(Ta) The food and beverage industry is very important. everyone needs to eat and drink to survive. However, despite being a source of nutrition, food and drink is also one of life's most cherished pleasures for many.
The combination of necessity and luxury makes the food and beverage industry particularly attractive today. As the pandemic subsides, consumer habits have changed significantly and the industry has undergone a major shift to e-commerce to meet demand.
In fact, recently 73% of consumers have shopped online; The demand for shipping all kinds of products remains high.
With recent changes in the industry, how can marketers keep pace and attract new customers to their food and beverage products?
In these highly competitive times, you need more than attractive food and drink to win over shoppers. Fortunately, we have a comprehensive guide to help you differentiate your marketing from your competition. Let's get started.
(Click on the link below to go to a specific section of this article)
Overview of the food and beverage industry
Steps to create a food or beverage marketing plan
Consider ways to market food and beverages
An example of food and beverage marketing
Signs that your food and beverage marketing should be outsourced
Tips for Success in Food and Beverage Marketing
The future of food and beverage marketing
Overview of the food and beverage industry
What exactly is the food and beverage market? It's a big place, but it usually includes fresh, prepared and packaged goods, as well as alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. (I mean, from soup to beans).
industry trend
The food and beverage industry has seen many exciting changes in recent times due to consumer demand. Current customers want:
- Healthy and delicious options, including plant-based options and global flavors.
- Sustainable products and transparent and responsible sourcing.
- Health-oriented convenience foods, including strong growth in frozen meals and homemade snacks.
The direct-to-consumer (DTC) movement that has disrupted many industries has also caught on with food and beverage companies, as customers are increasingly accustomed to buying directly from the source through e-tailers.
These are some of the biggest trends in the food and beverage industry today.
Steps to create a food or beverage marketing plan
Do market research
Before you start dreaming up a new ad, you need to start with market research.
- Who are your competitors and what do they do?
- Where are the gaps in your niche that you can fill with your marketing?
- What do consumers look for in a brand like yours?
You also need to define your ideal customers, market them effectively, which is to create your marketing persona.
Answering these questions and doing thorough research will help you create a strategic plan for your marketing right from the start.
Plan your campaign
Once you know exactly who you are targeting and what messages are relevant to them, you can start planning your campaign. Below is our guide to the most common marketing tactics you should consider.
Of course, a successful food and beverage marketing campaign isn't just about advertising, it also includes your product packaging. It should all work together as part of a strong, unified brand.
Implementation of the strategy
It's time to start a well-planned campaign.
This could mean launching or relaunching your website with fast loading speeds and the information your customers want. For restaurants and bars, it includes menus, opening hours and reservation methods. Websites for consumer packaged goods (CPG) and e-commerce companies should include plenty of product information, contact information, and product descriptions.
After your other tactics, such as email marketing or paid advertising, make sure you can access and monitor their performance data. This allows you to stay within your marketing budget and track results in real time.
measure your success
One of the biggest benefits of digital marketing is that it gives you a lot of insight into the performance of your campaigns. See your email click-through rate (CTR), cost-per-click (CPC) on paid ads, and engagement on your organic social posts.
Once you've finalized your data, be ready to pivot when it's clear something isn't working in your campaign. Food and beverage marketing is not a deal you should overlook. You need to make sure that what you implement is effective and will be effective over time.
Consider ways to market food and beverages
There are different marketing channels that you can use for your campaign. It's better to pick a few and make sure you get it right than to try to tackle them all at once. It's easy to overdo it. Choose the channel where your target audience spends the most time and adjust accordingly. Here's what you need to know about the most popular options.
Social network
Social media is a powerful marketing tool for the food and beverage industry, particularly the wine and hospitality industry. Consumers spend a lot of time on social media and often go there to research, taste or buy.
Food and beverage brands should use social media as a form of brand awareness to attract new consumers and engage and delight existing customers.
Instagram is popular and widely used, and is ideal for restaurant and food and beverage brands that focus on images and stories. TikTok is a platform you shouldn't miss if you're marketing to Generation Z. Facebook continues to be an option for older consumers who use the store and e-commerce businesses looking to connect.
Paid search ad
In today's noisy market, new brands are hard to differentiate and even harder to stand out. Paying for your content to appear at the top of search results pages can be expensive, but if you do it right, the return on investment is well worth it. This is why search engine marketing (SEM) is so popular.
For local businesses, you can focus on showing up in searches related to your area (for example, someone searches for "Gluten-free bread options in the Bay Area" and you live there and have those options).
This type of search is very intentional, meaning people looking for options will want to find a new gluten-free bread. Paying to appear at the top of search results means more customers online and clicking through.
SEO:
But if your website has been around for a long time, or you have to wait for the search engine to grow, you don't have to pay to appear at the top of the search results. You can rank organically using search engine optimization (SEO).
Local SEO is essential to attract searchers in the highly targeted food and beverage area, such as those looking for local gluten-free options at the top. In fact, many local suppliers prefer to do business with local companies, which makes their brand even more important.
From an e-commerce perspective, food and beverage companies can also use SEO strategies to drive more sales.
Junk mail
Email marketing has been around for a long time, but it's still widely used because it works. This is especially effective for e-commerce brands. You can create targeted email campaigns to remind buyers of your DTC snack brand that you have a sale or a new seasonal product.
Food and beverage brands can take advantage of email marketing by emailing updates on new products, recipes, contests and important news. This is a good way to connect with customers at a low cost.
video marketing
Video marketing is relatively new, but it is becoming more and more popular. YouTube and social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok create huge opportunities for food and beverage companies. It provides another way to engage with customers and show how your company is different from others in the market.
Creating content behind your brand in videos, such as how your products are made (without revealing trade secrets) and how you make your business eco-friendly, gives your customers more transparency about what's important to them.
Google My Business
All local restaurants and food and beverage businesses require a Google My Business account. It appears on Google Maps and on the search homepage when Google users search for businesses like yours.
You can optimize your GMB listings by filling out information such as hours and contact information, uploading menus and photos, and responding quickly to reviews.
Receiving negative feedback is never fun, but responding quickly and objectively can prevent a person or two from damaging your online reputation.
An example of food and beverage marketing
It's easy to talk about what you should do, but what is a good example of food marketing? And how can you implement the campaign? These are three of our favorite food and beverage marketing campaigns in real life.
1. Dripping
Drizly is an alcohol delivery app that has grown tremendously in recent years. His approach to all marketing campaigns is fun and irreverent, which speaks to his target audience of young urban professionals. Their website reviews are a great example of this.
Source: Drizal
2. Seafood is legal
Legal Sea Foods is an East Coast institution, and they know how to make their customers salivate, even through the windows. Their email marketing campaign features delicious images of popular seafood and offers deals to loyal visitors.
Source: toast
3. Blue apron
Source: Blue Apron
Blue Apron is a DTC brand that sells cookware to consumers, typically busy professional families who want home-cooked meals but don't have time to make everything from scratch.
Their Instagram accounts effectively use video marketing in the form of Reels, where they show existing and potential customers how to make trendy items like easy and delicious meals and butter dishes. He is kind, attractive and down-to-earth like his brand.
Signs that your food and beverage marketing should be outsourced
This guide will help you create and execute a great food and beverage marketing strategy. But doing market research, learning different tactics and channels, and building a great campaign (and then doing it again and again) takes a lot of time. And when you get it wrong, it can waste your budget and effort.
If you find it difficult to deal with it on your own, consider hiring an agent to help you with marketing strategies and campaigns. You should consider outsourcing your marketing if:
- You're too busy to learn, create, and run all your campaigns with your existing team alone.
- Are you growing rapidly and need help improving your marketing efforts immediately?
- If you're doing your marketing but you're not seeing the results you're hoping for and you're not sure what's wrong?
An outside expert can pinpoint exactly what you need and put you on the path to success with the perfect strategy, great content, and quick tangible results. Be sure to work with an experienced food and beverage marketing agency like Hearst Bay Area; You can see how we achieve great results for our clients.
Tips for Success in Food and Beverage Marketing
How can you make your food and beverage marketing campaign successful? We have three practical tips you need.
1. Focus on what makes your company unique
There are thousands of food and beverage businesses out there, so what makes yours different? The answer may be found in your company's mission statement, or why you were founded in the first place.
That difference and the passion you bring to the workplace every day in your business will help you stand out from the crowd. Your marketing message should reflect all of this. your vision will speak to the client as much as your image.
2. Focus on high quality images
Speaking of images, they are essential to the marketing of any food and beverage business. Whether you're selling directly to customers, distributors, or other businesses, you need to make sure the wine, chips, coffee beans, or fruit you're selling looks good.
People can't feel or smell your product through a screen, so images have to sell you.
Fortunately, now it's easier than ever to find videographers and photographers who can help you, or take photos and videos with your phone. But always make sure that no matter how you create content, it looks fun, engaging, and tasty.
For bar and restaurant marketing, the space and atmosphere must be fun and engaging, so don't miss out on this content.
3. Be creative and have fun
One of the best parts of working in food and beverage marketing is having fun. There's a lot of room for creativity and artistry, so don't be afraid to stand out and create something memorable and fun.
You can join the fun by posting short videos or sharing user-generated videos.
The future of food and beverage marketing. final thoughts
From the growing interest in global flavors to the shift to healthy yet delicious food and beverage options, the future of the food and beverage industry is bright and exciting. Your marketing campaign should reflect this expansion and encourage you to attract new customers and retain existing customers.
Contact Hearst Bay Area today to help create creative and effective marketing campaigns for your food and beverage business.