Health and wellness marketing is how HR teams promote a wellness program internally so employees actually use it. It borrows consumer marketing tactics such as countdowns, incentives, social proof, and email campaigns, and applies them to an internal audience. The 11 ideas below cover what works for workplace programs.
Most wellness programs do not fail because the benefits are weak. They fail because nobody knew the program existed, or the launch email landed once and was never followed up. Platforms like Vantage Fit fold campaign scheduling and reminders into the program itself, so promotion is not a separate job someone has to remember.
The market context is worth knowing. McKinsey put the global health and wellness market at more than $1.5 trillion, growing 5 to 10 percent a year. Workplace wellness is a smaller slice of that: a $48 billion market in 2017, projected at the time to reach $66 billion by 2022.
Key Takeaways
- Wellness marketing is internal marketing. The tactics that work are the consumer ones: countdowns, incentives, social proof, and repeated reminders.
- A single launch email is the most common failure point. Campaigns need a schedule, not an announcement.
- Gamified countdowns and leaderboards outperform passive awareness posts, because they give employees a reason to return.
- Internal influencers, usually managers and visible early adopters, move participation further than official communications do.
- Measure participation and sustained engagement rather than email opens, which tell you nothing about whether anyone joined.
Employee Engagement and Wellness
Taking care of employees’ wellness is important for businesses to thrive today. When employees are healthy, they tend to be more engaged and productive at work.
According to a statistics, 90% of employees with low physical health have poor emotional wellness. 12% of employees who have very high financial wellness have poor emotional agility. And therefore, factors like physical, emotional, and financial wellness goals are highly inter-related to employees’ disengagement at work.
Activities like wellness challenges or events can bring the workforce together for a better cause. Promoting wellness marketing ideas will set an example for other organizations as well to create more awareness within and outside the organization. It will help organizations build a diligent and spirited workforce.
Related: 5 Advantages of Digital Wellness For Employees And Workplace Wellness
The Importance of Health and Wellness Marketing Ideas to Boost Employee Engagement
The workplace culture plays a crucial role in determining the state of employee wellbeing. Issues like employee turnover, employee disengagement, job-hopping, and low-performance levels have becoming high.
The employee disengagements rate is rising in recent times. Thus, implementing effective health and wellness marketing ideas are becoming crucial.
Thus, wellness Marketing attracts and engage target audience, with similar strategies as internal marketing that also yields excellent results in employee engagements.
How well are you marketing your wellness programs to employees?
Suppose there’s a chance of a communication gap between you and your employees. In such a case, it is natural that they will find it hard to take advantage of your offerings that ultimately shift their interests from wellness programs.
Leaders acknowledging that employees get overwhelmed with information every day makes it crucial to devise a comprehensive plan to market corporate wellness program.
Top 11 Wellness Marketing Ideas To Help You Boost Employee Engagement
Here are the strategies:
1. Allow Your Employees To Volunteer To Health Screenings
Biometric Tests are proving beneficial to attain a long-term health goal. Maintaining a regularity with the screenings can be cumbersome for some of your employees.
Allow your employees to conduct stress-free voluntary health screenings. Never put unnecessary pressure on your employees for active participation. Communicate your offerings.
You may also partner with a professional health coaching company that can monitor the proper usage of your services. Creating a corporate wellness committee and assigning the responsibility of carrying out a wellness objective is also a cost-effective way of promoting current and upcoming wellness initiatives.
2. Gamify The Process With A Count-Down Timer
Adding an element of gamification for employee fitness is a well-known wellness marketing strategy. It works excellent to pump up your employee’s excitement level. Creating a count-down timer or a calendar indicating the number of days left or a CTA will help elevate employee engagement.
This is a fun idea to add as a recurring element to your internal employee newsletter, making it visible for everyone and get a bit of teamspirit going. One tip to increase email engagement through storytelling. Adding a personal story of an employees’ fitness journey or quotes alongside stats or countdown.
3. Host Some Fun Contests
What works better than a meme-contests as a fun element?
Job satisfaction result in a productive workforce. Why not think something out of the box?
Try to host some fun contests like a “Caption & Win” you can post funny health and wellness-related cartoons or images and ask your employees to caption and win before entering the final wellness rounds.
4. Decorate The Workplace With Wellness Themes
You can also market your wellness programs with specific health goal themes. Encourage your creative employees to create a wellness room at work or desks around the themes for the upcoming workplace wellness challenges. You can also put forth awards to vote for the best-decorated piece.
Platforms like Vantage Fit give HR teams built-in campaign management tools that handle several of these marketing tactics automatically. You can build a wellness challenge with a countdown, set audience targeting by department or region, and deploy automated reminders, without needing a separate communications plan for each initiative.
5. Offer Free Samples
Everyone loves freebies!
You can partner with a popular local store or restaurant to offer your employees some samples or snacks at special sign-up events. Also, hosting a sale on completing a wellness campaign is a great way to market your wellness program.
6. Distribute Flyers And Posters
Place a big graphic poster or sign in the right context, and it’s sure to be noticed. Try the kitchen, lunchroom, or break room and use the content to start conversations about healthy choices where most socializing takes place. For example, a poster about healthy eating in the lunchroom or a sign about stress reduction and relaxation tips in the employee lounge can significantly impact.
7. Host An Onsite Event
A live event offers an opportunity to communicate and clear doubts on the spot. Your employees get their queries solved before starting the event; it’s also a great way to market your future wellness programs. You can personally invite your employees to spend some time in the common area and motivate them to sign up right then and there.
If you’re partnering with outside vendors, you can invite their wellness representative to guide your employees through the process. You can also arrange for an actor to dress up in a themed costume and gain your employees’ interest in a wellness program’s fun elements.
You can also organize virtual events, here is our complete guide for a Virtual Marathon.
8. Support any Cause
Cause-related marketing campaigns can also help boost health and wellness marketing strategies. It is a contemporary marketing strategy to promote businesses in support of a social cause. Companies use this method to bring awareness to a rising social issue and share social responsibility with the community.
For example, The Body Shop, recognized healthcare workers in 2020. They promoted a campaign: “Time To Care,” an initiative of health, wellness, and kindness.
9. Health and Wellness Influencers for marketing
Influencer marketing is an excellent way to boost brand awareness today. Wellness influencers increases the credibility of the product.
In practice, influencers can show nutrition and health talks or even run a giveaway to promote health and wellness ideas. This way, it provides an authority to the product in the market.
To make sure, it doesn’t have to be an influencer with million followers, but someone from your organization with similar interests might help. Thus, helping in employee engagement as well as contributing to an effective marketing strategy.
10. Collaborate with Complementary Brands
After COVID-19, the market for wellness products has become more effective. Health and wellness industry can partner up with a brand that upholds better business outcomes in global pandemic.
Collaborative marketing is like aligning with like-minded brands. Collaborating with similar brands bolsters the campaigning goals. Moreover, it is a sustainable tactic to reach out the wider market.
Such as, companies can collaborate with health and wellness brands to promote their products. Also, provide discounts to employees who purchase from that particular brand.
Recently, Starbucks and Lyra Health joined hands for partnership on the mental health for its employees in respect to the Covid-19 scenario.
11. Social Media
Health and wellness brands should always consider the lifestyles people are currently practicing.
Online marketing helps to know it better. Also provides an opportunity to interact with the target audience in unique ways.
Advanced social media is amongst the few healthcare technologies changing lives today.
Social Media is an effective way to promote health and wellness marketing.
Some of its main strategies includes:
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Promoting the product with the latest updates and launches
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Engaging with the customers directly on Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, or Reddit
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Posting podcasts and influencer videos
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Blogging or content marketing on the products to encourage brand loyalty
Download our complete and comprehensive guide to corporate wellness programs to create an effective one for your workforce.
Bottom Line
Incorporating employee wellness programs will keep the workforce highly engaged and also create a healthy work culture.
Building a successful employee engagement requires support from leadership, a proactive work environment, and wellness culture. The employee wellness program ideas with the marketing strategies, as mentioned earlier, can be fruitful ways to boost engagement.
You can collab your marketing efforts with other departments and teams and stir some enthusiasm for promoting your organization’s mission and wellness values. It will help your employees feel that they play an essential part in your business’s ultimate success. Pairing these marketing tactics with strong wellness program participation strategies ensures the message reaches and motivates every employee, not just early adopters.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is health and wellness marketing?
Health and wellness marketing is the internal promotion of a workplace wellness program so employees know it exists and take part. It applies consumer tactics such as countdowns, incentives, social proof, and email campaigns to an internal audience.
How do you promote a wellness program to employees?
Announce it two weeks ahead, then remind again the day before launch. Use more than one channel: email, chat, and managers in team meetings. Tie it to a challenge with a clear goal and a reward.
Why do employees ignore wellness program emails?
Usually because the email arrived once, competed with a full inbox, and asked for effort without a clear payoff. Campaigns that run on a schedule, name a specific action, and attach a reward do far better.
What should you measure in a wellness marketing campaign?
Measure participation rate and sustained engagement at 30, 60, and 90 days. Email opens and click-throughs tell you the message was seen, not that anyone joined. Completion rate for a challenge is the most useful single number.
Who should run wellness marketing, HR or internal comms?
In practice it works best as a joint effort. HR owns the program and the data, while internal communications owns the channels and the calendar. Managers matter more than either, because employees take the cue from their own team lead.
