Halo Top Ice Cream Thrives In The Frozen Dessert Business Without Traditional Marketing

Marketing ice cream as "healthy" is enough to constantly keep the product flying off of store shelves. Halo Top is a salient example — the company's products are regularly selling out even without traditional ad spaces or marketing, according to the founder and CEO, Justin Woolverton.

According to the company website, Halo Top is low in calories and sugar and high in protein. The company also says it uses all-natural ingredients for its products to offer a taste similar to traditional ice cream.

Last year, sales increased around 2,500 percent from 2015, and Woolverton credits the company's loyal following to strong word of mouth, Advertising Age reported.

"You can make $100 go a lot further through, say, a Facebook ad where you can target demographically, psychographically, geographically, et cetera, than by taking out ad space in a newspaper," Woolverton told Ad Age. "If you can focus on people who actually want to see your ads, everyone is happier."

The company currently handles its own social media outreach and digital ads, but may look to outside sources as its popularity increases; however, Halo Top has previously tried working with agencies to design ads and social media content, but those collaborations didn't last very long.

"We cringe at the thought of giving canned, corporate answers to everything. It's so boring," Woolverton said. "We came to the conclusion that no one could get our voice down as authentically as we can, so we decided to pull it back in-house."

To read more on 5 "health" reasons it's okay to eat a pint of ice cream, click here.