Founded / 2003
Headquarters / Salt Lake City, UT
Top Executive / Steven Fife, CEO
Products / Health and Wellness, Personal Care
NASDAQ / LFVN
Little Things Lead to Big Impact.
How do you fix something that isn’t broken? You don’t. You simply make it better.
For LifeVantage, a “health and wealth” company whose revenues for the fiscal 2021 year reached $220 million, it’s this focus on improving what’s already working that will define the company’s next season of growth.
Short of a brand overhaul, the company is entering a period of renewal as it refreshes its product line, website and resources. It’s these small changes, the intentional improvements to details, that the company expects will create a burst of momentum and provide Distributors with the tools and resources they need to further their business goals and better serve customers.
But why now? LifeVantage’s CEO, Steve Fife sees this moment as a time for course correction and said the company has shied away from its central focus and unnecessarily complicated its messaging.
“We feel it is important to really lean into the network marketing message as part of who we are.
—Jesse ALLEN / Senior Vice President of Marketing, LifeVantage
“The motivation for this refresh is really to return to the roots of our Protandim Nrf2 Synergizer,” Fife said. “It’s our most compelling message for our consumers and Distributors, and it’s a product like none other on the market today in addressing health concerns caused by oxidative stress. We kind of got away from that messaging a little bit, and this is an effort to simplify and refocus on the strongest message we have.”
New Look, New Feel
LifeVantage’s Distributors, as well as its customer base, are both overwhelmingly female, with women accounting for more than two-thirds of each category. And yet, LifeVantage Senior Vice President of Marketing Jesse Allen said, the company’s appearance, tone and messaging has been incorrectly targeting a male demographic.
“The website currently has a very masculine feel,” Allen said. “We want a site that our customers and Distributors are proud of and want to associate with.”
A new look and voice are important details in this upgrade, so the company’s refreshed digital elements will also speak to consumers from a lifestyle perspective, relying on science to validate the product while positioning it in a way that helps potential buyers understand how it will impact their day-to-day experience. As a result, both the product and opportunity will be more approachable, relatable and easier to explain.
“This is not a departure from who we are, what we stand for and what we’re about,” Allen said. “It’s an approach to make it easier to talk about and understand the purpose of our products and the business side of our organization.”
Leveraging the Technological Pivot
Like the rest of the world, LifeVantage leaders have learned how to further embrace technology to keep the company’s Distributors connected in a socially distanced time when in-person events and conferences haven’t been possible. During the COVID-19 pandemic, digitally-led presentations and trainings became the norm.
Now, in an effort to leverage how readily Distributors and consumers have embraced this technological pivot as part of its refresh, the company has instituted several significant enhancements to its LifeVantage app, an exclusive Distributor tool for prospecting, team training, education and communication.
Over the summer, the company rolled out a promotion-based program that sought to reward behaviors rather than results. Distributors were able to measure their performance against that of their peers, participate in challenges and engage in healthy competition. Meanwhile, the company’s leaders watched in real-time as the new gamification process tangibly impacted Distributor success.
“We were able to track behavior and incentivize the behaviors that led to either product sales or Distributor recruitment,” Allen said. “What we saw was a massive increase in messages and assets shared through the app and a phenomenal close ratio of 12 percent. That’s where we saw real success.”
An upgraded continuation of this gamification promotion is part of the refresh, and the company has rolled out new incentives and expanded messaging functions that make sharing across social media platforms simpler. Customer onboarding was also be streamlined, allowing Distributors to prioritize and quickly manage consumer engagement and relationship building, and artificial intelligence has been implemented to identify which customers are at risk for leaving the company and what action steps Distributors can take to help retain those people.
“We have to provide additional value to Distributors and a point of differentiation,” Allen said. “We feel that with the technology we have—the replicated website, our app and now this integration—we’re changing how we use technology to change how Distributors run their businesses. It’s a simplification so that whether they are a seasoned network marketer or brand new, the technology puts them on an even level so that everyone can hit the ground running and be successful right from the very beginning.”
Doubling Down on Direct Selling
In an unsettled global economy, with closures and regulations in flux due to the lingering pandemic, the company is thoughtfully eyeing multiple markets that show promise as potential new homes for LifeVantage’s international operations.
“We’re in the process of launching into the Philippines in the first quarter of 2022,” Allen said. “We’re aggressively pursuing, analyzing and evaluating which markets to go into next, when is the right time for those expansions, and how we will go about doing it.”
In the meantime, the company plans to focus on the little things that add up to make a big impact. And unlike many of its competitors, the company’s leadership plans to double down on the part of itself that many companies seem to be distancing themselves from the channel itself.
“We feel it is important to really lean into the network marketing message as part of who we are,” Allen said. “We have a clear identity: Our mission is to leverage the power of relationships to unlock the health and wealth of every life we touch. A number of our peers try to shy away from it and hide from it and talk around being in that channel. We have immense pride in our Distributors and in the channel and industry. We want to lean into that, into who we are and why we’re proud to be part of network marketing.”
From the November 2021 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.
