Four Top PR Tips for Your New Wellness Brand Launch
If you’ve landed on this blog post because you’re researching the imminent launch of your wellness brand, congratulations!
Whether it be meditation apps, dietary supplements, Ayurvedic teas, the demand for wellness products and services has burgeoned, and in response, wellness brands have mushroomed! The landscape is competitive and it’s looking crowded.
If PR can be summed up in four words; ‘the management of reputation,’ we are here to say that this really comes down to the credibility and integrity of your business, and to offer practical and actionable ways for you and your brand to shine in your niche.
Here are our four top tips to integrate into your new wellness business plan.
Make Competitor Analysis a Habit
Competitor analysis may feel like a drag if you already feel that you have established and finessed your offering. We understand how easy it is to get caught in a loop of your own ideas and vision. However, there is a risk of early stagnation in attempting to move your business forward in isolation.
To counter this, cultivate the habit of competitor intelligence to make you more agile as a business; this means regularly checking in on your competitors’ operations, strategies, pricing, branding, messaging, and growth, even their pitfalls, to help you identify your own opportunities for growth.
Gathering information from your competitors is essential to fuelling your momentum and keeping you ahead of the curve, helping you to notice trends that you can capitalise on, proactively cope with shifting sands in the industry, and most importantly, identify competitive gaps that you can fill.
Learn from their strengths and weaknesses and strategise on how you can differentiate yourself.
Don’t Follow the Herd
This is closely linked with competitor analysis; by observing who inhabits the same space as you, you can evaluate those who have resisted the urge to fit the mould against those that are content blending in with the crowd. Who do you want to be?
The busyness of the wellness space is a chance for new brands to double-down on their efforts to truly stand out. Have you noticed how many brands in the wellness industry bear similar branding - from taglines and fonts, to green and leafy logos? If so, it’s important to consider that consumers and press have likely noticed too, and that the novelty of wellness is wearing thin because of identikit branding. Engage with designers - from web to graphic designers - that will challenge industry norms and align with bringing your vision to life.
Reflect on why you started on this journey and what makes it unique, and work on creating the confidence to bring forth that message in a novel way. Maintaining your authenticity is a key component of how you stand out and that should guide the visual and written expression you choose for your brand. We discuss the importance of authenticity for wellness brands in another blog post, which you can read here.
Remember: following what has seemingly worked for similar brands is not a golden ticket to your success.
Become a Leading Voice in Your Field
Earned media placement is the cornerstone of good PR. Earned media placement on third party platforms is coverage for your brand that you haven’t paid for. So how do you earn it? By having something to say, ideally with the credentials to back it up.
Have you founded your brand on the back of your existing credentials as a nutritionist, for example? Integrate your certifications, experiences, and expertise in all that you do, and make establishing yourself as a strong voice in your field part of the long-term vision for your brand. Help lead the conversation!
Savvy wellness brands invest time and effort in directly or indirectly fostering and nurturing relationships within the media including editors, journalists, and influencers with true gravitas. Their goal is to become the go-to brand or expert the media turn to for insightful commentary, product placement, and much more. It is important to be available, responsive, and creative with press enquiries that come your way. If your budget allows, engaging a PR agency with a solid network of contacts in your niche is an invaluable vehicle to connecting your brands’ experts to the press.
In the meantime, maximise your own marketing platforms to weave a story around your products and services; create a blog on your website as a space to educate, inform, grow your community, and spark discourse, and share your nuggets on your socials alongside strong imagery. Stay visible and keep abreast of relevant events, opportunities for speaking engagements, and trade shows; an experienced PR agency will also act as a conduit to these.
Invest in Creating a Buzz
PR is not a one-off event; building and maintaining the energy around your new brand relies on a well-executed plan of action.
Investment in timely press releases, high quality photography, setting a budget for sending out product samples to a priority list of press, and hosting immersive and memorable events can create that crucial buzz in the early stages of your business, helping you plant the seeds for future success.
Besides impressing media, your target audience awaits! Set about creating your ideal customer profile, and kickstart the process of bringing your message and product directly to them. Use your social channels to get people talking about your brand in a fun and interactive way. Even if you have not yet officially launched, utilise posts, stories, and reels to give a sneak-peak of what’s to come.
Early champions of your brand will be inclined to emotionally invest in you, be on the look out for your new product launches, and watch as your business journey unfurls. Your happiest customers will serve as the biggest advocates of your brand in the long-run, which will eventually have a tangible impact on your bottom-line.