I’ve been a supplement consumer since my boys introduced me to P90X in 2010. I was a long-time customer of one of their flagship products, which was expensive on a per-bag basis. It still is.

Not too long after that, I was forever grateful to the dean of driver-based modeling software when the founder of Pillar (later acquired by Hyperion) introduced me to a startup supplement company in Arizona. They needed help connecting the dots among marketing, sales, operations, and all support functions.

While working on this project, I learned the most fundamental lesson about a supplement brand’s customer base. There are four types of supplement customers to find, get, and keep.

Each customer grouping requires a unique strategy or set of tactics. Furthermore, a supplement company generally has the resources to focus fully on only two of those customer groups. And, as one Microsoft veteran I recently interviewed would say, we’re constantly wagering our ideas on a desired payoff. Sometimes we win; other times we lose.

To even the odds a bit, we still need to revisit those four customer groups.