Why The Healthy Mummy has one third of its staff looking after its dynamic online community

There’s power in community and The Healthy Mummy founder Rhian Allen understands that like few others. 

Allen’s business, which she sold to ASX-listed Halo Food Co in a $17 million deal in February, has grown into a business with $21 million in annual revenue in large part due to its vibrant, highly engaged social media community.

The business has some 1.5 million followers across its social platforms in Australia alone and more than 600,000 members in its dedicated Facebook group.

This Facebook group has become something of a secret weapon for the business, which Allen started 12 years ago and which offers mums a health and lifestyle program, including meal and exercise plans, supplements and smoothies, recipes and merchandise.

From providing feedback on current products and offers, to crowdsourcing ideas for new products, the group has helped forge The Healthy Mummy’s identity, and delivered the business a loyal, invested customer base. 

So how have Allen and her team created such a space? By making the community a priority — and investing teampower accordingly — and trusting what that community tells them.

Key takeaways:

1. Be truly open to feedback from your customers, and use that feedback to develop new ideas within your business;

2. Invest resources in what gives your business a competitive advantage; and

3. Encourage your followers to share content about your brand to their own social networks to multiply your reach.

The start of a community

Creating The Healthy Mummy’s online community was one of the first things Allen did when she founded the business from her kitchen back in 2010, and the same mission to bring mums together continues today. 

“I wanted to do something good and I wanted to do something that was supportive,” she said. “I wasn’t looking at it, and never have, from a straight commercial mindset … and I think that’s where we’ve been quite different.”

Allen was motivated by her own experience of motherhood and an understanding that “the online space can be a really frightening space”. 

“Especially as a mum when you’re feeling isolated, there’s a whole new world and there’s online trolls and bullying. There’s also fake news and myriad of misinformation. So I wanted to create a kind of community where mum could feel safe, no matter what stage of motherhood they were in and they weren’t going to get judged.” 

The Healthy Mummy uses both its public and private Facebook groups to spark conversations, share success stories from its members and of course, provide information about the company’s products. New members are encouraged to join the communities through customer journey emails, onboarding processes and in post-purchase communications. These same members are then encouraged to share their own journeys on their personal social accounts, which in turn amplifies the brand’s reach. 

Allen is clear that the purpose of the community is not strictly to make sales. 

“We’re not aiming to have everyone who’s in the community as a customer … It’s more important to me that we’re able to serve mothers, whether they’re a customer or not, no matter what their budgets are, with help and support,” she said. 

In February when the business was sold to Halo Food Co, 53 of the company’s 150 full-time, part-time and casual employees were employed to manage the brand’s social media community. This admin support and moderation is provided 24/7 and the staff work to a roster so that whenever anyone logs on to read a community post, there is support available. 

In part, this is to help ensure the community does remain safe, says Allen, with the moderators there to make sure members stay within the community’s guidelines and remove anyone who doesn’t. 

But it’s also a reflection that this community has become, in Allen’s words, “the centre of the business”. 

“It’s where everything happens. I could go into the community right now and I can understand what the concerns [of members] are … [and] what we need to do as a business to support people,” she said. 

“That’s what drives me and what drives the rest of the business, as opposed to looking at it as, ‘how do we sell stuff?’ It’s, ‘how can we support people?’ And sometimes that is sales related and sometimes it’s not.”

It’s also indicative of Allen’s ethos as founder and CEO to put the customer first, always. This included the decision to turn down other suitors and sell to Halo Food Co, which she describes as “the right partner” to take The Healthy Mummy to the next stage of growth. 

“Because to me, it is always about the long-term future of the business, and not just about the short-term sale,” she said. 

The Healthy Mummy founder Rhian Allen with staff members. Source: Supplied.

Market research on steroids

Perhaps the true power of The Healthy Mummy community resides in the way Allen and her team use it to help develop new products. It is, as Allen says, a “live focus group” that is available to them at any given time. 

In fact, Allen says the recent decision to develop a wellness app came directly from the results of a group poll during 2021. The business had asked group members to vote on a selection of 10 new product ideas and within 24 hours, more than 12,000 people had voted in support of a dedicated wellness app, which represented around 95% of the total votes in the poll. 

While it’s not unusual for the team to ask its Facebook group members to vote in polls, Allen says the response in this instance was so large and immediate that the team knew they had to act. 

“I was like, ‘holy guacamole, that’s amazing! Let’s do it, let’s build it’.” 

That kickstarted a six-month process of building and refining the app, which has a specific focus on helping users manage stress. The community has been involved in every step along the way. 

Not only did this feedback open up an entire new space for The Healthy Mummy to play in, it also stopped the business from investing in other products that weren’t as appealing to its audience. 

“From a business perspective, it makes sure that we’re not wasting money on ideas that the business might think is good but the customers don’t really like. That’s invaluable,” said Allen.

Allen also feels fortunate for the sense of accountability to the community too. This group of people keep the business “on track”, she says. They tell the business what they want, but they also tell it what they don’t want too. 

“I think today a lot of brands will have Facebook followings but it’s not really a two-way conversation. Ours is very much a two-way conversation where the community posts more than we ever could respond to. It gives them a voice and I think that’s a really powerful thing.”

In the crowded health and wellness space, this conversation allows The Healthy Mummy to stay ahead of the curve and tap into the “thirst for new” its members. 

New recipes and workouts are added to The Healthy Mummy programs every month, in the same way the streaming juggernauts are constantly adding new shows to their platforms. 

“I think what consumers want today is what’s new. They want better, they want the top service and they get it … We’re all so conditioned now to Netflix bringing out new things every week and I think as a brand in this kind of space, you have to think like that and you have to be like that,” said Allen.