Winning the Wellness Journey With Personalization
Fall and winter are filled with significant opportunities to win the wellness journey.
Shoppers are stocking up on allergy relief and cold medicines to combat cold and flu season. They also seek vitamins and supplements tied to commitments for improving wellness with New Year, New You on the horizon.
Personalization has become a key message across the wellness industry — in fact, a recent survey from PA Consulting found that 90% of consumers seek tailored health products. In this era of personalized wellness, OTC brands and retailers must ensure they’re meeting their customers’ dynamic needs, championing personalization across advertising efforts.
Here are three ways to win the wellness journey by crafting a customer-first approach across targeting, activation and measurement.
1. Double down on customer insights and competitive analysis.
For a personalized approach, start by diving deeper into your target audiences to understand what’s driving purchase decisions and the "why" behind their shopping choices. Insights into intent, purchase and visitation patterns are key for uncovering the "why." That fuels improved targeting and provides inspiration for personalized advertising experiences that accurately address shoppers' dynamic needs.
For OTC brands, the focus on value has created an influx of brand challenges as even loyalists are open to lower cost alternatives. The ability to go beyond superficial characteristics and understand what’s driving consumers’ purchase motivations across categories can fuel strategies for overcoming those challenges.
If a brand finds loyal, high-income shoppers are increasingly trading down across categories, they can ensure they craft a value-driven promotion offering discounts on product bundles at select retailers where they’re switching brands to keep those shoppers engaged.
As the marketplace has become saturated with private label brands, celebrity-backed start-ups, new supplement and dietary trends and more, it’s also essential to better understand the competitive landscape.
Retailers, for example, should invest in complementary insights to understand where else your shoppers are going. Are they buying competitors' private label products? Are your loyal customers also stopping by a nearby discount chain to pick up OTC offerings due to a better deal that week?
Enhanced insights help you understand competitive advantages and missed opportunities — like shoppers you might be losing and missing out on — to craft more effective messaging and advertising experiences.
2. Meet shoppers where they are with relevant experiences.
To truly win the wellness journey, brands must incorporate both top- and bottom-of-the-funnel tactics into their marketing strategies. A full-funnel approach ensures you’re not only reaching shoppers while they’re planning their next shopping hauls, but more importantly when they’re actively in market.
If you're an OTC brand and found that consumers stocked up on immunity boosters like Vitamin C and D as well as quick cold and flu remedies right before the holidays last year, consider launching a promotion highlighting a variety of top-performing products to pique their interest this year.
Leverage top-of-the-funnel tactics like social campaigns featuring trusted parent influencers showcasing their go-to product bundles and interactive CTV experiences enabling viewers to create their ideal cold and flu product combinations to drive consideration.
Craft immersive mobile ad experiences that empower shoppers to swipe through and see brief product descriptions with health benefits while they're in-store. Incorporate messaging to showcase benefits including how the product can remedy side effects like dry eyes or dry mouth when taking certain prescriptions or address vitamin deficiencies to relieve persistent symptoms for long-term conditions.
There's no one-size-fits-all approach to health and wellness. Finding unique ways to articulate how your brand can meet dynamic needs across advertising experiences is essential.
3. Drive greater efficiency with improved measurement and optimization.
InMarket found that measurement is a top investment priority this year. When adopting top- and bottom-of-the-funnel strategies, it’s pivotal to have a holistic measurement infrastructure in place that can comprehensively depict the impact of these efforts across crucial KPIs (brand awareness, incremental visits, sales and iROAS) alongside increasing success with inflight optimization.
For personalized strategies, inflight optimization opens up additional opportunities for improving the shopper experience, driving incremental performance and enhancing the impact on overall ROAS. Rather than waiting until post-campaign, marketers can improve inflight success by dynamically testing creatives, offers and call-to-actions. They can shift media placements based on top-performing creatives in different markets and more. It’s no surprise that inflight optimization has proven to increase media effectiveness by 11x.
Take advantage of the innovative solutions on the market to create more meaningful, personalized experiences that truly resonate, empowering your brand to be a winner of the wellness journey.
About the Author
Sharon Glass is InMarket's vice president, practice leader of OTC & Pharma. Championing more than 25 years of customer strategy expertise, Glass has a proven track record in creating deep strategic partnerships, developing customer-centric solutions and successfully leading organizations to reach their full potential.
Glass previously held leadership roles at Cubic and Catalina Marketing, helping thousands of clients drive incremental growth, all while supporting product development and innovation internally to ensure her teams deliver success.
