Convinced? Good, let’s get started.

Do your market research

Market research belongs to the beginning phases of any product launch. It doesn’t matter if you already have an idea for your product or target audience or not.

In any case, you need to do market research to figure out

• Is there any demand for medicinal mushrooms at all?
  • In general, yes there is, but this might vary across countries and audience groups
• What are the bigger consumer trends driving the demand on?
• Who uses medicinal mushrooms? Why would someone not use them?
• What types of products are already on the market? What is their target audience? What is their price point?
• What types of companies/brands are marketing medicinal mushroom products? How do they look like? What is their communication style?

Market research will also help you to distinguish yourself from competitors. You’ll see how others are marketing their products and to whom. This can help you make one very important choice, which is the choice between a blue ocean and a red ocean.

Choose between the red or the blue ocean

Have you watched the movie “The Matrix”? In the movie the hero, Nemo, is given the choice of either swallowing the blue pill, that will allow him to continue his calm existence, or the red pill, which will show him the ugly truth about life.

In business there is a similar concept, choosing between “the red ocean”or “the blue ocean.” The red ocean in this case means an existing category (with often a lot of competition). The blue ocean means choosing to basically create a totally new category.

Like Nemo, you should also make the decision of how you want to differentiate and stand out with our product. If you choose the red ocean, you’ll know that the audience has demand for products like yours.

However, you’ll need to put a lot of effort into differentiating yourself from all the other competitors already on the market. This will not be cheap because a lot of competitors means of course a lot of competition on any possible channel.

In the blue ocean you’d be building the category from scratch. You can’t be sure if there is demand for your product at all. So, you also need to educate people that there is a thing called medicinal mushrooms and that they are great. This can be very difficult as at least in the EU, as what you can say about medicinal mushrooms is limited.

Taking a dip into the blue ocean is also not easy, but if you succeed, you’ll benefit from being the first to which all possible new competitors will be compared to.

There is no right or wrong answer here. What you choose will depend on your own resources and, well, preferences, which “pill” you’d rather swallow. Or in which ocean you’d rather swim, because both come with their challenges.

You can also choose one ocean first and then expand to another later.

Beware of market differences in different countries

If you are thinking about internationalization and how to market your medicinal mushroom product in other countries, market research is even more crucial.

No country is the same, even though from afar it might seem like it is. And just because you’ve had success in one country, it doesn’t mean you can just go and do the same thing in another country. Every country has their own preferences about communication style, media choices and the way they consume health and wellness products.

A recent case of Liquid Death is a prime example of that. The American company sells still and sparkling water in a can in various flavors, and is very popular in its home turf, thanks to its aggressive and out-of-the-box marketing tactics and communications.

The company launched in the UK about two years ago but are currently pausing their operations in the country. Industry analysts assume that the aggressive marketing tactics and humor of the American brand didn’t translate that well for the UK market. The Brits apparently appreciate authenticity more than hype, and is known for being a tough crowd.

Do your research and be prepared to start from scratch. Always have someone from that foreign country in your team (can also be an agency) to help you out, especially the new target country has language you can’t speak.

Identify the right target audience

Audience and market research happen pretty much hand in hand. Because while you are looking at the situation on the market at large, you’ll most likely get ideas of who you could target, what the product could be, and what your marketing message needs to be.

Who would be interested in medicinal mushrooms and why?

You need to think about different consumer segments who could be interested in medicinal mushrooms. Why would they be interested in medicinal mushrooms? Because they are bio-hackers? Or are looking for a stress lief or to focus better or to sleep better? Why not?

Is there an audience segment in the market whose needs are currently not being met, and would your medicinal mushroom product be an answer to those needs? Think about the pain points and (unmet) desires of your audience. You should pay attention to genders, people in different life stages, people with various interests related to health and wellness. What about the products that people consume in these life stages and while doing things that interest them. Could there be room for a new medicinal mushroom product?

How much does your target audience know about medicinal mushrooms?

It’s also important to figure out how much your target audience knows about medicinal mushrooms. This will determine how easy or difficult it is for you to differentiate your product, or educate the market about it.

It might be tempting to offer something to an audience already interested in medicinal mushrooms. But this means you already have a lot of competitors fighting for the same market share. You need to prepare to position your product very well and be very skillful in your marketing activities.

The other side of the coin is to be the first to offer a medicinal mushroom product to a specific audience. You’ll have the benefits of being the first. But it might pose additional challenges as you might need to do a lot of educating before people understand why they should buy your product. And educating about the benefits of medicinal mushrooms isn’t always so easy.

We recommend trying to find a middle ground, like our sister company HKS Austria did. They introduced a cordyceps infused energy drink to gamers, who already were aware of cordyceps through the game “The Last of Us.” So they didn’t need to start completely from scratch.

What else is important for your target audience?

Don’t just limit yourself to thinking about your audience’s perceptions about medicinal mushrooms. Try to get a 360° of them as people with specific interests, life situations and values that all impact their buying behavior.

Think about how they consume food supplements in general and why.

Are they rather into drinking their powders or swallowing pills or chewing gummy bears? This will determine whether your product should be more of a lifestyle one (think of mushroom coffee or a functional beverage) or a supplement (think of reishi extract capsules).

It’s also worth thinking, how does the audience segment like to take care of their health. Are they sport enthusiasts or women in menopause or busy parents or young Gen-Zs with little money?

Lastly, think about what they value in general in life. Are they really into organic products? Are sustainable growing practices importan? Do they only care about local products? Do they want to be in the know of the latest trends? Are they looking for the most convenient way of taking care of their health?

Start with a small audience, but allow for expansion later

We recommend you start with a rather small, or with a more specific audience. It will make your positioning and messaging clearer and more impactful. You know exactly to whom you are communicating and how you need to do it, so your message is more likely to resonate.

However, don’t start with an audience too small, or you’ll run into troubles of finding enough customers. You also most likely would like to grow your business beyond your small(er) target group at some point.

Don’t rush the step of figuring out your target audience. It’s crucial, because it will determine a lot of your choices from marketing communication style to channels, and even product.

How to build a functional mushroom supplement brand

Okay, after all that market and audience reseach, it’s finally time to focus on branding.

What is your brand’s story, vision and mission?

If there is a vision and a mission, or a story behind your brand, the better. Everyone has their unique story of how they became who they are.

For example, our customer Joanna from Mushroom Alchemy decided to start her own medicinal mushroom brand after she couldn’t find a medicinal mushroom product to which she would have been happy with as a consumer. Now that is an inspiring founder story.

Potential customers also often tell us that they want to start a medicinal mushroom brand after using the mushrooms themselves. They’ve got the support they needed, and now they want others to experience that help, too. That is also a very compelling story.

From your brand story you can easily create the vision for your brand. Your vision is the bigger goal you have, guiding all your activities.

Our vision, or a long-term company goal, is to be the “Kappa” of medicinal mushrooms. In the b2b dietary supplement industry the company Kappa is known for their vitamin D. Basically if you want to buy vitamin D, you buy it from them. And that is the status we want to be, in terms of medicinal mushrooms.

Our mission, or the way we want to reach that goal, is to offer medicinal mushroom raw materials of the highest quality possible, which means using only the fruiting body and laboratory analysis for our products.

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What is your product’s unique value to your customers?

In addition to red and blue oceans, we brand builders like to talk about Unique Value or Selling Proposition (UVP or USP). You don’t need to use such fancy terms, but you need to find the WHY your target customers should buy YOUR product, and not the one from competitors.

The shorter your value proposition, the better. It should fit into one sentence, which also does not take two rows to write.

For example, our slogan is “Quality mushrooms inside.”

Okay, that is maybe not the most unique slogan out there. (Who doesn’t say their mushrooms are of high quality.) Still, high quality through e.g. using only the fruiting body, and independent laboratory tests of each batch are the backbone of our business. So it must be on the slogan.

Most importantly, our slogan tells our customers that if their product has our raw materials inside, they’ve of high quality. Also, even if people just see our logo and have never heard of us, they understand that we do something with mushrooms.

It doesn’t matter if you choose to go to a red or a blue ocean, you’ll need a unique value proposition.

This is even more crucial if you choose to enter a saturated market. But, even if you happen to be the first to offer this type of medicinal mushroom product to your target audience, you still will have competitors from the non-mushroom products. Take the example of HKS Austria: they compete with every single energy drink as well.

Develop a distinguished brand identity, supported by a name, tone of voice and visuals

How your brand looks and sounds is very important, but it goes even deeper than that. Your name, logo, typography and colors should reflect the values and character of your brand and be appealing to your target audience.

Creating a brand means your company needs to have an identity, like a person. A brand is the thing what people feel when they think of your company. It’s the one thing that would keep people buying from you even if you’d need to stop all marketing and advertising. So, take some time to think about it.

If you are a solo-preneur, the easiest way is if you just put yourself and your values and the way you are into your brand.

How do you like to dress, how do you talk? What kind of a person are you? Are you a bold go-getter? Make this a core value of your brand. Are you a hippie at heart? Make this the core of your brand. Are you goofy and always know how to make people smile? Then build your brand around humor and having a good time.

In that way you brand will feel more authentic, and it’s also easier for you to stand behind your brand. You’ll also attract like-minded employees, with whom it’s easy to market your brand.

If you are developing a product for a company, you still need to come up with a brand persona. It can still have a glimpse of you, if it also fits with the target audience.

When you’ve defined your identity, it should be easy to come up the rest of the brand assets such as the logo, brand colors and packaging

Are you young and hip (like your audience)? Then bright colors that look good on social media (and are eye catching on shelves) with bold, big fonts suit you. And the brand name should reflect those hip and young values of yours.

Or are you a prestige brand, oozing of luxury and impeccable taste? Then you can’t go wrong with black, silver, gold and other strong colors and a shiny, sleek packaging. It will let everyone know that this is a prestige product for those who only want the best.

Similarly, your tone of voice or how you communicate should be an extension to the character of your brand and also appealing to your audience.

You need to communicate differently to nature-loving people and to trendsetting Gen-Zs and luxury-affine 30-somethings. If you have done your audience research well enough you should know how to best communicate with your audience, regardless of the channel.

We hope you now have the building blocks with which to start building a brand. Our article is of course only a a stepping stone for brand building. The topic is so complex that one blog post, and not even one book, can cover everything up. But, you can only truly learn how to build a brand by actually doing it.

You are also never finished with building a brand. It takes years to build it and then you need to maintain it and most likely also keep adapting it. It’s a journey, not a destination. Embrace it!

However, creating a brand and launching a product is still not enough. You need to let the world know about them! No product will sell itself, you’ll need marketing. And that is the topic of your next article where we will give you tips from our e-commerce clients regarding successfully marketing your brand to potential customers.