12 Strategies To Make Your Brand Stand Out In A Trillion Dollar Health & Wellness Space In 2020

The global wellness market has grown 12.8% in the last two years, transforming it into a $4.2 trillion industry. According to the Mental Health Foundation, we're working longer, playing harder, and three out of four of us have expressed feeling "overwhelmed" or "unable to cope" in the last year.

Wellness, for more people, is evolving from rarely to daily, from episodic to essential, from a luxury to a dominant lifestyle value.

4 main factors that contribute to the growth of this industry are

1. The clean eating trend
2. Wearable devices and virtual assistants.
3. Wellness tourism
4. Ecommerce sites like amazon that make nutritional supplements and skincare available.

Image source : Global Wellness Institute, 2017 stats

Specifically in India, in 2018, this market was valued at almost USD 23 Bn and is expected to cross USD 30 Bn by 2022. Data reveals that the health and wellness industry ( comprising of healthy foods, nutraceuticals, and organic skincare) in India valued at USD 23 Bn in 2018 and is estimated to cross USD 30 Bn by 2022. 

Online sales contribute to roughly 5% of the total pie, and with a trend of it doubling every 2 years the serviceable addressable market is estimated to be around 1.5 Bn USD in 2020 and approx 3.5 Bn USD in 2022.

With the consumer behavior shifting even more towards digital purchases post-COVID, the opportunity gets better.

What makes some e-commerce players in this space do hundreds of transactions every day while marketplaces still struggle? While there are many players who entered the space and have made it quite big, there exists an even larger set of players who have had to shut down. From bollywood influencers selling health and wellness products/services to spammed Instagram feeds, here’s what you can do right for a digital win in this space.

1. Have a brand story line

For those in the wellness industry (and aspiring startups), this is both good and bad. Consumers are more aware than ever of the benefits of good sleep, a good diet, and activities like yoga, and they’re seeking new ways to improve their health and productivity. Along with this increased awareness, however, comes the fact that wellness brands must fight for attention in an extremely competitive market.

Does your brand have a purpose driven story?

A deep and compelling story helps you differentiate your brand from your competitors. The higher you go on the brand story hierarchy the deeper the connect with your audience.

• Level 1 : Makers Perspective : Focuses on product features. If your features are similar to your competitors, your customers will turn into price for purchase decisions.
• Level 2 : Users Perspective : Focuses on how these features will benefit your customers. Shows that the brand relates to the needs of their customers, not very different from competition however.
• Level 3 : Purpose Driven perspective : This focuses more on “Why” brands do what they do. Specially for brands that have a clear purpose. This way brands can engage communities with the story of why they do what they do. This gives your community a deeper context of why your brand takes certain decisions.

2. Brand Consistency

Outline clearly what your brand stands for, values, and USP as a part of your branding exercise and then communicate them via your digital assets, like website, social media, etc. Especially if you’re targeting millennials. 

3. Authenticity

Stand for what your brand believes in and express that on all your digital assets. Although the word authentic is being overused these days, it’s especially relevant in the health and wellness space. If your brand can stick to realistic expectations as opposed to portraying edited, photoshopped, and idealistic standards of beauty and living, users may feel a deeper connect thereby increasing leads and sales.

7. 91% of consumers would rather buy from an authentic brand and customers who have an emotional connection with a brand have a 3x higher LTV.

4. Customer Touchpoints

“A touchpoint is any interaction (including encounters where there is no physical interaction) that might alter the way that your customer feels about your product, brand, business or service.”

Brands that only sell online with no brick and mortar experience whatsoever have very limited customer touchpoints. Typical customer touchpoints in any digital business would be through their social media handles or their website. With packaging as the only physical touchpoint, brands are now under the pressure to make the unboxing experience special for the customers. How your customers receive the product, design of the packaging and how brands use it to communicate with their audience can be made special. Most brands are now using the packaging to communicate their values, invite customers to share reviews on social media etc.

5. Community

Digital communities create opportunities for brands to connect with their audiences in a way that's more personal and human. Targeted interactions via communities create a lot of opportunities. There's a huge difference between burning your media spends in gaining followers and actually building an engaged community of users who love your brand.

Wellness is moving from personal goals to collective gains.

“Millennials are a generation fascinated by self-actualization, self-improvement, and community—and in finding spaces that enable them to experience all those things together.” —Christina Disler, founder of Werklab

They are sharing pictures of the new facemask they read reviews and purchased online, or a new smoothie bowl they carefully planned. Health and wellness trends such as vegan, keto, crossfit etc are catching up. Millennials take pride in belonging to such communities and products / services associated with them become an integral part of this lifestyle.

How health and wellness brands are creating communities?

1. By Marrying product with purpose - For E.g- Lululemon - Lululemon’s clothing is crafted to empower people to be comfortable while moving their bodies in yoga and while doing fitness training. 
2. Celebrate your consumers to build a stronger more loyal community around your brand.
3. Connecting on a people to people level - This could be done via events locally or via micro / macro influencers to strengthen network.
4. Creating content that adds real value to your customers. When you create content that they can learn from, get inspired from, you become the go to brand for all their needs related to your niche.

6. Listen

Social listening helps your brand make important decisions, be it the launch of your next product, improvisation on your existing product, or reviews. Woke customers are very active on social media with # and feedback. Take every feedback your brand gets seriously, may help you learn from your mistakes. 

7. Social Proof and User Generated Content

Accept it or not, Health and wellness brands are at the mercy of great reviews from their customers. User-generated content comes in the form of reviews, testimonials, and social shares. UGC is the biggest social proof for health and wellness brands, flaunting them on social media platforms, and on the website can influence sales heavily. Reviews make up for yummy content on your social media. Also, where social proof is placed can influence the purchase decision heavily. Social proof videos (Reviews from customers) could increase your ROI on media spends when used as content for ads.

UGC garners an average of “4 times more clicks at half the cost per click; is 20 percent more influential on Millennial buying habits; is 35 percent more unforgettable and 50 percent more trustworthy for Millennials.

8. Content

Text, Imagery, and Videos form the universe of the content your brand will produce. It's important to build a brand that has a unique style, in its imagery and a unique tone and messaging in the way it interacts with its audience. Images promoting wellness can inspire others to pursue wellness within their own lives, too.

In fact, we found that 61% of wellness content on social media is visual

Source:Linkfluence Wellness Trends Report

Brand consistency is key. Also, the key to creating a great content strategy is to map to your buyers and understand where they stand in the journey, from the discovery of your brand all the way to the moment they become brand advocates. Knowing their needs at every stage of their journey allows you to provide them with the most relevant entertaining, informative content possible. 

Additionally, in this industry, videos provide a 60% return rate, which is 3x the average. (Marketing Sherpa).

Nearly 84% of consumers say they trust online reviews more than a personal recommendation from friends and loved ones.

9. Content Distribution

It's important to understand the kind of customers you are going after and accessing the platforms you want to be active on to build a community. For e.g if you’re a B2C brand in the health and wellness space with a core focus on women, you may want to be more active on visual platforms like Instagram, pinterest etc but if you’re a B2C brand offering to all age groups, then including platforms like youtube and Facebook may be a good idea. 

10.Design UI after UX.

Most brands often ignore UX and then spend a lot after, redesigning their websites in a way that PERFORM. If you plan to sell your products on your website, it's always a good idea to invest in UX and design a website that actually converts. Aspects like Brand consistency, tone and messaging in content, CTA buttons, the load time of your site, how information is placed on your website, and the visual feel or your site can influence purchase heavily. How you offer support to clients and where you choose to display product information and reviews, checkout pages, etc must all be driven by data and optimized for conversion. 

11. Health and Wellness focused micro-influencers

In a world where the b2c space is heavily influenced by Macro and Micro-influencers. Identifying the right influencers and collaborating with them to promote your product not only builds brand trust but also builds a stronger, loyal community. Your brand automatically gets a trusted endorsement. There are ways of measuring your investment with influencers you choose to collaborate with. Screen time from the right influencers is the new b2c marketing hygiene you don't want to miss. Enter the era of micro-influencers with the audience getting smarter and sales averse from celebrities and models, they want more real people use products. Not that micro-influencers don't get paid, Yes, they’re still in the business of making some revenue for advertising products, but, because they come from a more close-knit, usually well-engaged community, their followers trust what they have to say. 

A 2018 study carried out by socialpubli noted that the engagement rates of a micro-influencer are 7x that of those with millions.

According to 5W’s 2020 Consumer Culture Report

12. Focus on Experience

When one is on a mission to better themselves, wellness products and practices become a part of the day to day life of the consumer, creating an experience that they’ll live through. Focus on creating visuals that incorporate the products you offer as a part of your customer's daily experience and success stories of those who are already a part of this experience.