Marketing Strategy vs Tactics (The difference)
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Read More »How Do Food Companies Advertise Their Products? (6 tasty ways)
As a multi-billion-dollar industry (soon to be trillion-dollar!), the food sector has seen millions of food companies position themselves for the customer’s attention!
In the incredibly important spirit of free enterprise, this increase in competition has created some innovative marketing techniques that help companies reach clients and gain sales revenue. So how do food companies advertise their products?
Food companies advertise their products by communicating their value proposition to the people most likely to purchase. Food advertisers focus on where their customers are most likely to come from, whether in grocery stores, eCommerce sites, or other places where there is a concentration of the ideal target market.
Food marketing and advertising techniques are meant to educate consumers on the benefits of their food(s). Benefits could be price, taste, convenience, nutrition, texture, health and more.
Let’s now look at the first necessary steps to build your food advertising strategy, and then some tactics to be part of your advertising plan.
Food advertising: Your first step
Before settling on an advertising strategy, you need to answer the following four questions to ensure you make the right advertising choice:
- How is your food product different from other similar food products?
- What makes this food product better, giving it a competitive advantage? (Price, quality, size, ingredients, etc.)
- Does your target market want this food product? What proof do you have?
- Where is this target market located in a concentrated number that can make enough sales to justify the advertising costs?
Once you have these four questions worked out, it's time to develop an advertising strategy.
If you are looking for some help in forecasting sales or production, these two tutorials are very helpful:
- What are the Benefits of Sales Forecasting? (+free forecasting model)
- What is Forecasting in Manufacturing? (+Best practices)
Onward.
The following are some of the strategies currently used by food companies to market their products that you can use for your brand.
Here is another excellent tutorial to help you as build your food and beverage marketing and advertising strategy: Marketing lessons from the most popular food companies (Top 10 brands).
6 Advertising Strategies of the Best Food Marketers
Below are six advertising strategies that the best food advertisers and marketers use to build their brand, gain customers, and keep them coming back.
You can do the same!
1. Provide Incentives for Retailers
The initial stage of food marketing is convincing retailers to put your products on their shelves so that consumers can buy them.
Retailers won’t touch your product unless customers want them.
You need to make a very compelling case for why retailers need to give your product the best spot on the shelves, let alone invest into a test batch.
There’s usually only one reason why retailers will entertain using up their valuable shelf space:
customers are hungry for your product and it will drive massive, profitable sales to the retailer starting immediately.
One way to do this is through incentives.
Incentivizing retailers can help them get on board to stock your products. Some incentives you can use include:
- free samples
- quantity pricing
- high profit margins
- sales commissions
Keep your incentive program simple to make it easy for retailers to get their rewards and escalate the incentives to keep them hooked. Frequent changes to your incentive program’s terms and conditions will confuse retailers, so also remember to be consistent.
One of the best ways for a retailer to take on a new product is to generate a great brand that is in demand.
For ideas, go check out the shelves in your local Walgreens.
2. Create Compelling Product Packaging
The importance of your food packaging cannot be understated.
The best food manufacturers know this. Check out the food brands at Kraft-Heinz.
Are they the best tasting food products? High in nutrition? Lowest price? Convenient?
Definitely not high in nutrition, but nutrition is not what these brands are competing on.
But their packaging is dialed in.
Your food packaging is one of the initial things that customers will notice about your brand. And, your packaging will support the customers buying decision.
Your package’s design, logo, and colors affect how clients perceive your product. While your packaging is not the value proposition (in most cases), it should be appealing enough to stand out from your competitors’ products on store shelves.
Ask yourself, "Is my packaging supporting the sale, or is it taking away from the sale?" It's an either-or answer.
There are no in-betweens. your packaging is either helping to make the sale, or its hurting the sale.
Align your package design with your brand identity and pick a functional package based on your food to make a great impression.
Moreover, keep the design simple so that people do not get overwhelmed with too many elements that distract them from buying.
3. Invest In Superior Digital Marketing
Most food companies are online to get the large client base available.
Therefore, it is challenging to make it without investing in digital marketing.
This fast-paced industry needs networking and a passion for learning new things to keep up.
Hashtags on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook are among the fastest options for building awareness of your products.
Posting content that mixes food with pop culture is also an excellent way to get your brand noticed online. This is part of your online strategy and needs to stay focused on your customer demographics and psychographics. For a helpful tutorial on this, go here: How Do You Market a Food and Beverage Business Online? (+examples).
4. Is Your Food Advertising Kid and Parent Friendly
In some sectors, marketing for kids is not part of the advertising strategy.
However, this might be a crucial aspect of food marketing.
Just look at McDonalds. It is arguable that their entire advertising strategy focuses on marketing to kids, in order to bring the parents along.
Kraft-Heinz makes advertising to kids core to many of their brands. After all, if they only advertised to health conscious adults over 50, their sales revenue would tank.
Peers, media, and advertisements easily influence kids, so they can easily become your biggest brand ambassadors.
The kids, in turn, influence their parent’s purchase decisions. When putting together a marketing strategy, the best-performing companies have figured out how to include kids.
Some tactics that work are using animations for advertisements and touching on topics that pique kid’s interests. With suitable approaches for children, your marketing campaign could meet its target.
But beware, be sure to work with a competent and experienced attorney when developing your advertising campaigns.
5. Choosing the Right Marketing Message
Profitable food companies know that they have a few seconds to communicate as much as possible to potential clients on what they can expect from your product.
We hammer this important topic hard. The message you choose and its tone will either draw in clients or put them off. Your message should be clearly displayed and concise to be easily digestible by clients.
6. Build Strategic Partnerships That Build the Brand (and Sales)
This could be your best possible strategy.
Strategic partnerships are among the best options for building brands quickly.
Picking partners that will positively boost the brand makes sense. The main benefit you will look for in a partnership is customer acquisition.
For instance, when marketing luxury food brands, you can partner with a catering school because the students will use your brands when they enter the workforce. Moreover, pick partners with access to the same audiences you are looking for. For instance, when looking for media exposure, choose a publication whose existing readers match your target clients.
If you want to invest into the food industry, you will not go wrong with the above marketing and advertising strategies to get your products flying off the shelves.
Be patient because the strategies might take time to actualize your projected gains. Stick to the right approach instead of frequently changing the strategy. Change is important, but do give these strategies enough time to be successful.
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