Pre-landing Pages — How Top Brands Warm Up Customers

Hello, marketers!

I come from the world of nutra affiliate marketing — a place where you either learn to warm up buyers fast, or you burn your budget on dead traffic. The grey market is brutal, and that exact pressure has birthed truly brilliant pre-landing techniques.

The good news: most of them translate beautifully to legitimate supplement brands. Even better news: when a white-hat brand uses these tools correctly, it leaves grey-hat players far behind because it can actually build real trust. Direct, head-on approaches yield poor conversion rates, and it is unlikely anyone will buy at all. Landing pages are usually templated — there is nothing in them to impress the audience. And this is equally true for sketchy SS/Trial offers and premium DTC supplement brands alike.

So, how do you warm them up? Grey-market players figured this out years ago. Let's look at what the top supplement brands are doing — and how to merge both worlds into something that actually converts without compromising your brand.

Why warm up?

Those who have worked in traditional e-commerce — Shopify and the like — remember the standard: the average conversion rate in online retail is around 1%. If you manage to hit 2–2.5%, that is already very good. Nutra and supplements can potentially deliver a stable 4–6% conversion rate, with some brands and advertisers hitting 8–10%. I would say 2–2.5% is the absolute baseline for Nutra SS/Trial and supplements.

So, why warm up? We have already defined the goal. We warm up to lift conversion rates, EPC, and other key metrics you use to evaluate campaigns. As humans (or rather, animals, to some extent), we need to be intrigued; we need our pain points tickled before we make a serious decision. Parting with $100+ on an unfamiliar site is exactly that kind of decision. The first phase of decision-making is emotional, while the second is "thinking." With pre-landing pages, we tickle that first phase — emotions and feelings.

What emotions and feelings must you trigger in a buyer to break through the 0.5–1% conversion barrier and push it up to 5–6%+? Let’s break it down:

• Trust. During the warm-up process, you build trust in the product. Health is a highly personal, sensitive, and often intimate topic. Product copy, videos, reviews, testimonials, and social proof all help establish this.
• Tapping into vulnerabilities. ⚠️ Handle with care. The grey nutra market has mastered this — if your audience has a pain point (energy, weight, hair loss, potency), you call it out, amplify it, and offer a solution. Done poorly, it is manipulation. Done well, it is honest empathy: "We know this is bothering you. Here is what actually helps." Top DTC brands (Hims, Hers, Keeps) built entire businesses by making vulnerabilities solvable rather than shameful.
• Offering hope. The key here is not to overpromise or cross into outright deception. Promising a cure for complex diseases — like diabetes or hepatitis — is unethical and, in most markets, illegal. Stay within the realm of realistic, meaningful improvements. The best supplement brands inspire without lying.
• Sparking curiosity. People are naturally curious, so you need to know how to trigger their interest without overdoing it.
• Building awareness. You establish an initial level of awareness about your product, especially if you are selling something relatively new or unknown. In nutra, almost every product falls into this category.
• Pleasure, comfort, and laziness. People are naturally lazy and prefer not to spend time and effort on long, demanding methods to solve their problems. It is easier for them to believe that a pill from the internet will shrink or grow some part of their body.
• Urgency: creating a sense of scarcity — for example, through a time-sensitive offer or a promo available for a limited period. "Today only, the clock is ticking!"

And any other emotions that can nudge them to part with their money. Put yourself in the "patient's" shoes and think from their perspective. For instance, I stutter slightly, and if there were a nutra remedy for stuttering, I would create incredible pre-landers because I know the pain of this target audience firsthand.

A quick bit of theory: The Funnel

I place the pre-landing page at the upper section of the funnel — the second element from the top. It is an indispensable part of the funnel. A pre-lander can take the form of text, video, influencer content, and so on. This stage of the funnel represents "interest," while the ad at the very top represents "awareness." Everything below is designed to drive sales.

Without a pre-landing page / interest stage in your funnel, the profitability of any online sale will collapse.

How to warm up?

Audience warm-up options:

• Standard affiliate pre-landers: typical pre-landing pages used in affiliate marketing.
• Informational review articles: articles providing valuable information about a product.
• Comparison articles: content contrasting several products to help the audience make an informed decision.
• Quizzes, calculators, surveys: interactive tools that engage the audience.
• Video: YouTube videos and Video Sales Letters (VSLs) that engage the audience visually and aurally.
• Social media and influencers: leveraging social platforms and collaborating with influencers to build trust and interest.

These are different methods to warm up your audience and prepare them for a purchase.

Let's break down each of them with examples, links, and screenshots. I love comparing grey-hat and white-hat approaches in supplements — because the contrast is stark. Grey-hat players innovate fast. White-hat brands do it with a focus on long-term results. The real sweet spot is knowing which tactics are worth borrowing.

Fake articles featuring celebrities and doctors

I strongly warn against using these kinds of pre-landers. Using celebrities and doctors in fake articles can lead to severe legal and financial consequences. I have witnessed several of my US partners get into deep trouble over these tactics. They faced multi-million dollar lawsuits simply because their affiliates used celebrity images on pre-landing pages. In the United States, litigation is a costly ordeal, and you can even end up behind bars.

Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz — popular figures in the US — have been actively exploited by affiliates. However, I wouldn't recommend promoting products using their names: it's an outdated strategy.

Fake articles using famous sources and TV shows

This type of pre-lander has been around for ages — I see it on Google every other day. How effective is it? No matter how much we test it — it is no easy task.

There are plenty of pre-landers like this, and I don't want to dwell on them — you have probably seen them already: Shark Tank, Oprah, other celebrities, sensational scientific breakthroughs, and so on. Perhaps in new GEOs for SS/Trial offers or through other traffic sources, this still works. Of course, if you can modify the story and make it unique, you might get results. The key is to test it.

Informational review articles

These articles are often written in an SEO style and are usually either paid placements or strategically positioned content. In 98% of cases, these are not sensational pieces, but standard marketing content. It is essentially the same approach described above, but without the shock value and sensationalism. Both camps — black-hat and white-hat — can use this method.

A quick bit of theory

Affiliates working with SEO traffic manipulate search engine rankings using articles — both free placements and paid ones. White-hat brands use the exact same method, but they approach content creation more meticulously, and their links are higher-quality and more authoritative. Why? Because white-hat players play the long game and aim to boost their domain authority through these links. Nutra brands, on the other hand, rarely care about their domains — they can swap them out several times a year. Getting these links and placements is called link building.

Let's look at how the best supplement brands do it. Nutrafol is a perfect starting example: it is a premium hair loss supplement brand, and their office happens to be right across the street from mine in New York. They pour serious resources into high-quality review articles on highly authoritative platforms.

But Nutrafol is not the only example. Ritual has built a content machine that puts their products in front of readers through reviews written by registered dietitians on Healthline, InnerBody, and GarageGymReviews — reviews that land on the first page and warm up buyers long before they ever see an ad. AG1 has done the same at scale: Fortune, Healthline, RealFoodDietitians — a library of expert-backed articles functioning as the top of their funnel.

And for comparison — here is what a review article by a grey-market nutra affiliate looks like (below). The gap in quality is quite telling: clickbait headlines, shock content, and absolutely no useful information for a real consumer. Everything boils down to exposing and dissecting a "super-effective formula." This is exactly how your brand should never look — even if you are borrowing the structure.

Now let's search for these reviews on Google. Compare the black-hat and white-hat approaches. As an average adult, which would you trust more before buying? Personally, I would choose high-quality, helpful content.

SEO-style comparison articles

This approach is very similar to the previous one, but it features multiple products and creates an engaging, informative article where one specific product outperforms the rest.

Various tricks are used to make a certain product stand out: rating it on a 10-point scale, placing it at the very top of the list, or omitting outbound links to the "losing" products.

This is a highly popular approach in both the black-hat and white-hat camps.

This is an excellent type of pre-lander that converts incredibly well. However, there are nuances. Let me share a workflow from my personal experience that offers major advantages. We ordered keto nutra bottles from competitors and grabbed our own. We photographed these bottles on an iPhone and created a detailed, native review article. Naturally, my brand took the top spot — complete with a link, a 10/10 rating, nutritionist recommendations, and so on. It came out looking organic, and people tend to trust this kind of content. Where did the idea come from? AG1 — a white-label brand.

P.S. Sometimes you can find photos of competitor bottles online and save yourself the purchase.

White-hat brands have mastered this format. Take a look at "AG1 vs. Live it Up" or "Hers vs. Nutrafol" — these are polished comparison articles written by registered dietitians, featuring detailed ingredient breakdowns, rating charts, and — unsurprisingly — the brand that sponsored the article usually wins. The mechanics are identical to what grey-market affiliates do; the execution is simply a tier above in terms of credibility and sustainability.

And here is another idea for you! Real product reviews or comparisons on Reddit, Quora, and similar platforms.

Quizzes, calculators, and surveys

I love this type of funnel — in both white-hat and black-hat approaches. Why?

• People are naturally drawn to this kind of interactivity — it's engaging.
• The questions allow you to tap directly into their insecurities and desires.
• The customer gets a sense of "personalization" — the feeling that the product was tailored specifically for them.
• A well-designed quiz looks highly credible and professional.
• They are used across multiple niches: dating, crypto, white-label products, and, of course, our favorite — nutra and supplements.

Here is a black-hat example. They are often disguised as Reddit threads, hospital portals, popular magazines, and so on.

At the end of the quiz, you can redirect the user to another pre-lander — for instance, a fake hospital page tied to the quiz topic, or some shock content. Alternatively, you can send them straight to the main offer landing page.

White-hat quizzes are much more attractive and thoughtful. They ask practical, realistic questions without overhyping things. They are often embedded right on the homepage with a prominent CTA button — because the tool simply works.

The questions and answers are genuinely intriguing. Let your girlfriend or wife take one of these, and you will likely end up spending $100+ on premium hair care before you know it. Honestly, even I got sucked in!

A few more stellar examples worth studying: Hims built one of the most sophisticated quiz funnels in the industry — a multi-step hair loss quiz that doubles as a medical intake form, building deep trust while qualifying the buyer.

Gainful and Persona Nutrition go even further: they use quizzes to generate completely personalized supplement packs, making the product feel tailor-made for you. The quiz is no longer just a pre-lander — it becomes the actual value proposition.

Where to create quizzes?

There are plenty of options. Here are some highly effective tools that we use ourselves:

• Interact
• Outgrow
• LeadQuizzes
• ScoreApp
• Opinion Stage
• Typeform
• involve.me

YouTube, VSLs, and other video pre-landers

Using video before the offer is common across many niches. It can be long, like in crypto/forex, or short — around 30 seconds, like in dating or e-commerce. It can run for an hour like a VSL (Video Sales Letter), or last just 15 seconds like a social media Story. You can embed it on a landing page or host it externally on YouTube and social networks. The options are endless. In the nutra niche, fake YouTube reviews and VSLs are incredibly popular.

Just like with articles, the black-hat and white-hat approaches differ significantly. Black-hat marketers usually don't overthink it and churn out low-quality content with AI-generated voices. They piece together video clips from screenshots with a voiceover on top. Or they hire cheap, unscrupulous "reviewers." I have created and ordered these kinds of materials for my own offers, and honestly, they are embarrassing to watch. You can Google something like "keto offer review" to get inspired by this cringe. The comment sections on these videos are a whole separate category of art.

At the same time, white-hat supplement brands approach this highly professionally, commissioning reviews from creators who deliver polished visuals and high-quality production. Sure, brands pay for these placements or set up affiliate links, but at least it's content you aren't embarrassed to show to people.

Video is a top-tier tool, and it works incredibly well in the white-hat approach. We actively test it and often see great results. Conversions from video reviews are frequently cheaper than those from paid traffic. But it takes work: you have to find the right influencer and an audience that actually converts.

Social media as a pre-lander

Let me share an interesting case study you probably haven't heard of. Brand-owned Facebook groups filled with customers are a massive trend in the US supplement industry.

Take the brand Obvi, for example — they have a group with 117,000 members. They drive people there through abandoned cart emails, ads, and post-purchase "thank you" emails, among other channels. Once a user joins, their doubts quickly vanish, paving the way for a purchase or turning them into a loyal, repeat Obvi customer. The posts look completely native: people share their weight loss success stories, leave comments, and like posts. It is a flawless system. These groups are built specifically to warm up leads and boost retention.

I won't dwell on Instagram or Facebook posts as pre-landers. An Instagram post essentially acts as a minimalist pre-lander. However, nutra brands often neglect social media and fail to invest in it properly. This is a major missed opportunity: social proof and activity significantly boost trust, even for grey-market players.

What you should definitely avoid

I added this screenshot after writing the article, and it is actually a relatively decent example. Often, a cheap nutra pre-lander is just a basic image of the product bottle and a clunky CTA button saying "GO TO OFFICIAL WEBSITE." With pre-landers like these, you are just throwing money down the drain—you'd be better off saving your budget and taking your girlfriend out on a nice date.

How to find pre-landers for inspiration?

You probably know this better than I do. You can find pre-landers through:

• Spy tools: Use ad spy tools to discover competitor pre-landers.
• Google search with a US IP: Search Google using a US IP address to find active pre-landers.
• Offervault: Search for the offer name to look at the associated pre-landers.
• Competitor brand funnels: Go through the complete buying funnel of leading DTC supplement brands like a regular customer. Sign up for their newsletter, add items to your cart, abandon it — and their pre-landing strategy will unfold step by step.

Conclusion

The grey market is a tough school, and that is exactly where the best pre-landing mechanics were born. But white-hat brands have something grey-market players can't buy — genuine trust. The exact same tools — emotional warm-ups, addressing audience pain points, social proof — work much more powerfully and last longer in the hands of a legitimate brand.

Pre-landing isn't manipulation; it is respect for how people make decisions: emotion first, then logic. If your brand hasn't built this stage of the funnel yet, you are simply leaving money on the table.