When Amanda Chantal Bacon started Moon Juice in 2011, the wellness movement was in its infancy. She sold green juices and raw foods from an impossibly perfect little shop at the nexus of all things bohemian and trendy: Venice, California.
Seven years later, the global wellness industry is now estimated to be worth $4 trillion dollars. Bacon, who cut her teeth cooking under some of the top chefs in the US, has since expanded her business to get ahead of the juice trend and focus instead on “dusts,” or blends of adaptogenic herbs designed to improve the functions of body and mind. These earthy powders can be added to smoothies or coffee for what the Moon Juice set might call a “cosmic boost.”
The brand’s loyalists and curious health enthusiasts alike can be found buying Brain Dust, Sex Dust, or Beauty Dust at one of Moon Juice’s three physical locations or on their eCommerce site, which accounts for some 30% of their business.
Following their recent release of SuperYou — a daily tablet that offers the benefits of stress-reducing dust without all the potion-making — Moon Juice is now dipping its feet into the beauty pool as well. They are poised to launch a skincare line this summer.
Skincare accounts for about 36% of the global beauty market, which is growing at a rate of 5% year over year. So, a brand like Moon Juice, positioned to take both the beauty and wellness markets by storm, has the world at its feet.
Ever wonder how emerging brands can get to the same spot, earning the devotion — and repeat purchases — of wellness-seekers around the globe?
We got the strategies straight from the pros behind this super-brand. Moon Juice’s Director of eCommerce, Mila Aldrin, Marketing Manager Ashley Murphy, and Customer Relations Manager Carly Wasserstein sat down with us to answer your toughest questions about eCommerce, marketing, growth, and success on social.
The holistic approach to marketing
Mila: We’re using Google PPC ads, retargeting ads and prospecting ads running on Facebook. We also work with a lot of different vendors.
You need to A/B test and see what’s working for your company. We just recently turned off a marketing channel for a month as a test and reallocated that spend to another channel just to see if that made a difference, and it did. It really revealed a lot of valuable insights that we used going forward.
Mila: Definitely. I really encourage you to optimize your email marketing strategy, including your regular marketing emails. Optimize your cadence, test what works — subject lines, content, etc. Create automated flows that are constantly hitting customers at the point in their cycle when you really need to be in front of them.
Monetize your social media. These are people who are already following your brand. They already care. So make sure that you are creating content that is informative, educational, interesting and compelling.
Lastly, if you do have money to put toward any ad spend, we definitely recommend retargeting campaigns. Those are high-intent people who have come to your site and left, so you definitely want to hit them again. Retargeting typically has great ROAS.
Ashley: Initially, when setting objectives for the campaign launch, we identified that we wanted to generate buzz before the product even came out and we really wanted to educate. So based on those objectives, we strategized how we could leverage teaser posts, our loyalty segment — offering early access via email, Instagram stories, and trackable links. In addition, we also aligned our influencer marketing efforts. And with all campaigns, I really drive home that cadence is key, because if all your levers aren’t aligned, it’s just not going to maximize your exposure.
Carly: If it’s the discount that gets the customer in the door, we also provide a discount on their next order if they want to talk about the product and leave us a review. So there’s always those little ways to keep incentivising people to come back.
Scaling sales in the health and beauty space
Mila: First focus on getting your site up to speed and make sure that all features are running as you want them to, and then focus on making optimizations. Look into your analytics, make sure you’re addressing any issues where there are high bounce rates.
I would also say — and this has been big for me here at Moon Juice — is really make the most of every platform and service that you’re already paying for and using. Yotpo is a great example of this: we’ve been working with our amazing rep Shani all year to find ways to utilize the features that they keep coming out with. It really is so much more than just reviews on the site, which is what I thought when I first learned about Yotpo. You have the ability to push reviews and customer testimonials on to social, you can run Facebook ads straight out of the platform, so there are a lot of features.
As we grow, so do the vendors that we’re working with and their platforms. I recommend always speaking with an account manager if you have one and telling them, “We’re putting in a lot of money into this tool and we really need to be seeing the ROI. How can you help me grow how we’re using this tool?” We’ve had a lot of success with that.
Lastly, focus on email acquisition. A good way to grow your list could be partnering with like-minded brands and running a co-branded contest. People are also more likely to sign up with an offer. If you already have an offer for your email acquisition, think about testing it and trying different offers to see what moves the needle.
Mila: There are 3 KPIs that I hone in on: traffic, average order value and conversion rate. The way I think of it, those KPIs are on one side of the equation and your online gross sales is on the other side. So anything you do that’s improving those KPIs is going to incrementally lift your online business.
With traffic, of course you want to bring new people to the site, you want to drive fresh people into your sales funnel, so that means taking a good look at your prospecting campaigns, make sure that they are engaging and relevant for people, and are driving them to the site. It’s not sexy, but you definitely want to work on your SEO strategy on the site as well.
For average order value, start by encouraging shoppers with complimentary product recommendations and geo-targeted suggestions on cart pages or product pages. Another good tactic is to create custom bundles or exclusive sets that may have a higher retail price, but have some sort of added value.
And then lastly conversion rate — I’m not reinventing the wheel, but you want to keep testing on your site and make sure that you’re always tracking, monitoring, and optimizing.
I track these KPIs on a weekly basis, and it really lets me watch the business and understand, for example, why AOV is down this week. It gives you a sense of when things are out of whack and you can address those issues.
Creating a community of evangelists on social
Ashley: We post everything on Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram, but really our core audience is on Instagram, and that’s the more engaged community.
We’re a really lean team, so I always recommend to any brand — since you can’t do it all — is to focus on where people are clicking and buying. That’s why we rely so heavily on Google Analytics and using the URL builder to track every link we’re putting out there.
For us personally, Instagram is our bread and butter.
Ashley: If you have over 10,000 followers, utilize the swipe up feature in Instagram stories — use a trackable link, because then you can really see how many people are taking action to go to your site. Make a dedicated landing page, because then you can see how many people sign up, and it makes it a one-step process instead of making people go to the footer, for example.
Also, if you launch a new product, you can always remind people in the copy, “don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter for 10% off.” And put that in your ads as well — we’ve tested that and it’s really paid off for us.
Carly: A product that works is huge. People try it, they love it, they want to talk about it.
We also interact a lot through social media, we use Instagram primarily, but also Facebook and Twitter to interact with our Moon Family. We answer any questions they have and promote sharing through leveraging services like Yotpo, who really spearheads our review program. People share on their social media, they get a little extra discount on their next purchase.
For more Q&A with Moon Juice, check out the full recording of our AMA below: