Health Professionals: Help Us Help You

Thousands of nutritionists, physicians, nurses, dietitians, fitness instructors, and other health professionals have opted in to receive programs through PulseConnect. Why? Because we not only tell them about healthy brands, educating them on the specific health benefits of a product, but we also provide them with educational materials, product samples, and coupons so they can naturally recommend products to their patients and clients when relevant.

If this sounds dull to you, you don’t know health professionals like we do. Having worked with them for over 18 years, we know that they like more information, not less. We know that they want marketing material that’s primarily paper-based. And we know the types of information that they find most helpful. 

And as much as it helps the brands we work with sell products, what we provide to health professionals actually helps them do their job.

They discover new products.

Health professionals do their best to keep up with new products, scientific findings, studies, and surveys. But unless brands make an intentional and repeated effort to communicate with them, their products or the benefits of their products will likely go undiscovered. 

“Through PulseConnect, I’ve discovered new products, and it’s nice to have that firsthand knowledge and be able to try the product,” said Gina Crome, the founder of Lifestyle Management Solutions and a PulseConnect member. “For me, it’s the part I like most about the network itself because I find it really hard to make a recommendation if I don’t know anything about the product or haven’t tried it myself.”

Being able to try the products is an important next step after discovery. Katrina Howard, a retail dietitian who works at Hy-Vee and advises CrossFit athletes, says, “I like being able to try products before I make a recommendation. Sometimes, you hear about healthy foods and get excited, but then they taste like dirt.”

They (really) understand the health benefits.

For good reason, health professionals are some of the smartest, most curious, and engaged health & wellness consumers. They want to understand the detailed health benefits of your brand’s products. Give them the science behind the packaging labels so that they can help sort through, with their clients, the mess of health information shared by well-meaning friends, family, and sometimes brands themselves.

“I get a lot of questions about GMOs and artificial sweeteners,” says Howard. “People hear from friends or the internet these terrible things about GMOs and artificial sweeteners, and a lot of it is just wrong. Some people don’t know what GMOs are, but think that they need to avoid them entirely. It just comes down to a lot of misinformation online.”

Kelly Wolschon, a registered dietitian who works with dialysis patients and pregnant women, says, “We often discuss the science behind the claims. The people I counsel are not afraid to get a little bit of science background to help them better understand the claims.”

They can recommend a specific brand.

Stickney Brook Yoga by raganmd

When health professionals can help clients by recommending a product available at their local grocery store, both parties benefit. The client feels more in control of their health outcomes, and the professionals are able to offer a tangible solution.  

“I always recommend brands by name,” says Amy Kubal, a registered dietitian. So does yoga teacher Stacey Green: “If I am aspiring to be an example to my students, pointing to a particular brand I actually believe in and/or use is very helpful.”

They get materials to share.

Though they could recommend that their patients or clients visit a website to learn more about a product or brand, what are the chances the consumer will actually do so? By the time they’re online next, they’ve likely forgotten the URL or the name of the brand to search. This is one reason why old-fashioned printed materials are so effective.

“I use the materials in a one-on-one setting with clients, where they apply. I also like to share the educational information and samples at events in the community that I attend, like health fairs.” That’s Kubal again. Crome appreciates the printed marketing materials, too: “Since I do a lot of public speaking, the materials we get from PulseConnect have been a great resource to hand out at my talks.”

The ultimate goal of this repeated, detailed communication from brands is to strengthen the existing trust and faith consumers have in their health professionals. As a registered dietician and world-class triathlete, Rachel Chambers says, “Patients can tell whether you’re sincere and honest if you truly believe in what medicines you’re sharing.” Especially when that medicine is the food they eat.

More Than Anything Else, Consumers Want to Eat Less Sugar

A recent study by Leatherhead Food Research found that nearly half of American consumers have made it a priority to eat less sugar. In fact, it was the #1 dietary goal of American consumers in 2017. As consumers have become more aware of what they’re putting in their bodies, the food industry has, by necessity, become more consumer-driven.

GELATO.

The increased focus on sugar reduction in new innovations and reformulations is one example of this, as is the addition of added sugar to the new Nutrition Facts label. It is clear that consumer preferences are constantly changing and when they do, the CPG industry must adapt to meet these needs. 

“They want the food and beverage industry to help them achieve their goals. It is vital that manufacturers and retailers take note of these demands and find innovative ways to address them.”

— Chris Wells, Leatherhead Food Research Managing Director

So, if the food industry is indeed becoming a more consumer-driven industry, what does this mean for marketers of healthy brands? Is your brand ready for this shift? How will you alter your marketing approach? What impact will these evolving consumer preferences have on the way you talk about and position your brand? 

For now, consumers have spoken. They want less sugar. It’s up to the industry to make its move.

Why Marketing Healthy Brands to Health Professionals is a Must, not a Might

Marketers who tap into the influence that health professionals have with a brand’s target audience are bound to see results. Because health professionals are some of the most effective influencers around. 

But why, specifically, should healthy brands market to consumers through this group? Keep reading. You may be surprised by how obvious the answer is.

WOMAN TALKING WITH HER DOCTOR

1. Their interactions with consumers are predictable.

Health professionals talk to consumers every day about a range of health topics: digestive health, early pregnancy, sports injuries, first foods for baby, weight loss, and so on. We know when these conversations are going to happen because consumers make appointments. 

The key for you as a marketer is twofold:

• Know which conversation is most relevant to your brand
• Provide health professionals with the most relevant information about your brand for that context

For example, if your target consumer is moms of babies under a year old, then you absolutely want to be part of the conversation during a 6- or 9-month well visit to the pediatrician.

2. Their conversations with consumers are repeatable.

Once you have identified the conversation to be part of, you can be sure that health professionals are having that same conversation over and over again—and with unique patients and clients. The “multiplier effect” is one of the reasons why marketing through health professionals is so powerful. 

Build a relationship of trust and credibility with a health professional having the conversation you want to be part of and then allow them to have that conversation with hundreds, and eventually thousands, of consumers. 

The trick is to keep your brand top of mind so that a health professional thinks of it—and not another brand—when recommending solutions to patients and clients. Just as their conversations with consumers are repeated, so should your conversations with them. Provide the right kind of education with frequency, and you will earn those repeat conversations and recommendations.

3. Their relationships with consumers are personal.

Consumers choose their health professionals, and each conversation they have is tailored to their specific need. Not only that, but the health professional your target chooses to talk to may be the only person who knows about that specific need. This relationship, between patient and professional, is very personal.

In this vulnerable setting, the consumer has a heightened health awareness and is predisposed to receiving the message. Your healthy brand could be a part of that message.

4. Their conversations about specific health needs are ownable.

There’s a good chance that other brands aren’t making the kind of effort needed—providing the type of educational information necessary, reaching out often enough, providing samples and coupons, etc.—to make it into these predictable, repeatable, and personal conversations between health professionals and their clients. 

There’s no clutter. No competition. It’s a one-brand show waiting to happen. Healthy brands who engage with marketing professionals consistently and with the right materials can own these conversations. 

Health Professionals: They’re not Your Typical Influencers (But They’re More Effective)

You may have read about the disaster that was the Fyre Festival last month. No? How about the controversial cover of Vogue India? Or that Pepsi commercial? All three were considered a form of influencer marketing, and all three featured Kendall Jenner. 

The trifecta prompted this article in The New York Times suggesting that influencer marketing is on its way out if for no other reason than the trouble it can get you in—“you” being the influencer and the brand. It was one of several recent articles questioning the effectiveness and addressing the challenges of influencer marketing.

But we’re not worried. We work with the most effective “influencers” in the health & wellness industry, and not one article questioned their trustworthiness, value, or credibility. In fact, the opposite was reported. 

The influence that health professionals have over consumers’ purchasing decisions remains outside of most marketing conversations, especially conversations about digital and social media marketing. Why? Maybe because most marketers don’t consider them influencers.

But they are.

Why aren’t health professionals typically considered influencers?

When marketers hear the word “influencer,” they automatically think of people like Kendall Jenner and the use of strictly online communications. That’s because the term “influencer” assumes a robust social media presence and an impressive number of followers.

Influencer marketing also assumes that the person driving a brand’s message using the power of their own personal brand is admired by potential customers but not necessarily respected as an expert in the industry. 

Neither of these is true when it comes to health professionals, whose primary form of communication with consumers is face-to-face, who may not have a single social media account, and who may be the most knowledgeable expert your target consumer knows. 

What’s so special about health professionals?

People trust other people more than they trust brands. Brands have learned to leverage this trust by paying people to say great things about their products (sponsored content). This has happened most often on social media, where one person can reach thousands or even millions with just one post. Some health professionals use social media, but that’s not where they are most influential. 

Three qualities make physicians, nutritionists, dietitians, and other allied health professionals the ideal marketing influencers:

1. They’re seen as trusted experts. The media does a good job bombarding consumers with advice about nutrition, diets, exercise, and other health information. So much so that consumers are confused. But study after study shows they trust their hand-picked health professional to know what’s best for them.
2. They communicate with consumers one-on-one, face-to-face. Millions of social media impressions can’t begin to compete with the strength of this interaction.
3. They have a two-way relationship with consumers. Consumers share things with their dietitians, nurses, and personal trainers that they may not share with anyone else, even their closest friends, family members, or spouse. A blogger will never, no matter how well they write, have this kind of relationship with a reader. 

How can brands/marketers take advantage of this unique influence?

The only way to use the unparalleled influence of health professionals is to make sure that your brand is a part of these face-to-face conversations by being in the office with the professional and their patient. That’s tricky. These conversations are physically happening in what is often called the “real world,” and they are happening behind closed doors. All the likes and retweets in the world can’t help you there. 

You must educate health professionals about your brand and the health & wellness benefits of your products. That’s the only way to ensure they are recommended, much less mentioned. If brochures, pamphlets, coupons, or samples are made available, even better. 

Let’s appropriate some military-speak to drive this home: Health professionals are the ground troops of influencer marketing for health & wellness brands. Just imagine what they can do with air support from your social media and digital strategies. Your target audience? They’ll get your message.

What Marketers Should Really Take Away From the 2017 IFIC Survey

The International Food Information Council publishes their Food and Health Survey results every year in a long, detailed report. And every year, we devour it. It’s chock-full of information about how consumers define “healthy” foods, what they are looking for in healthy foods, and what motivates their purchase decisions. If you’re a marketer of a healthy brand, the Food and Health Survey can offer some fascinating, and often surprising, insights into how consumers think about health and wellness.

If you haven’t had time to read the IFIC survey results yet—or even if you have—we wanted to share with you the five things we found most compelling and consequential for marketers of healthy brands.

Our Take on Five IFIC Findings That Health & Wellness Brands Should Know About

1. Consumers (still) trust health professionals most.

Consumers want to be healthy, but they are overwhelmed by information that can be superficial, conflicting, and often deceptive. Though their primary source of health information is friends and family, they don’t ultimately trust the information that comes from this group. And they trust TV personalities and the media even less.  

The IFIC report once again shows that consumers rely on their personal healthcare professionals—like dietitians, nutritionists, physicians, personal trainers, and more—for trusted information. And not just as adults but through every stage of life (though less so in young adulthood). 

Unlike social media posts or interviews with health experts, face-to-face conversations between consumers and health professionals drive consumer action. How do we know? Because for the past 18 years, we’ve been putting healthy brands at the center of these face-to-face interactions and watching consumers turn those recommendations into purchases at the grocery store. In one recent program, 70% of consumers who had received brand information from a health professional in a face-to-face interaction said they would definitely buy the brand in the future.

2. Health-conscious consumers want more information, not less.

According to the IFIC survey, consumers most frequently define healthy foods by what they do and do not contain. They are looking for foods high in the nutrients and components they want, and free from the artificial ingredients and preservatives they don’t. Less important to consumers? Catch-all terms like “natural” or “non-GMO.” With unclear direct health benefits and a myriad of possible meanings, they have little impact on consumers.

Marketers, this means you should educate consumers and the health professionals they go to for advice. (We recently wrote about this on our blog.) Dig in. Go beyond the health headline.

3. If you’re a brand, you have a default health halo. Use it to your advantage.

The IFIC results show that consumers are more likely to believe a brand name product is healthier than its generic equivalent, even when the Nutrition Facts label is identical. 

Why is that? We think that consumers may associate higher quality, better ingredients, greater nutrition, and/or functional benefits with branded foods versus their generic counterparts. Brands, you have a unique opportunity to highlight your health and wellness bona fides — consumers already perceive them as somewhat healthier. Build on this perception.

4. Consumers are telling you what they want—are you listening?

Only 14% of consumers say they are following a specific eating pattern, whether that’s eating a paleo diet, going vegetarian, or following Weight Watchers. You know what they are doing? Taking small steps to better health. Once again, trends come and go, but what’s realistic and achievable to consumers are the small steps they can take every day to eat a healthier diet.

As a marketer, you should take that finding and run with it. Forget jumping on the latest trendy bandwagon. Instead focus on how your brand meets consumers where they want to play—in the land of baby steps, not rigid diets or unattainable ideals.

5. Stop worrying about a certain four-letter word.

Not too long ago, some brands stopped using the word “diet” and refocused their marketing efforts on healthy eating patterns and “ideal” weight management. Lean Cuisine even launched a “diet” blocker—a web browser extension that masked the words “diet” and “dieting” in online content.

Well, consumers just want to lose weight, no matter what we call their efforts. According to the 2017 IFIC survey, wanting to lose weight was the number one motivator of changes in eating habits. And 1 in 3 consumers says that weight loss is their most desired benefit from foods or nutrients. 

Health and wellness brands that help consumers meet this goal stand to gain from their efforts. No need to complicate this one. Consumers want to lose weight, so help them.

Read more about the IFIC survey results in The Washington Post, or download all 68 pages for yourself here.

How to Market to Healthcare Professionals: Follow David Ogilvy’s Advice

Long before the Internet and pocket computers, advertising tycoon David Ogilvy said, “The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be." That is still true when it comes to marketing to healthcare professionals.

They are education junkies. They know that consumers trust them more than anyone else to recommend what’s best. And the more health professionals know about your brand or product, the more likely it will be that they recommend it. Period.

Last month, we spent three days with 700 dietitians at the 2017 Today’s Dietitian Symposium in New Orleans getting their education fix. Though “Huge Ass Beers” was just down the street from the hotel, these dedicated professionals were eager to sit through 90-minute presentations in conference rooms and talk with brands on a trade show floor to gain a better understanding of how they can best help their patients and clients.

If you’re not educating health professionals about the health and nutrition benefits of your product, you’re missing a huge (dare we say huge-ass?) opportunity. Here’s how to do it.

Don’t market to them like ordinary consumers

Health professionals are dedicated to continuous learning. They want to know all they can about the options their clients face at the supermarket. The bottom line is this: Less is not more when marketing to them. 

Take a look at advertisements from the 1940s and ‘50s. Most consumers would give the copy-filled pages 0% of their time. Not these consumers. When writing for healthcare professionals, use Ogilvy’s old-fashioned equation: informative = persuasive. 

One of Ogilvy's own ads.

Share the details

These are smart, curious people who want the kind of resources they can leverage in their day-to-day practice. So, get down into the weeds a bit. Provide context, use charts and graphs, introduce new terms — health professionals can not only handle it, they want it. If you feel like you’re giving too much, you’re giving enough.

Add value to their client interactions

Think samples, coupons, pamphlets, brochures, one-pagers, and other physical pieces of information that health professionals can literally hand to their clients during a face-to-face conversation. Once they know enough about the health and nutrition benefits of your brand or product, there’s a chance you’ll make it into that verbal exchange. But by providing a dietician, for example, with paper-based information, you’re guaranteed to add value.

Make it a two-way situation

Like most curious learners, health professionals want to ask questions and give their feedback. For brands, this may be done through surveys, online forums, even webinars or Twitter chats. Don’t stop with promotional materials. Make it possible for health professionals to talk to you, too.

Brands, you have willing, eager consumers of information — and consumers themselves — who want to understand the health and nutrition benefits of your brand, product, or service. And they want to understand it so well that they can teach it to their clients, who are also consumers. Why wouldn’t you want to take advantage of this? 

It’s time to channel your inner Ogilvy. What’s old is new again!

The Most Effective Health & Wellness Marketing Device of 2017 Isn’t Digital

In the recent book “The Revenge of Analogue,” the creative director at Mohawk Paper, Chris Harold, is quoted saying that for millennials, “digital devices are a commodity; a commodity delivery platform.” Does this surprise you?  Maybe not. Maybe you’ve heard that adults who grew up with digital devices find all kinds of “old-fashioned” things refreshing, such as reading actual books and living out of vans. But the desire for information on paper is stronger than simple nostalgia.

Harold goes on to explain that “print has an ability to organize information in a special way,” compared to the always-clickable internet with its “endless loop of information.” In other words, even for digital natives, the fact that a printed handout is the beginning and the end can be a benefit. This is especially true for health and wellness brands, particularly when that printed material contains highly relevant information delivered in a face-to-face interaction with a trusted professional. 

Believe it: Paper remains one of the most effective health and wellness marketing devices yet.

The appeal of paper as a marketing device

We’ve been delivering face-to-face interactions between health and wellness influencers and consumers for nearly 20 years, and overwhelmingly, influencers prefer hard copy, printed materials. In fact, their preference for print has only gotten stronger in the wake of the digital explosion. 

Members of PulseConnect influencer collective tell us that printed educational materials handed out during a face-to-face interaction add significantly more value to their patients and clients. 

Think about it.  What would you trust more? A list of keywords to Google or a brand website URL provided by a dietitian, or a printed educational piece that you and that same dietitian sat down and walked through together.

Three factors of paper marketing success

Three factors make this old-fashioned marketing device one of the best-performing in the health-and-wellness space in 2017.

1. The information on it
   When it is beautifully designed and communicates just what its readers need (such as nutrition guidance and key brand messages), handouts, brochures, and tear pads are the widely preferred communication device—even for millennials.
    
2. The person who shares it
   The information on the paper must come from a trusted source—and for health and wellness, that’s a professional. Without a doubt, consumers trust their own doctor, nurse, dietitian, or fitness professional more than any other source for guidance on which healthy products meet their needs.
    
3. How it is shared
   It must be shared during a face-to-face interaction. Not via email or social media post. Not with a URL or a QR code. But with a professional looking the consumer in the eye and saying, “This is what can help you.” Targeted, impactful, and effective.

Yes, even in 2017, old school and analog solutions can be most effective when it comes to driving health and wellness sales. 

What the (other) experts say

Don’t just take our word for it.  

Neuromarketing firm TrueImpact did a study that found that paper-based messaging performs even better than digital ads. When asked to cite a brand they had just seen, recall was 70% higher among participants who were exposed to printed marketing materials (75%) versus a digital ad (44%). 

The numbers can only be higher when paired with a face-to-face recommendation from a trusted source. Pair it with your next digital execution, social media campaign, or PR effort and you’ve got the best of all worlds. Just don’t forget paper the next time you hear the term “marketing device.”

Marketing Through Health Influencers

Over the last few months, our Trust series of blog posts has focused on the difficulties of marketing in a trustless environment and the resulting importance of focusing your marketing efforts on sources consumers find credible and trustworthy, such as health influencers. 

In this final post of the series, we take a look at how healthy brands can build a relationship with these trusted health influencers and earn a coveted face-to-face brand recommendation to their target consumer. 

It’s important to note that while the keys below have been critical success factors for virtually all of the face-to-face, influencer-to-consumer programs and platforms we’ve built for clients over the past 18 years, there is no magic formula for success. Effective health influencer marketing requires understanding not just which health influencers are critical to your brand, but also the best strategy for engaging those influencers, including the right mix of messaging, outreach, and communication.

But for those marketers just starting down the path of talking to health influencers and encouraging them to share their brand with patients and clients, these three keys are vital:

1. Don’t Be One and Done: 

Far too often these days, marketers “pilot” programs at a small scale, hope to measure some form of success, and then move on to the next tactic if results from this modest investment of time and dollars don’t deliver oversized results. Frankly, this approach is guaranteed to fail with health influencers. These dedicated professionals are eager to engage with and support healthy brands that are committed to providing them with outstanding products and resources that improve the health & wellness of their patients and clients. But, they’ve seen “one and done” before and are naturally skeptical. Demonstrate your commitment to meeting their needs by emphasizing frequency of communication. Recognize that developing a relationship of trust and credibility with health influencers—a relationship that will deliver branded recommendations—is a process, one that involves ongoing engagement.

2. Educate First, Promote Second: 

Just as health influencers are skeptical of brands that make a big splash never to be heard from again, these professionals are also wary of brands that make bold but weakly substantiated claims or bombard them with promotional messages better suited to consumer-focused channels. Market your brand responsibly to health influencers and you will see results. Focus on adding value to their interactions with patients and clients through educational materials, product samples, and coupons. And don’t forget that the influencer needs education about your brand and need-state as well. Year after year, our research with PulseConnect influencers shows that familiarity with a brand and depth of product knowledge are directly correlated to willingness to recommend.

3. Make Your Outreach a Two-Way Street: 

One of the key reasons health influencers raise their hand and opt-in to PulseConnect to receive branded materials is the opportunity it provides to keep abreast of what is happening in the industry as well as the voice it provides them with manufacturers. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to engage health influencers in a two-way conversation about your brand. Solicit feedback about your product and programs, ask influencers for insights on upcoming innovations, and inquire about how your brand can better meet the needs of their patients and clients.

These three keys have been guiding principles for us as we’ve developed and executed hundreds of influencer-to-consumer marketing programs for healthy brands. The most successful programs have stuck to these core principles and developed into ongoing platforms that deliver significant value for the sponsoring brands.

Throughout this series, we’ve talked about the evolution of trust in the marketing world, as well as the desire of consumers to get valuable information and guidance from key trusted sources. At the end of the day, however, consumers and influencers alike want to support brands that share their values. Health influencer-to-consumer marketing, when well designed and executed, can be an invaluable way for healthy brands not just to communicate about their values to influencers and consumers, but to live those values. 

Expo West Recap

This month we ventured to Anaheim, CA for Natural Products Expo West. We navigated our way through more than 80,000 people and 2,700 booths to meet with clients, see friends, and discover what’s new in the natural products industry. With new products on display every year, the Expo is always buzzing with positive energy. Here were our takeaways of the trends at Expo West:

Nut Butters

The rise of nut butter brands shouldn’t be shocking. There’s been a shake-up in the $1.9 billion a year nut butter category, which was once almost completely dominated by peanut butter. At the Expo, you could also see lots of almond, cashew, and sunflower based products. 

Water

Everywhere we turned, there was a new water company. The big players in bottled water were not present, for the most part. Many younger brands, however, were. There were tons of variations on water, all bringing something unique to the table. We saw boxed, alkaline, sparkling, caffeinated, electrolyte infused, and fat water to name a few. 

It will be very interesting to watch this category over the next few years to see if smaller fringe brands can gain market share. 

Natural Energy

Energy has been a trend in the natural space for quite some time. However, this year we noticed even more companies promoting natural energy. This was, perhaps, our favorite trend, since traversing the Expo hall can get tiring. We needed the boost! There was certainly an increase in cold brew coffee companies. Green tea matcha was also featured in a lot of drinks. Unsurprisingly, there were scores of energy drinks. That, however, is not a new trend.

Coconuts

Coconuts had a huge presence in Anaheim. Over the last decade, coconut water sales have grown exponentially.  Now, coconut bites, coconut milk, coconut oil, coconut chips, and even coconut jerky are everywhere. 

There is certainly an opportunity in the coconut category. Those who are able to educate consumers on the benefits of coconut products will succeed. Currently, however, many people are skeptical of the real benefits. 

Meat Alternatives

The meat alternative category has exploded in popularity over the last few years. This category is no longer limited to Boca, MorningStar, and Tofurky. Smaller companies are joining in—and stealing market share. 

This is perhaps the most viable of the health trends we saw at Expo West. These alternatives are a great source of essential nutrients, and fit into many more diets. For example, meatless alternatives are perfect for flexitarians—those who consume mostly plant based foods with the occasional inclusion of meat. Also, meatless alternatives are a great option for the over 375 million vegetarians worldwide. 

Finally, meatless alternatives are a more sustainable option than meat. This is exceptionally important, as sustainability has become the third highest factor driving consumer purchasing in the grocery store. As more people become more conscious of how their decisions impact the planet, meat alternative sales will likely continue to increase. 

The Impact of Health & Wellness on Grocery Stores

Keep an eye out for grocers playing more of a role in health & wellness in the near future, a move fueled by consumer demand. According to Leslie Sarasin, President & CEO of Food Manufacturing Institute, grocery stores are situated perfectly to assist consumers on their health & wellness journey. This comes at a time of high competition for grocery stores—not only competing against themselves, but also online retailers, as we previously wrote about.  

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it now — as people prefer holistic approaches to health and wellness, food retailers, standing in the nexus position between food and pharmacy, as well as nutrition and provision of medical services, are uniquely positioned as health and wellness resources for their customers.” – Leslie Sarasin, FMI

Health and wellness engagement at grocery is a huge opportunity for healthy brands to pair with health influencers to meet the needs of Americans. Through their concerted efforts from office to shelf, health influencers and brands can influence the decisions of consumers at a much higher level.

The advantage will go to brands that are smart about engaging key influencers geo-targeted to store locations and partnering with key customers to promote their products and offerings. Pairing “near store” influencer and consumer reach with “in store” shopper marketing will certainly help consumers make healthier decisions.