The demand for organic products has skyrocketed over the last year. There has been a fundamental shift in how the general pubic views sustainable goods, not just from a personal wellness perspective, but at a sociopolitical level too. As a seller you’re faced with an unprecedented opportunity to grow from a small to medium business to an enterprise operation. This growth is steeped not just in product integrity, but in the communications employed to reach the masses. You already know that there are certain regulatory guidelines to follow when it comes to your marketing message. What keeps you up at night however, is how to get your products in front of the eyes of a greater number of conscious consumers amidst the most competitive time in history. More importantly you need to make sure that the strategy is both scalable and sustainable as your company grows. Here’s what you can do.
Top 5 Online Marketing Tips for Sellers of Natural Health Products
I. Organic Traffic for Organic Goods
There’s only one way to ensure that your online marketing is truly sustainable – organic search. The online search taking place for organic products in your market is as high as it has ever been. It is not just trending it is sustaining and no longer considered to be a luxury good in many households. Getting your website and its product pages to rank and maintain prime positioning on Google and BING is the key to bringing in customers today and tomorrow. But you need to play by the regulations set forth by search engines and the algorithms that fuel their results pages (SERPs).
For one, you must update your website to ensure that it’s free of functional problems (navigation, etc.) and technical issues (page loading, etc.). This is not only critical to the visitor experience, Google demands it. As of the May 2021 Google Page Experience Update websites that provide an optimal experience to visitors (and Google Search bots) will enjoy an improvement in rank (all else equal) whereas those who do not may see it fall significantly, or never attain it in the first place. If you are reading this before the May 2021 update, act now. If you are reading this after the May 2021 update, act even faster.
Beyond the development work needed to prepare your website for sustainable organic rank, you must publish original, fresh, and frequently updated content. In other words, consider your content the same way that you do your products, and you’ll be just fine – as long as it has been search engine optimized.
Lastly, you need to be ready to react if/when there is a noticeable drop in rank for any of your customer acquisition pages. View our guide on what to do if this happens.
II. GMB for Non-GMO
For those that sell natural non-GMO foods and organic products in a physical space Google My Business (GMB) is an essential online marketing tool. It is necessary to rank on the Google Map for your locales – the ultimate real estate on SERPs. GMB drives the public to walk, cycle, or pilot their electric vehicles over to your or your vendors (more on that below) place of business to make a purchase. If you have set up your GMBs profiles but are not getting prime Google Map position contact us for an audit. If you haven’t set them up yet, make sure that it gets done right from the get-go.
III. Grow on Social
Organic products thrive on social media. But in order to get influencers talking about your goods your brand needs to be active daily. This is not an industry where once-a-week posts cut it.
Visuals are very important. Be sure to build a library of high-resolution and eye-catching images not just of your goods, but people using and enjoying them. This catalogue will give you what you need for daily posts and can be appended to post-links that send users on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram back to your website’s product pages where purchases can be made. On the latter note, you can do the same on Facebook Shops, which allows you to sell your organic products on Facebook and Instagram. In addition, leverage the updated keyword search features on Instagram to get your items to pop up on user feeds.
Social media is also important if your products are being sold at farmers markets and events throughout the city or country. Communications on these channels will keep the public informed about where to find your goods offline.
IV. Optimize the eComm Experience
All of the traffic in the world won’t matter if users are delivered with a frustrating experience when the time comes to buy products on your website. From organic energy bars and protein powders to sustainable clothing and accessories the online purchasing process should be seamless. Follow our guide to optimizing the eCommerce experience and please update the shipping information on your website for greater transparency. You’ll see conversion rates skyrocket when you do.
V. Guide Your Vendors
To grow from a small or medium seller to an enterprise operation, you need to get your organic products in brick and mortar stores across Canada. The list of natural health retailers is long and growing, and many of them offer online sales. But the natural health industry has traditionally been a slow adopter when it comes to digital transformation. For this reason you should take on a role not just as a supplier, but an advisor when it comes to how they sell your products online. The tips that we have shared with you above can be shared with them. In addition, provide them with everything in the following list:
- The keywords used to sell your products in their e-store.
- The product descriptions accompanying each of your products in their e-store. Remember, they must be unique (by about 30%) from the descriptions used by your other vendors for SEO purposes.
- High quality images (in size, resolution, and meta-data) accompanying each of your products in their e-store.
- Details of how they should (or should not) represent your products when sharing them on their social networks.
And if your vendors don’t outsource online marketing, encourage them to bring in outside support.
Strategis Consulting Group has years of experience in working with organizations that promote natural health and organic living. Contact us today for a FREE audit of your website, social networks, and digital marketing strategy.
Another Article You Might Like: