Marketing Lessons from Weight Loss Industry Giant Weight Watchers

Even before obesity became a multi-billion dollar industry, Weight Watchers had the vision to grab the demand by the horns and run full speed forward with their business. With no clear blockbuster drug in sight to offer the consumer a ‘quick fix’ for their weight problem, Weight Watchers has a clear opening in this $60.9 billion growing industry.

The entire industry is comprised of not just commercial weight loss chains, but also services that deliver food directly to the customer, weight loss drugs, and more drastic medical approaches such as surgery and medical weight loss clinics. Commercial weight loss chains are estimated to be worth over $3 billion of this market and among the popular chains, Weight Watchers is the largest, beating the second place chain, Nutrisystem, by at least three times and Jenny Craig by even more. The number of online subscribers has swelled to over 1.6 million in 2011 and the share price of Weight Watchers has soared from $2.13 in 1999 to over $83 in 2012.

Failure Proof Marketing Strategies

What is the secret to their success? How can Weight Watchers be such a giant in the weight loss industry when other programs also successfully guide their clients to lose weight?

You would think that the reason Weight Watchers is the most successful is because their product is the absolute best. But in reality, the largest most successful consumer-oriented companies all have one big thing in common: great marketing strategies. You can have the best product in the world that allows a person to live for 500 years, but without marketing that directs people to the idea that they WANT to live 500 years, the product would be worthless. Some of Weight Watchers ‘secret marketing strategies’, which are presented below, are pretty apparent and surprisingly effective.

Make the Problem Look Complicated

Dietitians and weight loss experts say that in order to lose weight you should burn more calories than you eat. Weight Watchers goes a step further saying that counting calories is not enough. All calories are not created equal, and this is the concept where Weight Watchers’ PointsPlus plan is based. This plan assigns points to foods based on how the foods are metabolized. A complicated eating plan is devised for clients with this characteristic in mind. Weight Watchers claims that this is a “more accurate value of energy available from foods than the calorie as we see it on food labels”. The customer is made to feel that Weight Watchers understands food science and biology and is responding to ‘new’ information in these areas for the sake of its customers.

Provide a Solution. Make it look brilliant and just complex enough that customers can’t figure it out themselves.

What Weight Watchers does with the PointsPlus system is mastery at the highest levels of marketing strategy. They tell us that, based on new evidence in how foods are processed in our bodies, we now know that eating is a very complicated thing. Weight maintenance and loss is not about what goes in and what is burned. Instead it is important to understand all the intricacies of what happens and how the body utilizes the energy contained in different foods. Sounds very scientific, doesn’t it? It makes the customer feel overwhelmed when confronted with all of this information that they are supposed to take into account every single time they eat. But then, Weight Watchers rides in on the white horse and rescues the customer! They tell you that they have done all the work for you in putting together their new Points System. Whew! We feel very relieved that we don’t have to think about all of that science stuff! But in order to gain that advantage, of course, we need to join the program.

Create Exclusive Products

Any company worth its salt knows that in order to keep customers coming back, you need to have merchandise that they want and need. Not only does Weight Watchers have an entire food line available through their website and in a grocery store near you, but it also has plenty of other merchandise that customers clamor to buy. For example, if you are keeping track of points, it would be great if you had a dedicated Points calculator, right? Well, Weight Watchers has these items for you! How about a PointsPlus scale? This scale doesn’t just weigh the food, it also calculates the points immediately! Of course there are cookbooks and DVDs and CDs and all of the other basic merchandise of a weight loss system as well.

Sell Your Product at a Discount

Weight Watchers offers its two main products (Weight Watchers Online and Weight Watchers Meetings) at a discount all year round. The size and shape of the discount offer varies throughout the year but it is always packaged in a way that makes the dieter feel she is saving. For example, along with the standard monthly plan of $46, they offer you a 3-month saving plan for $55. You are not saving any money if you buy the 3-month plan. You just pay $9 more!

When the company’s marketing team asked me to become an affiliate of Weight Watchers and recommend their product, I was aware of the opportunity that was lain before me. In 2012, Weight Watchers ranked #1 best weight-loss diet by U.S. News & World Report. I am proud to recommend Weight Watchers to my site’s visitors. The promotion for Weight Watchers USA and Canada currently available increases the visitors who convert into buyers, and my affiliate commissions as well.

Expand Your Target Audience

Weight Watchers realizes that, especially in this day and age when a vast majority of people are obese or overweight, it’s not just women who are seeking help. Their visionary gurus realized that men would also be very interested in using a structured program to lose weight. Thus, they are now targeting men as well as women. Weight Watchers was the only program dedicated to weight loss that advertized during the NBA playoffs, a pretty costly advertising opportunity directed to the male audience.

All of these tactics have served to propel Weight Watchers far beyond any of their competitors. Their ability to move with the times and have flexibility in how they present their products has served them very well. If the company uses new ‘language’ as science progresses and shows their customers that they are responding to new research, they will only be a bigger and better company in the coming years. They will also be an a paradigm of success in the entrepreneurial world.