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How to Position Your Health and Wellness Brand

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When you think of Dr. Scholls, you think of ergonomic shoe inserts and shoes – not high heels. When you think of Planters, you think of peanuts – not trail mix or pistachios.

 

That’s because these businesses went out of their way to position themselves as authorities in a particular market segment.

 

They used visual designs (like the friendly logo Mr. Peanut) and educational content (like the Dr. Scholls resources on foot pain) to set themselves apart from the competition. As a result, consumers now recognize and trust these brands.

 

Your health and wellness business can do the same. You can differentiate your business so when ideal clients think of your industry, your brand is the first that comes to mind — it’s just a matter of brand positioning! Brand positioning also allows you to charge more for your products or services.

 

To help you position your brand, we created this quiz to help you identify your brand personality and connect with your customers on a deeper level. Discover your brand personality here:

Think of a customer who is buying an ergonomic shoe insert for the first time: they could pay a little extra for the Dr. Scholl’s version, which they trust based on the branding alone, or they could spend less money on the generic brand they don’t trust.

 

Even if those two products had the exact same item inside, most shoppers would choose the branded item over the generic version – even if it meant paying more. A strong and well-positioned brand is key to making more money in your business.

 

Brand positioning involves answering this question: What do you want your health and wellness business to be known for? Brand positioning doesn’t happen by accident or word of mouth. You need a strategy and action plan to position your business apart from your competitors and build a specific reputation in your industry.

 

We walk health and wellness entrepreneurs through the entire brand positioning process in the Brand Clarity online course, and this blog covers an abbreviated description of how to position your business.

 

Follow these three steps to position your brand:

 

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1: Clarify Your Brand

Before you position your health and wellness business apart from your competition, you will first need to look inward and get clear on the qualities your brand already has. While there are many elements that make up a brand, two to consider are your brand attributes and brand purpose.

 

Brand Attributes

Brand attributes are the personality traits of your business. If your business were a person and it walked into a room, how would people describe it? Friendly? Nerdy? Feminine? Luxurious? Just like a person has their own personality traits, every brand has attributes of its own.

 

We created a useful free mini-workbook that walks you through how to identify your brand attributes, and you can get your copy here:

 

 

Once you identify the brand attributes of your business, you will express them through your logo, colors, website, fonts, and visual brand to attract your ideal customers.

 

As you can imagine, a health and wellness business with brand attributes such as “colorful” and “fashionable” would have a completely different website, Instagram feed, and overall look than another brand who had the attributes “serious” and “high-tech.”

 

assorted nuts and seeds

 

Brand Purpose

Your brand purpose is the “why” behind your brand. If you want customers to feel a genuine emotional connection with your business, you need to know your brand purpose and express it through your written content.

 

Resist the urge to be too formal when thinking about the purpose of your brand. This is an opportunity to genuinely reflect on the core reason why your business exists in the first place.

 

Did you create your healthy snack brand because you were tired of bringing home snacks from the grocery store that tasted like cardboard? Did you launch a skin care line because you finally found high-quality ingredients that made your skin feel soft?

 

Once you know your brand purpose, you can weave it into your website, blog posts, and social media captions to humanize your brand. The book Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action by Simon Sinek is a great resource to dive deeper into building a strong “why.”

 

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2: Know Your Ideal Client and Competitors

Step into the shoes of your ideal client and look at the world through their eyes for a moment:

 

What is your ideal client like? Where do they live? What specifically are they looking for when it comes to your product or services? And why haven’t they been using your competitors?

 

For example, let’s say you own a no-frills fitness center that helps people exercise in a positive environment. Your gym includes all the basic fitness equipment as well as training classes for beginners, and you focus on creating a tight-knit community where people of all ages and sizes feel motivated to work out.

 

In that situation, your ideal client will be completely different than the ideal client of an elite athletic performance facility, so your branding needs to reflect this.

 

This is why finding your ideal client is so important: when you know who they are, what they want, and why other options haven’t been working for them, you can clearly position your business as the best solution to their problem.

 

women exercising on fitness balls in a gym

 

In addition to your ideal client, you will want to look at your closest competitors and see what messaging and visual designs they are using to attract new customers. This will take a bit of research, but it can be a fun and interesting exercise.

 

Look at the websites and social media accounts of your competitors, as well as their logos and taglines. What elements of their brands would your ideal client connect with? What would scare your ideal clients away? What are your competitors doing well? What are they not doing well at all?

 

And the all-important brand positioning question: What can your brand do to set yourself apart from these competitors and attract your ideal client?

 

If you’re interested in competitor research, the book BrandFix: A Brand Strategy Guide for Busy Entrepreneurs outlines how to identify your exact competitors and capitalize on the facets that make you stand out.

 

business man using tablet

 

3: Set Your Business Apart

Once you know your brand attributes and purpose, your ideal client, and what sets your business apart from the competition, you can take action steps to position your brand.

 

The colors, fonts, logo, website, and written content for your business are all opportunities to attract your ideal clients. The more you use these elements to share what sets you apart, the stronger your brand positioning will be – and the faster your business will grow.

 

Colors

Different colors evoke different reactions from your audience. What colors would stand out from the colors of your competitors while also expressing your brand attributes? These will be your brand colors.

 

Fonts

Fonts and typography are often overlooked by entrepreneurs, but just like colors, you can use different styles of fonts to evoke different psychological reactions.

 

Logo

Your logo is the face of your brand, and it needs to accomplish the superhuman feat of attracting your target, expressing what your business does, and standing out from your industry — all within a few seconds.

 

We created this free logo design inspiration e-book to help you generate logo and visual branding design ideas:

 

Website

Your website needs to provide the information, images, and branding that your ideal clients want to see. Let’s go back to our example of owning a no-frills gym. In that scenario, your ideal client would want to see a website that feels warm and friendly, with perhaps an FAQ section to calm their nerves and help them feel welcome in a gym environment.

 

They would want to see photos of real people smiling and working out – not fitness models or professional athletes. Based on this information, you can create a website design that speaks directly to your target while repelling customers who aren’t the right fit.

 

Content

Consistency builds trust, so the written content on your website and social media needs to be consistent with your overall brand.

 

If down-to-earth is one of your brand attributes, your brand voice needs to sound personable. If you want customers to feel relaxed, you shouldn’t use a lot of exclamation points in your content. Remind yourself of what your ideal client wants to hear from you, and give them the content they desire.

 

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At Aventive Studio, we help health & wellness businesses create powerful brand identities that attract their ideal customers and increase their sales. You can find our full suite of brand strategy and design services here.

 

We also offer a variety of resources to help you build your own brand, including the Brand Clarity online course and the book BrandFix: A Brand Strategy Guide for Busy Entrepreneurs which was written by our CEO Kady Sandel.

 

Ready to position your brand apart from the rest? Contact us here to schedule a call with our team.

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