Transcription
Hims and Hers is growing at an incredible pace, fueled by one of the most aggressive digital marketing investments I can remember seeing.
So today, we're going to break down the exact digital marketing playbook that Hims and Hers is using to generate such insane digital marketing growth.
First, let's look at some numbers. At the time of filming this, the last quarter from which they published results showed revenue of $41 million. So that's a run rate of around $1.2 billion a year in sales.
But the most incredible thing about Hims and Hers is that the business is growing profitably, and that's up almost 80% year on year. So this is a business that's doing $400 million a quarter and growing at 77% per year.
What's even more incredible is they're doing this profitably; they made $76 million of profit in that quarter.
Okay, got your attention, right? So how are they doing this? Well, the secret is they're investing almost half of their revenue in marketing.
So that's not their investment in half of their profit in marketing; they're investing about half of their revenue in marketing.
Take a look: in the quarter that they generated $400 million of revenue, they spent $182 million in marketing. A year prior, they spent more than half of their revenue on marketing.
Okay, so you're probably thinking, "Well, if our business spent half of our revenue on marketing, we wouldn't be profitable." So how are Hims doing it?
Well, because their marketing activity is profitable for them. I.e., they put money in, and they get more money out. They can afford to scale their marketing very aggressively, knowing that their revenue is going to expand.
Now, this hasn't always been the case. They were heavily investing in prior years, and that did lead them to a loss, but that is now paying off as the customers they generated during that time are repeat purchasing.
Okay, so that's enough about the numbers, but safe to say this thing is working. Although they're investing vast amounts of money in marketing, it's paying off for them.
So we're going to break down exactly what they're doing in this marketing into four areas: their website and their value proposition, their search strategy, their paid search, and finally, their paid social and video.
And there's some surprises in here. Then finally, at the end, I'm going to show you some stuff that they're really not doing very well, just so we can all feel a little bit better about ourselves.
Now, to keep this video under the 10-hour mark, I'm mainly going to focus on their U.S. traffic and the Hims side of the business rather than the Hers. The Hims market in the U.S. is the best marketing that they're doing, so we may as well learn from the best.
Okay, let's start with the Hims website then, because if you're going to be driving $2 million of traffic per day to a website, you may as well make it fairly decent.
This is it. This is where all of that marketing spend is funneled. This is where it either turns to money or turns to dust.
It goes without saying it's a good-looking site, but I think the most obvious principle that stands out to me here is actually the simplicity of this site.
And I'm going to be completely honest and say this site's layout is a lot simpler than we would typically recommend for a business that doesn't have Hims' visibility.
Now, yes, they've got some use of credibility triggers at the top: "Trusted by over 1 million subscribers," but really, they're not doing very much on this site to sell you on Hims.
So how do they get away with that? Well, I think that this site is built for an audience that already knows the Hims proposition.
Because they're spending $2 million a day on their marketing, the people coming to this site kind of know what they're in for. Subsequently, Hims doesn't have to spend time selling the visitor on the whole proposition.
Instead, we've got a simple headline, and then we're straight into the treatments, and these are really simple.
Now, could a startup take this approach if they were very, very bold? I think this is risky. It works for Hims because they've got that brand awareness.
Now let's go into one of these treatment sections, because undeniably, this is where they want to funnel people through.
Now, the great thing about all of these is that they're not asking you to make a choice about Hims or not. What they're doing instead is leading you into a kind of consultation process.
Now, the form delays the lead capture until right at the end, so you already invested in putting in all your answers, and you feel like you're going to get something personalized at the end.
So you're less likely to bounce at this stage. I think it's a really smart approach.
Elsewhere, the site is essentially a typical e-commerce site. We've got product category pages like this one here, which is all about their different weight loss treatments, and then it funnels you through to the e-commerce product pages like these ones that tell you a bit more about individual treatments and then encourage you to either get started, which is basically the buy now, or see if a treatment's right for me, which is when you go through that form.
Now, one thing that really stands out about this site is the layout. This is very clearly a mobile-first site.
Look at the size of these images on desktop; it's actually quite unwieldy because the images are so large. If we shrink this down to mobile size, it makes a lot more sense.
Now, I'm going to put a pin in that because we'll come back to that later with their Google Ads strategy.
The Hims site also has a blog, which they call Good Health, and this has exactly what you'd expect: loads of health-related topics all around the treatments that they offer.
These are categorized around the treatments themselves, the benefits of what they're selling, and these blogs are categorized around the treatments that they sell.
This blog is working really hard for Hims. Let's take a look in SEMrush so we can see that the blog as a whole is driving around 1 million visitors per month.
And actually, for some really high-quality keywords like treatment names, comparisons, and some relatively bottom-of-the-funnel queries around those treatments.
And I've got to say, these blog posts are a work of art. Let's take a look.
So here we've got a post called "How Long Does Minoxidil Work?" Minoxidil being one of the treatments that they sell.
First thing to notice is this is all reviewed and written by medical professionals. We've got the nice contents at the side; it's a great piece.
There's some really good information in here. We've also got shareable links next to each section to encourage people to share it on their socials or share it with their friends and family or whatever.
The PS, my favorite part though, is how they embed the CTAs, the calls to action, in these posts that you can start the consultation directly through the blog post.
They've even got testimonials and reviews embedded in the blogs, and if you get even further down, they've actually got the products that you can just go straight through to buy.
These blogs cite their sources; they've got information about the author from an EAT perspective. They are perfect.
But the content on the website isn't just the e-commerce pages and then the blogs. We've also got this type of guide, and these are kind of like the blogs.
They're longer-form topics, again with CTAs embedded and information about the conditions that Hims products treat.
And again, because they're not doing this as a charity, there are CTAs embedded.
So it's clear from spending some time on the Hims site that they've invested vast amounts of money into the content, particularly these guides and condition pages, which are targeting some of their core pillar keywords in search.
You've heard us talk on this channel about the topic cluster approach, and that's exactly the approach that Hims is taking.
They have a high-level topic, like hair loss, for example, which maps to one of their products that they sell. They then have lots of subtopics around this.
Let's take a look here. So we've got the hair health category. This is a blog post: "What is a Widow's Peak?" which is ranking in the U.S. position three for the term "Widow's Peak," which SEMrush estimates is driving around 6,000 visits a month.
They've also built tools like this one to help you work out which haircut you should get. Why is that relevant?
Well, because Hims will have identified that some men think about changing their haircut when they start noticing hair loss, which also, what a coincidence, is the perfect time to introduce them to hair loss treatments.
And then, of course, we've got that core pillar hair loss condition page, which is incredibly long, incredibly detailed, and ranks for a range of terms like "thin hair men," which drives around 4,500 visits a month in the U.S.
Of course, in order to rank and get all that traffic from Google, Hims needs a ton of backlinks, and they do have a ton of backlinks.
I'm here in SEMrush, which by the way, you can get a free trial of at thankyouninjas.com, and we can see that Hims' backlink profile is pretty amazing.
They've got most of the highest authority sites on the internet linking to them. There are different reasons for these links.
For example, they're getting links from Apple for their Hims app. They're getting links from health-based websites through articles about the impact that they're having on telehealth.
They're getting articles from financial sites like CNN about the growth of the business itself, but they're also getting links from sites like Healthline for what looks like their affiliate program.
So Healthline gets pages ranking for "How to Get Viagra in 2024," sends people to Hims, and then presumably Hims pays Healthline a commission for the sales generated.
So organic search is a huge driver of traffic for Hims.
Okay, so that's organic search, but what about paid search? Well, again using SEMrush, we can see that Hims is spending approximately $500,000 per month in the U.S. on desktop on paid search ads on Google.
A lot of this budget is going on branded search terms. They are working really hard to defend their brand name.
Some people would say, "Why spend the money bidding on your brand name? Surely someone's going to click on your organic search result anyway."
Whereas others would say, "Look at how much Hims is spending on other marketing channels. What you don't want to do is get someone to finally get to the point where they're going to type the brand name in search only to lose that visitor to another competitor that's bidding on your brand name and snatches that customer from you at the line."
What's kind of interesting though is if you look at the amount that Hims is spending on targeting mobile traffic, it's nowhere near as much.
In fact, most of the year, it doesn't look like Hims is running any ads to mobile searchers at all, aside from a couple of times in 2024 in March and December where they did run ads again on their brand name.
But for the rest of the year, they don't seem to be doing that. Now, I find that kind of weird because the website is so clearly designed for mobile first.
So given how much Hims is spending on marketing as a whole, we can only assume that the quality or the conversion rate of this mobile traffic is so low it's really not worth them bidding on these search terms.
The search ads that they run tend to be very benefits-focused. Look at this: "Complete an online hair loss appointment faster than you can drive to a doctor's office."
And there are messages of hope, like "Going bald can now be optional." They do use credibility in their ad headlines, like "Award-winning for regrowth."
All right, if you've got aggressive growth goals for your business and you're trying to figure out where you can best deploy your marketing resources in order to get the most growth, we've got something that might help you.
It's called the free website and digital marketing review from the team here at Exposure Ninja.
We'll ask you a few questions about your business. We'll then go and do some background research like this to work out what's going really well in your industry, where are your marketing strengths, and where are your weaknesses, and how might you want to change your marketing priorities in order to generate the sort of growth that you're targeting.
This service is completely free of charge, but I have to stress that not everyone is eligible, so you do need to apply for this.
To do that, go to exposure ninja.com/review. Don't forget you can get a free trial of SEMrush, which we've used to do this analysis at thankyouninjas.com.
Inside SEMrush, that shows you all the ad spend for the social, video, and display ads, you can get a free trial of that at exposure.ninja.
Wow, one of the areas I find most interesting about Hims' digital marketing is their social and video ad strategy.
Here I am using Ad Clarity inside the SEMrush app center. And by the way, if you don't know Ad Clarity, it's an insane tool.
You know how you can see on Meta's ad library the ads that somebody's running? Well, on Ad Clarity, you see those ads, but you also see how much people are spending on those ads as well.
It also shows you how much they're spending on video ads, and it shows you all of the ads that people are running, the landing pages, and how those ads are organized into campaigns and how they've changed over time.
It's an absolute gold mine. Now, we persuaded SEMrush to give you a free trial of Ad Clarity, so you can go to exposure.ninja/slw.
That's exposure.ninja/slw if you want to take this for a test drive. It is incredible.
Let's take a look at how the advertising budget has changed on social over time. If we take a look at this chart here, we can see the spend on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok and how that has changed over time.
We can see, for example, that they were spending a lot more on Facebook and Instagram before the summer when they really started reducing some of that budget down.
It looks like they go through months where they test TikTok in quite a big way before then bringing that budget back down again.
Okay, let's talk about Meta ads in particular. If we go to the Meta ad library, we can see all of the ads that Hims is running.
And you'll notice that most of these are the type of UGC-style ad that you would expect, right? These are the sort of ads that are going to be filmed on a phone.
They're filmed in portrait; they've got typical UGC-style captions on them—all pretty much what we would expect.
So if you are copying Hims, you might think, "Right, we just need to go with UGC style. This is what they're doing; that's what they're putting all their budget behind."
But actually, if you take a look inside Ad Clarity and you order their social ads by spend, you'll see that the ads they put the most budget behind aren't necessarily UGC style at all.
And if we expand the ads that we're looking at to also include video, we'll notice an even bigger trend.
And by the way, Hims is spending way more on video than they are on social or display. Check this out: in one week in June, they spent over $3 million on video ads alone.
But anyway, back to the ad creative that they're using. So remember in the Meta ad library, we saw loads of UGC, but if we look at the top ads that Hims have been running sorted by spend, we see that actually the ads that they're putting the most budget behind are much more well-produced.
These are almost like TV ads. Check this one out: they spent $6 million promoting this.
"Why would I use Hims? My ED has delivered to my door. I love pharmacy lines. Why would I use clinically proven ingredients to regrow my hair? For Hims, I love Hims."
Now, these look like TV ads. They're sleek, they're well-produced, everything is on brand, right?
You're seeing a similar color scheme here as the rest of the Hims branding, and actually, all of these ads appear really consistent, meaning that although they're brand-focused ads, they really push the benefits of the product.
And they build up that familiarity because you become used to seeing the same colors over and over again and build that association with Hims.
As you would expect with this sort of budget, they're testing quite a lot of ads, and these are just the ads that are showing up in the last week or so.
As you would expect with this sort of ad budget, they're testing quite a lot of different ad creative, and they seem to be running fairly small tests with lots of different pieces to see what works and gets traction.
All right, right now you might be feeling a little bit sad about yourself, thinking, "Wow, Hims is really killing it; I'm doing nothing."
Well, let me tell you that Hims isn't killing it at everything. In fact, there seems to be something that they're really struggling with, and that is organic video content.
They've been posting on YouTube for some time, for example, and really, these videos aren't performing that well at all.
We're talking like triple-digit views, and they're clearly putting some work in. Some of these videos have done well, but that hasn't translated into success for the channel.
And to be honest, it's a bit of a similar thing with TikTok. Yes, there's almost half a million followers, 7.5 million likes, but a lot of these TikToks really aren't performing that well.
Bear in mind that Hims is putting a significant ad budget behind both YouTube and TikTok, and still, the organic accounts really aren't growing to the extent that I expect they would like.
But other than that, they're absolutely smashing it in every area.
Okay, Tim, we want to grow 77% per year through profitable marketing. What do we need to do to recreate Hims' success?
Well, I'm glad you asked. There are really five things that Hims and Hers are doing.
Firstly, their core offering is a winner. It's a competitive mass-market price point. They understand their target audience and speak directly to them.
They have slick branding, great design across the board, and the offering is simple. They're not trying to sell a men's community, taking a new approach to health via Web 3 and AI-enabled digital health solutions.
No, they're like, "If you don't like this thing about yourself, buy our treatment to fix it." It's really simple.
The second thing is they've got a great website designed to capture prospects' contact details in a really consultative and non-salesy way.
The whole process is designed to funnel people through to the treatments that they need as seamlessly as possible.
Third, they're killing it in search. They're investing vast amounts of time and energy in website content. They're ranking really well and driving people through to products from this content.
Fourth, huge ad spend, loads of ad creative, lots of testing, and backing winners. The best performing stuff seems to be very well produced.
It's brand consistent. They're running loads more ads on YouTube than they are social or display ads.
And finally, and probably most importantly, once they found a profitable model that worked, they scaled up aggressively.
Remember, this is a business that's spending half its revenue on marketing. We've got clients that are generating a 10 to 1 return on their ad spend, meaning they put $1 in, they're getting $10 out.
Logically, what would you do? You'd find every dollar that you possibly could to dump into this money-printing machine.
Yet when it comes to it, people's risk appetite doesn't always let them take that approach.
Well, Hims is a company doing over a billion dollars that is absolutely taking that approach. They are going hard, they are going fast, and they are winning.
So I hope you've enjoyed this video. If not, I hope it's at least been useful to you.
And if you want to build out a content strategy like Hims, check out this video, which will show you exactly how to do it.