• by Les Luchter , May 8, 2023

Call it a gut feeling.

For Complete Gut Health, a year-old supplement from Beekeeper’s Naturals, chief marketing officer Alexis Warchalowski wanted consumers to “feel the results for themselves.”

So the brand launched a TikTok campaign designed to give away from 20,000 to 30,000 10-day samples (valued at between $400,000 and $600,000).

With “a lot of saturation right now in the gut health space,” Warchalowski tells Marketing Daily, “it’s really hard for consumers to know what will actually work. A lot of brands use science as marketing, but that doesn’t mean that they are scientific.”

But Complete Gut Health did an independently conducted clinical trial, and when Warchalowski saw the results showing “over half of people feeling an improvement in gut health bloating and digestion within the first week alone... I knew immediately that the world needed to try the product.”

The sampling period was set at 10 days, she adds, “just to make sure that customers could really, really feel it.”

And not only customers, but paid TikTok influencers.

“It was important to me for each influencer to feel the impact of the product as well, so all of (them) were required to actually use the product for a week to 10 days and then create something that was really authentic to them and their experience,” she says.

Those testimonials -- by about 20 influencers in such fields as moms, fitness and beauty -- combined with Beekeeper’s Naturals own TikTok posting, launched the weekend of April 30-May 1 and have resulted in over a million daily views and thousands of samples requested per day from the offer’s landing page, Warchalowski says. Engagement numbers soared from 75,000 on Friday to 115,000 by this morning.

So many people have requested the free sample, in fact, that Beekeeper’s is “pacing way ahead” of its original plan for a 45-day campaign, Warchalowski says. “We may not make it to the middle of May at this rate.” Almost 50% of total targeted samples went in just over 1 week.

The no-strings-attached offer requires no shipping fees nor credit card entry, reflecting the brand’s faith that “people will come back… after experiencing the product,” Warchalowski says.

While Complete Gut Health is “targeting anybody with a gut,” she zeroes in on a 70/30 female/male split, “particularly people who are shopping at big box retailers.” Beekeeper’s, in fact, just added Target to its retail list in the past couple of weeks.

TikTok was chosen for the giveaway because it’s the “number one destination for gut health conversations.”

While Beekeepers Naturals, best known for its Propolis Throat Spray, launched in 2017, the Complete Gut Health product debuted in 2022

Marketed as 3-in-1 Complete Gut Health, due to its containing pre-, pro-, and post-biotics, the supplement contains 150 mg of bee-produced Propolis, Tributyrin, and two probiotic strains—Bacillus Coagulans SC 208 and Bacillus Subtilis HU58. 

While the brand, being a supplement, makes no specific claims, the clinical trial studied people  with bloating/gas, irregular bowel movements, heartburn, and/or poor digestion.