From Self-Care to Self-Preservation: The Future of Marketing for Health, Wellness & Performance Brands
In the past wellness and fitness brand marketing was about escape: places to sink into your practice and drown out the noise. We all remember the era and the products that went with it. 2016 began the #selfcare-ification of everything movement. That worked before. But this moment and what’s beyond calls for something deeper to move customers to purchase and come back.
Rather than framing wellness services and products as a means of escape, the brands that will lead and own their categories in the coming decade will market their solutions not as self-care, but as self-preservation. Products that help people sustain themselves, their community, and their planet.
Why? Because this moment is much more complex than 2016 was. The world is facing real challenges and real conflicts. The environment is getting warmer. AI is changing the way we work and learn. Social media has entered a new era of clutter and noisy echo chambers. Customers still reach for their mat and their practice to drop in and tune out, but after the sweat session ends, they are looking for real answers to their anxieties.
Don’t think that I am suggesting it is a brand’s job to solve the world’s poly-crises or make everyone feel great. (Because it is definitely not.) What I am saying is that if wellness and fitness brands want to gain new customers, retain relevance, and build life-long brand loyalty, new tactics are required and new platforms too.
Whether we like it or not, customer purchase behavior and brand affinity is very much shaped by the current events, global environment, societal trends, and market forces that support (or hinder) our physical and mental health in the real world. Brands that can speak to these challenges and offer solutions (no matter how small or seemingly unrelated) will win in the next era of wellness.
Here are seven trends I see impacting my clients as a personal trainer and how I believe health, wellness, and fitness brands can meet this moment to succeed.
1. K-Shaped Spending Curves
The top 20% of households making $175K/year are driving 60% of the country's discretionary retail spending. [1] Brands must balance flagship product priority with a focus on lower-ticket items to retain revenue as middle-market customers pull back on extras. [2]
· Celebrating limited-edition products and new seasonal color drops of flagship SKUs. Continue to promote high-ticket items and limited-edition releases.
· Increasing visibility of values-oriented and entry-level price point products in intentional boutique ways rather than with a clearance mindset.
2. Underconsumption-Core, Frugal Chic Aesthetics, and Buy-it-For-Life Mindset
Brands must adapt to customers romanticizing a more frugal and minimalist lifestyle. [3] These customers shop less often but are still willing to buy premium luxury products if they will hold up better over time.
• Participating in thoughtful conversations around “frugal chic” and “underconsumption core” on platforms like Instagram, Substack, TikTok, and Reddit. Position products as lifetime investments due to their quality, longevity, life time warranties. etc.
• As consumers buy less and less often, place greater emphasis on replenishable or wear-and-tear categories that align with minimalist consumption habits without encouraging excess
3. A Search for Sustainable Alternatives
Customers have ecological anxiety and are looking for brands that make them feel better about their consumption habits. [4] Customers are more likely to trust smaller brands with eco claims than larger competitors. [5]
• Deepening brand education around sustainability by clearly showing how your products are made, repaired, recycled, and designed to last.
• Using lifecycle storytelling (raw materials → use → end-of-life) to position your brand as a partner in long-term mindful consumption, and not just another purchase
• Prioritizing sustainability content that lives beyond social—evergreen web content, email education, and retail-facing materials that support informed purchasing decisions.
4. A Search for Ethical Alternatives
Customers are looking for alternatives to big-box stores like Target and Amazon to spend according to their values. We saw this in 2024 when customers began switching en masse from Target to Costco, with sales and stock values continuing to slide, even as Target expands their wellness offering by as much as 30% in 2026. [6] [7] Many customers are more willing to shop on brands’ DTC websites and Shopify as they look to unsubscribe from retail giants.
Your brand can capture these customers by ensuring that general fitness customers looking for the best mat in the world can purchase direct through your website or in-person at values-aligned local studios and retailers.
• Strengthening your eCommerce DTC narrative by clearly articulating why buying direct supports better outcomes for workers, communities, and the planet.
• Equipping general fitness consumers (not just yogis) with simple, confidence-building education that answers: why our brand over cheaper alternatives.
• Spotlighting studio partners, independent retailers, and community spaces as part of your brand’s ecosystem, reinforcing credibility and shared values while expanding reach.
5. The Next Frontier of Social Media Management is on Substack and Reddit
Instagram and TikTok are no longer new and users have begun to delete their accounts en masse over privacy concerns. [8] More people are moving to community-oriented, hobbies-focused, longer-format, subscription based platforms like Reddit and Substack that feel less noisy, less toxic, and less algorithmic in nature. [9] Many users are going fully offline all-together, claiming that being chronically online is a new sort of social underclass. [Link] Brands should invest in creating profiles, writing content, and engaging with community forums where people are already talking about your product category like reddit forums such as r/yoga and r/BuyItForLife. [10]
• Treating Substack as a long-form brand education channel rather than a promotional one—housing deeper storytelling on durability, sustainability, and community.
• Participating on Reddit with a service mindset (listening, answering, clarifying) rather than brand broadcasting. Build trust in spaces where credibility matters more than polish.
• Using insights from both platforms to inform product education, FAQ content, and lifecycle messaging across all owned channels.
6. Yoga Part of Broader Movement Ecosystem
Yoga is no longer the sole hero modality. Strength training and Pilates have exploded in popularity, especially with younger customers. Aging populations or those with mobility limitations are focused on longevity and mat-based corrective exercise strategies. Busy adults balancing work and parenting are squeezing in mat-based training from their favorite online creators or app-based subscriptions that blend HIIT, Pilates, yoga sculpt, calisthenics, bands, and free weights. Your brand can market to these customers without diluting their yogic roots or alienating yogis by creating content, education, storytelling, and doing studio spotlights that celebrate and center a variety of mat-based movement modalities to expand and grow new customers. Because anyone with a movement practice needs a great mat.
• Expanding brand storytelling to explicitly welcome strength training, Pilates, corrective exercise, and hybrid mat-based practices without diluting your yogic roots.
• Developing content and studio spotlights that center diverse movement professionals (trainers, physical therapists, Pilates instructors) who rely on high-quality mats and props daily.
• Positioning your brand of mats and accessories as foundational tools for any long-term movement practice focused on longevity, recovery, and resilience.
7. Ahimsa and Aligned Action
Customers are increasingly asking wellness brands and especially yoga brands to move beyond symbolic values and toward visible, material action rooted in ahimsa. For many customers, silence now reads as neutrality, and neutrality as misalignment, with customers willing to take their business elsewhere if companies and corporations are not aligned with their values. Research demonstrates customers want to see their values reflected in their purchases, with 64% of respondents buying, choosing, or avoiding brands based on their beliefs about what is going on in society. [11] When brand efforts are rooted in real care, accountability, and long-term community investment and not reactionary messaging, customers can tell it’s authentic.
• Anchoring values-led marketing in visible, sustained action. Partnerships, investments and programs that support expanding access to and centering communities directly impacted by structural inequities and localized harm.
• Communicating values through consistency, care, and accountability rather than statements.
• Creating space for education and dialogue that honors yoga’s roots and ethical foundations while meeting the awareness of a more socially conscious customer base.
Who I Am & How I Can Help You
I’m a senior content marketer with 10 years of experience working in digital strategy, brand education, and lifecycle marketing for lifestyle and wellness brands. I’m also an NASM Certified Personal Trainer completing my Corrective Exercise Specialist & Nutrition Coach certifications this spring.
I blend my marketing background with my training & recovery knowledge to help modern brands expand their connection and conversion across broad coalitions of diverse communities. My understanding of where the wellness industry has been is informed by my experience working for upmarket and luxury brands. My awareness of where the wellness industry is going is rooted in my working-class South Minneapolis roots where I was raised and continue to live.
My Ask
If these ideas intrigue you and you’re looking for help with your marketing initiatives, I’d love to hop on a quick phone call or start an email thread about how I could plug in and support your work.
If you don’t need this kind of support now, keep my info on file and reach out when it’s right.
And if you know someone who you think I’d connect with, please pass this report and my info along. I’m casting a wide net these days and am always open to a conversation, no matter the outcome.
Thank you for your valuable time and be well,
Elizabeth Kay Huber
Content Marketing Manager, Brand & Education
NASM Certified Personal Trainer (CPT)
elizabethhuber@proton.me
cipressoepalma.com | elizabethkayhuber.com
651-285-5884 | always in beta
