Keeping up with what’s new in marketing
Pre-pandemic, Alana Sandel was keeping tabs on what a lot of brands in the wellness space were doing, paying close attention to how they were addressing pain points of various customer segments, especially those managing chronic health conditions like diabetes, arthritis and asthma. As CEO of Marketing for Wellness, a purpose-driven agency designed to grow brands that stand for wellbeing, Sandel wanted to see how these brands were planning to use their influence and creativity to help their most vulnerable customers find products that complement their lifestyles, especially when it comes to food.
In the time before COVID, Sandel paid close attention to marketing trends like personalization, a practice she believes is the future of marketing, especially when it comes to the delivery of content and products. She cites Element Bars’ decision to allow customers to build their own healthy snacks so they know exactly what they are putting into their bodies.
Like any marketer you talk with, Sandel will tell you that COVID has changed the game. Today, one of the biggest trends she says is in how the pandemic significantly accelerated peoples’ awareness of their health. “We were all completely taken aback by COVID, and no one had any idea how to address the pandemic without the fear concept and lockdowns. We realized, perhaps for the first time in our lives, that our biggest defense against the challenge we faced due to the virus was to our immune system. We learned that people with chronic health issues are not only most vulnerable when they get sick, but also when they try to manage their lives with serious side effects.”
This heightened Sandel’s awareness about the pain points of people with chronic health conditions.
For wellness marketers, COVID opened the door to helping brands find new opportunities to help people manage their lives. Myriad brands jumped on the wellness wagon, adjusting their products and incorporating ingredients like ginger and turmeric into their recipes. To help meet the crush for information, Sandel launched the not-for-profit For Well Being, specifically geared toward people looking to take care of their health in a collaborative environment. A series of “Let’s Do it Together’ classes helped educate people and inspire them to eat better through cooking classes and more mindful exercises.
“Brands must figure out how marketing, customer service and sales are aligned, and engage their audience.”
— Alana Sandel, CEO, Marketing for Wellness
Standing out, Sandel says, means continually working to craft the perfect recipe for your brand. “I don’t believe there is any one thing you can do, even if you do it really well, that can make you stand out from competition because most things can be easily copied. We advise our clients to pay attention, first and foremost, on how to manage their brand. If they have a strong brand strategy, brand foundation and messaging, the important part is to make sure the brand remains relevant and compelling. If your brand doesn’t have a strong foundation (vision, mission statement, key messages, brand essence and a map to define and address customer pain points), it’s back to the drawing board.”
Once you put the fundamentals in place and map out your customer journey, you can figure out how to relate to your customers, starting with the products and services you deliver. Getting to that place requires placing data and technology—Artificial Intelligence (AI), for example—at the core of your blueprint. Data helps create more relevant experiences across one or more dimensions of what marketers call the 4Cs:
- Content (provided in experiences like emails or mobile apps)
- Commerce (physical retail, e-commerce, or a hybrid experience)
- Community (convening B2B buyers at a virtual trade show or hosting a webinar on home repair for consumers)
- Convenience (offering consumers coupons or benefits from a loyalty program)
Hitting the books…
One of the biggest challenges facing the wellness world is that the term is not universally understood, i.e., it means different things to different audiences. To stand out, Chris Ross says you must understand what wellness means to your audience, and assure that you have something meaningful and compelling to offer in that area.
“Wellness is a very noisy space, and it covers lots of categories and audience needs,” says Ross, CMO of Isagenix Corp., a multi-level marketing company that sells dietary supplements and personal care products. “There’s no easy or universal way to stand out. It just requires establishing deeper insight, and designing products and services aligned to those insights.”
Before COVID, Ross says the “Happiness Industrial Complex” was taking over the world. It seemed people everywhere were overrun by various thought leaders evangelizing their collective need to define and pursue the ever-elusive idea of happiness. Work-life balance, job gratification and basic holistic health were the themes of the day.
With the pandemic and the cultural context surrounding it, Ross says that everyone is under extreme pressure. Mental health, sleep, real social connection and friendships quickly became extraordinarily precious and precarious. The good news is that like many pandemic-related themes, many of the issues that surfaced during the past year will continue to be important as we emerge from the crisis. “Anyone involved in wellness related marketing will need to connect back to those themes. Getting clarity on the marketplace means doing your homework. Do the research, talk to your customers and prospects, your salespeople, industry experts. Insight is a competitive advantage. Organizations that know more will win.”
“Getting clarity on the marketplace means doing your homework. Do the research, talk to your customers and prospects, your salespeople, industry experts. Insight is a competitive advantage.” — Chris Ross, CMO, Isagenix Corp.
To engage with consumers looking for connections, wellness marketers will have to find the channels that fit their audiences. “Channels are always audience-specific and even a ‘ripe’ one can be misused or ineffective without the right messaging, creative and offers,” Ross says. “Print has become a bit of a premium item. The right intersection of customization and quality can make print a powerful tool. There is a tension between print and sustainability, but there are brands who have balanced those tensions to create effective print work.”
In a time of complex change, today’s consumers are as intelligent and well-informed as ever, with one distinct quality marketers must recognize—they are very attuned BS-detectors. “Any wellness related messaging or offer needs to be grounded in reality and hold up to consumer scrutiny,” Ross says. “If you’re going to go down the wellness path, just be authentic or be prepared for the backlash.”