The Social Media Marketing & Communications guide for Natural Health and Wellness insiders.

How Keith Ferrazzi Used a Marketing Blunder To STRENGTHEN His Brand

FLUUUUSH. That’s the sound of your hard-won brand reputation going down the toilet.

How can you bounce back from a marketing campaign that turned your fans off? And how do you balance your brand’s inherent humanity and generosity with the need to motivate customers to take ACTION?

Read the following story (and lessons learned) from one of my mentors: Keith Ferrazzi. I call him a mentor, but truth is – I’ve never met him. He’s a mentor because he’s taught me so much over the years through his generous blog posts and other writing.

He’s been so valuable to me that I forgave him immediately when he started sending out cheezy emails promoting his teaching program (although I have to admit, I did turn off my listening ears).

Buyer Personas: What Natural Health Businesses Need to Learn to Sell Effectively

Who are your customers REALLY?

Trying to target a generalized market leads to generic messaging that fails to resonate with anyone.

How well do you actually know your target market? Do you know the names of your top 10 customers? Do you know what they eat for breakfast, what they’re most afraid of in life and what they hope to do in their old age?

Too many businesses (B2C and B2B) in the health food industry sketch a broad composite of a single target demographic, then spend a fortune thrusting marketing and advertising “out there” hoping to entice prospects. Problem is, you likely have at least three distinct types of people that are perfectly suited to buy from you, each for different reasons.

Creating Buyer Personas helps solve this problem. Tech companies spearheaded the concept, and it goes something like this:

What MommyBloggers Can Teach Natural Health Brands About Marketing

Nummies Bras Website - simple and effective

I’ve always admired so-called “MommyBloggers.” They get it. They know how to leverage their brands through social media. They engage their networks with apparent ease, transparency and effectiveness. They make it look so easy, like it just comes naturally. Maybe it does. After all…

• Moms like to socialize and talk to each other. When a product or idea helps them, they tend to evangelize and share it with others.
• Mom oriented businesses often grow out of the personal experience, passion and values of visionary founders. This helps them speak clearly and effectively to the needs of their target market.
• Parenting and childhood are universal themes.

Um, are you seeing any parallels to the world of natural health and wellness?

• Natural health enthusiasts also evangelize products that have enriched, changed or saved their lives.
• Natural health businesses also often grow out of the personal experience, passion and values of visionary founders.
• Health is also a universal theme.

But many natural health businesses struggle with web strategy, social media and online marketing.

What are mommybloggers doing different? What can we learn from them?

I Went to the Vancouver Health Show 2010 and I Have Two Questions

I scored tickets to last weekend’s Vancouver Health Show at the new convention centre, so I brought my family down to have a look around.

The first thing I thought was “Did anyone actually pay to get in here?” (No, that’s not one of my two questions.) The tickets had a $10 price-tag on them, but no-one at the door actually checked my ticket. Doesn’t exactly add to one’s “perceived value” of an event.

I headed straight to the back of the hall to see Michael Murray ND speak on the topic of his new book: “What The Drug Companies Won’t Tell You And Your Doctor Doesn’t Know.” His information was well organized and his arguments were compelling. ie – Drug companies are grossly misleading the public, government agencies are largely in their pocket, and the natural health industry is the strongest force currently taking them to task. Preaching to the choir in my case, but I gleaned some good specific examples and felt grateful that this man is on his mission.

Question #1:

Why would gifted health professionals and spokespersons be in virtual HIDING from the people that matter most to their success?

Rethinking Viral: Why Viral Video Doesn’t Always Live Up to the Hype

Re-Thinking Viral Video

“Let’s make this go viral.”

“We need a viral video!”

“How can we use viral marketing to promote this?”

When people talk about a video or an idea “going viral” they generally mean that it spreads to many people quickly and cheaply, that it builds it’s own steam – without a lot of investment from whoever spawned it. Obviously that’s a very attractive prospect to marketers.

But with all the hype about viral, some very important points can get missed.

Here are two problems with the whole “viral” concept:

Twitter for Business – CNHR Article for natural health retailers

Natural Health Brands: The 3 Types (Which Type Are You?)

Natural Health Brands: The 3 Types (Which Are You?)

I’ve identified 3 core Brand Types in the Natural Health and Wellness industries. The TYPE of brand you are should inform your marketing and communications.

The 3 types:

1. Lifestyle
2. Personality
3. Solution

Lifestyle brands appeal to the customer’s experience and sense of self. They say “We know you. We share your values.” Whole Foods Market is a Lifestyle brand. They have created a shopping experience that appeals very specifically to the preferred life experience and world view of their target market.

Personality brands are built upon the status and like-ability of a celebrity or health expert. They say “You trust me. Maybe you even love me. You know who I am and you want to be associated with me.” Andrew Weil is a Personality brand. When he puts his name on something it becomes valuable.

Solution brands simply solve a problem. They say “We know what ails you and we have the best solution.” ColdFX is a solution brand. They’ve built a reputation for solving the problem of colds. Period.

How Information Technology (IT) Is Different From Social Media

Do You Have a Social Media Map?

Imagine you’re trying to get to… Disneyland. You’re in a car. You ask a guy for directions. He says, “Disneyland? Oh, that’s easy. Here’s how you get to Disneyland: Press down lightly on the accelerator while you slowly release the clutch. This introduces fuel to the carburetor and engages the transmission…”

Half an hour later you’re getting a pretty thorough understanding of combustion engine mechanics. But you’re not any closer to Disneyland.

Twitter, Facebook, Blogging, YouTube… are all tools with mechanical aspects. Certainly you need to know how to use them, just like if you’re going to drive to Disneyland you need to know how to use a car. BUT – an understanding of mechanics is NOT the same as having clear directions to your destination.