Website Closers® presents a unique eCommerce business that has combined a niche offering in the fast-growing Vegan Lifestyle Category with a vibrant social media presence that has helped them turn thousands of influencers into an active and effective sales team.
This elite brand in the field of plant-based and Vegan diets has used their social media presence on Instagram and Facebook to build a core team of social influencers that have been phenomenally successful in promoting the brand. Essentially, this company created a package that includes a wide selection of eCommerce items in the vegan niche, which are sold by influencers across social media platforms. Within just one year, the brand has sponsored four influencer campaigns and sold 23,000 copies of their package.
Their package contains a collection of 90+ digital recipe eBooks, guides, and online programs in the vegan niche – an industry that has grown by more than 300% since 2014. That collection of products is provided by the influencers who join the package, contribute content, and market it. This company’s approach to those influencers has been simple and direct: it can be challenging to sell digital products on their own, but joining the package enables them to sell their products together with 90+ additional digital items related to the Vegan and plant-based lifestyle.
The products are made by people in the vegan niche including personal trainers, pro bodybuilders, cookbook authors, Instagram and YouTube personalities, and chefs who have brought with them products that include plant-based recipe eBooks, fitness guides, yoga memberships, weight loss programs, food journals and customizable meal planners. The topics range from health and fitness to meditation, keto recipes, and disease prevention.
While all the products within the package have a combined value of $4,000, influencers can sell the package for $50, typically double their normal order value. This package has helped influencers increase the value of their orders and the revenue they can generate from their products by selling as part of the package.
This company has sponsored four launch events that brought on and trained new influencers to enable them to overcome any weakness in their marketing skills.
The first launch in June 2020 attracted 53 influencers and resulted in a strong profit of from 4,846 sales. By the second launch, they had 72 new influencers who went on to make a total of 7,567 sales. The key behind each launch has been to effectively educate the influencers in online sales and teach them how to promote the package on their own channels. Influencers who join the company are enrolled in their sales training program which includes their eBook on how to maximize sales.
The company now has 98 “Creator Affiliates” who create content for the package and also promote it, while they have an additional 46 influencers who promote the package but do not create content for it.
This brand’s success has come largely through social media used effectively to drive their influencer campaigns. These platforms have proven invaluable for connecting with influencers when a new launch is being scheduled. It helps that there is a fast-growing number of Vegan influencers on Instagram.
They also utilize these social media platforms to drive traffic to their website, which lays out in greater detail what the package offers, who has contributed content to it, and how new influencers can benefit from marketing it on their own. The brand has found it easy to recruit middle and lower tier influencers who now account for 60% of sales.
Current owners dedicate varying hours depending on when a launch is being held. Within the months leading up to the final two weeks before a launch, they can spend up to 15 hours per week on tasks that include communicating with and recruiting creators and affiliates, editing content on their website, and organizing information to be provided to the new influencers.
In the final two weeks leading up to the launch, they spend about 40 hours per week on the business, and that drops to 5 hours per week in the weeks after the launch has been completed.
They now have one employee who handles customer service contacts, primarily for email inquiries, which average about 20 a day during a launch. Their creators are paid a commission to recruit other creators and affiliates.
A very distinctive business model, this business opportunity provides a buyer with some terrific scale opportunities, especially as the Vegan and plant-based lifestyles continue on a growth trajectory, and their presence is most strongly felt on social media today. This brand is now advertising entirely on Instagram where they offer a recipe eBook for free as a lead magnet. They could expand its social media presence to include new channels such as TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, and YouTube.
The brand could also begin running PPC ads on Facebook, specifically ads that are aimed at Millennials, which is the next group this brand is targeting. An estimated 85% of millennials in the U.S. are active on Facebook.
There remains enormous potential through a new and aggressive email marketing campaign. The company’s current database includes emails from 22,000 buyers, but it also includes 42,000 subscribers who haven’t been marketed to yet.
This would enable the company to more efficiently market to those 42,000 subscribers while also upselling new products to the 22,000 buyers.
Expanding its product offerings, the business could bring on new items in the vegan niche such as supplements, plant-based foods, Vegan one-on-one coaching, kitchen equipment and cooking utensils, and monthly membership groups. At the same time, the company could bring on more top tier influencers who contribute content to the current bundle and then market it through their social media channels.
This uniquely specialized brand combined a passion for vegan food – a passion shared by millions of others globally – and their skill at social media marketing to create a stunning product, that is literally being sold by an ever-expanding sales team, their influencers.
Since interest in the vegan and plant-based lifestyles keeps growing, this brand’s offerings will continue to have a large audience of newcomers to market to. The influencer-based sales plan creatively provides an army of recruits to market it.
Having brought in more than $1 million in gross revenue in just a year, and with the ability to expand onto other popular social media sites with a strong vegan presence, this company has tremendous potential to see its profits soar quickly.
