How to Stand Out in the Flavoured Air Diffuser Space

Introduction

This report is a competitive digital analysis of 5 brands in the Flavoured Air Diffuser space.

We’ll highlight key metrics for each competitor across the digital landscape, and then make a comparison to determine which brands are winning and lagging in each area.

Once the winners are determined, we’ll dig into specifics on why they’re winning. This will help us surface actionable insights.

Finally, we’ll highlight suggestions for further research that RightMetric could provide to uncover more specific opportunities to fuel digital growth for your brand.

Competitors Analyzed

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Key Takeaways: Recommended Actions

In this section, we summarize the most important key takeaways and actionable recommendations from the Competitor Snapshot Report™.

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Key Takeaways

All competitors are skewing toward younger women.

• Recommendations
  (i) Focus on male millennials to help them bridge the gap between smoking and quitting in a realistic way. 

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ripple+ saw the highest digital ad spend ‍of $728K, focusing on Instagram.

• Recommendations
  (i) Run ads in January for New Year Resolutions and target Spring seasons that are less competitive amongst competitors.
  (ii) Put customer testimonials at the front of your mid-funnel advertising.
  (iii) Ad content should explain product purpose in layman’s terms.

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Referral sites like linktr.ee and Trustpilot represent 17% of the referral traffic. 

• Recommendations
  (i) Start pushing outbound marketing, top referral sites are business platforms competitors use for marketing. 
  (ii) Control the narrative against vaping. Make a list of myths that need to be debunked and feed it to the press as a way to engage in an open conversation around known worries people have about your product.

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Capnos saw the highest organic traffic growth at +330% YoY.

• Recommendations
  (i) Your content should prove how you’re helping people quit vaping. Competitors focus on behavioural benefits (ie. zen, calming, sleeping). 
  (ii) Create information-dense home and landing pages. As viewers scroll down the Capnos’ homepage they are met with information pockets.
  (iii) Frame product display page site links similar to the way you would a blog post. Instead of just the product name Capnos’ link includes: “the-capnos-e-z-for-quit-vaping-and-quit-smoking-support”.
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There’s tons of space to keep growing on social media. Only ripple+ has the highest impact with 575K followers and 46M video views.

• Recommendations
  ‍(i) Find content creators who are willing to share their quitting journey with others.
  (ii) Show people the benefits of your product as a substitute for smoking and vaping by getting them to try it in the moment.

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Let your product talk for itself but continue focusing on technology and benefit-specific verbiage.

• Recommendations
  ‍(i) Prioritize social proof for your product in your hero banner.
  (ii) Identify your core purpose and ensure that messaging is clear on the homepage. For example, Cloudy is for sleeping and Capnos is to help yourself stop smoking.
  (iii) Work with creators who will produce content that is organic while discussing your benefits and their experiences quitting vaping.
  (iv) Educate people on the purpose of the product before how to use it.

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No competitors are generating high amounts of traffic from email marketing.

• Recommendations
  ‍(i) Aim to send an average of 5 emails per month.
  (ii) Hype, educate then launch products through email all within a 30-day period.
  (iii) Use subject lines to communicate benefits such as “1000 puffs in the palm of your hand”.
  (iv) Don’t over-sell. Focus on education with emails that share more about your products and new features or R&D.

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Traffic

When analyzing competitor traffic, we look for growth spikes. 

Once we detect a brand significantly outpacing competitors’ growth, that’s our clue to dig into all that brand’s digital activities to determine which strategies and tactics fuelled the growth. We then distill that into repeatable learnings for you to apply to your brand.

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Traffic Growth

ripple+ leads in traffic volume with the highest YoY growth.

Capnos has grown traffic by +334% over the past twelve months, increasing from 96K yearly visits to 420K yearly visits. The average growth for the other competitors is +6% in the same period (with Capnos’ growth removed to avoid skewing).

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Seasonal Trends

Leverage the Spring. March to May saw increases in traffic.

Cloudy saw an interesting spike in January 2023 that could be an opportunity to leverage ‘New Year Resolutions’ as people who vape may be setting their actions in motion to change their habits. Create a narrative to leverage that prospective mindset.

Leverage the Spring season by releasing new flavours that get prospects excited about the transition from winter to summer.

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Digital Advertising

When analyzing advertising data, we look at absolute spend volumes to identify winners. Then, we narrow down to each brand and examine spikes in advertising spend and social traffic.

Once we identify which brands are investing significantly in advertising, we look at which platforms they are focusing their efforts on and the top-performing creatives on each platform. Analyzing top-performing creatives allows us to extract effective advertising tactics that are being utilized by your competitors.  

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Advertising Spend

Diversify your ad spend across channels.

ripple+ saw the highest ad spend of $728K, focusing on Instagram.

Capnos is the only other brand that experimented with TikTok, with a spend of $3.8K.

‍Open yourself up to platforms that have lower creative production costs. 

Instagram video content can leverage UGC as an effective way to educate prospects.

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Seasonal Trends

Leverage the New Year and Spring periods as priorities for ads.

ripple+ saw an ad spend spike from December 2022 into January 2023.

No one in the advertising space is leveraging the concept of the potential to curb vaping or smoking additions.  

Brands are focused on sharing behavioural benefits such as their product’s ability to restore calmness and sleep. 

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Advertising Creative

Focus on customer testimonials.

ripple+ ran this $87K ad on Instagram, at 12% of their total ad spend. 

They prioritize advertising product purpose. This example shows how their product made someone feel calm. 

Identify your core value. Find a review that hits the nail on the head and transform it into a top and mid-funnel campaign.

Spend $87K | Impressions 13M | CPM $6.6

What does the customer need?

MONQ runs similar messaging ads to ripple+, but their content focuses less on testimonials and more on amplifying a pain point many people have in their lives. 

Targeting feelings like zen, focus and peace tend to be popular amongst competitors.

Spend $9.8K | Impressions 1.4M | CPM $7

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Advertising Creative

Educate on the science using layman’s terms.

Cloudy advertises with the message of offering rest and relaxation. They differ by including more background information about the product.

Many people already know what both Melatonin and Essential Oils are. By bringing them into the ad headline, Cloudy can create context on the product. 

List tangible results in your ad copy. 

Cloudy claims to have delivered over 1M nights of sleep to their clients. 

Aggregate your own testimonials in a way that proves how many people you’ve helped quit vaping or smoking with your product. 

Consider bundling offers together as Cloudy has done. Their bundle is merchandise-focused which helps build brand awareness in a post-purchase capacity. 

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Paid Search Spend

Continue spending on Paid Search, competitors are not taking risks here. 

MONQ ($304K) is spending the most on Paid Search ads, followed by Cloudy with an investment of $171K.

ripple+ ($131K), and Capnos ($20K) saw the lowest paid search ad spends.

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Paid Search Traffic

The average CPC of the competitive set is $2.7.

Cloudy saw the lowest CPC at $1.0 and MONQ saw the highest at $5.9. 

ripple+ and Capnos wavered between $1.7 to $2.5 CPC.

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Paid Search Creatives: MONQ

MONQ targets people looking for convenience and life improvement. 

Top paid search ads for MONQ in July 2023* use the following tactics:

• Highlight the option to mix and match products in bundles
• Emphasize the convenience of a product that can bring you zen ‘on the go’
• Target people looking to quit vaping or looking to buy a vape

Keywords

Landing Page

This page sees 77% of Paid Search traffic.

Top Ranking Ads

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Referrals

Analyze competitor referral traffic to identify the key drivers behind their visits and uncover potential opportunities. 

Identify the press and media entities that have the most influence over your target audience, and pinpoint the optimal websites for affiliate marketing partnerships and display ad placements. 

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As a growing category, leverage referrals and publicity to raise awareness.

Cloudy has the highest referral traffic at 39K.

Top referring websites include: force.com (14%), linktr.ee (11%) and trustpilot.com (6%).
Current referrals are coming from technology platforms and business platforms such as Salesforce and Linktree. People are linking competitors through their own channels.

Fill the space of defining your product with opportunities like Trustpilot where people go to read reviews or target Lifestyle and Wellness magazines for coverage, their audience would be interested in your product.

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Start pushing outbound marketing, top referral sites are business platforms competitors use for marketing. 

Salesforce, Linktree and Bounty are marketing platforms competitors are most likely using for heavy outbound marketing whether influencer or targeting-based. Since your category is new in the market, consider pushing for reviews (Trustpilot) and publicity (VeryWellMind) as well.

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Publicity: Competitors like Cloudy are getting caught up in publicity that questions the effectiveness of use due to its claims to help people sleep.

Control the narrative against vaping. Where competitors are getting slammed for claiming they’re effective for sleeping, focus on being the good guy who is attacking the problem of “should you really be vaping?”.

Education: Be part of the conversation that helps educate prospective buyers on the goods and the bads of your product. 

Make a list of myths that need to be debunked. Start feeding it to the press as a way to engage in an open conversation about known worries people have and how to move forward with your product. 

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Organic Search

As we dissect organic search data, we keep an eye on spikes in competitor traffic and keyword trends.

When a brand outperforms others in organic search, we delve into its best-performing web pages to understand what captivates the audience. By identifying the most impactful keywords, we can decode prevailing content themes and formats, leading us to web content opportunities that truly resonate with the audience.

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ripple+ is leading the pack in Organic Search traffic.

ripple+ saw the highest Organic Search traffic generation from November 2021 to October 2023 at 1.4M and 1.3M respectively. Capnos has the largest growth at +330% from 42K yearly traffic to 180K.

MONQ is the only brand seeing decreases in Organic Search with -63% less YoY.

*Total Organic Traffic (Global): Nov. 2021 - Oct. 2022 vs. Nov. 2022 - Oct. 2023.

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Organic Traffic Growth

Your content should prove how you’re helping people quit vaping.

Capnos’ top organic keywords prioritize the concept of an effective way to quit vaping but also identify that it has behavioural benefits (ie. for anxiety). Keywords they have ranked for include:

• fake vape for quitting
• fum alternative
• vapourless vape
• vaping alternatives
• alternative to vaping
• is capnos safe?
• vaping without nicotine for anxiety
• quit vaping behavioural aids

(i) Competitors focus on behavioural benefits (ie. zen, calming, sleeping), Capnos is one of the few ranking for anti-vaping benefits. 

Their approach is very sterile and medical-like, set yourself apart with bolder branding.

(ii) Rank for competitor-branded keywords. In May 2023, Capnos had a spike in traffic where 13% was generated by the keyword “fum vape” on mobile devices.

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Create information-dense home and landing pages.

Capnos’ homepage is longer than a typical e-comm homepage. 

They’re leveraging the fact that most people don’t know what they offer. As viewers scroll down the page they are met with information pockets.

Frame product site links similar to the way you would a blog post. Instead of just the product name, their link includes “the-capnos-e-z-for-quit-vaping-and-quit-smoking-support”.

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Social Media

Analyzing competitors' social metrics reveals untapped platforms with high audience engagement and minimal competition. 

It helps identify the platforms that drive web traffic and indicates where to focus your social strategy for maximum reach, engagement, and follower growth. By benchmarking competitors' social media efforts and performance across platforms, you can identify top-performing areas and gain insights to enhance your own social strategy.

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Followers

There’s an opportunity for growth in organic social media.

ripple+ is the dominant player in the competitive set with a social media following of 575K, which is 1.3x more than the second-largest brand, MONQ, with 442K followers. 

Capnos and Cloudy have the smallest following of the competitive set at 12K and 8K respectively.

Continue pushing TikTok. 

ripple+ has the largest following in the competitive set due to their TikTok account with 415K followers.

MONQ has earned many Facebook followers but it hasn’t translated successfully through engagement. The highest engagement they saw in the past year was 27 on this sale post.

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Follower Growth

ripple+ gained 146K followers from November 2022 to October 2023.

ripple+ saw a spike in follower growth in April 2023 at 32K and another 36K new followers in July 2023, when their “nic bin” content format went viral. The TikTok strategy consists of convincing people on the street to get rid of their vapes in return for a ripple+.

TikTok saw the most overall growth for the brand at 134K new followers, with Instagram just behind at 12.4K new followers.

This is a great top funnel approach as the brand builds awareness on their core benefits. 

This way they reach their core audience (people who need to quit vaping) and give them the product to try first hand.

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Social Traffic

Continue leading your followers offsite. 

Cloudy generated the most Social traffic at 208K from November 2022 to October 2023. 

YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram drive the most traffic for the competitive set. ripple+ also generates 15% of its social traffic from Pinterest, an under-utilized platform for this industry.

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Social Traffic: Pinterest

Use Pinterest to give context to your product in an aesthetic way that is hard to achieve on other platforms.

ripple+ has 35 followers but 4.5K monthly visits to their Pinterest page. Here is their strategy:

• ‍State your three main brand benefits in the description.
• ‍Create boards for individual products, influencers and concepts.
• ‍Let the content tell a story about your brand. 
  ripple+ even repurposes TikTok content on Pinterest.

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Video Views

ripple+ outperforms competitor video viewership by over 4.7x.

ripple+ is leading the pack among competitors with 46M views. 

TikTok is a leading platform for ripple+ generating 41M views.

Find content creators who are willing to share their journey to quit vaping with others. 

These can be first-hand testimonials into the process of quitting vaping.

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Content & Messaging

By analyzing the competitors' content, we can discover unique content opportunities, pinpoint successful production elements and techniques for replication, and identify underperforming themes to sidestep. 

This will guide an effective content strategy for the Flavoured Air Diffuser audience.

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Homepage Branding 

50% of competitors are leading with promotional content, while 50% lead with product.

Product visibility is the one consistent feature across all competitors. Hero banners include a strong visual of the product on its own or in use to set the stage for site visitors. Cloudy and ripple+ prioritize social proof immediately with press links (“as seen in”) or testimonials (“1.2K reviews on Trustpilot”) at the top of the page.

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Homepage Branding: Scroll Depth

Competitors follow their hero banners with either core products, product information or social proof.

Cloudy and ripple+ present their product options but with specific benefit callouts “100% recyclable” or “Sleep: Melatonin Diffuser”. MONQ leverages their social proof by claiming they have over 40K 5-star reviews, while Capnos focuses on core purpose education “Help yourself stop vaping or smoking…”. 

Website screenshots only available in November 2023. 

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Influencer Partnerships

ripple+ is heavily sponsoring TikTok creators to raise awareness.

(i) Give the reins to creators. The content they produce should be organic to their typical style of content. 

(ii) Explore where your product falls. ripple+ understands that their product borders into the lane of technology and has creators produce popular tech content like “unboxings”. 

@francescafarago
3.8M Followers

Discuss the tangible benefits of the product like “1,000 puffs” or “boost your focus”. 

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@kevboyperry
2.9M Followers

Provide first hand testimonials—how have people actually curbed their addictions?

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@griggstv
893K Followers

Implement guerilla marketing to educate new audiences in real life.

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@yourlocaltaurus
37K Followers

Show how your product works and what it looks like to set order expectations.

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Email Marketing

When analyzing email marketing, we look for growth spikes in email list size, email traffic and send volumes. 

Once we detect a brand significantly outpacing competitors’ growth, that’s our clue to dig into all that brand’s email campaigns to determine which strategies and tactics fuelled the growth. Areas we analyze include optimal send times, top-performing creatives, subject line tactics, traffic generation, and landing pages. 

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Email Traffic 

Leverage email marketing, it is an untapped space amongst the competitive set.

No competitors have reached a yearly traffic generation of over 5K from emails.  

Brands are not prioritizing email as a communication strategy with their audience base.

Use email to hype up products and purpose:

(i) In April 2023, ripple+ sent 5 emails hyping up the benefits of a new product with subjects like “Something BIG is coming” to launching with “IT'S HERE.”

(ii) MONQ uses email to leverage sales where they hosted a month long 33% off deal through email.

(iii) Keep launching flavours, ripple+’s October 2023 spike came from the introduction of a peach flavour.

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Email Creative

Make email marketing an experience, not an afterthought.

ripple+ sends an average of 5 emails a month to readers. Their campaigns are design-forward and intentional in their messaging and content:

• Use targeted partnerships. Their collaboration with Alexis Stone reaches a specific audience who is deep in TikTok and popular culture.
• Use subject lines to communicate benefits. “1000 puffs in the palm of your hand” is pretty convincing.
• Don’t sell. Focus on education with emails. ripple+ consistently uses CTAs that promote learning over buying, such as “see what’s new” or “get quizzical”.

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Demographics

When looking at demographics, we analyze site visitors and social media followers.

We analyze the demographics of all brands in the competitive set to determine the average audience demographics and identify any anomalies in the data. This helps us to identify if any brand is attracting an audience that is not being captured by others. 

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Website Demo (Age)

Audiences above 35+ are less prioritized. Grow an audience with 35-54 year olds.

Globally, the 35+ year old audience isn’t skewed in focus by competitors. 

*Global age distribution data for Capnos is currently unavailable.

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Website Demo (Gender)

Grow an audience with men, most competitors have a majority female audience.

Cloudy is the only competitor with a completely even audience. ripple+ and MONQ have majority female audiences.

*Global age distribution data for Capnos is currently unavailable.

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*Website Traffic Data Source Caveat

*Digital Advertising Data Source Caveat

*Retargeting data not available.

References:
1. Should You Really Be Using a Melatonin Diffuser Before Bed?

2. Do Melatonin Diffusers Help You Sleep Better — and Are They Safe?