Nature Made’s recent marketing initiative with HelloFresh is highly targeted, aiming to place product samples of its probiotic directly in the hands of interested consumers.
The vitamin and supplements brand, known for its yellow labels and brown capsules, is promoting its growing portfolio of gut health vitamins by including a sample of its core product with HelloFresh’s meal kits.
For 12 weeks, July through September, one million HelloFresh customers who chose a meal kit labeled as “gut friendly” will receive a serving of Nature Made’s eight billion CFU probiotic gummy with their order. The kits will also include a Nature Made postcard with gut health education, a discount code and a link to exclusive gut friendly recipes.
Nature Made knows from consumer research that people interested in gut health are looking to do it in a “holistic way,” which includes taking supplements, exercise, stress management and the food they eat, said Kathi Christensen, Director of Brand Activation at Nature Made.
“What we liked about the partnership is that it allows us to pair our science-backed supplements with gut-friendly recipes that inspire real behavioral change,” Christensen said. And working with HelloFresh was a good way to get its product in front of consumers already interested in gut-friendly foods.
Nature Made Taps Cooking Influencer Justine Doiron
In conjunction with the campaign, Nature Made hired cookbook author and social media personality Justine Doiron. The influencer curated the gut-friendly recipe choices on HelloFresh and also created additional gut-friendly recipes that shoppers can view on Nature Made’s website.
“HelloFresh is a brand that’s already in homes across the country, but we wanted to also bring more of a personality and a familiar face to the partnership. And that’s why we tapped Justine Doiron, who’s a bestselling cookbook author,” Christensen said. “She has a strong following on TikTok and Instagram, and through her we were able to reach consumers in a really authentic and approachable way.”
In addition to promoting Nature Made on her social media channels, Nature Made used Doiron as a spokesperson for a paid segment on Good Morning America. Because of her cooking expertise, Doiron spoke about gut health and could represent Nature Made in a natural way, Christensen said.
“She brings a really real human face to the initiative that can be hard for the brand to do without some kind of a spokesperson,” Christensen said. “We could certainly get our employees involved, but this comes really naturally to someone like Justine who’s accustomed to talking in a really public way about food and cooking and nutrition.”
Nature Made has used food influencers before, but this is the first time it’s tapped one on a larger scale and to educate consumers about nutrition.
Goals and ROI for the Campaign
The goal for the campaign is to grow reach, awareness and sales. The brand will measure this through surveys and modeling-based measurement. Once the campaign concludes in September, Nature Made will survey the HelloFresh audience to determine if the sample had an impact.
Nature Made can track sales through its coupon code, although that is only valid on NatureMade.com, which is a small share of its business, she said. She expects the sales lift from the campaign to come from its entire omnichannel ecosystem of retailers that carry its products in stores and online.
“We’re very confident that this will be driving sales for our gut health portfolio, but also for the total brand,” Christensen said. “That’s part of how we drive ROI is that we’re selling these eight gut health products, but we’re also building the relationship between the brand and the consumer that’s going to halo to Nature Made’s total assortment.”
Nature Made paid both HelloFresh to get in front of its audience and Doiron to have her create content and be the spokesperson. It also produced the product samples and flyer materials. The return, however, will still likely be worth the investment, as non-traditional media partnerships in the past have achieved the brand’s target ROI.
“We’ve definitely seen that partnerships for us are able to meet our ROI hurdles on par with the other media tactics within our portfolio,” she said. “That’s given us license to be able to expand into the partnership space, [the fact] that we have the track record of driving results through both traditional and non-traditional media on the brand.”
Why Probiotics Now
Probiotic fiber and the idea of gut health has been around for some time, but consumer interest in the topic has increased in the past decade, she said. Christensen credits this to younger consumers being more open to talking about gut health and their overall wellness, especially on social media.
Gut health is one of the top five segments within Nature Made’s supplements category, and probiotics generate a large amount of sales for the company. But its market share in probiotics is lower than its penetration in multivitamins, minerals and letter vitamins, where it’s had products for a longer period of time.
The marketing initiative should help boost consumer awareness that Nature Made has probiotic products, Christensen said, with the HelloFresh sample as an introduction to the eight gut-health supplements the brand offers, which includes two that it launched this year.
Nature Made’s Evolving Marketing Tactics
Because its products are for a wide demographic of consumers, Nature Made’s marketing tactics also need to be varied in message and channel. So while traditional tactics like TV work well for the brand, it also needs a robust digital strategy that includes connected TV, influencers and social media to reach younger consumers as well.
One recent change Nature Made’s marketing team has to contend with is how consumers seek out information through generative AI. Consumers search for wellness information using AI platforms, such as ChatGPT and Google’s new AI Mode. Previously, Nature Made’s website content could show up in search results. Now, the company has to evolve its content practices to ensure that its brand is showing up across a wide set of platforms, not just traditional Google search results.
“We are evolving our SEO practices to be inclusive of AI and other types of search to ensure that our brand is visible, credible, helpful, wherever consumers are searching for information about wellness and supplements,” Christensen said.
That means instead of having wellness information just on its own website, which is a typical SEO practice for Google or Bing, Nature Made needs to ensure its brand is a source of information where an AI platform would pull it from, such as Reddit, Wikipedia or Instagram.
“We need to think about the total ecosystem of content about and adjacent to our brand that’s feeding AI, not only the content that we’re putting into the world through our website,” she said.
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