by Matt Weik
There’s no shortage of supplement companies out there pushing their products onto consumers. In fact, each year more and more supplement companies are coming out of the woodwork. Some brands are trying to be an ecommerce giant while others go the route of working with distributors and trying to get their line in retail locations across the US. But, there seems to be one common practice in my opinion that majority of the supplement companies are lacking—content creation.
Bring value
Supplement companies these days want to shove product down your throat in a buy now mentality. However, when consumers have things forced upon them many tend to shy away. Brands spend millions on marketing and advertising, but the thing they are missing is value. We see your ads in magazines, but guess what, no one cares anymore. Overhyped marketing is played out and people can see right through it (well, most people).
Why not bring VALUE to the consumer? Help educat them on different topics from health, fitness, nutrition, and supplementation. You have a website, right? USE IT! Work with a writer (hand raised) and strategize how you want to utilize the content. Do you want to talk about certain ingredients that are also found in your products? Are there studies that back up a unique profile you use? Do you want to talk nutrition and give tips to help consumers get better results from using your products and through proper training?
It blows my mind how many brands refuse to add value and simply demand consumers to just open up their wallet and make a purchase. Here’s a thought… if you added value through content, more people would come to your site, and in turn, you could potentially convert more sales. Over deliver and differentiate yourself from everyone else in the market.
Through content, you are able to engage an audience, and continue to do so. How many unique visitors do you get each day to your site? Now how many repeat visitors do you get? If not many, that’s your own fault for not bringing people back. Too many brands simply plaster their site with product images and athlete photos then walk away as if to think magically people will stumble across their website and buy something. Give me a second to clear my eye boogers after waking up from viewing your boring website. It’s a snooze-fest. There’s nothing there other than, “Here’s what we have, please buy. Oh, and we have some models we pay to say they use our product too.”
By utilizing content, you also have something you can push on your social media platforms. Everyone is set in their ways when it comes to supplements so promoting a product on social media really won’t give you much engagement or clicks at all. Yet, on the other hand, if you had a content piece that was (for instance) “5 Nutrition Tips You’ve Never Heard of To Get Lean” you would have people click on it and head over to your website to read it. Understand? Add value. Even people who never used your product will go see what the article is about to learn from it. While there, the chances of them converting to a sale are increased. You added value, oh by the way there are supplements on this site, and they’ll browse. This is a much better strategy as opposed to the spray and pray method of plastering your social media with images of your products with boring captions or having your athletes posing with a product that no one cares about, they just want to see the T&A show.
You don’t even need to post new content every day (but it would help). Once a week is a great start. See what content your readers are engaging with the most and then work off of that. Going the extra mile to show you aren’t afraid to stand next to your customers and prospects to show you want them to succeed goes a long way. When value is added to someone’s life, they are more willing to give you a chance and opportunity. And on the flip side, if you aren’t providing value and everyone else is, guess what could happen to your business? Yup, in the toilet.
How to make it happen
First off, if you don’t have a blog on your website, that would be a great first step. A blog will allow you to post about sales, new product launches, as well as any content you want to add. If you wanted to keep the blog short and sweet, you could create a content or articles section on the website to direct people over to. Either way you shake it, content is key.
Seek out the help of an experienced writer who has industry experience and knows what they are talking about and start creating content. Not all writers are created equal. Some are simply writers and haven’t spent a minute in the industry in the trenches and understand what you need—they simply type words, but have no real insight. Feel free to reach out to us (Weik Fitness) if you are in need of help and don’t have anyone in house that is experienced and you’d want creating content.
From there, figure out the type of content you would want the writer to create and the schedule at which you’d like to have content sent to you. Treat the content like you would marketing/advertising dollars. Boost content posts on your social media and engage an audience. Have a call to action (CTA) that will make people want to head over to the site and read the article. Then you can promote whatever you want in the article or on the side banners, whatever. The key is to add value and get people over to your site. It’s a lot easier to ask for a sale when you are overdelivering on value than if you did nothing at all and expect people to buy your product(s).
Content should be part of your marketing strategy moving forward. If not, you’ll look back and have me saying, “I told you so” in the long run. Get ahead of the pack and deliver true value to your consumers and prospects and in return, you will see thanks in the form of sales.