How Trend Spotting Helped One Supplement Company Stay Afloat after COVID-19

When Andy Duckworth and Paul Finnegan created Naturecan in 2019, the duo focused on offering pure and effective CBD products. But as the U.K.-based company grew, the need for additional product lines became apparent — and a pivot, backed by science and trends, was in order.

Natural Supplements; Organic Marketing

At the start, Naturecan's founders used their experience — and deep industry data — to plan a launch across 30 markets. But actually getting the product into the hands of customers proved to be more difficult than expected due to international CBD regulations.

“We might have underestimated how complicated it would be to sell CBD globally,” said Alexander Rinn Ortiz, e-commerce managing director at Naturecan. “For example, Amazon and PayPal don’t allow CBD sales, and Facebook and Google don’t allow you to run CBD product ads.”

Rinn Ortiz and his team needed to figure out a way to market their product to customers around the world, then get it into international distribution centers and homes. Due to the difficulty of running ads related to CBD, the company's marketing team set their sights on organic channels.

“We concentrated on organic optimization through blog articles, product collection pages, and more,” said Rinn Ortiz. “We looked at our target audience and analyzed their pain points — why would they want to use our products? Next, we’d look at SEO data from Semrush and Ahrefs to see where search demand is and how it was likely to shift in the future.”

Using this information, the Naturecan team began creating a library of useful content on topics like "The Science Behind CBD and Epilepsy" and "CBG Gummies vs. CBG Oil."

“We then got insights from all of our different country managers, as searches are sometimes a bit different around the world,” said Rinn Ortiz. “Based on that, we created a global plan to localize content in a way that was cost- and time-efficient to scale.”

An Essential Pivot

At first, this plan worked well — the Naturecan team effectively leveraged organic searches for CBD products into sales. But in 2020, their marketing and distribution efforts were interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. As the global focus on health shifted from overall wellness to acute illness prevention, search trends changed.

These changes persisted even after the most intense parts of the pandemic passed.

“The hype around CBD grew a lot until COVID-19 hit. Since then, it’s been pretty stagnant,” said Rinn Ortiz. “So in order to grow our business, especially since we were relying on organic search, we had to pivot.”

Rinn Ortiz and his team began to study e-commerce trends beyond CBD, and beyond their current markets — even in the U.S., where they were making few sales at the time.

“Our mission at Naturecan is to help as many people and pets live healthier, happier, and longer lives through science-backed supplementation. And we noticed that longevity supplements, podcasts, and influencers were all trending in the U.S,” said Rinn Ortiz. “Because many supplement trends that come from the U.S. move to Europe and Japan at some point, we were confident that interest in longevity would spike here, too.”

The team turned to Exploding Topics to better understand what longevity-related products and tools were growing in popularity across the U.S. — even if those items didn’t involve CBD.

“Products like NMN, spermidine, and berberine were all growing in popularity,” said Rinn Ortiz. “We used Exploding Topics to verify that people were starting to look for these supplements, and decided to pivot from only selling CBD to offering lots of longevity products.”

The company took a strategic, targeted approach during their pivot, too.

“We knew we could of course go after protein, creatine, and other basic supplements, but the market is very competitive. It’s not easy for a small company like NatureCan to break in,” said Rinn Ortiz. “Instead, we’ve focused on specific niches within the longevity supplement space.”

Longevity in Business and Life

While the company’s initial pivot is done, the process of building out a line of trusted longevity products is an ongoing process. Rinn Ortiz follows a straightforward workflow in order to discover what NatureCan’s customers are likely to want next.

First, he checks Exploding Topics to see what niche trends are emerging in the U.S. and other markets.

“By spotting longevity-related trends early, we can identify markets that aren’t too competitive yet,” said Rinn Ortiz. “It’s definitely very helpful for us.”

Next, he takes the insights he’s gathered from Exploding Topics and conducts further SEO research with Semrush.

“Let’s say I see that spermidine is trending in the U.S.,” said Rinn Ortiz. “I can then go to Semrush and explore how searches are doing in the U.K., Hungary, or Spain. This shows me if there’s demand, but not too much competition, for a product.”

From there, Rinn Ortiz and his team look at keywords related to specific longevity products and think about what content they can produce for organic growth.

“For example, we’ve seen that there are a lot of searches related to weight loss and GLP-1 drugs. One of the big trends from last year in the U.S. were GLP-1 patches — these were especially big on TikTok. But the bioavailability of GLP-1 patches is poor. If you put a patch on your body, it’s not getting absorbed,” said Rinn Ortiz.

Naturecan prides itself on accuracy and quality, so the company won’t create marketing content that misleads its customers. Instead, they take trending inaccuracies or falsehoods as a chance to educate a large number of people on the science behind a supplement.

“In this case, we could create content around GLP-1 patches, but we’d tell people that patches may not be the best way to lose weight,” said Rinn Ortiz. “We could explain that GLP-1 drugs are very efficient. And if someone wanted to avoid side effects or try a non-drug option, we could then introduce our supplements as an alternative.”

Commitment and Quality

This science-backed, evidence-driven approach to both marketing and product development is what sets Naturecan apart from other supplement companies.

“There’s not a lot of regulation in the supplement industry. A lot of supplements aren’t very useful, but they grow in popularity because of a TikTok prank or an influencer,” said Rinn Ortiz. “But we offer third-party certificates on our website, so our customers can be sure that they’re getting quality supplements that are scientifically studied and correctly dosed.”

Naturecan’s success shows that customers trust and love the brand’s products.

“My proudest moment is getting to read reviews from thousands and thousands of people who have benefited from Naturecan CBD or products like NMN and collagen peptides. And we sell CBD oils for animals, too, so we’re improving the quality of life for people and their pets,” said Rinn Ortiz. “Our repurchase rate is high.”

And, because of the company’s willingness to pivot and adapt as the market demands, Naturecan’s 500,000 customers will be able to purchase their favorite products from the company on an ongoing basis.

“I don’t think our business would exist anymore if we hadn’t made that pivot to longevity supplements. There were so many other CBD businesses that went bust because they didn’t pivot,” said Rinn Ortiz. “But we’re here, improving the lives of so many people and their pets.”