The Real Trends in Health & Wellness for 2017

It’s that time of year again—the time when our email inboxes and web browsers overflow with predictions about the key food trends for the coming year. Will 2017 be the year of sorghum? Will matcha take over the beverage market? Will people start swapping jackfruit for meat? 

While these trends represent exciting innovations in the food world, we don’t believe that they are the trends that will drive health & wellness in America next year. Instead, we encourage people to use this year-end period to take a step back and think about the big picture for 2017.

Americans Want to Be Healthier

A significant—and growing—percentage of Americans want to be healthier, lose weight, and feel better about their physical well being in 2017. So much so that in a recent survey, nearly half of Americans said that they are actively trying to lose weight. The number of Americans who use a gym has reached an all-time high—58 million people! This number has risen steadily since 2000, and we can expect this trend to continue.

Consumers Are Confused

We’ve written about the conflicting reports in the media that have created a cluttered space when it comes to health & wellness. Google any health-related topic and you’ll get dozens of conflicting opinions by self-proclaimed “experts.” People are confused about what to believe—and who to trust. 

Personal healthcare professionals are the most trusted source of health & wellness information, according to IFIC. As fake news, biased content, and questionably credentialed experts continue to proliferate online, consumers will turn to these trusted sources to cut through the clutter.

Trust and Credibility are Hard Won

Building trust and credibility is perhaps the most important “trend” for 2017. Americans have been skeptical of the media. Then came the presidential election, in which fake news garnered more attention on Facebook than the real news. 

While false claims are made by a very small percentage of brands, they have led 77% of consumers to believe that diet products aren’t as healthy as they claim to be. The uncertainty about who or what to trust online will make the role of face-to-face health professionals even more important in 2017.

Wishing you all health and prosperity in 2017!

Defining A Health Influencer

Malcolm Gladwell is often credited with the birth of influencer marketing as his 2000 book “The Tipping Point” highlighted the unique impact certain individuals can have over the preferences—and buying habits—of the people they interact with.

Over the past 16-plus years, influencer marketing has become a broad and varied discipline. As the value of mass media and now digital media are continuing to be questioned, consumer packaged goods brands are turning more and more to influencer marketing to help their brands reach that proverbial tipping point.

These brands have scrambled to identify those key individuals that can persuade others to buy their product, and they have sought them out in communities, on websites, via social media, on TV and in print. If you look around, you can see attempts at influencer marketing everywhere you look. The definition of an influencer, for many, has become very broad and somewhat diffuse.

Our exclusive focus on health & wellness, however, leads us to a very specific and focused definition of an influencer—a definition based on the trust and credibility that consumers demand from those that advise them on their health and wellness.

So, what constitutes a health & wellness influencer at Pulse? For us, it’s someone who:

1.  Counsels, trains or advises people in a professional setting. People trust the health & wellness professionals that they have hand-selected to support them. This includes practicing dietitians, nurses and nurse practitioners, physical trainers, health coaches, pediatric professionals, midwives and many other everyday health & wellness professionals. As the International Food Information Council found, that trust does not necessarily extend to bloggers, TV personalities, the news media, and other sources of indirect influence.

2.  Counsels, trains or advises people on behavior change. When people seek out health & wellness solutions they are looking for products that support positive changes in their behavior—small steps to better health. Whether that’s “free from” food products that support their aspirational wellness goals or functional products that address a specific health need, consumers look for advice on products that help them change their behavior. Our definition of an influencer, therefore, focuses on the professionals who spend time with consumers talking about how to make those positive changes. These “allied” professionals often spend significantly more time with consumers than doctors and make a much more effective vehicle for delivering your brand message directly to the consumer.

3.  Sees patients or clients on a regular basis. Far too often, “influencers” can only deliver that influence indirectly through blog posts, tweets, Facebook posts, or 90-second local news segments. We seek out professionals who see dozens of patients and clients on a weekly basis in order to provide clients with reach to their target consumer. We want the influence delivered directly to the consumer through a face-to-face interaction, not indirectly through media.

4.  Has the training and expertise to understand the needs of their patients & clients. What could be more targeted than relying on the education and experience of a trained health & wellness professional to determine for which patients & clients your product is most relevant. With our influencers, there’s no need to look to demographics or markers to identify which consumers to reach. If you find the right influencers, they do the targeting for you.

5.  Is willing to use branded educational materials, product samples and coupons in their counseling interactions. Not every health & wellness influencer is willing, but our research shows that more than 90% of influencers do recommend specific brands by name to patients and clients. But even when they are generally willing to incorporate materials, we want to be sure that your brand materials are highly relevant to the conversations they are having with people and that they meet a specific need for the consumers they are counseling, training and advising on a daily basis.

It’s not just a one-way street, our members expect high-quality educational materials from us. They rely on us to provide materials that are not only informative and credible, but which are also relevant to the conversations they are having with the people they advise. 

Influencers are at the core of what we do, and we are constantly looking to add qualified influencers to our network. If you fit the description above, join our influencer collective and start receiving educational materials, samples, and coupons that can make a difference in the lives of the people you counsel, train and advise.

Why Print Succeeds with Health Influencers

There’s no question that we live in a digital age. Wifi, smartphones, and social media are ubiquitous and have unquestionably and fundamentally altered the way that we communicate—and the way we market.

So why do we continue to espouse the benefits of printed materials when it comes to delivering healthy brand messages through health & wellness influencers?

Because print works in ways digital cannot.

Let’s start with the most basic and powerful benefit: Printed materials deliver a face-to-face interaction between an influencer and highly targeted consumers. When a health & wellness influencer hands printed materials to a consumer during a counseling interaction, their influence is delivered directly and compellingly to that consumer. You don’t get that direct influence with a URL, tweet or blog post.

No less importantly, print lets you control the message. Digital activation aimed at earning blog posts, tweets, and other social media content risks your healthy brand message being communicated to consumers in ways that are inaccurate, misleading, or embarrassing. Printed materials not only educate influencers in an accurate and appropriate manner, but they ensure that consumers will receive your healthy brand messages as you have crafted them.

And despite what you may think, influencers prefer printed materials. This has been corroborated many times in our research with health & wellness influencers. In fact, more than 75% of influencers say they prefer print over digital. Why? They don’t have time to search the Internet for information to share with patients or clients, let alone manufacturer websites. They often don’t have the means in a professional setting to print or copy the quantities they need to distribute to consumers.

Plus, influencers prefer printed materials because they want their patients and clients to walk away with something they can refer to later. In fact, creating printed materials that allow for personalization and interaction vastly increases the usability and perceived value of the materials.

Finally—and this comes as a surprise to many—consumers prefer printed materials. When it comes to their health & wellness, consumers are seeking more information, not less. They trust health & wellness influencers more than any other source for this information. And despite the ubiquity of digital, they prefer print.

When people express surprise at this, I often encourage them to search Google for the phrases “Millennials prefer print” or “Boomers prefer print.” There is no scarcity of studies and data supporting these notions. In fact, there’s even science to support the fact that consumers are right to prefer print when it comes to important topics. A study by TrueImpact, a Canadian neuromarketing firm, showed that print media requires 21% less cognitive effort to process than digital, is easier to understand, and is more memorable.

So, is there a role for digital in the realm of health & wellness influencer marketing, or even in the marketing of healthy brands? Absolutely. Digital plays a key role in driving awareness and interest in healthy brands. It’s just that digital impressions are a mile wide and an inch deep.

But once you have the attention and interest of health & wellness influencers, print is the workhorse engine that drives the path to purchase.