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Healthcare
Digital Marketing
Life Nutrition — Meeting demand with brand marketing strategy.
Life Nutrition — Meeting demand with brand marketing strategy.
Challenge
Getting the Word Out Through Influencer Marketing
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity,” according to the Roman Philosopher Seneca. Something similar happened to Life Nutrition, an American-made, Hong Kong-based health supplement brand, though their success story isn’t about luck. It’s about strategy.
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a spike in demand for health and wellness products all over the globe, and Life Nutrition too found a new wave of people keen on boosting their immune system and improving their overall health. They approached Branding Records for a health and wellness marketing campaign as well as brand strategy.
What they needed was a plan of attack to harness and leverage the increase in audience interest. They needed to acquire a larger share of voice preferably in relevant, reach-amplifying social media circles, alignment of digital strategy with offline marketing efforts, and a novel and unique way to deliver the figurative killing blow that completes the holistic brand marketing strategy.
In terms of gaining brand recognition, few methods can yield results as favourable as properly executed influencer marketing via key opinion leaders (KOLs). Through advice from Branding Records,Life Nutrition leveraged campaigns with celebrities relevant to health and wellness brands and the sector at large to spread brand awareness.
The central KOLs that grew Life Nutrition’s brand recognition were Maria Cordero and Wai Wai.
A household name in Hong Kong and particularly well-received among local Cantonese housewives, Maria Cordero’s opinionated personality is outdone only by her credibility relating to cooking recipes and household products.
Cordero became the face of Life Nutrition.She graced primetime TV with well-timed ads, became a significant part of relevant campaigns for events like Mother’s Day, and was also sponsored by LifeNutrition on her own TV show.
Cordero’s roots are more from traditional media, while Wai Wai’s were from viral internet circles. A famous butcher of viral acclaim in Hong Kong who’s never without a face mask, Wai Wai was perfect for an online campaign and email marketing strategy meant to build up to a climactic “face reveal”commercial — a concept originating from online influencer and Youtube celebrity culture.
Solution
Aligning Online Strategy with Offline Efforts
Cordero and Wai Wai covered traditional and online media, but there needed to be strategic alignment between online and offline efforts to create a whole that’s more than the sum of its parts.
Branding Records helped Life Nutrition with everything that had to do with digital branding strategy. This spanned content creation, digital backend systems, and conversion optimization, among other fronts. Branding Records also united the online and offline halves of the campaign into a cohesive and seamless strategy, merging online channels such as email marketing with offline ones such as TV and in-store ads.
Traditional TV Spots With Ad Retargeting and Repurposing for Online Media
On the traditional media front, MariaCordero recommended Life Nutrition products and showcased her own discount code on her night time cooking show in Hong Kong. Bolstered by ads targeting users who searched for Cordero on Facebook, Instagram, and Google — as well as people who visited a relevant landing page — Life Nutrition sales increased practically overnight.
Additionally, Cordero continued to recommend products during parts of her multiple live streams. Clips ofCordero’s live streams recommending Life Nutrition products were also repurposed for advertising, intentionally localized with effects and animation catering specifically to the tastes of the local target audience. The resulting video media used emphatically positive elements such as Cordero’s own credibility, Life Nutrition branding and slogans, and favourable reviews from real people to deliver truly uplifting brand messaging.
Building a Sales Funnel From a Face Reveal
On the online media front, the approach hinged on Wai Wai’s massive viral fame and the fact that he’s never shown his face. GIF advertisements teased Wai Wai’s face reveal and led people to a signup page for announcements and discounts. Leads generated were retargeted with ads and nurtured via email marketing until the much-awaited face reveal, after which more discounts and promos campaigns were run.
On the night of the premiere of Wai Wai’s face reveal commercial, the viral butcher trended #1 on entertainment news on social media, further pushing visits and signups for Life Nutrition.
Of course, the hype didn’t stop with the face reveal. Social media conversations and new, even more evocative media with Wai Wai’s actual face allowed Branding Records to retarget search users onFacebook, Google, and Instagram.
Two weeks after the reveal, Life Nutrition was also able to entice users who interacted with the campaign to re-engage with the brand through special discount promotions. The Wai Wai campaign successfully converted interested people twice, well after the build-up and reveal, while also reflecting how Life Nutrition appreciates its audiences with exclusive discounts specifically for their use.
The Biggest Marketing Alignment Challenge: The HKBPE
Among the trickiest vehicles of marketing to coordinate from a two-pronged online and offline approach is a live on-location event, such as the Hong Kong Brands and Products Expo Overview or HKBPE. Held annually as a discounted market for visitors, HKBPE presented a distinct opportunity for a new advertising strategy.
So Life Nutrition set up a booth and specifically engaged their target audience of people who are over 40 years of age with families. The booth’s purpose was twofold: a sales stand and a user-generated content (UGC) collection point. At Branding Records’ counsel, Life Nutrition collected iPhone footage of visitors at their booth to use for ad campaigns.
The resulting video collected genuine, favourable brand responses from real people, showcasing Life Nutrition products and benefits in a positive light. The beauty of UGC is that the content is not only free but is also excellent to highlight positive social vetting of the brand.
All in all, the HKBPE served as an excellent organic touchpoint where honest positive opinions from real people could be leveraged to establish brand credibility and drive conversions. It was the foundation for the merging of offline and online channels in the service of a brand marketing strategy that leveraged a real-life event and UGC.
Outcome
Personalization as the Coup de Grace
As luck would have it, the final piece of the puzzle was just waiting to be tapped. Life Nutrition had an already existing tool that was fairly novel and unique but under utilized: a personalization quiz.
With Branding Record’s help, the quiz went from a curiosity that had nothing to do with Life Nutrition’s acquisition funnel to a central piece in its pipeline. It turns out the company’s audience, which was keen on health and wellness, also found it quite appealing to be given personalized recommendations based on the quiz and were more than willing to part with their lead information to get it.
Life Nutrition’s initially straight forward acquisition funnel was energized by the addition of the personalized recommendation quiz as a lead magnet. Instead of target audiences going from ads to landing pages to conversion, they were instead engaged by ads, clicked through to take the quiz, and then emailed their personalized results and customized products that match.
They can then click through from there to a product landing page with much higher chances to convert, given that the leads are already practically sales qualified.
Better yet, conversion campaign strategies were shifted from marketing messaging to more educational and informational.This way, interested people who took the quiz, submitted their email, and received personalized recommendations went through the entire sales funnel without a single manual interaction point up to becoming sales qualified when they click through to the product landing page.
Even then, every lead that didn’t convert immediately was already in the system, ready to be re-engaged with relevant, timely offers down the line through educational content, promotion announcements, and of course upselling.
This strategic pivot was so successful thatBranding Records noted a 6.6 Marketing Efficiency Ratio on metrics tracked by their analytics. That meant that for every HKD 6,000 invested in the campaign, Life Nutrition got HKD 40,000 back.
Brand Marketing Strategy, Not Luck
If Seneca was right and luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, Life Nutrition’s story is what happens when an opportunity is leveraged through sound branding strategy. Since working with Branding Records, the company’s conversion rate increased by a healthy, pun intended, 34%.
Life Nutrition’s advertising revenue also skyrocketed from HKD 20,000 to HKD 140,000 — a 700% increase in performance — but those are just the immediate and tangible stats.
Arguably much more important and harder to assess: Life Nutrition was able to reach out and touch the lives of millions of people by giving them access to personalized health supplements at a time when they needed them most.
