Supplement Feedback Loops
Don’t launch until you’ve figured this out!
I’ve spent much of the past ~7 years designing great supplement formulas. Tradeoffs are everywhere – formulation, cost, taste, efficacy. But there’s one important consideration that always comes up for new brands, often after their V1 product has already gone out to market – the feedback loop.
Does your product have a feedback loop for the customer? In other words, do customers feel the effects of the product within minutes? Hours? Days? or weeks? You can break supplements down many ways, but let’s look at it through this lens:
immediate effect / benefit (30 mins)
24 hour window for efficacy
Everything longer than a 24 window for efficacy
“Insurance policy” vitamins - no discernible effect in 90% of population
When designing your product, you should be thinking about the efficacy of your ingredients in terms of the above categories. The more you can create a feedback loop that your customer will experience quickly when they consume your product, the more likely they will consider your product effective and will repurchase. There’s perhaps a few edge cases that don’t match this trend, but generally speaking I think it holds.
30 minute effects
Energy drinks are the obvious one here. If you put 200-300mg of caffeine and a bunch of other ingredients into a can, your customer is going to FEEL something within 30 minutes or so. And even if it’s jittery energy, or too much in that moment, you have absolutely delivered on the need that they had when they purchased your product. They’ll be back.
Imagine buying an energy drink that promised better energy a week from now. Would you buy it? Probably not. An energy proposition that takes a week to work needs to be explained very differently on the can.
There aren’t that many ingredients that you can safely use to get a feedback loop within 30 minutes. Caffeine is the easiest one - it’s ubiquitous, cheap, recognizable and makes people feel something. Because of this, you start to see it creeping into other products purely to create quick feedback loops for the customer. An example is the fat burner/weight loss category. This category usually has some expensive thermogenic (heat producing) ingredients in them, maybe some chromium, maybe a probiotic. Often, you’ll find a ton of caffeine in the capsule as well.
Now those brands will argue that the caffeine is there to energize you to workout more. But caffeine’s value in a weight loss pill feels like more of a stretch (rather than a drink you have right before a workout). Nonetheless, that’s an example of using a quick feedback loop to make your customers feel something instantly when the primary effect is less immediate. Side note - the science behind the thermogenic ingredients is surprisingly good when you are in a caloric deficit and working out, but it’s still slow going. It might take 2 months for you to really see the results. If a brand wants you to stick around, they need to convince you earlier that their product does something. Hence, caffeine.
Also, caffeine’s diuretic effect could be helpful in seeing quick results on the scale, even though that’s just water weight loss and is not contributing to your longer term weight loss goals.
24 hours
The 24 hour window of efficacy in my mind is represented very clearly by high fiber drinks like psyllium husk supplements. You don’t get immediate effects, but you’ll know by the next day that you took it. Even this separation of timing of consumption and benefit makes it harder for the consumer to remember what caused the change. You need to really prime them with your marketing messages on what to expect, so that when they experience your benefit, they link it back to your product and not something else.
More than 24 hours
Ingredients like biotin fit nicely here. It doesn’t have a strong effect, but you might notice something over the course of 30-60 days. Some people will report faster nail and hair growth. Some may report skin benefits. It’s difficult to get folks to link your product to the benefits. Think about how many variables in diet, health, stress etc. come up in a 30 to 60 day period for you. You had some acne this month. Was it the stress? Was the product not working? Or you went on vacation - did that improve your diet?
You have to absolutely nail the storytelling for ingredients in this delayed-effect category. You should coach customers pre-purchase on what to expect and what to look for as signs that the product is working. Otherwise, your product will be deemed ineffective and consigned to the trash can.
Insurance Policies
The last category is the insurance policy vitamins. These are your run of the mill multivitamins, that for 90%+ of the population will do next to nothing. Most of the studies on these show a positive impact on patients when there is a deficiency in that vitamin, otherwise no effect. So for the majority of us who do not have deficiencies in these vitamins because we have well rounded diets, these do nothing. We may keep taking them as an insurance policy and because the category has so much legacy at this point.
It’s rare to find a study that looks for any possible negative effects of long term supplementation of these vitamins. So they are considered a low cost and low risk to “stay healthy”.
Contrast the first category and the last.
Let’s look at how these different product groups show up on the packaging.
Fast feedback loop tends to lead to brighter, more aggressive packaging with bold claims. You know your customer is going to feel the efficacy of your product quickly. (Searched “energy drink” on Amazon March 2024)
Slow feedback loops are more understated. You don’t want to set the expectations your customer has for your product too high, as they are likely not going to feel any difference. You need them to trust that your product is the right one to be their insurance policy for the long run.
To wrap it up:
So if you’re thinking about launching a new product line, ask yourself what kind of feedback loop your product will have. How strong is that loop? Is it as strong as caffeine? Or is it weaker, like hydration? Or weaker still like biotin? Then think about what messaging you need to prime your customer with. What are the ingredient stories you are telling to make them believe that your product delivers on its promise?
If you’re working on a supplement and would like a thought partner, reach out!