Little-Known Factors That Could Affect Your Nutritional Health and Supplement Sales Online

We’ve come a long way from the first part of this 5 part series where we outlined the five steps you need to fully maximize the value of each and every online vitamin supplement customer. If you missed it you can go back and read it here.

We’ve gone deeper into step 1 – the lead magnet. where we discuss how to get the right prospects to sell to.

Then we looked at step 2 in detail and learned how to layout your welcome mat to segment your buyers and non-buyers and maximize your traffic budget.

Today, we’ll be examining the core offer closer.

Step 3 – The Core Offer

The Core Offer includes your flagship product or products.

This is where most vitamin supplement marketers focus ALL of their time and energy.

Crafting, refining and improving the core offer is both an art and a science. But when done right you can increase sales on just the core offer alone even without steps 1 and 2 or the remaining steps 4 and 5 that we haven’t gotten into yet.

The core offer can be treated as a separate buying funnel all together and therefore improved in and of itself.

Yet, almost every online supplement and health product company out there miss the key elements of a winning offer. Let’s go over then briefly.

Your core offer must…

• Solve a chronic need or stoke a passion

• Have the right value proposition

• Provide the right amount of proof

• Be credible and radiate trust

Most supplement companies are just doing the bare minimum when it comes to the core offer.

In essence they’re saying: Here’s a bottle of our supplement do you want to buy it?

And that’s it. They hope for the best.

Here’s an example from Brightcore Nutrition that just does the bare minimum.

There’s no better way to become a commodity than to just do the bare minimum.

The opportunity here is to tap into the elements of a winning offer and continuously tweak the sales page over time to sell more and increase the number of customers and front end conversions.

Now let’s go deeper into the elements of a winning offer in more detail one by one, so you can start improving your sales.

Your core offer must solve a chronic need or stoke a passion

There is no other industry other than the vitamin and supplement industry that can say almost every product offered solves a chronic need or stokes a passion.

The key to increasing sales here is the proper expression of that need or passion, while also being compliant with the FDA.

This example from Bomuca International Corp. on their site vivioptalvitamins.com, they start to tap into that passion through imagery, color and the tagline “Get Your Vroom On” But this is likely a case of the branding department suffocating sales. The tag line is cute and may work in a TV ad but the web is a TOTALLY different beast.

Why? Because on the web you make a purchase decision right there, unlike TV or print.

And because of that…

Your core offer must have the right value proposition.

Having the right value proposition is like turbo-charging your sales.

A value proposition is an ultimate reason why your prospect should buy from you. It must differentiate you from your competitors. And it must be framed from your customers point of view (or thinking) rather than your companies. Because after all your customers are the ones buying not you or your company.

According to a 2012 MarketingSherpa survey 71% of companies Have Not Tested their value proposition. That means most companies don’t know how much they are loosing in sales by not trying different value propositions, which might resonate more clearly. How do you know that your value proposition is getting you the most sales that it can unless you test it?

Your core offer must provide the right amount of proof

To prove something is simply to provide sufficient evidence to establish a thing as true, or to produce belief in its truth.

Providing proof is even more important in this industry than any other because of the nature of the products and because of the less than reputable companies out there that ruin it for the straight and narrow shooters. So sadly you have to make-up not only for what may be your lack of proof but also everyone else’s too.

Nutraceuticals World reports that 67% of nutrition information is based on personal beliefs and half-truths rather than published peer-reviewed research.

Consumers are inundated with health information and because of this they are not sure what to think and are therefore naturally skeptical. You must correct for this on your website if you want to double or triple sales.

Testimonials that are specific and results based from customers that are just like your website visitors are some of the strongest proof points that you can provide.

A guarantee can also be a powerful way of demonstrating proof that your supplement works.

This example from BioTrust packs them both in…

A lesser know but powerful proof point that can boost conversions is “the reason why” Tell them why and your visitors are more likely to buy. Tell them why you created this product, why you’re making this offer, or why you even care.

Your core offer must be credible and radiate trust

The willingness to ingest something into your body on a regular basis like a vitamin or supplement requires that your product have a certain level of believability or be worthy of trust.

There are two types of trust. Trust of your product and trust of your website.

Trust marks, can help with the trust of your website. They can be a badge, image or logo that indicates your website can be trusted by showing approval of a third party company.

Trust of your product can also be supported in the form of a trust mark or an endorsement, with something like the Doctor Trusted seal below.

That’s it for now but stay tuned next week and, we’ll go in-depth with the profit maximizer, which is step 4 of this 5 part optimization plan.