Supplement brand marketers are at odds with direct response marketing.
They have been for years.
It’s one of the greatest marketing fights of all time.
Brand marketers believe…
The brand is the bridge between the product and the customer.
Therefore brand marketing is about linking the values of a company or product with an audience.
Their belief is that this will result in more sales over time.
Brand marketing requires advertising dollars to be spent in good faith.
Success is measured in how many people have seen an ad.
Volume and time is how brand marketers win the game.
The direct response marketer on the other hand believes…
Every advertising dollar must be trackable down to the sale.
Success is measured in units sold and total average order value. (And in some cases life time value.)
The cost of acquisition (that is how much it costs to get a customer to buy) is how to win the game.
Nowhere is this great marketing struggle seen more clearly than on the product sales page.
eCommerce product detail pages vs. Long form direct response sales pages
The typical supplement eCommerce product sales page looks like this.
Where as the typical supplement direct response sales page looks like this. (shortened to fit)
These two pages couldn’t be any more different.
If you agree with one of our core principles…
People don’t buy supplements online the same way they buy other products.
Supplement sales are both functional and emotional.
On the function side is how it works, the mechanism of action and the science.
On the emotional side is the hope and desire part of the equation.
If you agree with that hypothesis then it’s not very hard to see the problem here.
The standard eCommerce sales page has very little selling going on.
It’s only functional there’s no emotion.
It presents the product in a take it or leave it kind of way.
So, if the prospect is not already sold before she comes to an eCommerce page she’s likely not going to buy.
Everything before getting to the eCommerce product detail page is doing the heavy lifting for the sale.
Including the advertisement, the brand, and the desire within the prospect to solve their problem.
The eCommerce type of product detail pages only work for prospects that are both problem and product aware in the marketplace awareness pyramid.
The direct response sales page does more of the heavy lifting in terms of selling than the eCommerce product detail page.
The eCommerce product detail page lacks tension.
Without tension, there is no sale.
Tension comes from the words used on the page and the length of the page.
The length of a typical direct response sales page is something most brand marketers can’t get past.
Brand marketers see such a long page and cringe.
They think no one will read that much. And that’s simply not true.
Long sales pages typically beat short pages in every single split test.
It’s not that it’s just long. It’s also compelling. Compelling copy leads the prospect to a conclusion.
That conclusion is the sale.
Put the prospect in the lead… Not the product
Putting the prospect in the lead means the sale is about the prospect, not the product.
Supplement brands mistakenly lead with science.
The science only addresses the logical, functional side of how people buy supplements.
Not the emotional side.
Supplement brands mistakenly believe that a supplement is a functional sale.
The way people buy supplements involves hope, desire, trust, and belief.
Here’s an example of how you tap into that first and use science to support later.
The example above is for a pre-workout supplement.
For this market segment, it’s all about being your best. That’s why they are taking it.
If you think about it that’s a very emotional sale.
The lead copy on this page starts with the prospect’s desire.
Not the science or even the product. That comes below the fold.
That may seem taboo to best practices but people don’t buy supplements the same way they buy other products.
This is one of the major differences with selling supplements.
Here’s a video where Lori Haller and I break down a long-form sales page design that uses direct response copy and design tactics to increase bottom-line response.
Supplement brand in a world of supplement slingers
How can eCommerce product detail pages get it so wrong?
In their defense, those weak eCommerce product detail pages come from the world of supplement branding.
The standard eCommerce product detail page is little more than a legacy of how things were done when the Internet first came together.
Online marketing is much more crowded now compared to 1998.
Your prospects have heard it all before from your competitors.
And they have more options at their fingertips than ever before.
Supplement brands need to change the way they sell to match where the customer is.
I believe there is room for a branding / direct response hybrid.
This hybrid direct-response branding approach is how to sell supplements in a crowded space.
Discover the 3 funnels that can help your health supplement business succeed.
Listen to the Health Supplement Business Mastery Podcast for for dietary supplement entrepreneurs and marketers.
