Prelanders. How the Best Brands Warm Up Buyers — and What You Can Steal From the Grey Market.

Hello, marketers!

I’ve spent years in the grey market of nutra affiliate marketing – a place where you either learn to warm up a buyer fast, or you bleed money on dead traffic. The grey market is ruthless, and that pressure has produced some genuinely brilliant pre-landing techniques. The good news: most of them translate perfectly to legitimate supplement brands. The better news: when a white-hat brand uses these tools properly, it outperforms grey players by a mile because it can actually build trust. Direct head-on approaches will yield weak conversion rates (CR) and it’s doubtful that anyone will make a purchase. Ad landing pages tend to be generic, offering nothing exceptional to impress the audience. That’s true whether you’re running a dodgy SS/Trial offer or a premium DTC supplement brand.

So, how can we warm them up? Grey market players figured this out years ago. Now let’s look at what the best supplement brands are doing — and how to combine both worlds into something that actually converts without compromising your brand.

Why Warm Up?

Those who have worked in traditional e-commerce, like Shopify and alike, remember the standard - the average conversion rate in online retail is around 1%. If you manage to achieve 2-2.5%, you’re doing exceptionally well. Nutra and supplement products have the potential to offer a stable conversion rate of 4-6%, and some brands and advertisers even hit the 8-10% mark. I’d say 2-2.5% is the bare minimum for Nutra SS/Trial and Supplements.

So, why warm up? We’ve already established the purpose. We warm up to increase conversion, EPC, and other vital metrics by which you evaluate your campaigns. We, as humans (or, perhaps, more accurately animals to a certain extent), need to be intrigued, our insecurities tickled before making a significant decision. For example, parting with over $100+ on an unknown website is one such decision. There’s a plethora of research on how emotions and feelings influence our actions and decision-making, particularly among the target audience that purchases Nutra products. The first phase of decision-making is emotional, the second is the “thinking” phase. With pre-landing pages, we tickle the first phase - the emotions and feelings.

What emotions and feelings do we need to evoke in the buyer to break through that 0.5-1% conversion rate and elevate it to 5-6+% CR? Let’s contemplate:

• Trust. During the warming-up process, we establish trust in the product. Health is a very personal and sensitive matter, especially in Nutra, often intimate. Text about the product, videos, reviews, customer testimonials, and social proof can assist with this.
• Pressing on Insecurities. ⚠️ Use with caution. Grey market nutra perfected this — if your audience has a pain point (energy, weight, hair loss, performance), you name it, you amplify it, and you offer the solution. Done crudely, it’s manipulative. Done well, it’s simply honest empathy: “We know this bothers you. Here’s what actually helps.” The best DTC brands (Hims, Hers, Keeps) built entire businesses on making insecurities feel addressable, not shameful.
• Offering Hope. Here, it’s essential not to overdo it and avoid blatant deception. Promising someone that they will be cured of complex illnesses like diabetes or hepatitis wouldn’t be ethical — and in most markets, it’s also illegal. Stay in the lane of realistic, meaningful improvement. The best supplement brands are aspirational without being dishonest.
• Spark Interest. People are naturally curious, so you must know how to pique their interest without going overboard. Oprah lost 40 pounds with the help of Keto pills, so I can do it too!
• Awareness. We create an initial level of awareness about our product, especially if we’re selling something relatively unknown and new. In Nutra, nearly all products fall into this category.
• Pleasure and Comfort, Laziness. People are lazy and don’t want to spend time and effort on solving their problems with lengthy, effective methods. They’re fine with deceiving themselves into believing that a pill they found on the internet will either reduce or enhance some part of their body.
• Urgency: A sense of urgency, for example, through a limited-time offer or a promotion that’s only valid for a specific duration. “Today only, time is ticking!”
• And other emotions that can push them to part with their money. Put yourself in the “patient’s” shoes and think from their perspective. I, for example, have a slight stutter, and if there were a Nutra craze against stuttering, I’d create super pre-landing pages because I know the pain of people with stuttering. It requires a bit of a psychologist’s touch.

A Minute of Theory: Funnel

I’ve placed the pre-landing page at the top of the funnel, the second element from the top. It’s an integral part of the funnel. The pre-landing page can be in the form of text, video, an influencer, and so on. This part of the funnel can be termed “interest.” As for the advertising at the top of the funnel, it represents “awareness.” And of course, everything below is aimed at driving sales.

Without a pre-landing page/interest in the funnel, the profitability of any online sale will break down.

How to Warm Up?

What are the options for warming up the audience?

• Standard Affiliate Pre-landers: These are your typical pre-landing pages used in affiliate marketing.
• Informative Review Articles: Articles that provide valuable information about the product in question.
• Comparison Articles: Content that compares multiple products, helping the audience make an informed decision.
• Quizzes, Calculators, Surveys: Interactive tools like quizzes and calculators that engage the audience.
• Videos: Including YouTube videos and Video Sales Letters (VSL) to visually and audibly engage with the audience.
• Social Media and Influencers: Leveraging social media platforms and collaborating with influencers to build trust and interest.

These are the various methods you can use to warm up your audience and prepare them for the sale.

Let’s examine each of them with examples, links, and screenshots. I enjoy comparing grey-market and white-hat approaches in supplements — because the contrast is instructive. The grey guys innovate fast. The white-hat brands do it with staying power. The sweet spot is knowing which tricks are worth borrowing.

Standard Affiliate’s Pre-Landers

There are many variations of these pre-landing pages, and affiliates have come up with a plethora of creative approaches. I won’t list them all here to keep it concise, but I’ll touch on some that have recently come up in my campaigns.

Fake Articles Using Celebrities and Doctors

As an advertiser, I strongly caution against these kinds of pre-landers. I distance myself from them completely. Using celebrities and doctors in fake articles can have severe legal and financial consequences. I’ve witnessed a couple of my American affiliate friends getting into serious trouble for such tactics. Lawsuits with claims worth millions of dollars were filed against them for affiliate’s use of celebrities in pre-landers. In the United States, legal battles can be an expensive ordeal, and you might even end up behind bars.

Affiliate marketers know that sometimes this is a working scheme. However, people are gradually becoming more aware and less likely to fall for such tales. If an advertiser finds out that you are using these tactics, they might refuse to pay.

Fake articles using well-known sources and shows.

How long has this pre-lander been in use? Does it work for anyone in the USA? I’ve been seeing it every other day in Google for a couple of years. No matter how much we test, it’s a challenge.

There are many similar pre-landers, and I don’t want to dwell on them as you’ve likely seen them already: Shark Tank, Oprah, sensational scientific breakthroughs, and so on. Perhaps these work well in new geos for SS/Trial offers or through different traffic sources. Of course, if you can modify and create your unique story, it might make an impact. It’s essential to test.

Informative Review Articles

These articles are often designed in an SEO style and are typically either paid or strategically placed. In 98% of cases, these are not sensational pieces but rather standard, marketing-focused content. It’s essentially the same approach as previously mentioned but without the shock value and sensationalism. Both black-hat and white-hat players can employ this method.

A Minute of Theory.

Affiliates who work with SEO traffic manipulate search engine rankings using articles, both free and paid placements. White-label brands also employ this method, but they take more care in crafting articles, and their links are of higher quality and more influential. Why? Because white-hat players are in it for the long run, and they are determined to boost their domain’s visibility in search results through these links. Nutra brands, on the other hand, often don’t care much about their domains as they can change several times a year. The acquisition of links and placements is called link-building.

Let’s look at how the best supplement brands do this. Nutrafol is a great starting point — they’re a premium supplement brand fighting hair loss, and their office is just across the street from mine in New York. They invest heavily in quality review articles placed on authoritative publications. But Nutrafol is not alone. Ritual (women’s vitamins) has built a content machine that puts their products in front of RD-authored (registered dietitian) reviews on Healthline, InnerBody, and GarageGymReviews — reviews that rank on page one and warm up buyers long before they ever see an ad. AG1 by Athletic Greens has done the same at scale: Fortune, Healthline, RealFoodDietitians — a library of expert-backed articles that function as the top of their funnel.

They write in different styles and publish them on authoritative websites.

Now, for contrast — here’s what a grey-market nutra affiliate review looks like. The quality gap is instructive: clickbait headlines, shock content, no useful information for a real consumer. This is what your brand should never look like, even if you borrow the structure.

There is no image, and the text doesn’t contain anything valuable for a typical consumer. It’s all about exposing and dissecting the “super effective formula.”

Now, let’s search for such reviews on Google. Compare the black and white approaches. As a normal, adult person, what would you be inclined to trust before making a purchase? I’d probably lean towards quality and useful content.

Comparison Articles with SEO Style

This approach is very similar to the previous one but involves several products and the creation of an engaging and informative article in which one particular product outshines the others.

They use various tricks to highlight a particular product, such as scoring on a 10-point scale, arranging them from top to bottom, omitting links to “losing” products, and so on.

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

Now, here’s a good white-hat example. Well, they tried, not bad!

This is a great type of pre-lander that can convert well. However, there are nuances. Let me share a scheme from personal experience that comes with some advantages. We ordered bottles of Keto Nutra from competitors and got our own. We took photos of these bottles with an iPhone and created a lengthy native review article. Of course, my brand is rated number one - with a link, a 10/10 rating, endorsements from nutritionists, and so on. It turned out to be natural, and people are inclined to trust such content. Where did I get the idea? From AG1, a white-label brand.

P.S. Sometimes you can find photos of competitors’ bottles on the internet and save money by not purchasing them.

White-hat brands have mastered this format. Search “AG1 vs Live it Up” or “Hers vs Nutrafol” and you’ll find polished comparison articles written by registered dietitians, complete with ingredient breakdowns, scoring tables, and — unsurprisingly — the brand that commissioned the article usually comes out on top. The mechanics are identical to what grey affiliates do; the execution is just far more credible and sustainable.

Here’s another idea for you! Real product reviews or comparisons on Reddit, Quora, and similar platforms.

Quizzes, calculators, and surveys.

I like this type of funnel in both white and black approaches. Why?

• People are drawn to this kind of interactivity; it’s interesting.
• In the questions, you can tap into their complexes and desires.
• The customer feels a “personalization” of the offer, the sense that the product is specially tailored to them.
• A high-quality and well-thought-out quiz looks trustworthy and professional.

They are used in many niches: dating, crypto, white-label products, and, of course, in our beloved Nutra and supplements.

Here’s a black-hat example. They camouflage them as Reddit, hospital websites, popular publications, and so on.

At the end of the quiz, you can lead to another pre-lander, for example, one related to the “hospital” that was the subject of the quiz or with shock content. Alternatively, you can lead them directly to the offer’s landing page.

White-hat quizzes are more attractive and well-thought-out. They feature factual questions without going overboard. They often integrate them directly onto the website, placing a prominent CTA button because they are an effective tool!

A prominent button on the quiz on the website.

The questions and the answers to them are interesting. Ask your girlfriend/wife to take it, and most likely, you’ll find yourself considering $100+ hair cosmetics. I got hooked on it !

A few more standout examples worth studying: Hims has 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 trust while simultaneously qualifying the buyer.

Gainful and Persona Nutrition take it further, using quizzes to generate a fully personalized supplement pack, so the product itself feels tailor-made. The quiz isn’t just a pre-lander — it becomes the value proposition.

Where can you create quizzes?

There are plenty of options, here are a couple of effective ones:

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

Youtube, VSL, and other videos as pre-landers.

Videos before the offer are used in many niches. They can be long, as in crypto/forex or as short as 30 seconds, such as in dating or e-commerce. They can be an hour long like VSL or 15-second stories. They can be on the landing page or separate, on YouTube or in social media. There are numerous options. In the nutra niche, fake reviews on YouTube and VSL are popular.

As with articles, the approach differs significantly between black-hat and white-hat products. Black-hat marketers usually don’t bother much and create low-quality content using AI-generated voices. They piece together video clips made from screenshots with overlaid voiceovers. Or they hire small-time, unscrupulous “reviewers.” I’ve both created and commissioned such pieces for my offers, and it’s embarrassing to watch. You can search on Google for some “keto offer review” and be inspired by this shame:

Comments on such videos are a separate art form.

While supplement brands approach the matter very professionally, ordering reviews from bloggers with beautiful visuals and presentation:

Certainly, brands pay for this, or you can negotiate for an affiliate link. However, it’s not embarrassing to show people such content.

Video is a top tool, and it works very well in the white-hat approach. We actively test it, often running tests with positive results. Purchases from video reviews are often cheaper than from paid traffic. But it’s also work, and you need to find an influencer and an audience that will convert.

Social media as a pre-landing

Let me tell you about an interesting case that you probably haven’t heard of. Facebook groups for brands with customers are a popular topic in the supplements industry in the United States.

For example, there’s a group for the brand Obvi, which has 70k followers. They lure people into this group through email newsletters for abandoned shopping carts, advertisements, and after-order “Thank you” emails, among other methods. When a person joins this group, their doubts can quickly dissipate, and they may make a purchase or become a repeat customer for Obvi. The posts look very native, people share their weight loss success stories, leave comments, and give likes. It’s the perfect scheme. These groups are created for warming up and increasing retention.

I won’t go into detail about Instagram or Facebook posts as pre-landers. An Instagram post is like a minimalistic pre-lander. However, nutra brands often neglect social media and don’t put much effort into it. This is a missed opportunity because such things with social activity significantly increase trust, even for the shady players.

What other pre-landing options are there?

There are probably just as many as I’ve listed. I’ll write about them in another article.

Definitely avoid these

I added this screenshot after writing the article. It’s a sore point for me. Affiliates often send me such pre-landers. The screenshot I left is still a decent example; often, it’s just a picture of the product bottle with a clumsy CTA button that says, “VISIT THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE.” Why are you doing this, my dear Affiliate? What are you trying to tell the customer with this invention? Save the money you’re flushing down the drain on this and take your lady out on a date instead.

How to find pre-landers?

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

• Spy Tools: Utilize spy tools to discover pre-landers used by competitors.
• Google Search with a U.S. IP: Perform Google searches with a U.S. IP address to uncover pre-landers.
• Offervault: Use Offervault by searching for the offer’s name and checking out associated pre-landers.
• Competitor Brand Funnels: Go through the full purchase funnel of leading DTC supplement brands as a regular customer. Sign up to their emails, add to cart, abandon — their pre-landing strategy will reveal itself step by step.