Select Page

A typical organic consumer walks into a Whole Foods (or other grocery store) with a million things on her mind…

What to eat for dinner tonight?

Have to get the laundry done…

Does he love me, or does he not?

Can’t wait till the next episode of “Orange is the New Black”…

The kids are driving me crazy…

What was the name of that chocolate my friend recommended?

Oh shit, have to pay the XYZ bill tonight…

As they’re going through this flurry of scattered thoughts, while traversing aisles filled with colorful, shiny organic products — each one silently trying to scream out its value through clever packaging — the actual products the consumer ends up buying depend largely on one of two things: habit or chance.

Habit is where people buy certain products because they’ve been buying them already, and they like them. They already know the products and are familiar with them. In some cases, they zip straight to those products, ignore everything else, and check out. End of story.

Chance is where a consumer “happens” to see a product that looks interesting. The label is pretty. The packaging is neat. “Maybe I’ll try this,” they think, and chuck it into their basket.

Overwhelmingly, most organic product companies leave their sales to chance.

Companies employ many smart people who figure out how to increase the “chances” that consumers will randomly pick up their items at the store. (This has to do with placement of items in the store, and capitalizing on consumers’ tendency towards instant gratification.)

As an organic consumer myself, I personally dislike the chance method. I’ve been lured into buying products I didn’t want…solely because they were positioned right near the checkout lane. This doesn’t create long-term value in my opinion.

I’m more a fan of training consumers to adopt a new habit — i.e., learning about a good product (yours), educating themselves about it, and consciously choosing to buy it because they truly want to…not because of some chance encounter during a moment of weakness.

How do you create and emphasize the “habit” behavior in organic consumers? How do you get more people buying your products and getting in the HABIT of buying them?

The answer is to create proactive marketing campaigns.

Instead of relying on clever positioning in a store, fancy packaging, or whatever else…you make the decision you’re going to find customers first, before they find you.

Like pouring gasoline over a fire, well-crafted marketing campaigns create a flurry of new customers on demand.

No need to wait for scatter-brained housewives to tell five of her friends about your product…

You can exponentially multiply the speed at which people find and try your products…by doing savvy online marketing campaigns.

You can reach people who are most likely to love your product — by the thousands — using the internet.

How?

By using marketing funnels.

A marketing funnel is an elaborate yet simple backend system that places targeted marketing content in front of people who are searching for your products online.

It captures the email addresses of these people…

Then it drips entertaining, educational content to them over a series of weeks.

People begin to learn about your company and think, “Holy shit, this is genuinely awesome.”

In all of your marketing — in every email, every ad, every piece of writing — you adopt the attitude:

“Even if readers don’t buy this product now, they’ll still end up learning something valuable from reading this content.”

THAT is how you train people to get in the habit of buying from you.

THAT is how you take control of the marketing process, while relying less on chance and more on a proactive strategy that benefits both you and consumers long-term.

Hardly anyone does this. Most organic companies leave it to chance. They’d rather pay store an extra fee to place their products in a prominent location…and hope that random shoppers happen to see their products and buy.

Sure, that approach can work. But for the average organic company, it tends to yield average results.

Plus, consumers often end up resenting your products because they’re only buying them in a moment of weakness.

If you want to succeed big, take matters into your own hands. Take a long-term, value-oriented approach.

Give consumers the gift of educational, entertaining marketing that draws them in, opens their minds, and changes their lives.

One caveat: If you’re selling organic junk food, my approach probably won’t work for you. My approach is more geared towards companies selling a legitimately good product that solves a problem, creates health, and/or heals people and frees them from health conditions. My approach works best for products that are SO good, they border on medicine. With these types of products, you must push out plenty of EDUCATIONAL marketing, while wrapping it into an entertaining writing style — something that captures the attention of a typical busy, hurried shopper who has a million things on her mind.

If you want my help with this, get started by applying for an Organic Marketing Audit.

Talk soon,
Michelle

About the Author

Michelle Lopez is a writer, editor, and copywriter with a BA in English/Creative Writing from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Confused About How to Increase Conversions?

Download my FREE cheat sheet, “5 Tips for Increasing Conversions on Natural, Organic, Non-Toxic Products”