Episode 123: Focusing on Brand Positioning with Greg Connolly at Trifecta

Greg Connolly is a seasoned veteran in the subscription industry. He is currently the Co-Founder and CEO at Trifecta, a subscription health and fitness company that delivers fully-cooked, organic, healthy meal options to subscribers to help keep them on track to achieve their fitness goals.

What separates Trifecta from other meal subscription companies is what they offer their subscribers in addition to the meals. They provide a standalone app, a premium subscription model built into the program, that guides users through their fitness journey. It includes customized programs based on where customers are with their fitness goals to help them get to where they want to be.

The app advises users on what to eat, when to eat, the ideal macros and calories to eat for their fitness level, and gives workouts to achieve their goals. Greg compares it to the Peloton exercise bike, which exploded in popularity because it wasn’t just an exercise bike. It included live classes and exercise competitions to be enjoyed with friends and family. This is what got people excited. 

The model is working. Trifecta has seen steady, healthy growth in the five years they’ve been in business. They recently passed the $100 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) mark, and the company is continuing to grow.

Hyper-focus on brand positioning

As the leading meal subscription service provider to the health and fitness community, Greg and his team have been hyper-focused on brand positioning. Greg sees many fellow entrepreneurs make the mistake of trying to go too broad too quickly. His advice is to find your niche and focus on it until you own that market. 

Trifecta has built its community through partnerships with companies in the industry like 24 Hour Fitness and CrossFit. They sponsor sports leagues, including the UFC and the PGA Tour’s nutrition program. They’ve been the title sponsor of the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding contest, which many people associate with Arnold Schwarzenegger and bodybuilder Jay Cutler. 

They also team up with the influencer community. They have been mentioned by people like Joe Rogan and other influencers in the health and fitness space. By taking a collaborative dive into the community and not trying to compete with other meal kit subscription services, they have positioned themselves as leaders in the space.

Their focus on brand positioning goes back to the very beginning. It even influenced their decision to go with the name Trifecta. They hired one of the world’s best branding agencies, and together they explored what they wanted their brand position to look like. Greg explained to the agency that they weren’t interested in building a meal kit business. Their aim was to build a business that would help people get into the best shape of their lives.

Knowing their market means knowing who their customers are. This allows them to better position their ads which in turn keeps their customer acquisition costs (CAC) down. When Trifecta sponsors Jay Cutler on a YouTube video, it knows that people watching that video are likely to be interested in fitness and bodybuilding. 

Targeting the advertising

Greg acknowledges that the biggest player in the meal kit subscription space is HelloFresh — a company that, he says, generates eight billion dollars in ARR. A company that size can afford to spend a lot of money on advertising.

It is a different story for Trifecta. They can’t afford that kind of ad spend. They have to take a more direct approach and use thoughtful messaging to get their message in front of the right audience. They spend a lot of their money on Google and Facebook paid advertising, and the message focuses on the health and fitness aspect of their offerings.

This not only keeps CAC down but also helps eliminate churn. By clearly identifying themselves as leaders in the health and fitness space, they won’t attract customers just looking for the convenience of a meal kit delivery service. If those people do become customers, they usually churn very quickly, because convenience isn’t what Trifecta is about.

The emphasis on fitness brings in customers focused on a particular type of lifestyle, and those are the customers who bring lifetime value. Trifecta is providing a solution to a specific problem, one that their top customers are looking to solve, trying to stay in the best shape of their lives.

Greg doesn’t obsess over metrics and numbers. He knows people are busy, and they may not respond directly to an ad’s call to action. They may make a note of the name Trifecta, and search for it later when they have time. This can skew the data when it comes to the number of conversions from organic search results if the true attribution belongs to a TikTok video someone saw. 

He also isn’t worried about competitors buying paid ads using his brand name. If someone is looking for Trifecta, they’re going to scroll down on the results page until they find the right link, and if they do click on a competitor, they will more than likely bounce back immediately.

Building the app

One of the most popular features on the platform is the standalone Trifecta app. It offers subscribers much more than just a healthy meal.

The app gives customized instructions. It builds programs based specifically on the current condition and fitness goals of each user. Someone who is 400 pounds and wants to get down to 190, isn’t going to get the same program as someone who has been doing CrossFit for years. 

The app provides a large food database and includes a nutrition program. This provides users with the information they need: what they should be eating, workout regimes, the calories and macros they will need, all available right at their fingertips. 

It also teaches users how to spot behavioral cues. It helps them to understand why they order fries instead of chicken when they go out. The Trifecta app offers thousands of videos and instructional blog posts to walk its customers through every step of their fitness journey. It’s the goal they’ve been focused on from the beginning, helping people get in the best shape of their lives.  

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