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Marketing & Branding for Wellness in 2023 - 4 Tips & Strategies

by Owen Turner

As 2023 approaches, consumer trends have begun shifting towards health and wellness. We are beginning to spend more money on health and wellness products (1) due to a heightened focus on self-care during the pandemic, which means that now is the perfect time to create the foundations of a successful marketing and branding strategy for your wellness brand. Follow the steps in this article to learn the top 3 branding and marketing strategies for health and wellness.

1. Build Emotional Connections With Your Audience Through Personal Branding 🥰


People like to buy from individuals who are like them and share their experiences. 

We are living in a more open and transparent society where people are looking for meaningful connections and consumers want to know who is behind the brand. Branding goes beyond simply crafting a logo or launching a website. Embracing who you authentically are, honing in on what you do exceptionally well and with unrelenting effort and enthusiasm, and identifying how your offerings can enhance the lives of others are the cornerstones of a successful brand. 

This also means becoming a master of your skillset or industry as you build your brand. Then use your knowledge to amplify yourself as a leader. But it’s important not to rush it - building this type of emotional rapport first takes time so don’t expect to see your sales explode when you first get started.

Before you start building your personal brand, ask yourself: 

  1. Who do you want to help?
  2. How can you help them?
  3. Why should they choose you?
  4. What’s your brand story?
  5. How are you different from the others?


Example: Tim Ferris

Time Ferriss is a wildly successful entrepreneur, investor, author, podcaster and lifestyle guru, who’s widely known for his “Four Hour Workweek” self-development book. Leveraging the power of his personal brand and podcast called “The Tim Ferriss Show”, he challenges people to redefine what success means and teaches them how to implement new habits, practices and mindsets by deconstructing world-class performers.

2. Nurture the Relationship Through Online and Offline Community Events 🌐

Creating a community around your brand is one of the best ways to authentically connect with your customers and followers who have shared interests and values. One way to do this is by organising a wellness event to bring together your current and prospective customers. Get creative with it and come up with ideas centred around health and wellness. 

Example: Alo Yoga 🧘

Alo is a health and wellness brand that has a strong emphasis on building a community. Aside from the yoga wear, supplements and classes they offer, Alo brings their customers and community together through events such as Alo House - a week-long festival dedicated to movement, wellness, mindfulness and connection.

A group yoga session being led at the Alo House.
Photo: Courtesy of Alo Yoga

3. Use Wellness Micro-Influencers 💗

Try reaching out and collaborating with other like-minded influencers and opinion leaders to help build your credibility. Once you’ve built these relationships, especially with other wellness coaches, you’ll have lots of opportunities to create and repurpose content for social media - a win-win for everyone. 

Influencer marketing has always been a key strategy used by many health and wellness brands to reach their target customers. However, with recent shifts in consumer behaviour largely driven by millennials and Gen Z, the future of influencer marketing is all about quality and behaviour leading to engagement, clicks, and brand recognition–not size. 

Studies have shown that friends and family can have a strong influence on our purchasing decisions. As micro-influencers don’t have the same level of following as celebrity influencers do (usually under 10,000 followers), consumers feel like they can relate to them more closely due to their authenticity and reliability factor. Consumers are also much more likely to follow an influencer than a brand, making it easier to access audiences that your brand can’t reach on its own. 

For your wellness marketing strategy, it’s important to experiment with different types of influencers to see what works for your brand. Here are the different types of influencers you need to know:

Nano-influencers - 1000 - 10,000 followers

These personas typically contain a mix of current and new customers who are looking to grow their following and build their personal brand through unpaid collaborations. They most likely already love and use your product. Examples include independent yoga teachers, wellness coaches and personal trainers who are just starting out.

Micro-influencers - 10,000 - 100,000 followers

Considered the golden tier of influencer marketing, these personas have a strong following in a niche category with high engagement rates. 

Mid-tier influencers - 100,000 - 500,000 followers

These personas have invested lots of time and effort to build their personal brand, and as a result they know exactly how to engage their audience.

Macro influencers - 500,000+ followers

Considered the most powerful content creators, these personas have a strong influence across multiple platforms. It’s expensive to work with these influencers but is worth it for achieving a large reach and awareness. 

Example: Glossier 💄

Photo: Courtesy of Clickz.com

Glossier is a direct-to-consumer cosmetics company that has relied on micro-influencers to build a wildly popular brand. According to Glossier’s founder and CEO, Emily Weiss, a principle that they’ve always remained true to is treating everyone like an influencer. They frequently repost their customers experiences on Instagram to their millions of followers and rely on an army of more than 500 ambassadors who sell products and earn commission through their individual pages.

4. Focus on Real People 👩

Everyone wants to be treated like a real person, not just a business transaction. Your brand strategy should therefore focus on highlighting real customers, not only your products and services. You can accomplish this by asking one of your members to share their wellness experience with your brand. This will build credibility and inspire others to undertake their own journey with you. 

You can take this one step further by transforming your brand into a lifestyle brand; one that attempts to embody the values, aspirations, interests attitudes of a group or culture. Lifestyle branding helps to appeal to the things that matter most to the target audience, helping the brand to fit authentically into their lives. Here’s an example of Lululemon’s lifestyle branding.

Example: Lululemon

Photo: Courtesy of Avada.io

Lululemon has experienced rapid growth for more than 20 years after launching the brand. They’ve been able to do this by promoting a lifestyle of health and wellness which has resulted in a strong brand community of enthusiasts who desire premium quality. Supported by marketing messages that inspire customers to live a life of possibility, it’s hard for people to not be tempted to live the Lululemon lifestyle.

Key takeaways

📈 Invest in building a personal brand as consumers are wanting to learn about who is behind the business

🤝 Organise events for your customers to connect with each other

💥 Leverage the power of micro-influencers

🔎 Focus on real people and humanise your brand by aligning it with the values, aspirations, interests attitudes of a group or culture

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