Nourished Life began as a humble product review site and in just four years, turned over a reported $20 Million in sales through cultivating a huge community of like-minded customers. In this article, I break down some of the ins & outs of how they did it. But first, if you’re a female and have ever thought about what’s in the bottle of skincare or makeup you’re applying, chances are you’ve heard of Nourished Life. If you haven’t, Nourished Life was founded by Irene Falcone in 2012 as a way to bring toxin-free beauty regimes to women all around the world. Irene was fed up with not knowing the ins & outs of what she was putting on her body and after discovering the shocking truth, she set out to research and find the best natural and organic solutions on the market. I first heard about Irene and Nourished Life from my partner Jess, earlier this year after she was in the market for some more natural solutions and was doing her own research. I turned to Google to find out more about Irene and the empire she had built and to be honest, I was impressed! After noticing Nourished Life ads following me around the web I thought I’d sit down and layout how I think their marketing strategy has helped Irene and Nourished Life become so successful.
The Nourished Life Community
Nourished Life’s brand strength lies in its community. It’s a perfect combination of engaging causes with similar characteristics that have laid the base for her business. Irene and Nourished Life has really been the vehicle for bringing all of this likeminded community together. Nourished Life are also very stringent about the quality of the products they stock on their site. They’ve received over 1,000 reviews on their site and maintain a 4.9 Star rating, testimony to the quality they’ve managed to consistently maintain. They also have a neat plugin installed on their site that connects directly to Facebook to link the comments and reviews everyone is saying on Facebook. A great way to capitalise on the level of engagement she has on her page.
The community itself is also huge across social media. Nourished Life has 220,000+ likes on their Facebook page and 74,600 followers on Instagram.
Where their strength may truly lie though, is in their email database. Subscribers are automatically joined to their NL Club. A loyalty club that includes four different levels as you earn points for purchasing and referring. 
You can then claim those points towards purchases. The more you purchase, the further you progress, the better the rewards…you get the picture. It’s a neat way to be able to send specific offers and products based on their purchase behaviour. 
Key Takeaways:- Growing a community to that size takes time and patience.
- Social Media communities are great, but email still works and it’s another touch point that customers trust.
The Offer
Nourished Life take a ‘value first’ approach to their advertising across Facebook. It’s a fantastic tactic that helps build her brand, authority and trust amongst her niche audience. By creating content that gives something to the user first, they’re more likely to trust and buy from her when an offer comes up that is relevant to them. The content Irene and her team post include articles and blogs across six main categories of Shopping Guides, Beauty, Food, House, Kids & Books to pretty much cover all aspects of the modern day mum.
It takes a lot of patience and hard work to produce as much content as Nourished Life has, but playing the ‘long-game’ has been one of the keys to their success and massive growth in the past 5 years.
I think it’s a great homage to the roots of the original website that began as just a humble review blog about toxin-free skincare options.
Nourished Life has created A LOT of content. So much so that they now have a quarterly digital magazine that curates the best content and sends it exclusively to their email database first.
It’s all part of a strategy that must be super organised and advanced to be able to deal with the sheer amount of products they stock on their site. When you first arrive on their site you might be somewhat overwhelmed with the categories and types of products they offer so behind it all needs to be a sophisticated system that can serve the right offer at the right time to make sure you capitalise on your marketing dollar. Key Takeaways:- Value first. Always.
- Putting that much effort into the quality of content you provide takes guts. You need to set aside any fears you have of being ‘the’ brand they trust.
- Systems will stop potential sales falling through the cracks.
The Creative
The creative reflects the ‘value first’ approach. Most ads that are currently running include valuable blog posts that can quickly and easily get the user to consume the information. Like this post about magnesium and the differences between the different uses to help clarify questions, customers may have.
This post is obviously an extremely popular one. It’s been running for nearly a year now and includes 1,277 shares, 1,000 comments and 3,000 reactions resulting in some great organic reach and no doubt lowering the cost per click due to it’s relevancy.
Another tactic Nourished Life has taken is to give personal and honest reviews of products to be totally upfront with customers. This post below reviewing sugar craving release spray explicitly states, “it doesn’t taste great” and “There are also lots of other/mixed reviews on the site about this so read through them”. How much more sincere could Irene be with her customers…not much! 
The tactics for her campaigns are interesting. The majority of her advertisements are part of a reach & frequency campaign. R&F campaigns have certain requirements, not available to all advertisers and the objective is purely to get brand awareness.
They’re ideal for land brands that have a major chunk of market share and are purely looking at growing the awareness of the brand through an accurate prediction of how many people they will reach and at what price they’re going to pay.
Reach & Frequency campaigns also have certain stipulations before an advertiser can implement one:- They must reach a minimum of 200,000 people
- Campaigns can run between 1-90 days
- You can only target one country at a time
- Targeting is limited due to the reach restrictions.
The power of the strategy though lies in the ability to remarket and upsell them to become returning loyal customers.
The help achieve this through some engaging copy in the advertisements that connects them directly to the customer.
Take for instance the copy for the sugar craving spray. 
“Unfortunately for me I have always had a sweet tooth and honestly part of me didn’t want to use this spray because I actually enjoy eating chocolate and the odd donut too.”Immediately this plays into every person’s psyche that has ever eaten something sweet and enjoyed it. And who hasn’t? I mean, basically all her customers can directly relate to her personally with this copy. She then goes on to say:
“But deep down I knew it was playing havoc on my gut, my skin and makes me bloated”Again, she connects with customers on an emotional level and brings to life the feelings we’ve all no doubt had before when indulging on a bit too much of the sweet stuff. It’s how she then turns this into a positive though with a smart way to position herself:
“I tried it over the weekend…I just sprayed it straight onto my tongue and no it doesn’t taste great, but it is totally bearable. I can truly say this stuff worked for me, I just didn’t feel like eating the sweet afternoon tea….and really don’t feel like having dessert. I feel like I am in control and I feel pretty good about it.”I love this tactic in copy. It positions herself as the ‘accidental hero’. A Good vs Bad triumph! The person that actually liked sweet treats but knew it was good for her (the bad) so she took one for the team and tried it for everyone on their behalf. Surprise, the results work! (the Good) I’m certain she didn’t try to trick people into trusting her using this tactic and it came from a good place but the method is brilliant and the interactions speak for themselves. 1.4k comments, 160 shares and 1.1k reactions. I also came across ads in different formats that have their own benefits for brand awareness and to deliver a message in different mediums.
One thing that stood out with Nourished Life’s Facebook Ads was they never spoke about the expected benefits or before and after results from using the products. Other businesses in the health & wellness industry can often struggle with this but it is against Facebook’s Advertising policies to promote before or after images or promote unexpected results. Surprisingly, many businesses often get their ads or accounts disapproved for not abiding by this aspect of Facebook’s Policies. Clearly though, Nourished Life wouldn’t face this difficulty with their approach. Key Takeaways:- Good copy is invaluable.
- Test mediums to see what works for your audience.
- Be aware of Facebook’s Ad policies.
Final Thoughts
Nourished Life reportedly turned over $20 Million in 2016 and is on track to grow to more than $30 Million in 2017. It’s phenomenal growth from a humble store that Irene Falcone kicked off with just $100 in October 2012. It hasn’t come about without hard work though and a thoroughness that has set Nourished Life apart in the natural and toxin-free health & beauty industry. By producing valuable content that empowers and connects with their customers, Nourished Life has nailed the key element to a successful Facebook Advertising strategy. Expect Nourished Life’s marketing to grow in the future, they were acquired by BWX limited in September of this year. BWX have helped grow other natural skincare brands like Sukin to household names. With their backing an extra resources dedicated to Facebook Advertising, you can expect Nourished Life to outgrow their Australian roots and expand to continents all over the world. Something that Irene, and her team, should be very proud of.DISCLAIMER: I have no association with Nourished Life or Irene Falcone. This review has been completed using publicly available information on the Internet. If you would like to get in touch to discuss a similar strategy for your own business, you can contact me here.
