Before the rise of flogs and the hundreds of millions of dollars generated by the performance marketing ecosysytem, a handful of companies had carved out rather successful health and beauty continuity businesses. Contrary to the saying that rising tides lift all boats, these two companies in particular did not do well during the 18 month period where fake blogs and fake news sites seemingly owned all of online media. On one hand, it is easy to think that they would have done well given they had the key assets – product, fulfillment, customer service, along with the marketing and web expertise to feed the machine. While they had everything in place and a jumpstart on others, they didn’t, both by choice and inertia modify their marketing style to keep up with the blogs. As a result they were priced out of the market for media buys. They never could offer the cpa’s that others could, and their still catchy but not as sensational ads didn’t combine to create the necessary ecpc/m. What they do have, though, is a still thriving business that has weathered the credit card company backlash, legal scrutiny, and publisher mutiny.
The performance marketing ecosystem has long had a close-knit relationship with consumer based continuity offers from dating, to mobile, and nutriceuticals. The latter, health and beauty products, namely pills, performed very differently from anything the sector had seen before. Unlike mobile, the core products had existed for many years. Acai and colon cleanse weren’t anything new when the flogs started promoting them. You could have found them and others at vertical specific and more traditional affiliate network. The chief difference was the twist to continuity and the marketing magic of click to try not click to buy.
Risk-free is certainly one of the more time tested messages, and hardly anything says risk free like the word free. The trouble with the acai pills were many, but we can’t help but think that a good number of the issues stemmed from marketers trying to squeeze a round peg into a square hole. Yes the pills were generally marketed with egregious claims and the economics of the product were hard to justify (79.95 for a two dollar cost of goods), but the real problem might just be that they were pills. They aren’t a natural product for continuity. An auto-ship auto-bill might make life easier for a small handful, but borrowing from the silicon valley book of popular business sayings, it is a feature. It isn’t a product.
Let’s contrast the world of neutriceuticals with a successful continuity product – Netflix. Granted they don’t offer a $79.95 plan, but the charge is great enough for people to take notice. Those who don’t cancel due to inertia are a small percentage as opposed to the majority. Netflix makes sense as a recurring billing for all the reasons the pills do not. It is consume at your own pace. The real problem with pills – changing user behavior so they take it. If they don’t take the pills regularly, each new bill is a kick in the ass reminder to cancel. Acai’s problem isn’t acai but picking a product that was a stretch to turn into continuity. Prescription medication is about the only consumable that can work. Or the issue has to be one so emotional, like hair loss or wrinkle creams, where the person will not risk not losing.
What’s another weight loss program on continuity that works? Here are two – Nutrisystem and Weight Watchers. They are both very different. The former is primarily a meal plan. The auto-ship and bill can work as a time saver because you need to eat. If you don’t eat their food, it’s your own guilt first as opposed to trying to blame their system. Weight Watchers is a hybrid, but it is primarily the same approach as Netflix and almost all continuity programs – pay for access. The gym, cell phones, cable tv, and countless software as a service start-ups, all fall into this bucket. Your money doesn’t correlate to a specific amount or number of pills. It is the price to use it, and that is what the work from home guys know but pill guys didn’t implement – a subscription access model to justify the price of goods.
I remember one of the pill guys thinking they should send out a scale with each purchase or after month three. It was a great start, but what they really needed was to move away from pills – let people order as needed, but keep billing them for the right to speak to a counselor or for tools to help them along. They needed to get into the information side of continuity. Information and access, that is where continuity can work. And now is the perfect time to look for angles where the model can make sense. It is time to think outside the pill, just as it is time to realize that there is more to information marketing than work from home offers. Continuity doesn’t have to be a bad word or a bad product. For those that do it right, they will enjoy an upside far greater and longer than the health roller coaster. Yes, it is just about that time for continuity’s return.
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