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The 5 Worst Branding Mistakes That Wellness Companies Make

Not all branding and marketing practices are necessary for a successful wellness business. You don’t need to focus on networking events, social media posts, Google ads, retail stores, in-person promotions, event booths, Instagram stories, and blog posts all at once – and you can’t!

As a brand in the ever-growing health and wellness industry, you simply cannot be everywhere at once if you want to provide the best content and value to your readers, followers, and potential clients.

However, there are a few things you must have in order to build a successful wellness company, no matter if you are selling products or services.

spices branding on blue background

Whether you have something that people can physically see (like healthy snacks) or if they need to experience it (like massage), your target will be similar: people who care about their health and are passionate about their wellness lifestyle.

Of course you will need to narrow down your ideal client persona further to include their gender, age range, interests, and problems because that is how you will attract them to your offering. We’ll keep that in another article and focus on the most common branding mistakes here to make sure you don’t make them!

hand mixing granola into a bowl of yogurt and strawberries

 

Mistake #1: Operating Without a Brand Strategy

A lot of businesses don’t understand the importance of having a brand plan. Branding is what helps people connect to your brand – which seems obvious, I know. But what does that actually mean and how can you do it?

Brand strategy is a plan for your business, and it focuses on who your target is, how your business will behave and look, and how you will attract your ideal clients. Just as we all create opinions about other brands, people, objects, and basically everything, other people will create their opinion about your business as well.

What do you want them to think about your business? Focus on creating that! Focus on explaining what you stand for and why your offering is different than your competitors. It’s a big question, and the only way a wellness business can do that is by comparing yourself to similar businesses and trying to stand out.

If you have a skincare line, for example, how can you explain that your face lotion is better than any other? By creating a brand strategy, you will find all the details about your brand that you didn’t even know. Yes, it’s possible – you just need to take it step by step!

woman with painted nails applying lotion to arm

Mistake #2: Using Visuals That Don’t Attract Ideal Clients

Some businesses just use generic logos, colors, fonts and images – something that doesn’t stand out and looks like it could be any health and wellness company. Which is fine, but then why would someone choose you over any other business in the same industry?

On the other hand, you don’t want to use completely random and off-brand colors such as red, gold, and black that would remind your audience of a metal band instead of the soft, earthy and natural feel that your clients should be attracted to. The best way to solve this problem is to define your brand attributes.

Brand attributes are the characteristics of a brand. Similar to how a human being has attributes such as smart, professional, elegant, and so on, your wellness brand can have its own attributes too.

plant growing in cat pot

Mistake #3: Lacking Brand Consistency in Your Wellness Business

Do you sometimes feel like you’re not sure what your brand’s voice is? It feels like it’s all over the place and doesn’t provide a clear message? Well, you’re probably right!

Even worse – if you are confused and not sure, then your potential clients are unsure as well. Which doesn’t make them trust you and will cause them to keep searching for a different solution. You lose.

Your brand’s voice is not just what you write on your labels, brochures or a website, but it’s actually the visual part of your brand – visual branding. The best way to keep your health and wellness brand consistent is to create a brand board.

A brand board is an easy-to-read document that contains your brand’s colors (codes), typography (font names), styled imagery (examples of what kind of photos people should use), and it basically describes how to use your brand in order to keep it consistent.

Here is an example of our brand board for Aventive Studio: https://aventivestudio.com/brand-board/

Once you have a brand board and have established consistency, your business can focus on building brand awareness so potential customers will recognize your business.

set of three skin care packaging designs

Mistake #4: Having a Website Without Clear Goals

Having an amazing website doesn’t mean that it should just look nice. It means that it needs to work! That means that your website needs to accomplish one of the following goals:

  1. Have people purchase your wellness product
  2. Get people to contact you for your health services
  3. Educate people on your topic within the health and wellness industry

The whole strategy around your website needs to be built before you actually create the site. I see a lot of people failing at this: they go straight to a designer or developer to build a website, when what really needs to be done first is understand the ideal client.

woman using laptop to update her website design

Once you have developed a strategy for your website, you can organize the pages of your website to follow what your ideal client is going to look for. Most of the time those are standard pages such as Home, About, Services/Products and Contact, but also you can have pages like Blog, FAQ, Pricing etc.

Your website will probably have subpages as well. For example, if you have a sports store your subpages can be shirts, shorts, shoes, and so on.

It’s in your best interest to grow the email list for your wellness business from the very beginning. You can make an educational “freebie” like a PDF guide and give it to customers in exchange for their email address. There are some easy-to-use Word to PDF tools to help you do this!

Whatever you have on your website needs to speak to your target audience. They are the ones that your website is built for, they are the ones that buy from you, and they will be the ones to help you grow your health and wellness business!

So have your goal and ideal client defined, and then build a website once that is clear. Do not make the mistake of trying to go the other way around.

woman holding mug of white tea packaging

Mistake #5:  Posting on Social Media Without a Strategy

How many times have you posted something on your Instagram just to post it? Or how many times did it take you two hours just to create one post? And even then – you weren’t sure if it was good or not.

Social media can be easy just if you had a strategy behind it – just like everything else I talked about in this article. What is your goal? More followers, likes? No! Your goal is to convert your followers into paying customers, and the best way to do that is to send people from your social media pages to your website.

If you look into the previous mistake that I shared about health and wellness businesses not having a strategy for their websites, and you solve that problem by creating your website in a strategic way, you are good to go.

Once you know your ideal client and you post something they love, you can add a call to action button that sends them to your website. Meanwhile on your website, you will have a good setup of the lead flow so new visitors complete one of your website goals — and you will make a sale or get a client!

woman dipping finger into natural lip balm

In summary, many health and wellness businesses do not have a brand strategy which is the biggest mistake your business could make. A brand strategy is a road map, and it will help you build a brand that people will like, trust and engage with.

If you are interested in developing a brand strategy for your business, I would recommend buying my book BrandFix. You can also contact Aventive Studio to help you.

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