To effectively resonate with target audiences, wellness marketing requires an extremely thoughtful, personal and unique approach. Where most other industries can count on special offers and incentives to create motivation, wellness marketing campaigns must pull different levers. Similar to health-based decisions, connecting with audiences requires authenticity, emotional intelligence, and often, multiple touchpoints. Wellness is rarely about a transaction, but rather about making a lifestyle change or embracing a new challenge. Inspiring audiences to take such steps requires comprehensive, insightful wellness marketing strategies.

As a health and wellness marketing agency, Communications Strategy Group (CSG®) uses a unique combination of behavioral insights and research-informed tactics to resonate with audiences along their wellness journey and move the needle for your company.

What Is Wellness Marketing?

Wellness is not just a people business — it’s also an emotional business. Wellness brands are helping their customers make tremendous strides in living well. Their stories are inspiring, transformational and emotional. Target audiences navigating a challenge or seeking a change need to see themselves reflected in the stories that brands share.

Health and wellness marketing requires a comprehensive, replicable approach that aligns your brand identity and mission with your unique audience’s goals and passions. For effective results, wellness professionals should leverage a behavior design-informed approach to marketing that taps into intrinsic motivation to engage audiences based on shared values and insights that spark action.

Why Is Marketing Important for Wellness Companies?

The wellness market is booming — the global wellness market is estimated at more than $1.5 trillion, with annual growth of 5 to 10%. Thanks to consumers who continue to prioritize products and services that improve their health, fitness, nutrition, appearance, sleep and mindfulness, the wellness industry is fast-changing and fast-growing. In fact, recent McKinsey survey research reveals that 79% of consumers believe that wellness is important and 42% consider it a top priority.

The continued rise in consumer interest and purchasing power presents exciting opportunities across wellness sectors and demonstrates the importance of marketing in reaching target audiences. Armed with a breadth of expertise from fitness marketing campaigns and nutrition marketing strategies to leveraging content marketing to make life-changing decisions empowering in the senior living space, CSG’s team of experts helps exceptional clients navigate industry complexities and competition in the following areas:

  • Aging
  • Employee Wellness & Workforce Health
  • Fitness
  • Mental Health
  • Mind & Body Alignment
  • Nonprofits, Associations & Foundations
  • Nutrition

9 Marketing Strategies for Wellness Companies

For organizations searching to transform how they market themselves, generate brand champions and engage with target audiences, here are nine key health and wellness marketing strategies to leverage:

Brand Communications

Your brand is the first thing potential customers will know about you. In the wellness industry, an identifiable, successful brand is something customers will remember long after an ad impression. Effective branding simplifies future planning, streamlines creative work and informs everything from corporate social responsibility initiatives to culture, but it also offers tremendous benefits to the bottom line. Integrated marketing communications planning along consumers’ evolving wellness journey offers brands the opportunity for meaningful and consistent engagement with their target audiences, and ultimately, the chance to make a lasting impression.

Content Marketing

A chance to meet consumers where they are and stay top of mind even when you can’t be face to face, content marketing is an opportunity for wellness brands to provide relevant and useful content that educates, solves problems and clarifies next steps for consumers along their wellness journeys. Considering consumers are 131% more likely to purchase from a company right after they consume early-stage, educational content, a robust content marketing strategy must drive organic traffic, provide ongoing value, build brand awareness and ultimately, cultivate brand champions.

Crisis Communications and Reputation Management

When it comes to crisis situations, it’s not a question of if, but when it will occur for your brand. Whether external or internal, there are myriad forces beyond wellness professionals’ influence that may create challenges. When crisis situations arise, it is critical to have strategic, tailored plans in place of how to respond to effectively communicate to stakeholders and overcome potential setbacks.

Digital Marketing

Asking the right questions is key to successful digital marketing for wellness organizations. Which channels are right for your business? What do your customers need to hear? Where can you get the most bang for your buck? The right strategy will consider these questions to meet your audiences at the right time and with the right message, and leverage data-driven insights to plan and execute digital touch points and experiences at every stage of the customer journey.

Internal Communications

Organizations often overlook internal communications, causing them to miss out on crucial communication alignment opportunities. Internal alignment begets external success — keeping the team engaged and focused on the broader company mission often comes down to open, honest and strategic employee communications, which then flows over to external messaging and customer experiences.

Public Relations

Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room, and public relations is your chance to join important conversations. Effective PR can help you build brand awareness, strengthen brand affinity, promote thought leadership and create demand in the wellness industry marketplace.

Social Media

Social media might consist of short-term content, but it is certainly a long-term strategy. We believe that every piece of content has a job and that every social platform has a purpose. That’s why we use a blend of organic and paid strategies to optimize relevant platforms and infuse social into integrated digital marketing for wellness strategies that span the entire content and consumer lifecycle.

Video Marketing

Easy-to-consume, visual and memorable, video is one of the most diverse and flexible marketing mediums. Video has the ability to engage audiences in a way that no other channel can. For optimal success, video requires careful planning and upfront work, but results in an evergreen marketing campaign asset capable of serving short- and long-term goals.

Website Development

In today’s digital world, customers are won or lost on any given web page. Modern web users expect seamless experiences, responsive sites, mobile apps and other robust digital solutions that make their lives easier. Brands within wellness sectors must offer site functionalities that create a seamless user experience, and site design and copy that guides users to take desired actions and make obvious how to achieve their goals.

Creating a Wellness Marketing Strategy For Your Company

The days of our understanding of health as a purely medical state of being are long gone. Indeed, brands and consumers alike have recognized the growing need for a holistic approach that takes into account our overall wellness. It’s not just how we’re doing, but how we feel. Brands and innovators now work every day to create new consumer products and solutions that help their customers say, “I feel good.”

But even the most incredible brands can experience hurdles rising above the swell of competition and getting their product into the hands of people that need them. Here are four steps to start developing a wellness marketing strategy that will achieve your organization’s goals:

1. Identify your ideal consumer

You can’t create an effective marketing strategy without knowing exactly who you are marketing to. First, you need to develop a client avatar. To identify your audience’s problems and how you can help solve them, be as specific as possible when describing your ideal customer, including age, profession, hobbies and interests, likes/dislikes, main concerns, etc.

2. Build your brand 

Next, it’s time to develop your brand. From personality, colors, logo, website, voice and tone, how do you want consumers to see and interact with your brand?

3. Design your digital presence

Then it’s time to consider which digital marketing channels your brand should prioritize. From email marketing, digital marketing and social media, the opportunities are endless.

4. Get involved in your community

While online platforms are critical for marketing channels, so are community connections. Community marketing focuses on the tangible, physical ways to promote your brand within your local community. From hosting events to partnering with other organizations, community marketing is a pivotal component of an effective wellness marketing strategy.

No matter the size of your organization, an award-winning marketing agency can provide the seasoned expertise and keen perspective to create and execute a personalized wellness marketing strategy that will help you reach your goals.

How Do You Market Wellness?

While the wellness industry is booming from a consumer interest standpoint, it’s also increasingly crowded. Effective marketing for health and wellness requires thoughtful strategy around where and how to compete. Marketing wellness products should utilize digital channels, offer personalized capabilities and storytelling and leverage the power of influencers.

How Do You Sell Wellness Products?

It’s no secret that the wellness sector is getting more competitive. To compete, companies should think critically about wellness marketing strategies to engage consumers and whether an ecosystem model might make sense. Wellness brands should be purposeful about where to play and how to win with an effective delivery model — whether that model is end-to-end ownership, strategic partnerships, outsourcing and co-manufacturing, or marketplaces.

What Is The Future of the Wellness Industry?

The future of wellness is connected and customized. As consumers now value personalization over data privacy, the demand for natural, clean and extremely personalized products will continue to rise. Digital and social channels will become even more influential in reaching — and resonating — with target audiences. And services will become increasingly important — from telemedicine partnerships, online coaching and fitness app subscriptions.

Develop Your Wellness Marketing Strategy With Us

Wellness marketing requires an insightful and personal strategy as unique as each individual wellness brand. Successfully connecting with audiences requires authenticity, emotional intelligence and multiple touchpoints. Contact us today if you’re searching for health and wellness marketing support that leverages behavioral insights and research-informed tactics to move the needle for your company. As an award-winning wellness marketing agency, CSG teams up with wellness professionals to design and execute comprehensive communications plans that align brand identity and mission with target audiences’ goals and passions.