How to Build a Brand in the Sleep Health Niche
Valuated in the tens of billions of dollars, the world of sleep health is not a fleeting trend. It’s an established, ever-evolving space brimming with brands and products ranging from specialized medical solutions to ergonomic products that provide postural comfort.
Given this fact, there are a lot of growth opportunities for prospecting business owners to carve a name for themselves in the sleep health industry.
The growth potential is undeniable, but as with all other business ventures, you’ll have to put in the hours and research to truly make your mark in the industry.
From creating a target customer persona to prototyping and marketing your offering, this article will delve into how you can build a successful brand in this lucrative niche.
We’ll also provide you with some industry-specific insights and advice to give you an even better chance of succeeding right off the gates.
Let’s jump right into it!
1. Create or find a minimum viable product (MVP)
The first step to establishing a brand in the sleep health niche is picking a product to offer to the broader market. This can be any viable product that can help people overcome sleep issues, from CPAP machines to bedding accessories.
CPAP Direct is a great example of a brand that focuses on helping patients with sleep apnea and other sleep-related problems.
Unsure what product to consider? A good start is by evaluating customer trends, consumer needs, and—most importantly—what you and your company are ready and willing to offer to the market as a whole.
Once you’ve found a good product opportunity from your initial research, and have done the initial costs and projections to ensure its feasibility, find a way to source the product and have it under your brand name.
Whether you choose to collaborate with manufacturers from overseas or design and ideate a product in-house is ultimately up to you. That said, striving for quality throughout your product design and procurement process often generates the best results.
You don’t want to offer a carbon copy product offered by every other sleep brand, however. It’s important to differentiate your product from other similar sleep-related offerings, while consistently upholding a high standard of quality.
The success of businesses in the sleep health field fundamentally hinges on product viability. Once you’ve chosen a flagship product, you’ll make the entire process of growing a much more realistic endeavor.
2. Create a customer persona
Knowing who you’re selling your product to is not just a passing recommendation, it’s mandatory if you want to achieve long-term growth in the sleep health niche.
Fundamentally speaking, a customer persona is the demographic of your potential customers. Beyond surface-level points like age, race, and income status, a customer persona also delves into a person’s lifestyle, sleep patterns, health concerns, and buying behaviours.
If you’re already selling your product, gather historical and current information on your customer profile.
Are they suffering from a specific health condition like sleep apnea? When along their diagnosis did they purchase your product? What’s the customer’s major pain point regarding their sleep habits and how do they intend to use your product to resolve it?
Gathering these bits of information is vital for ensuring the proper direction of your business. Beyond that, it also helps you tailor effective marketing campaigns and foster customer loyalty and satisfaction to your brand.
3. Finetune your product offering
Engineering and prototyping your product may entail a hefty amount of R&D costs, but a good product can translate to a more competitive presence in the sleep health niche. This is why it’s vital to stomach these costs in your journey to building your sleep health product.
Firstly, take into account the various bits of feedback your current customers provide you through review posts. Is there a common complaint shared among them, such as safety concerns or areas of discomfort?
Address these problems internally and ensure that the next iteration of your product design is better than the one before it.
Showing your commitment to improving product quality is a good way to communicate to customers that you care about their comfort and needs. This, in turn, can help you gain appeal and maintain relevance in this cutthroat industry.
4. Get endorsements from medical experts
It’s very easy for customers to be sceptical of businesses that are selling a new and fairly unestablished product, especially when the product is touted to improve a certain area of health.
One way to curb suspicion is by engaging with medical authorities and having them test your product’s ability to carry out its intended function.
Not only do they help provide peace of mind to prospecting customers regarding the safety and effectiveness of the product, but they can also find problem points that your team can improve upon and reiterate.
While finding holes in your product may seem undesirable, having it found during quality testing is much better than having a customer berate or carry out a lawsuit because of product design flaws and false advertising claims.
This is why it’s important to cover all bases and get positive endorsements (or private feedback) from sleep specialists.
5. Create and blast promotional materials
Building a brand entails spreading awareness about your product—marketing it, in other words. This can be done physically, such as through the strategic positioning of products on shelves and aisles; or digitally, such as with the use of social media and inbound marketing tactics.
Your marketing campaign is critical for brand-building and reaching your target audience. That said, it can also be a notorious business capital drain, so it’s important to be incredibly strategic with your approach to ensure that you maximise your marketing budget.
As a start, gather data about where your potential customers lie and strategically target them.
For instance, if your customer persona consists of elderly individuals with sleep apnea, you can consider spending your marketing budget on social media ads on Facebook instead of Instagram.
You can also maximise physical marketing strategies like posting eye-catching visuals on billboards and posters in areas where your target market usually frequents.
Besides these strategies, you can also consider doing other digital advertising techniques like harnessing SEO, email marketing, and paid ads to drive traffic to your business.
This way, you can test different marketing approaches and cast a wider net to keep your brand on a potential customer’s radar.
6. Stay in the loop and adapt to changing sleep trends
Running a successful brand is not a race to a singular goal and stopping there. It’s a dynamic environment where consumer preferences change and sleep product innovations get pushed out as fast as a snap of a finger.
As such, it’s important to pay close attention to emerging trends in the sleep industry as well as the evolving purchasing behaviour of individuals.
You can start by looking at what your competitors are doing and adopting some of their ideas in your next product lineup. Alternatively, you can go to sleep networking events and conferences and gather some insights there.
By staying responsive to these trends, you can quickly adjust your product offerings and brand strategy. This agility not only helps keep your brand relevant, but also positions you as a leading choice for customers, ultimately enhancing your profitability.