Creating a Sub-Category with "Spore Based" Probiotics
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Background
Just Thrive Probiotics came to us with a unique challenge. They wanted to scale the paid advertising for their line of health and wellness products. The problem was, the efficacy of their products came from a little known delivery technology for probiotics into the human gut microbiome. Their products (known as spore based probiotics) were very different from the run-of-the-mill probiotics most consumers were familiar with.
The main issue in educating consumers was delivering the message that these products were very different from what consumers were used to in an entertaining and engaging manner. Like many health and wellness supplement brands Just Thrive was focused on lowering their new customer cost per acquisition. Luckily, they had the products and the technology to make it happen.
Initial Account Takeover
When we first started working on their main paid acquisition channel they had been fluctuating between a $200-$300 CPA and had not been able to scale the account spend past 50k. One of the issues we immediately recognized was a lack of solid positioning within their category. The probiotic category is crowded and extremely competitive both on store shelves and in terms of the available ads inventory. In order to lower the CPAs we needed creative and messaging that was compelling and supported by an outstanding offer.
One aspect of Just Trhive’s growth that was already working in our favor was their high repurchase rates. Customers who were trying the spore based probiotics were sticking around and proving to be increasingly valuable over the long term. So unlike many companies we work with, retention wasn’t an issue and they already had some incredible subscription offers. We therefore focused entirely on lowering the new customer cost per acquisition.
Our focus was recruiting influencers from within our ecosystem and those who the Thrive Probiotics team could convince to come on board. We quickie ramped their influencer content production efforts and integrated 10 well known category specific influencers who’s audiences were already exposed to probiotics or paying money for products in the category. This level of sophistication in consumers and familiarity with alternative health and wellness made these audiences immediately productive. Within 3 months of starting with Just Thrive the CPA was sitting around $100 and their account was over 100k/mo in spend.
Project Focus
The focus on this project started with integrating an influencer marketing effort into the companies growth process. This process consisted of aggregating all the new and existing contacts we could get together between our team’s connection to many category specific influencer and those Thrive was familiar with. After contract negotiations we began rapidly testing influencers before arriving at the long-term partnerships that were used to scale Thrive’s paid ads.
Integral to influencer marketing is scripting and editing the content that will be used. To assist in those efforts we provided guidance to new influencers we hadn’t worked with in the past. In some cases we provided specific scripts for influencers who were uncertain about how to create content that outlined the differentiating factors that made Thrive special.
Once we had the raw content we needed that outlined many of Thrive’s differentiating factors it was up to our editors to bring the content to life. They’re extensive experience in the nuanced positioning needed for supplements in the alternative health and wellness space resulted in fast traction on the ads platforms we were running (drastically reducing CPAs). Some examples of our early creative efforts can be seen below.
Building Brand Equity
The main change in Just Thrive’s business is their growth teams understanding of influencer outreach. They recognize that having a pipeline of distribution partners is the critical level to pull when you are trying to target a specific subset of a broader market (like alternative health and wellness). Within markets like these it’s easiest to focus on people who are already aware of a problem (in this case delivery of probiotics to the gut) so you quickly introduce your unique solution.
The influencers Just Thrive has partnered with through their own outreach and their partnership with ATTN Labs has allowed them to evangelize their unique solution to this probiotics problem with people that are looking to solve this problem. Category specific influencers provide ready audiences and targeting data to access these specific consumers fast.
With a system in place to sell to problem aware consumers, Just Thrive has freed up more space to creatively solve the problem of educating the broader probiotics marketplace about why their solution matters. Towards this end, they are able to rely on the same playbook they used along with ATTN Labs to recruit category specific influencers as they expand out into the wider alternative health and wellness marketplace.
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