Is it Possible to Sell a Clinically Dosed Product?

In the Sports Nutrition industry, creating a clinically dosed product is the right thing to do.  You can go to sleep at night knowing your customers are getting a quality product without fillers or small quantities of effective ingredients.  However, to create products like this you either have to be prepared to operate on small margins or you have to price your product outside of normal category prices to maintain a healthy business model.

I’ve found that today’s online consumer does their search based on price…..period.  Large specialty websites are well aware of this, which is why you always see merchandising of low priced product and/or aggressive promos for products that definitely don’t live up to an effective product standard, in most opinions.

So how can you create a high-quality product and sell it effectively to maintain a healthy business?

1. Increase your direct to consumer business.

If you have a very good product, boost your direct sales.  This is done through strong lead generation, effective social media marketing, an active website and creating quality content.  You can safely price your products in category standards (ex Pre- Workout $29.99) if you are selling directly from your website.  This price may be impossible if you are trying to sell through distribution, Amazon (with their fees) or any other ecommerce site with their discounts off of wholesale.

1. Double down on the marketing.

If you want to clinically dose your product and work with resellers, you must come in with a plan of how to market it.  In fact, you should do several months’ worth of marketing prior to the release to see what kind of interest you can generate in the product.  If you have to sell a pre-workout, for example, at $39.99 to make solid margins through resellers, you need to make sure people want this product prior to its release otherwise you won’t have any resellers.  Creating quality content is key.  When selling through the internet you need to rely on video as your sales rep.  Educational and entertaining videos may just be enough to get someone to spend an extra $10 on a high quality pre workout with 10 less servings.  Getting a manager at a brick and mortar store to push your product may be a challenge, so don’t bank on it.  Consumers don’t go into the store to browse any longer, they go in with an agenda because they’ve done their homework already. Create a scenario where they go into shops asking for your product.

In summation, don’t create a clinically dosed product unless you have a strategy to take it to market.  Sure, creating these types of products is the best thing to do, but be sure to have a B2B and B2C strategy and if at all possible generate enough content prior to the release to get people lined up to buy.  This will not only help direct sales, but will generate enough interest on the reseller level where you don’t have to chase down customers.