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How Grüns Turned a Simple Idea Into a $500M DTC Brand

Positioning, Advertising Strategy and Landing Pages

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Hey team, welcome back 👋

Today, we're diving into how a greens gummy brand completely reimagined supplement marketing and built a $500M empire in under two years.

Most DTC supplement brands throw money at Facebook ads and hope something sticks. Grüns took a different approach. They built a systematic approach that turned daily nutrition into something people actually crave.

In today’s breakdown, I’ll be covering their:

  • Experience-first product positioning

  • Multi-channel acquisition strategy

  • Persona-driven conversion funnels

The Origin Story

Grüns started in 2023 when founder Chad Janis noticed something missing in the supplement world. Despite being a massive category, most nutrition brands were either high-end powders marketed to elite athletes or bland multivitamins for the mass market, leaving everyday health-conscious consumers with products they hated taking and quickly abandoned.

Janis, frustrated with his own chalky green powder routine, began experimenting with a simple question: what if you could get the same nutrition in a gummy you actually looked forward to? He started testing early prototypes with friends and fitness enthusiasts, gathering immediate feedback: finally, a product that solved the compliance problem and fit seamlessly into their day.

What started as a personal frustration and informal taste tests became the foundation for a completely different approach to building a supplement brand. One that combined clinical credibility with a format people genuinely enjoy, and marketing that speaks directly to their daily struggles instead of just listing ingredients.

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The Playbook

MARKET RESONANCE
Messaging That Actually Resonates

Grüns cracked the code with one simple insight: stop making supplements feel like medicine. Their positioning is bulletproof: "the first supplement you actually want to take" with a fun, tasty, and inconvenience-free experience.

While competitors fight over ingredient lists, Grüns fights on experience.

No mixing powders at 6 AM. No choking down horse pills. No cleanup.

Their packaging and copy hammer home the convenience factor: no mixing, no mess, no excuses. Just grab and go.

Consumer feedback consistently mentions being "shocked" that Grüns actually tastes as promised. That surprise factor fuels organic word-of-mouth better than any paid campaign.

When your product exceeds expectations on the most basic level, everything else becomes easier to sell. Grüns collected over 20,000 reviews averaging 4.8 stars in just over a year. A massive testament to their system.

The retention signals are everywhere: people bring packs to run clubs and the beach. When customers become your biggest fans who share your product socially, you've officially transcended typical supplement behavior😂.

Visually, their homepage reinforces the same energy. It uses bright colors, fast loading pages, lifestyle photos and testimonials next to benefits. This creates a scroll experience that feels like social media, not a sales page, and encourages people to stay longer.

One clear promise plus one clear action beats endless clutter every single time.

ACQUISITION ENGINE
Advertising Systems Built for Scale

Instead of treating ads as a guessing game, they approach marketing like an ongoing experiment. Their core move is simple but powerful: take a single hero product and run multiple narratives around it, each one designed to match a different customer avatar and pain point. This playbook blends rapid creative testing, diversified channels, and data-backed scaling to systematically find and grow winning angles.

Six Core Ad Angles

Grüns’ CMO Connor Dalt is clear about how the brand scales: consistency first, clever tactics second. Instead of endlessly tweaking ads in isolation, Grüns builds narrative arcs and rolls them out as coordinated sprints across Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Google, Amazon and retail stores like Target and Sprouts. This lets them test dozens of creative angles at once, quickly kill what fails, and scale what works.

Here are the six angles they lean on, each addressing a primary consumer problem:

  • General nutrition gaps

  • Gut health issues

  • Weight loss support

  • AG1 alternative (competitor polarisation)

  • Protein support

  • Nutrition support

Some hooks they capture attention with:

  • "You have nutrition gaps. Grüns fills them."

  • "You have nutrition gaps. Grüns fills them."

  • "6 Reasons Why Grüns is a Must-Have on Your Weight Loss Journey"

  • "11 Ways Grüns Is Better Than AG1"

  • “7 Benefits GLP-1 Users Love About Grüns (Besides the Poops)”

  • "5 Reasons Why Your Protein Isn't Working (And how to fix it for $1.50/day)"

By building angles around one avatar at a time, Grüns keeps every ad tightly matched to the landing page experience, so customers feel like the product was built for them.

Diversifying Channels

While they are heavily testing creatives on Meta, they are smart enough not to put all their eggs in one basket. Grüns spreads across Meta, TikTok, YouTube, Google, Amazon and even retail shelves like Target and Sprouts. This means if one channel slows down or a policy change hits, they are still driving sales from everywhere else.

Data-Driven Scaling

Finally, they have built a strong data backbone. Using Northbeam, they track new customer acquisition cost (nCAC) across all channels. This lets them know which ads are truly bringing in fresh customers and which ones are just retargeting people who would have bought anyway. With that clarity, they scaled ad spend 22× and revenue 40× while actually lowering their acquisition cost.

CALIBRATING CONVERSION
Their Secret Conversion Weapon: Avatar Funnel

One of the biggest drivers behind Grüns’ high conversion and repeat-purchase rates is its avatar funnel strategy. By focusing on one avatar at a time, the brand can resonate faster and connect with people on a deeper level.

Instead of sending everyone to a single, generic landing page, Grüns built multiple versions of its site. Each page is tuned to a specific avatar and pain point. The product stays the same, but the positioning changes depending on who is looking.

Connor Dalt (CMO) explained that Grüns stacks “big bets” instead of chasing hacks. They start with research-driven hooks such as fiber, microbiome, and convenience versus powders. They test these angles fast on Meta. When one starts to work, they spin out dedicated landing pages and light-touch personalization like pop-ups or segmented emails.

Only after an angle proves itself do they invest heavily in creators or large-scale production. This process keeps their speed high while maintaining consistency across ads, landing pages, and retention flows.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Each funnel uses language and proof points that match the avatar. Benefits are reframed to fit that audience, and social proof is tailored with testimonials from people just like them.

The structure stays consistent across every page. Each one has a bold hero banner, a clear benefit stack, trust badges, and one frictionless call-to-action. The result is no confusion about what to do next and a seamless path from ad to purchase to retention.

Grüns also captures emails and SMS based on the avatar, like a Gut Health Guide or Weight Loss Checklist, to keep the relationship going even if someone does not buy right away.

The Application

Ad creatives:
Build multiple angles for each persona; kill losers fast.

Multi-channel expansion: 
Add at least one new channel or marketplace.

Avatar funnel build-out: 
Create 2–3 new landing pages tailored to distinct pain points.

Hero banner CRO: 
Adopt the Grüns layout: bold hook, social proof, trust badges, single CTA.

Subscription push: 
Offer a default subscription with a visible incentive.

Measure nCAC + LTV: 
Track your true cost to acquire and retain a new customer across 90 and 365 days.

WRAP UP

The Bottom Line

Grüns’ explosive growth came from a creative-driven ad system plus persona-specific landing pages. This combo made every ad dollar work harder, removed friction from the customer journey, and maximized retention.

Thanks for tuning in this week! Hope you found this insightful.

— Dev

PS. I’ve finally just launched a community to connect with founders and marketers across ecom. Super ugly at the moment, but the resources in there are invaluable. Join my free community called Assembly to connect with other brand owners/marketers, get new playbooks, ad platform updates, templates and live trainings built for scaling.

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