Marketing Dietary Supplements Online: The Shift From Print Mail To Digital

Marketing dietary supplements online unfortunately means getting your product on Amazon for many people.

But Amazon is not digital marketing.

It is simply a showroom to sell your product.

A channel to sell your product.

Yes it’s already got a ton of traffic…

Yes it’s a buyer search engine…

Yes visitors are highly motivated to buy right this very second with one click.

And all of those are good things, if you’re Amazon.

Digital marketing for dietary supplements though is very different.

If You’re a Direct Mail Print Marketer

The one thing holding many direct mail dietary supplement brands back from the digital edge, is their culture.

Peter Drucker, one of the top business minds today, once said…

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

What he meant was that a company that disconnects the two are putting their success at risk.

An old culture that is so far removed from digital marketing that they take the easy way out.

Their digital strategy is to put the brand on Amazon. And why not, it’s where people go to shop.

But just as Amazon is not digital marketing, it’s also not a strategy.

But it’s not going change the culture from print direct mail to digital.

If you’re stuck in an old culture of print mail, you’re not growing.

In fact, you’re stuck. Stuck with a dying customer base.

What you need are new customers.

A new flood of customers is the key driver of growth for any dietary supplement business.

The ability to acquire new customers is at the heart of digital marketing to sell dietary supplements online.

You can’t acquire a customer and market to them again and again if they buy on Amazon.

Your backend is cut off at the knees, burned to a crisp and thrown in the trash. All in the name of additional sales.

Moving to digital as a way to acquire new customers is your only chance of continued sustained growth.

But if your culture is not prepared to shift along with your marketing strategy you’re doomed to failure or a slow death of your company.

It’s not easy, but it is necessary if you’re old school dietary supplement company that’s been doing only print mail.

It’s just not possible to grow your business over the long haul, if you’re not in the digital space these days.

People Don’t Like Change

Any type of change is difficult but not impossible.

The hardest step to get right when changing the culture is the mindset of your people.

You may need to tweak your culture or completely overhaul it. At times it will feel like pushing a mountain uphill in the snow, but it will result in growth for years to come.

In some cases it’s easier to just change the people. Some cultures are so embedded in the old way that this may be the only viable option for change.

Let’s face it, many systems and more importantly the mindset of your people have been entrenched in the old way of doing things for quite some time. Getting them all to shift overnight is not reasonable.

One must have ingredient to make the shift is…

Support From The Top

Changing a culture is impossible without executive support. There’s nothing that can replace having this be a priority of the CEO.

This is an absolute must.

Because, there will be times when your staff will fall off the wagon. This is only natural. People get busy with the day to day work and suddenly the new digital initiative takes a back seat.

For those times support from the executive staff needs to not only make sure it’s known as a priority. But also the ensure things are cleared away so time is carved out for future digital initiates.

At first this may mean you’re carving out a few hours a week for your staff to learn.

Level Up Your People

There are an endless amount of certifications and online training classes where you can level up your staff’s digital chops.

Learning the basics is a great way for them to not only feel like this is a real initiative but also to build their confidence in something new. Remember at first they may resist to learning something new.

Of course, training in addition to getting outside help from an agency at the same time is the fastest way to turn your culture around.

The agency will allow your people to dip their toe in the water of change.

The transition becomes easier because the agency can help change the thinking of the internal team.

Another option, is to internally hire or shift a smaller team to lead up the digital initiative internally.

This would certainly be quicker than moving the direction of the company that everyone is used to and comfortable with.

But it’s a recipe for disaster. That new group will be resented by the old guard. They will still resist the change because they are not a part of it and you’ll be left with a company divided.

An outside agency is the better option because your team can learn from them as they get more comfortable with not only the idea of change but also some wins under their belt.

The key is to make that win and the work as well a joint effort so the internal team has buy-in.