Launched mid-December 2022, these orange-flavored gummies have been challenging perceptions that have wrongfully labeled creatine as a quasi-steroid meant only for bodybuilders and serious athletes.
While creatine is one of the most extensively researched fitness supplements, its penetration remains shockingly low— 2% of the American population. Yet, proper creatine supplementation is something everyone can benefit from.
Create Wellness is re-educating men and women on the benefits of regular creatine intake: increasing strength, building lean muscle, muscle recovery, and improved mental focus.
Since the brand's launch in December 2022, Create Wellness experienced exponential growth in its first three months:
And more recently, crossing $2M in all-time revenue.
Founder of Create Wellness, Dan McCormick has shared his journey transparently with his followers and subscribers. He has no full-time employees and works with several part-time consultants, agencies, and freelancers.
Despite Create Wellness showcasing a lot of potential and early traction, it faced challenges of navigating the unpredictable waters of marketing platforms, the fickleness of investor interests, and the broader socio-economic impacts of a post-pandemic world.
Originally, Dan ventured into the market assuming that TikTok would be a significant driver for Create, given its surging popularity and relevance with gym content. He envisioned a balanced marketing effort split between TikTok and Meta. However, reality begged to differ. As Meta unveiled Reels, it effectively contained much of TikTok's burgeoning growth.
While Meta's advertising initiative took a hit following the iOS 14 update, its subsequent rebound proved it to be a resilient and efficient platform for advertising. The scenario wasn't as advantageous as the pre-Covid days or the 2013-2014 era, but it was a favorable phase to invest in Meta-driven marketing.
The objective? Improve brand awareness and sales through influencer marketing and paid ads, identify the right marketing channels, and refine the targeting process.
Using targeted outreach, Kynship identified 1000 influencers who were relevant to the Create Wellness product and initiated the first step—sending them a pack of Creatine gummies with no-strings-attached messaging.
A large percentage of these influencers, driven by a genuine appreciation for the product, posted organically— netting us 350 unique assets that we wouldn’t get from a traditional pay-per-post model.
Despite equally gifting their product to men and women, about 85-90% of the shared content came from women. This trend, driven by female creators' inclination to post their gifted products, unintentionally shaped the brand.
From the organic posts, we then secured usage rights for as many of the assets as possible and tested them in Create’s Meta ad account.
Once we tested the influencer-generated content in Create’s ad account, we contracted more of that type of content with similar creators— feeding more assets into the machine.
We identified profitable acquisition targets ($45-50 CPA)and as long as we hit those, we continued to scale ad spend.
Here’s how the top 4 pieces of IGC performed in Create’s ad account:
A major driver of our ability to scale ad accounts profitably is using Cost Caps and feeding every piece of creative we have at our disposal. But that can be hard when you don’t believe the creative is up to scratch. In Dan’s case, he understood the theory but still had doubts.
“Right after we launched, there was almost no spend. I'm someone who wants quick results. Launching during the holidays, I grew impatient. I even questioned on Twitter if our approach was right, without naming Kynship. Most responses advised against cost caps and suggested volume-focused campaigns.”
Dan learned that patience pays off.
“Every ad buyer has a philosophy on the optimal strategy. I, frankly, dont yet. Kynship's strategy has worked. Intellectually, I like cost caps. Feels like I have a bit more control over the Meta blackbox… Don't spend $ unless you can do it under x CPA."
To further prove you have to lean into Meta’s machine learning algorithm…
Kynship’s strategic collaboration helped Create Wellness set up its influencer seeding strategy and streamline content acquisition and ad production processes. Kynship handled all influencer communications, and, most importantly, steered the brand from a standing start to a turnover of $175k in three months.
👏 Reduced CAC & scaled ad spend: They achieved a 48% reduction in Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), amplified ad spending by 135%, and saw a whopping 263% rise in New Customer Revenue.
👏 Mastered cost efficiency: The brand set out with a target CPA of $45. By February, not only had Kynship met this goal but reported an impressive CPA of just $38 the following month.
👏 Cultivated genuine creator partnerships: They fostered genuine relationships with influencers through their tactics. This laid the foundation for authentic endorsements, boosting the brand's credibility and trust.
The partnership's success story didn't end there. In August 2023, Create Wellness celebrated a milestone, having accumulated over $2M in all-time revenue.
As Create Wellness is shaking things up in the creatine market with their new Gummy2.0—after a whopping 37 R&D batches, you've got to follow Dan. He's giving us the real behind-the-scenes, every high and low of building a DTC brand. And as for Create Wellness's future? It's looking promising. Kynship's been with them on this wild ride and, trust us, we're sticking around for whatever comes next!
Dan shared several takeaways and insights from his journey so far:
👉Patience is Key: Allowing time for campaigns to gather data and insights can lead to more effective refinements and better results in the long run
👉Influencer Collaborations: Paying influencers for posts might not be the best investment in early stages unless there's a distinct advantage, like a celebrity endorsement. Instead, it’s better to focus on influencers with genuine communities who can offer a real connection to potential customers.
👉The Power of Gifting: Gifting products to influencers can be invaluable. Not only does it serve as a marketing tool by putting the product in front of potential customers, but it also provides invaluable feedback. For Create Wellness, this strategy highlighted product issues, like the gummies being too sticky, allowing them to rectify problems before major launches.
👉Maximizing Gifting Benefits: The act of gifting can be the beginning of a long, mutually beneficial relationship. Brands can repurpose influencers' content, evolve the relationship into user-generated content partnerships, initiate affiliate partnerships, or even consider long-term brand endorsements. What begins as a small investment in gifting can lead to multi-faceted collaborations.
👉Unintended Consequences and Learnings: Dan noted an intriguing observation: even though their gifting was gender-neutral, most of the content came from female influencers. This inadvertent inclination of female creators to post about gifted products greatly influenced Create Wellness's branding direction.
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