brand has some kind of online activity, the more likely new people will stumble across your brand. However, keep in mind that search engine optimization (SEO), and other advertising methods, require consistency.

SEO and Advertising

If you plan on creating a blog for your brand to bring in new customers, you’ll need to blog more than once a week.

Blogging three or four times a week, if not more often, is a good place to start.

Blogging and SEO take more time than you may think. Typically if you’re starting from scratch for a highly competitive nice like health, you’re looking at blogging consistently for at least 12 – 24 months or more before seeing any traction.

Advertising is much quicker to bring traffic. There are many types of advertising you can choose from and some models may be more effective than others for your target audience. In general, pay-per-click (PPC) ads are quite effective and you will only pay for them once someone clicks on them.

These ads are helpful not only for getting new customers but also for analyzing the effectiveness of your marketing strategy. If you find that no one is clicking on your ads, you may not be speaking to the audience.

On the other hand, if you find that people click on your ads but don’t buy anything from your site, there may be something unappealing about your site that you need to fine-tune.

Create the Perfect Product

There will come a time in your business planning process when you will need to create the actual product you plan on selling. This is a very exciting part of starting a business as you can finally see your brand come to life, but it also comes with a few important challenges.

When starting a supplement company, you will need to create supplements that stand out from the crowd.

This can be difficult since just about every supplement known to man has been packaged and sold in one form or another.

However, if you don’t know much about what makes a good supplement, it is a good idea to work with a manufacturer.

On the other hand, if you already know a lot about health and wellness and different ingredients, you can start working on the formula yourself and then consult with a manufacturer later.

When choosing the ingredients for your supplements, you’ll want to make sure that every component is high quality.

As mentioned before, many health-conscious customers won’t be interested in buying supplements if they are stuffed with artificial or potentially unhealthy ingredients.

Choosing the Right Ingredients for Your Customers

If you find yourself getting overwhelmed with all the different supplements and ingredient choices, try starting out with only a few supplements.

What will work best is focusing on a narrow enough pain point that you can build a collection of at least six to eight unique supplement products around.

When starting, however, you can keep it down to just three products.

Once you create the main supplement for your brand, you can add other supplements later. Supplement manufacturers can help take some of the weight off your shoulders.

A manufacturer can also help you narrow down the ingredients for your supplements. Be sure that you always work with a reputable and high-quality manufacturer. Otherwise, you might find that your products aren’t turning out the way you wanted them to.

Private label manufacturers are always a good choice. Private label manufacturers are third-party manufacturers that won’t interfere with your brand’s name.

Remember that the aim of creating your supplements is to satisfy your target audience. For that reason, you will want to choose ingredients that you know will be a big hit with them.

Once you figure out what the supplements should be, you can start thinking about what they should look like.

Creating a Packaging and Label Design

Many people think that label design is a superficial issue because it has nothing to do with the supplement’s quality. However, this is not necessarily true. Good (or bad) label design can make or break your product.

This is because the first thing that people see is the label. They won’t immediately see the supplements inside the packaging. Instead, they will see the text, color scheme, and font on the label.

For that reason, if the label isn’t appealing, there is a good chance that people won’t buy the supplement.

Even if you create the best supplement in the world, people won’t want to buy it if it doesn’t look good.

To learn more about supplement labels that sell check out my article and podcast episode on it here.

The last thing you want is for your competitor to have a very stylish product design while yours is merely mediocre.

The trick is to understand colors, fonts, and other design details. For example, color is very stimulating to the human brain, but you shouldn’t use too many colors at once on your label.

Choosing the Right Colors and Designs For Your Supplement Label

If you use too many colors, the label could start to look too loud. What’s working best today in the market is a simple clean label design.

If you look at most labels on supplements and other products, you will notice that they only use around three colors. Using three or maybe four colors on your label gives the design plenty of personality without the colors becoming overwhelming.

While creating your labels, you also need to make sure that it follows all the label requirements for supplements.

For example, the label needs to list the manufacturer, what’s inside the supplements, the supplement facts, and so on.

If you are having a hard time coming up with a good label design, your manufacturer or a product designer should be able to help.

With professional help, you can make sure that your label looks modern, sleek, and attractive. That way, more people will be interested in buying your product simply because of how the product looks.

How to Start Selling Your Supplement Product

Once your product is finally put together and has a good design, it will be time to start selling it. There are many ways to sell supplements, but these days, it is best to sell them online. People are more likely to buy items online simply because it is easier and more convenient.

More than that, customers have more of a chance to research the products online before buying them. But if you do plan to sell your supplements online, where should you start?

While some brands might prefer to sell their supplements on platforms such as Amazon, one of the most effective methods is to sell your supplements on your own website.

That way, you have more control over your product, how to market your product, and how to deliver that product to your customers.

To start, you will want to make sure that your website is already established and has a good following. You will also want to make sure that your target audience is aware of your products before the products are even available.

This is actually a very good tactic for selling plenty of supplements right away.

Getting Your Customers Excited About Your Product

By getting your audience excited about the products you plan to release, they will be more likely to buy the products as soon as they become available. You might even allow them to pre-order some of your products.

This will add to the excitement of the upcoming products and it will ensure some immediate sales as soon as you release the products. You will also want to make sure that you’re using plenty of ads and ad campaigns once you release your product.

For example, you can put ads on YouTube, Google Shopping, etc. The more people who know about your new products, the better. That way, people will start to flock to your site to see what your products are all about.

To learn more about marketing supplements read my other article here.

How to Start a Supplement Company

Learning how to start a supplement company isn’t as hard as you might expect, but it will take a lot of work. You need to consider your target audience, stand out from the competition, figure out how to bring in new customers, and make sure that your supplements are both stylish and high quality. As long as you do all that, your supplements should be a great success.