Scaling Supplements on Amazon: How Smart for Life Uses Data to Win | EP. 215

Dan Head 00:03
A lot of other supplement companies will put in fillers and use things to kind of, you know, make things more profitable for them. That's not our goal. Our goal is functional wellness products.

Narrator 00:14
Welcome to the E comm Show podcast. I am your host. Andrew Maff, owner and founder of BlueTusker, from groundbreaking industry updates to success stories and strategies. Get to know the ins and outs of the ecommerce industry from top leaders in the space. Let's get into it!

Andrew Maff 00:28
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the E comm show as usual. I am your host, Andrew Maff, and today I am joined by Dan Head, who is the E commerce manager over at Smart for Life. Dan, how you doing? Buddy? Ready for good show?

Dan Head 00:41
Doing pretty good, beautiful. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Andrew Maff 00:46
N4t a problem.

Dan Head 00:46
Been a fan of the show for a long time.

Andrew Maff 00:46
Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm super excited for this conversation. I know we already kind of touched on a little bit prior to show about, like, creative and AI and some of that stuff, which is always super fun and sexy to talk about. But I always like, kind of starting these off a little stereotypically. I'd like to give you the floor and just tell us a little bit about your background, Smart for Life, and then we're gonna take it from there.

Dan Head 01:09
Okay, well, I guess I'll start back in the old dinosaur days, I originally started working for sellers in 2004 so I literally was working on Amazon before they were even using UPCS. And when you look up like Nike shoe, you would see the same Nike shoe, you know, 20 times with different sizes on it. So I've been around a long time, so that's where I started. And then eventually, Smart for Life approached me, and they were looking for a new e commerce manager. And that happened in December 2019, so I started taking over all the E commerce management for them, built a team, brought it in, organized it all, and they were doing, approximately, at the time, about about $100,000 a month in sales when I took over.

Dan Head 02:08
Fast Forward, you know, four months in you had covid hit, you know, in 2020, and that was very interesting, because we were launching all our gummy supplements, and we were very late to launch vitamin C gummies and vitamin d3 and B12 and all these other great gummies that were out there. So launching them in the middle of covid certainly helped. In hindsight, quite a bit. Oh, yeah. So that got us going. You know, I'm still, currently managing everything for them now, and we've grown the business into $600,000 a month business.

Andrew Maff 02:48
Beautiful. And so tell me a little bit about the product line. Is it mostly supplements, or, I believe there's also CPG products involved, like, it's a, it's pretty much a health and wellness brand, correct?

Dan Head 03:01
Yes, yeah. We're pretty much a health and wellness brand in entirety. Supplements is our main focus, but, you know, we will venture into other areas as we see fit.

Andrew Maff 03:13
Supplements are a wildly competitive space, like it's there's so much competition that comes out in there all the time. And it's, you know, we've had probably a dozen or so supplement brands on the show in the past. I've worked with, I don't even know how many at this point, like, there are so many supplement brands, it's amazing. What's everyone's kind of got their own trick of the trade, right? Of, you know, whether it's community building or if it's differentiation based on the product line, or, you know, anything along those lines, what's, what's kind of the approach with Smart for Life that allows you guys to differentiate from the competitors?

Dan Head 03:51
Oh, well, we focus on clean labels. Um, you know, we focus on clean labels, not using fillers. We want to keep the product unadulterated. A lot of other supplement companies will put in fillers and use things to kind of, you know, make things more profitable for them. That's not our goal. Our goal is functional wellness products. So, you know, we focus on the difference between if it's fat soluble or or if it's water soluble, and we focus on putting, you know, those kind of supplements together, you know, our basic, you know, focus is providing a product that works well, yeah. Dr Sass is the owner of the company, and he's made it very, very clear that we're not going to use fillers ever.

Andrew Maff 04:41
Yeah? Nice. That's, I mean, I know that that's,yeah. I mean, that's definitely where a lot of the industry, not even just supplements, but like every food and consumable and everything, is going in that direction, which I Love. Where's, where's the majority the business coming from. It's mostly Amazon, DTC, retail like, tell me a little bit about the specifics of that.

Dan Head 05:03
The bulk of our business comes from retail. We're in a lot of retail outlets, but Amazon is a significant lever for us.

Andrew Maff 05:14
What's, what would you say is kind of your secret to standing out on Amazon with supplements? Because I know that that's really hard too, because you got to pay for that click to then educate them on how clean it is,

Dan Head 05:31
Right? Yes, yeah, you're not kidding. So it's, uh, it's complicated, so let me see. How do I put this? I'm trying to put it the right way.

Dan Head 05:49
Well, we focus. One of the big focuses that we did right out the gate was Dr Sass had had a very hospital clinic, clinic line. You know, it looked like you were taking the supplements right out of a hospital. And, you know, if you're taking these supplements to live longer and increase your longevity or to, you know, have another daily ritual to make your day go a little better.

Dan Head 06:18
You know, it we decided that we needed to do a lot of rebranding back in the beginning, because a lot of these other companies use dull colors. And then if you look at a lot of the cheap companies, they'll use those gimmicky labels like, oh, we have 10 ingredients and one and they have the bright, colorful, you know, they stand out, but their labels look really gimmicky. So you know, what I noticed was we needed to brighten things up, because using dull colors, you know, doesn't play into buyer psychology. I'm taking this live longer not to go to the hospital and die. So we have to break that train, and then we had to add the colors and make it bright and vibrant without being gimmicky. And, you know, since our products don't allow us to be gimmicky, that helped a lot. But, you know, just life any things up? Because if you look at a lot of these guys that have been around for a long time, like nature made neutral coast, all those other guys, they use a lot of dull colors, they don't stand out, you know. And I think there's a balance to standing out but not being gimmicked.

Andrew Maff 07:28
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that would, yeah, that would definitely make sense. You know, Amazon's a beast in its own of products that you you run into the issues of fantastic branding just to trick consumers, and then they purchase it, and then they get frustrated, and then you get the other side of it, where the branding is horrible, but sometimes the products great, but unfortunately, whoever's running it doesn't know what they're doing, so it's, it's, I'd imagine, there's also a little bit of the the consumer awareness side coming from like reviews and things like that, that's also helping just kind of reiterate the social proof side. I should say that's kind of helping reiterate that. Yeah, right.

Dan Head 08:09
Well, I mean, third party testing is a mandatory and, you know, and you got to be careful, because a lot of these companies out there, they probably own a third party tester. So yeah, you know, you can take that with a grain of salt, but we do a great deal of testing to make sure that, you know, the quality is on par, yeah, because quality has kind of been our main focus with Smart for Life.

Andrew Maff 08:32
Nice, yeah. I mean, I know from like, brands and stuff we've worked with in the past, but just in CPG or in cost supplements or anything like, the biggest problem is always when you first launch a new product, or even if you're launching a brand, no one really wants to be the first one to like ingest something. They want to know that, like other people, have done it, and then they're going to sign off on it. So I know that those third party tests can definitely sometimes help in the beginning there, what's, what's kind of your approach? So if it's mostly Amazon on, from an online perspective, what's, what's the main approach on Amazon? You doing anything in terms of, like, tell me about, like, the advertising approach, anything from, like, an AB split testing perspective. I know before the show, you mentioned you've got some cool AI thing you guys built out. Like, tell me about that.

Dan Head 09:16
Oh, yeah, okay, so, yeah, we built our own app off the back of nano banana and and now we moved it to nano banana pro with Gemini three, and it has been incredible for us, like we were able two days ago to put together An entire product, A+ all the infographics, lifestyle images a plus, plus split testing images, plus sponsored brand headline ads, plus sponsored brand video. And we were able to, you know, redo all of this in about five hours. I mean, it's incredible. Um, how fast things can move now. And I think a big choke point in the industry before was nobody could get enough creative to constantly create that flywheel split testing. And, you know, I think that's the name of the game, because we built our E commerce off of doing a very similar routine in the background called cycling, and we will cycle keywords in and out. So we'll build this massive keyword research sheet and we will go and we will optimize for it, and we'll line it up for how well we've optimized, if we've optimized the front end, back end, even Rufus is in there, for that matter. And then we'll use these color codes and launch the advertising. And as we start getting feedback, we'll start backing off those keywords that we just don't seem to convert well on. And we'll go back, and then we'll bring in the next cycle to replace those keywords. Run it through the optimization. Run it through the back end, you know, create the new ads so that we were always split testing in the back end. Now that that couldn't have been done, you know, by us on the front end before, but now we can. Now we can. So now we're, you know, at a process where we can constantly split test the back end and constantly split test the front end as well. That changes the game a lot and the bulk of the E commerce strategy that we've really built out is, you know, we are pretty well diversified. I think, you know, we run probably about a 75% sponsored product to about 15% sponsored brands to 10% sponsored display, and we're slowly breaking into DSP now. But you know, we use a full approach when it comes to advertising.

Andrew Maff 11:56
What about on the DTC side? Are you doing a lot of this stuff on that end too?

Dan Head 12:04
I don't manage as much of that. We actually have a manager, a special manager for just that side. So I'm not really involved in that particular guy.

Andrew Maff 12:16
How's DSP starting off for you?

Dan Head 12:21
Ah, so far so good. Yeah. I mean, we're just, we're just getting into it now. So we're, we haven't really got all the data back yet from the holidays, but sales have been strong.

Narrator 12:33
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Andrew Maff 13:06
That's a fantastic segue. I appreciate that. So as of the recording of this, we are it's the Wednesday after Black Friday, Cyber Monday. So how, how did it go for you guys, better worse, year over year? Like, what are kind of your initial thoughts off of what you guys saw?

Dan Head 13:25
Dan Head 13:25 Oh, we did. We did significantly better this year. What was interesting, though was our conversion rates were two times higher than previous year, but we only have nominal growth in sales, so that was a little interesting. Didn't seem like we got all the traffic we got last year.

Andrew Maff 13:47
Yeah, interesting.

Dan Head 13:49
Might be a part of AI or Rufus, we had 2x on the conversion rate. So we were getting really well qualified traffic. So, you know, I think you know someone that has to deal with the AI taken away from Amazon. You know, Walmart's been hitting it hard. Targets been hitting it hard. I mean, all you see is Black Friday, Black Friday, Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Everywhere you look, these guys are starting to be a little bit of that, that traffic from Amazon now.

Andrew Maff 14:21
Yeah, I could see that happening. One of the things, unfortunately, I cannot remember the statistic off the top of my head, but I was literally just reading about this this morning, just on like, the initial statistics of what had happened from the weekend. And one of the things that stood out to me was the units per order across all of E commerce. I can't remember which publication did this. It was projected that there was actually a lower amount of units per order. However, there was like a 10% increase in overall sales. So the estimation was that consumer dollars were going into the weekend pretty much already knowing what they wanted to purchase, and so that theoretically could really increase conversion rates and make it look awesome, but then they're really not shopping around for much of anything else, and they're just kind of quick in and out and not doing any add ons or anything like that. So it was interesting because it had mentioned that the average sale, like the average discount, was the same year over year, although consumers still spent about, I think, was 9% more, or something like that. So it's kind of interesting to think that, you know, maybe consumers, while they are being safer and maybe not wanting to take on as much risk, they were still willing to spend the money as long as they were getting the sales for it, and then they just didn't do as much like, I guess, frivolous shopping, I don't know, but tell me, I would imagine q1 is probably when you guys crush it, right?

Dan Head 15:51
Yeah, so I was, I was just gonna mention that. I mean, supplements aren't the really the right, yeah, niche to be talking about Black Friday. I mean, we get a bump, but it's not, it's not gangbusters for us. Yeah, January. January is, it's like Christmas for a month for a supplement company.

Andrew Maff 16:08
That's awesome.

Dan Head 16:09
I mean, generally, I generally notice it starts to die down, generally, about the 21st of January. I mean, we get pretty solid growth. I guess, you know, it's the people that don't stick with the routine. Yeah? Yeah, you guys stick with the routine. Otherwise, if you don't stick with the routine, it doesn't work. Yeah? So that's why, you know, we, we quite often, you know, try to focus on, you know, you're not changing your whole life. You're just getting into a new routine where you're taking supplements that are going to help benefit your life. If it's 10 seconds out of your day over a routine, it should be too hard to keep Yeah, but that's, that's the nature of it. Yeah, people gain weight for the holidays, and they go off and then go back to their normal.

Andrew Maff 17:00
Do you? Do you do anything to kind of help, I guess, market it to, like, explaining to consumers that, you know it's, I guess maybe you're probably pushing subscription more during January, or something like, it's obviously a very like, crowded marketplace. So how are you kind of building that customer trust to keep them like throughout the year?

Dan Head 17:22
Well, we make great products and we have great reviews. So, I mean, we do, typically, once you get on Subscribe and say, we do typically keep you for a long time, but for you know, we just boil down into the new year, new you, and just really, really focus on that. It's about simple little hacks that can make your life a lot easier, lot better. And if you stick with it, you'll benefit from it.

Andrew Maff 17:49
Do you lean in on, like, promotions and coupons and Lightning Deals and like, you know, first month Subscribe and Save discounts and all that kind of stuff?

Dan Head 18:01
Yes, I do. Yes. Subscribe and Save is the name of the game. If anybody's not focusing on CAC and CLV and they have this kind of a model, then they're not doing things right. Yeah, it's about what you get back for that. So, oh yeah, I'm sorry, what was your question before that?

Andrew Maff 18:18
No, you nailed it. You crushed that was, that was exactly what I was asking. What's, what's the thought on 2026 where, like, what's, what do you think is going to end up happening in the industry? I know some questions around economy and blah, blah, but like, what are your thoughts?

Dan Head 18:34
Well, we're seeing a big transition. And, you know, I hate social media. Person, person, I mean, it's, I know, I understand what it is. It's, it's bringing you in to get you stuck on it to, you know, and it's, it's, it's a distraction engine. But one things that have been really rifling through the social media engine is biohacking. And I think biohacking is going to kind of be the new focus moving forward, and anything you can do to hack something to make your life better. So I think we're going to see quite a bit of a change and in marketing this year, as we go forward, as people react to, you know, what society is deeming important. And, you know, I think biohacking is very important. Yeah, I, for one, not very good at eating my vegetables, so I need supplements. You know, I don't do well in that area. I'm a meat and potatoes kind of guy. My father was the same way. He was the vice president of target for a long time he's the same way. And so it kind of not only did marketing come in my blood, but my lack of eating vegetables did too, because he grew up on a farm and he wouldn't eat anything any group. So it kind of transitioned to me.

Andrew Maff 19:58
Yeah, it's awesome. That's pretty cool. I know you're I look, I really appreciate you having the show. I know you're probably deep in prepping for q1 because I know q1 for supplement brands. It's, it's just wild. It's so our Sunday, yeah, so best of luck to you. I'd love to kind of give you the floor here and just let everyone know where they can find out more about you. Find out more about you and of course about Smart for Life.

Dan Head 20:27
Sure, yes, look us up. You know, Smart for Life. We have smartforlife.com we also run another brand called Md dot life. We are the number one seller of potassium magnesium on Amazon. And you can also find me on LinkedIn, Daniel Head, or amsie elite, and, yeah, beautiful, you know, love to have you guys take a look. We run a very trustworthy brand, you know, we, we put our product first.

Andrew Maff 20:59
Love that. Thanks, Dan, appreciate it. Thanks for being on the show. Obviously, everyone that tuned in, thank you as well. Please make sure you do the usual thing, rate review, subscribe all that fun stuff on whichever podcast platform you prefer, or head over to the ecom,show.com to check out all of our previous episodes. But as usual, thank you all for joining us, and we'll see you all next time. Have a good one!

Narrator 21:19
Thank you for tuning in to the E comm show, head over to E comm show.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or on the BlueTuskr YouTube channel. The E comm show is brought to you by bluetusker, a full service digital marketing company specifically for E commerce sellers looking to accelerate their growth. Go to bluetuskr.com now for more information, make sure to tune in next week for another amazing episode of the E comm show!