Planning your CPG brand’s social media calendar for a whole year can seem like a daunting task, but we’re going to break it down for you in a quick and painless 4-part series. Get your calendar out and takes notes!
The key here is to remember that the goal is to plan an outline for the whole year. This way everything is already thought out and you’ll just need to create your content when you have more details. A good way to stay on task for this is to create content three month’s worth at a time and schedule using a social media management tool.
First, start with what you know…
Note all the major holidays on the proposed social media calendar
You’ll want to plan some timely content around these holidays. Depending on your brand voice or current campaign, you can create holiday posts that are playful, heartwarming, or serious.
Then, add in fun, lesser-known holidays that can be tied to your brand
There are several fun holiday calendars like this one that can help spark content ideas that are relevant to your CPG food brand. Also, think about ways that your followers can interact with that content. Doing so will boost your engagement numbers and make your brand seem more relatable on social media.
Pay special attention to holidays in your category of food. Here are some mock examples:
Campbells may like to create content around Soup Swap Day.
Orville Redenbacher might take the opportunity to promote a giveaway for a free product on National Popcorn day.
Totino’s may create a “What Pizza Topping Are You” quiz during National Pizza Week.
Branch out even more with these ideas and build content around days that may not be directly related to your food category, but are still relevant.
You can see how consumers could easily connect the Skittles brand with National Find a Rainbow Day, for example.
Take the opportunity to teach consumers about your brand during National Education Day or National Trivia day.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series after Thanksgiving week 2020!
Finally, if you’d like to learn more about how to optimize your CPG brand’s social media content calendar with your marketing plan, we can help! Please reach out to the NewPoint team. If you are interested in more food marketing topics, please visit our Food for Thought page or check out NewPoint’s Patrick Nycz’s book: Moving Your Brand Up the Food Chain.
To identify and isolate areas for improvement in shopper marketing program strategies and tactics to further your CPG brand growth against set KPIs:
Maximize the economic performance of your CPG brand shopper marketing investment
Increase velocity at retail and consumer brand affinity
This shopper marketing audit will detail and contrast your CPG brand shopper marketing and messaging versus that of industry standard competitive practices and will include, but not limited to:
Target market reach, integrated retail marketing support, promotional continuity & awareness, offers and incentives, and tactical execution timing
Go-to-market launch strategies, timing, and tactical execution
Deliverables
Marketing Communication Audit Report
The deliverable will be a white paper with NewPoint Marketing findings and recommendations related to marketing activities in one retail partnership or DMA/market as defined by the client.
Brant brings 20+ years of experience to NewPoint as chief brand communicator and marketing-plan contributor.
Brant’s specialty is bringing an outside, investigative perspective that can feel alternately “rigorous” or “exasperating” depending on your point of view. Yet, he never fails to uncover a business’s unique selling proposition—one which can serve as a brand foundation for marketing that is compelling, creative and “sticky.”
Throughout his career, Brant’s applied his skill set to a broad range of business applications along the food supply-and-service chain. His services have provided vital clarity for all types of operations, from the more conventional food and food equipment manufacturers to the adjacent enterprises that partner with them, such as the Purdue University College of Agriculture.
Stephanie Bossung
Food industry marketing expertise—from retail to food-service and food-service equipment— is a natural outcome of having deep knowledge in every facet of a business’ operation. With 10 years in branding and business development, preceded by 15 years in mass media and promotions, Stephanie is an FMI Emerge mentor, holds an executive-level expertise in sales, marketing, media, and production management.
This exceptionally diverse skill set adds value for NewPoint clients by providing a full complement of perspectives on food-industry brand management endeavors.
Wired for a hawkish attention to detail while also maintaining a high-resolution view of the big picture, Stephanie is uniquely able to provide astute branding direction and simultaneously apply the business principles necessary to squeeze more bang out of every marketing buck.
Patrick Nycz
A member of the Forbes Agency Council and quoted in the New York Times, USA Today and Adweek, Patrick Nycz is the author of Moving Your Brand Up the Food Chain: Marketing Strategies to Grow Local and Regional Food Brands. He is an FMI Emerge mentor, an American Advertising Federation’s Silver Medal Award winner, and the Founding President of NewPoint Marketing, a full-service food industry marketing firm focused on food industry brands On a mission to grow.
Patrick’s vision for NewPoint emerged from his team’s success using this proven model for food industry clients and is fueled by NewPoint-funded food buyers and food manufacturers research around tracking consumer, industry, and ongoing food trends.
Kristy Blair
Since starting her 20-year career in commercial graphic design at one of the foremost catalog retailers in the world, Kristy’s visual branding skills have organically narrowed into the food-industry niche.
In that time, she’s directed graphic identities for snack food and restaurant startups, print materials for multiple agricultural seed companies, display graphics and merchandiser signage for major food-equipment manufacturers and everything in between.
Today, as one of the key brand architects for NewPoint clients, she continues to lead our visual research & development team, always working to find the innovative median between the best practices worth honoring and the accepted rules worth breaking.