When it comes to marketing weight loss programs, men are by far one of the more difficult segments to persuade to buy in. Given that men make up roughly half of the world’s population, they make for a good market. It’s really just a matter of figuring out how to best market a weight loss program to them.
Luckily for you, OppGen already knows how to market a weight loss program to men. Click here to learn more.
Emphasize Fitness and Healthier Lifestyles
Don’t create a message centered mainly on weight loss and/or diets. This may sound like the opposite of what you’re trying to market, but when it comes to marketing weight loss programs to men, making weight loss central is not effective. Instead, you should be focusing on fitness.
Google Trends data shows that people search more often for the word “fitness” than “weight loss,” which is especially good to know for weight loss marketing in general. Using fitness as a keyword keeps you out of the Google Search results for weight loss, where you’ll be competing with local competition as well as big names like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers, both of which focus heavily on nutrition and dieting. (Generally speaking, the weight loss industry is heavily saturated with fad diets that may or may not work.)
Diet is an area where men struggle. Food marketing itself has already impacted what men and women choose to eat in unconscious ways; men are less likely to eat healthier foods than women are and are likely to be more stubborn about changing their entire diet. This means you should focus your message around living a healthier lifestyle. Instead of discussing removing foods from diets, talk about adding new healthier foods to consumers’ diets or portion control.
Even if improving clients’ diets is part of your weight loss program, it should not be the main focus for marketing it, especially when marketing to men. Don’t focus as much on concrete numbers of weight lost — focus more on words and phrases like fitness, healthy lifestyle, staying in shape, workout, program, exercise, portions, control and so on.
Discuss Differences Between Weight Loss Programs for Men and Women
Your pay-per-click (PPC) and paid social media advertisements won’t be able to cover this subject in-depth, but your website, landing page(s), and social media accounts certainly can and should.
If you’re running a weight loss program that’s built specifically for men, go into detail about why your program is for men, what makes it different from other programs that include women or are targeted toward women, and so on.
Writing blog posts or social media posts about this subject and any similar to it can help prospects determine whether or not you’re an expert in your field. Writing high-quality in-depth blog posts with useful information tells prospects that you know what you’re doing, and you’re knowledgeable enough to be a trusted resource. Establishing that trust is what will have prospects converting to clients.
Use Visuals of Men in Your Ads
This is probably a no-brainer, but if you’re marketing weight loss programs to men, your display ads should have images or videos of men. These don’t have to be handsome men who have washboard abs or balding men who have a beer belly; in fact, they probably shouldn’t be on extreme ends of the weight loss spectrum.
Ideally, they should be somewhere in the middle. According to the CDC, the average American man over the age of 20 is 5-foot-9 and weighs 197 pounds. While the visuals you use don’t have to be that exact (and they are not going to be that exact), you should be using visuals of the kinds of men most people see everyday — an average man, if you will.
Using images of “average” men makes your advertisement more relatable and appealing, and most importantly, realistic. If your advertisement makes it seem like your weight loss program is something that can be realistically obtained, your audience will be more likely to click through the ad and follow up with the call to action.
Don’t Be Afraid to Make Your Ads “Manly” — But Don’t Overdo It
There’s a fine line between creating digital weight loss ads marketed toward men and Bic for Her pens that ended up being the butt of a joke on afternoon talk shows.
It’s not inherently bad or wrong to highlight masculinity or femininity in your weight loss programs, but doing it in a way that’s over the top can attract attention that may do more harm for your business’s reputation than anything else.
If you’re advertising on social media (Facebook in particular), it’s easy to ensure that your ads are going to be seen by men with ad targeting options, so by all means, make it manly. But with PPC or display ads, it’s going to be trickier to ensure that only men are seeing your ads. When creating copy and visuals for these advertisements, it’s best to tone things down.
Contact Us for More Weight Loss Marketing Ideas
For more ideas on how to run a successful weight loss marketing campaign for male audiences, contact us today. You can also fill out our free digital audit so we can show you where your current campaign falls short and how it can improve.
