Dominating E-Commerce: A Guide to Selling Supplements Online
Your supplement company might have a brick-and-mortar storefront or you may have other retailers who stock your products, but if you’re not online, you could be missing opportunities to expand your brand. Customers like the ability to buy their supplements online simply because it offers convenience. Even if your storefront is easy to access on their way home from work, some consumers will still opt to purchase most products online. Not to mention, without online options, you’re restricting your prospective customers to a specific location.
The good news is it is easier than ever to offer your products online.
In this guide, we’ve outlined a successful strategy for you to start selling supplements online.
Study What’s Successful
One of the first things you should do is look online for similar products that are selling. Find the top-performing brands, and create a hypothesis of why you believe they are successful.
Are there plenty of positive reviews? Is the design compelling and eye-catching?
Use these other brands as inspiration guides for what customers find appealing. Studying other companies isn’t about finding ways to copy them. Instead, you should tailor their best practices for your products.
Having a plan before you begin selling online will save you time and resources, so invest early in research and strategy.
Improve Brand Identity
Promoting your newest product will only be successful if you have a strong brand that customers recognize and trust.
It’s no easy task. Increasing recognition requires a hefty time investment and consistently delivering a quality product.
Since customers often judge a “book by its cover,” label design is an easy first step for improving brand recognition. Create consistent design elements on your website, incorporate it into your social media and ensure your brand becomes quickly recognizable.
Build a Website
Dominating E-commerce requires the construction of a quality website. Quality doesn’t mean complicated.
The website for your supplement brand needs to accomplish a few things. Every visitor needs to know the specifics of your product, why your brand is the best option and they need an easy way to make a purchase.
Your website should contain:
- About Page
- Product Page
- Contact Information
- Educational Content
Design pages that describe the manufacturing process. Give anyone who visits your site the comfort of knowing you care about the products you are making.
Building a website doesn’t have to be expensive or take a significant amount of time. Easy platforms like Squarespace, Shopify, and WordPress make website creation more accessible than ever.
Use blogs and other types of content to discuss any questions customers may have regarding your supplement. Talk about the benefits and potential concerns, but most importantly, be as generous as you can with the information you provide.
Build a Community Through Content
Your website is a perfect place to start promoting your products. After you create a new blog or other types of content, the next step is posting it on social media and other platforms where your community can find it.
Your content has an important purpose. It is designed to create conversations with your community. However, its most critical role is to provide information to your buyers.
Also, you can also share facts about your company and your team on social media. The key to building a community around your brand is authenticity and generous information.
Leverage Email Marketing
Another essential component of a successful e-commerce strategy is email marketing. You can use your website and social media strategies to build your email list.
While email seems to be one of the longest-lasting features of the internet, it remains to be one of the most effective and direct ways to communicate with and sell to your audience.
Send them updates about your newest products and send them promotions they’ll appreciate like a percentage of their first purchase.
Platforms like Mailchimp make sending drip campaigns and managing email lists fairly simple. If you have less than 2,000 contacts, the service is free.
Choose Additional Platforms to Sell Online
A successful e-commerce strategy doesn’t end with creating a website and engaging a community on social media.
Instead, you should also consider putting your products on Amazon. While people might not be entirely familiar with your product, they might start seeing it as an option on Amazon based on their keyword search.
Amazon is also a useful platform to build good reviews, which will improve the perception of prospective clients.
Online or not, Quality Matters
One way to stand out from your competitors is by highlighting the quality of your brand.
Here’s where choosing the right manufacturer becomes critical. Your customers want to know that the supplement they are about to take is safe.
GMP Certified and FDA registered let your customers know your product has completed rigorous requirements before reaching the shelves. Wear these badges proudly on your social media, website, and in your email campaigns.
Creating an e-commerce strategy can be a bit overwhelming, which is why we offer several creative services well beyond manufacturing supplements. We’re here for you from start to finish. We stick around from formula creation to distribution and everything in between.