One of the most formidable challenges for marketers in the weight loss industry is consumer distrust. It takes us marketers back to what has always worked best: approaching marketing from a personal perspective.
On a recent episode of The Art of Marketing Ops, I spoke with Brooke Fitts, CMO at Profile by Sanford, about marketing to people who don’t care about, know about, or even trust your brand.
Join us as we discuss:
People don't trust the weight loss industry.
They really, really, really don't trust it.
So if you're a marketing operations executive working in weight loss, you've got a big job ahead of you.
Brooke discovered that combatting distrust is the hardest part of brand awareness. In other industries, you just have to put the word out. In an industry people distrust, however, you have to think end-to-end.
The same is true in healthcare. It's not abnormal for a large healthcare system not to have a full end-to-end patient journey or CRM.
When that's your reality, you have to build our drip campaigns from the ground up — everything from those simple text and email messages all the way to end-to-end funnel building, from acquiring customers to nurturing them.
The only way to combat distrust is with a personal, one-on-one approach. Now… how do you create a personal, one-on-one marketing campaign at a massive scale?
If only we knew…
Brooke had a problem. How was she going to invest in brand awareness on a massive scale when people didn't know her brand and didn't care?
As it turned out, Brooke discovered three keys to a holistic brand awareness campaign.
Hitching yourself to someone else's brand can give you the most bang for your buck. It helps out the influencer, too.
Working in health and wellness, Brooke partnered with Emmitt Smith to leverage a Super Bowl ad. She also worked with two music artists — one in the country genre and one in the alternative scene.
Everything in the digital space starts with impressions.
People have to look at you before they get to know you. So put your brand in front of as many eyes as possible.
Consumers buy from people, not from ads.
Local marketing is where you can combat any misinformation or distrust surrounding your industry.
Throughout the entire end to end strategy, partners spread the word about Brooke's brand online.
This turned out to be the magic key.
If there is a magic key…
It's dangerous to believe in a single solution.
There's just not a one-size-fits-all answer for any organization, business, or industry.
Success is really about developing an end-to-end strategy. And that strategy has to begin with your product. Does your product actually stand behind what you say?
Then, a common thread must run through your entire company from product to operations to consumer solutions to advertising. You need to make sure you have a cohesive process and a consistent message for everyone to communicate.
Equally important is making sure you speak to the right people at the right time. Just like there's no single solution, there's no blanket message either. Hone in on your specific audiences.
Finally, take a step back. Identify ways the solution you offer one audience may look different from the solution you offer to another audience. You might have to change your messaging, your approach, and even your tactics to fit each of those different audiences.
We're always going to have guardrails that we need to adapt and adjust to. The changes coming to Facebook are just one example of why we need to be dispersed in our tactics.
Bottom line: don't put all your eggs in one basket. Look at everything from an end-to-end perspective.
“Name your tactic, we did a holistic end to end strategy.” — Brooke Fitts