It’s a fact that the retina in your eye ages faster than any other organ in your body. And, to slow the ageing process, Planet Lighting Ltd , a long established UK lighting specialist – and industry experts in design and electronics, has led a collaboration to launch a new product called “eyepower red” (See the website).
The product’s design is based on separate studies at UCL and Moorfields Eye Hospital. Both found that exposure to low-level deep red light had a beneficial effect on vision.
Just 3 minutes every few days of low-brightness deep red light using “eyepower red” glasses can help to maintain the health of the eyesight and could even reverse some of the effects of ageing by restoring certain lost visual functions.
Ravello Lab crafted a digital marketing roadmap for Planet Lighting Ltd in October 2021. The head of the company found the roadmap “interesting and for the most part re-inforced my own thoughts.”
Below you will find a copy of the plan. (Data used in the roadmap was gathered from secondary sources on public domains.)
Digital Marketing Roadmap for “eyepower red”
Crafted by Barmak Bahrehmand
Date: February 2022
Work done: 16 Hours
Words: 2939
To differentiate the product in the market, first, we need to determine what job the product accomplishes for our audience.
As I understand, the product’s main job is to “improve the health of retina.”
So, although there are no direct competitors in the market for these new glasses, there are some products that do the same job. I investigated some of these products and found some pain points. We could use these pain points and differentiate our product by claiming that our product doesn’t cause these pain points. We can also highlight the benefits that these glasses bring.
As mentioned on Eyepower Red’s website, the product can improve several health conditions. For each condition, I have proposed how Eyepower Red can differentiate itself:
AMD
- According to webmd.com, National Eye Institute’s findings show that high dose vision supplements such as antioxidants vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene along with zinc can reduce vision loss (Age Related Macular Degeneration (AMD))
But you should check with your doctor before taking any supplement if you are pregnant, nursing, or taking other medications or have any health issues.
We could differentiate the product by saying that no matter what your health issues are you can use the glasses.
Night Vision
Some kinds of night blindness can be treated but it needs corrective lenses such as eyeglasses or contacts and you need to constantly wear them.
We could differentiate the product by saying that this is a preventive tool, and you don’t need to wear them all the time. Only 3 minutes per day.
Colour perception
According to American Optometric Association, there is no cure for inherited colour deficiency. But if the cause is an illness or eye injury, treating these conditions may improve colour vision. Using specially tinted eyeglasses or wearing a red-tinted contact lens on one eye can increase some people’s ability to differentiate between colours, though nothing can make them truly see the deficient colour.
So, the best thing to do is to prevent colour perception loss. And this is exactly what our glasses do.
Glaucoma
According to National Eye Institute in America, there’s no cure for glaucoma, but early treatment can often stop the damage and protect your vision.
Also, by lowering the pressure in the eye, you can prevent damage to the optic nerve.
But you need to use eye drops or go through a laser treatment or surgery.
We could differentiate our product by saying that you don’t need to go through medical treatment and laser treatment and wearing these glasses for three minutes per day can eliminate all that.
Diabetic damage
Diabetes can have a major effect on your eye health and greatly increase your risk of certain eye conditions.
You need to constantly get your eyes screened, know your blood glucose levels, keep your blood pressure and cholesterol under control, eat and healthy diet and exercise regularly.
We can say that these glasses are an additional protective measure that you can add to the above list and to differentiate it from other treatments, we can say that it is almost free and much easier to apply.
To differentiate the product from other products that do the same job, I believe we could say that
- You only need to pay once instead of, for example, monthly payments from drugs and supplements
- These glasses are very cheap compared to constant eye screening tests and laser treatment or surgery
- They can be easily worn (only three minutes per day) instead of for example wearing corrective lenses
- They don’t have any side effects
So, to come to a message that “rises above the noise” we might be able to say:
These glasses are like Yoga for the Eyes. They almost cost you anything, but they prevent (Or lessen) non-reversible sight loss and avoid high medical costs when you age
Reasons to believe
We can take different approaches to persuade people to buy from us. As this product is health-related, it is highly important to show how credible our claims are.
I believe it suffices to mention the results of UCL studies. Because UCL is credible, and the results are scientific. As we move forward and start selling the product, we can gather social proof and testimonials as well. And, best of all, later in the campaign we might be able to use mouth to mouth recommendations.
The audience
As discussed, our target audience should be above 40 years old. And our product is global. For the sake of this preliminary research, I have only investigated the UK audience.
In mid-2019, the population of the UK was 66.8 million.
UK has an aging population. Between mid-2009 and mid-2019,
the number of people aged 65 years and over increased by 22.9% to 12.4 million,
the number of people aged 70 years and over increased by 24.7% to 9.0 million, and
the number of people aged 85 years and over increased by 23% to 1.6 million.
According to gov.uk, Ethnicity Facts and Figures, 49% of the overall population of England and Wales are above 40 years old. 49% of 56 million people equals: 27.4 million People.
People with sight loss
According to Royal National Institute of Blind People in the United Kingdom, more than two million people living with sight loss in the United Kingdom and this number is set to increase dramatically in the future because the UK population is ageing.
The older you are, the greater your risk of sight loss.
There are 1.2 million people living with sight loss who are aged 75 years and over. The proportion of people living with sight loss is:
• one in nine people aged 60 years and over
• one in five people aged 75 years and over
• one in two people aged 90 years and over
In addition, sight loss is strongly linked with certain medical conditions such as diabetes and lifestyle factors including obesity – the rates of which are both going up.
The number of people with sight loss is estimated to rise to 2.7 million by 2030. By 2050, the current figure will double to over four million.
Nearly two-thirds of people living with sight loss are women. People from black and minority ethnic communities are at greater risk of some of the leading causes of sight loss. Adults with learning disabilities are 10 times more likely to be blind or partially sighted than the general population.
The statistic in other countries is overwhelming as well. According to Bright Focus Foundation, 11 million Americans suffer from some form of age-related macular degeneration.
But, as our product is a preventive tool, our market is much broader and can target people who care for their body and eye health in general.
(In further research I can learn more about different target groups and segment our audience into several groups)
The positioning statement
So, all in all, with consideration to our target market, indirect competitors, points of differentiation and reasons to believe our positioning statement can look like:
“For people above 40, these glasses are like Yoga for the Eyes. They almost cost you anything, but they prevent (Or lessen) non-reversible sight loss and avoid high medical costs when you age. They are scientifically proven, and the results show improvement in vision after exposure to low-level deep red light.
Channels
Social Media
According to Ofcom, in 2020, the share of people between 65 and 74 or older on social media increased from 35 percent in 2015, to 59 percent in 2020.
According to Statistica, number of Facebook visitors aged 55 years or older grew by 2.4 million from March 2016 to 2018 in the UK and reach 11.9 million people (See figure 1). Instagram attracted approximately 1.7 million additional users in the same age range in the same period.
Internet
According to Office for National Statistics, 47 percent of aged 75 and over have been recent internet users. The internet use in the 65-74 age group is increasing – it rose from 52% in 2011 to 83% in 2019, and the current situation is likely to speed that increase. According to the 2018 UK Consumer Digital Index, 8% of UK population could perform zero out of five given digital tasks, with over 65s making up more than three quarters of those (76%)
According to Center for Ageing Better, COVID-19 has spurred many more people to get online or to use the internet in new ways compared to before the outbreak. For example, among 50–70-year-olds, three quarters (75%) say they were making video calls more often
during lockdown and three in ten (31%) said they were emailing more than they did before the pandemic struck. A survey by Lloyds Bank found that three times more 70-year-olds registered for online banking during lockdown compared to the same time last year.
In general, there has been a rapid increase in the numbers of people aged
55 and over who are now online. For example, in 2011, just over half (52%)
of people aged 65-74 had recently used the internet. This figure jumped to
eight in ten (83%) by 2019.
According to Statistica, 85% of British adults had sent or received emails in 2020, making it the most common online activity in the country. The popularity of emails had remained almost unchanged since 2017 but has drastically increased compared to ten years previously when only 57% of Brits used emails.
99% of email users check their inbox every day.
Only 56% of respondents over 75 use email, making them the least likely age group to take advantage of this internet service.
But email usage is high among all age groups in the UK. Over 60% of all generations (except for 75+) used email services in 2020, demonstrating that this form of communication is still relevant in the daily lives of Brits of all ages.
According to DMA, getting deals and offers was the most cited reason by consumers when asked why they have provided their email address to brands or shops. Another 46% said they subscribed for an email service to get loyalty points, and 40% did so to get free samples or gifts. Only 20% signed up to get notified about new products or services, and 13% registered so they could leave an online review of the product or service.
On the other hand, 12% see the email marketing they receive as relevant. This number has increased by 4% compared to the previous year, showing advertisers are becoming more invested in targeted and personalised email campaigns.
Paid advertisement
Although our campaign is based on organic growth, usually it would be a good idea to kick-start the campaign with some paid advertisement. With 10-15 pounds a day, we can attract a lot of people to the website. This can especially help us to have a detailed look and the demography of people who show interest to our product and then by using this data we can fine-tune our organic campaigns as well.
As our organic growth increases, we can decrease the paid advertisement.
Strategy
Based on the gathered material, older people are increasingly using Internet, Facebook, Instagram.
So, I believe that Internet (search engines and website), Facebook and Instagram can be useful channels for targeting our audience.
We can start a dialog about eye and retina health on our channels and create posts and stories.
We can also create posts around pain points the similar products have and also the benefits that our product brings.
We can also create dialog about the degree of support that people with sight loss or eye conditions receive in the society to create a community.
To sell the product we need a sales funnel.
Since we are launching a new product, we should first concentrate on awareness stage of our sales funnel.
Awareness
We could start by creating
- A Facebook page for the product
- An Instagram page for the product
Also, on the web, we could start by
- Conducting keyword research (This will help us optimise our website for people who use search engines to find products and information)
- A website SEO assessment
- Optimising the website content for search engines
Content wise, we should focus on our differentiation points and create posts on Facebook and Instagram pages about
- General information about sight loss and retina health improvement
- How different health conditions, such as diabetes, can affect the retina
- Latest bite-size and easy digestible news about latest developments of retina treatment and eye health
- We could also create posts about how glasses can help retina health and what their benefits are.
- We can publish posts about the research being done at UCL about retina health
Engagement
We can start by creating
- A Facebook group about sight loss and eye health
- A WhatsApp discussion group about sight loss and eye health
For these groups we can invite people to share their thoughts and experience about sight loss and eye health.
For example, we could run…
- A campaign with first-account personal stories about sight loss and its effects on our daily life
- A campaign about the most beautiful landscapes and arts to admire visual bliss.
We can also use Call to Action posts and engage our audience on Instagram and run talkative campaigns where they can share their experience about sight loss and eye health with us.
We can also run competition draws to engage people on our social channels.
We can invite professor Glen for a short one to one live interview on Instagram about retina health.
We can invite professor Glen monthly and say that he will answer people’s question about eye health.
We can ask our audience to visit our website and tell us what the think about our product.
Conversion
For the conversion stage, (Where buying occurs)
- We can focus on people
- who have started to follow us on Facebook and Instagram
- who have become engaged on our social groups
- who have shown interest by commenting on our social channels
- who have mentioned our products on other channels
- who have visited our website
- who have visited websites like us
- who have subscribed on our email lists
- who have asked questions
We can run discount campaigns on our channels to target these people. Because they are aware of our product it is more likely that they will buy from us.
We can run a Christmas gift campaign as you said (We can say buy one and get one half price for your loved ones)
We can also send coupons (discount codes) to people who receive our newsletters.
Retaining
According to RNIB, only 17 per cent of people experiencing sight loss are offered emotional support in response to their deteriorating vision.
Only 27 per cent of blind and partially sighted people of working age are in employment – a fall from 33 per cent in employment in 2006.
39 per cent of blind and partially sighted people of working age say they have some or great difficulty in making ends meet.
35 per cent of blind and partially sighted people say that they sometimes, frequently or always experience negative attitudes from the public in relation to their sight loss.
31 per cent of people are rarely or never optimistic about the future.
We can tune our campaign to target these people and build communities by using Facebook and WhatsApp groups where people share their experiences.
The above statistics can be used as talking points and, we can produce stories and posts within this context.
We could then repurpose and republish these first-hand experiences on our Facebook and Instagram pages. (Of course, with their written consent)
Also, we can create a VIP newsletter only for people who buy our products and send them weekly or monthly information about eye health.
We can also tell them how best they can use our product.
For example, we can create a group and ask people to suggest songs that people could listen to when they wear the eyepower red glasses.
We can also create a playlist and share it with people who use our glasses.
(As we move forward, we can think about more creative ideas to make wearing the products more fun.)
(Just a rough idea: In further development of the product, it would be a nice idea to enhance the device with voice and Wi-Fi. So, the glasses could provide three minutes of news, weather report or a famous quotation.)
Three more things
I believe there are three other fronts that we can work on to sell these glasses:
B2B
Optometrists and Ophthalmologists can recommend these glasses to their patients. So, we can also run campaigns to target these groups. For that we need some cold calling/visiting or cold messaging to gain their attention.
British Ex-pats
The British ex-pats who live in South Spain and in many other cities around the world, are mostly retired. I believe we could also target these groups. For that we need a campaign to attract British ex-pats. We could do that on Instagram or by running some ads on their local weekly or daily newspaper.
Newsworthiness
Aside from using social media channels and the website, I believe (I was a Senior Journalist & Chief Sub Editor at the BBC World Service from 2008 until 2020) the product is newsworthy, and we could also publish the results of UCL studies and the launch of the eyepower red in different journals and media outlets (Not only eye journals). For that we need to run a public relations campaign.