Athletic Greens $1.2B Growth Marketing Formula

The global health and wellness market is approaching c.$7 trillion and the functional beverages market is valued at $48 billion in the U.S. alone, projected to grow at a 6.6% CAGR through 2025! This presents an exciting opportunity for brands like Athletic Greens to expand and reach new audiences.

Athletic Greens are on a mission to make taking supplements easier through their flagship product — AG1.

In today’s edition, I’ll be covering the following:

• Athletic Greens’ origin story

• Unpacking their Meta-measurement and campaign strategy

• Podcast advertising playbook

• Influencer marketing approach

• Athletic Greens’ tech stack list

• Trend spotlight: Rising popularity of Shoppable videos

Enjoy 🙏
- Dev

SPONSORED

Send products to Influencers and 5X revenue!

Drive traffic to your Amazon store with influencer partnerships and 5X revenue. Boost your sales with our unique approach to influencers and UGC. Carefully selected micro influencers purchase your product and get reimbursed for their expenses only if they complete a social promotion.

See how brands like Unilever and Magic Spoon have been able to 5X revenue in 2 months and decrease ad costs using Stack Influence.

FEATURE CASE STUDY
Athletic Greens

Context: Athletic Greens was founded in 2010 by Chris Ashenden who was experiencing various health issues like gut distress, low energy and nutrient deficiencies. Experts recommended taking an unsustainable amount of 20-30 pills daily!! He was determined to create an all-in-one nutritional supplement that took care of everything that he needed.

After years of formulating and bootstrapping the business himself, Athletic Greens launched its flagship product AG1 - a greens powder containing 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food-sourced nutrients.

In 2022, Athletic Greens raised $115 million in funding at a valuation exceeding $1 billion, establishing it as a major player in the $7 trillion health and wellness market.

META ADS
Using the MM Model to Improve Ad Efficiency

Measurement: Facebook has an open-source Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) tool called Robyn to help advertisers measure the effectiveness of their ad campaigns on Meta and across different channels.

Athletic Greens tapped into the power of an always-on conversion lift study and a/b testing to improve their decision-making with accurate data. To achieve this, they did the following:

• They created a way to use the results from monthly studies on conversion rates to make decisions regularly.

• They used data from different channels to see how well their Meta campaign influenced sales from other channels. They were the first advertiser in the globe to do this via Robyn.

Campaign Strategy: Focus on niche audiences that fit their ideal customer profile, improve customer engagement and make sure creatives are compelling. Their ad copy leads with product benefits, testimonials and A/B testing different ad angles is part of their strategy.

Why does this strategy work for them?

• Keep creatives tailored to the customer journey and constantly test new assets.

• Understand who their ideal customers are based on the data and a robust measurement framework. This is more cost-efficient and, therefore helps reach and convert more people.

• They know what message has the best cut-through. They use this to communicate key messages at scale using ads.

These are the 5-key pillars that bring their strategy to life:

1. Audience building - Target fitness enthusiasts, health seekers, vegans/vegetarians, busy professionals, biohackers, those interested in healthy aging, outdoor enthusiasts, and green drink fans.

2. Testing - Use A/B testing to compare different versions of their ads to see which performs better. This method allows them to optimize their ad campaigns based on real data continuously.

3. Low-hanging opportunity - Retargeting strategies help reach people who abandoned their carts after they visited the website, bringing them back into the funnel in case they are ready to give AG1 a try.

4. Lead with what works - They leverage user-generated content from influencers into their ads — using testimonials and endorsements to add credibility and build trust.

5. Whitelisting ads - Run whitelisted ads in partnership with key micro-creators, helping them save costs on new creatives. Plus, they reach a more engaged audience through personal brands.

PODCAST ADVERTISING
Building Long Term Relationships With Podcasters

Spending upwards of $2.2m across key podcasts indicates how serious they are about reaching customers and focusing on taking charge of their health, finances, and relationships.

They work with big names like Tim Ferriss, Andrew D. Huberman, and Dax Shepard, who have lots of fans and share the same values as the brand. The strategy is to associate themselves with their authoritative brand to instil trust and expertise around their product.

Here’s why this approach works for them:

• They reach audiences who resonate deeply with the podcast hosts and their content. By proxy, they connect better with AG1’s message.

• Taking a long-term view rather than catching moments of attention has helped them build momentum and solidify relationships. During the pandemic era, in a tough economic climate, they kept their activity going when most brands were axing partnerships or stopping advertising in general.

• AG1 maintain a consistent presence across multiple podcasts, ensuring that their message and brand are consistently reinforced, helping them build recognition and trust.

This is what makes their Podcast ad strategy successful:

1. Having a team in-house that focuses on curating and aligning our brand with other podcasts helps us smoothly sync content between AG1 and each podcast. They aim to turn endorsements into affiliations.

2. Use dynamic ad insertion to ensure that their ads are seamlessly integrated into the podcast content where ads are easily inserted, swapped out, or updated across new and old. This approach helps get access to more ad slots.

3. Measurement via vanity URLs equipped with UTM parameters to track the performance of their podcast ads.

4. Ad scripts are consistent and tap into consumer psychology. For example:

INFLUENCER MARKETING
Partnering Up With a Diverse Range of Creators

Athletic Greens’ successful influencer strategy is centred around building long-term, genuine relationships with content creators.

It reaches a diverse audience that is aware of the problem AG1 solves and cleverly partners across different niches such as fitness, lifestyle, travel, automotive, personal development, and education.

By working with these creators they make sure they:

• Incentivise their partnership well.

• Build trust with the creator’s audience through UGC and testimonials.

• Maintain consistent branding with multiple campaigns and ad variations.

• Use their in-house team to tailor messages and angles to the right audience.

They’ve built a battle-tested blueprint that’s proven to be successful for them. This is what they do well:

1. Built a team of 10+ people solely focusing on influencer partnerships

2. Give creators the freedom to naturally integrate the AG1 product into their content

3. Sent gift boxes with AG1 and brand merchandise. This typically gets shared across YouTube videos, TikTok and Instagram reels — creating brand recall.

4. Partner with their customers

5. Collect raving reviews from prominent creators like Andrew Huberman and use them across the website and landing pages.

6. For their prominent influencers like Tim Ferris and Andrew Huberman, they have dedicated landing pages unique to them. Keeping familiarity with their audience → leading to faster conversions.

DIGITAL TOOLS
Athletic Green’s Tech Stack

The first thing I always look at when researching a brand is going through their tech stack. I decided to start sharing it with you in case you were wondering too.

• E-commerce: Shopify

• Customer Service: Gladly

• Email& SMS Marketing: Klaviyo

• Domain: GoDaddy

• Subscriptions: Upscribe

• CMS: Sanity

• Analytics: Google Analytics, Datadog, Northbeam, Snowplow

• A/B Testing: AB Tasty

• Referral marketing: Friendbuy
  

TREND SPOTLIGHT
The Rise of Shoppable Video Content

Brands are creating engaging video content that allows customers to click and purchase products directly from the videos. This trend is driven by the increasing popularity of social commerce and the desire for more interactive, engaging shopping experiences from consumers.

New Here? Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.