From basic social media posting to advanced geotargeting, conference and workshop attendees supplied the questions our experts answered.
I remember teaching my sons to ride a bike. We talked about desired outcomes: We both want you to learn to ride a bike well. We started small with training wheels in the driveway so they could get used to starting, pedaling, and stopping. Then as their confidence grew, I took their training wheels off and let them roll a few feet down the driveway on their own. We kept it small until they were able to hop on their bike with confidence and pedal down the sidewalk to their friend’s house. As soon as they reached our experienced the desired outcome, we upgraded to loftier goals.
Approach your food social media marketing the same way.
Desired Outcomes
It will help to decide what you are looking to accomplish with your branded food social media marketing. Let’s start with the obvious – everyone wants to support and encourage product sales. To get there, you’ll need social media content that engages your core audience which can lead to more likes, more followers and generally more impressions, or eyeballs, seeing your posts.
Training Wheels
Posting: What are you going to say? What are your posting topics? Doing it yourself, (DIY), you get to decide your content. It might help to spend a little research time looking at brands you admire: what are they on social media that you like – that makes you want to engage? Also, look at the competiton—how can you differentiate? The most important thing? Start slow. We typically advise that when you start posting on your brand’s business page, that you do not stop. Marketing is a process. You don’t need to post 100 times a day – maybe start with 3-4 a week. But be consistent and keep at it. This is important because it will help with the next thing we consider.
Analytics: Just about every social media platform has an analytics page. After several weeks of posting, you should be able to find that area on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram brand page and see how each post is doing. Take note of the content and time of the posts that are getting the most audience engagement like impressions, shares, likes, clicks, or shares. Also, start to pay attention to who your audience is—what are the basic demographics that are reacting or you think would be buying your product.
Planning: Look to replicate the success of these posts as you plan your next round or social posts. This fits into the “Marketing is a Process” concept mentioned above: Leverage all the data you have to take your best shot at producing effective communications – or in this case, posts. Then, see what works – what insights are you starting to see about what your audience is reacting to – and try to “do one better” with each new round of posts.
Loftier Goals
Like learning to ride a bike, success breeds confidence. Once you have a good idea what posts are making an impact it is probably time to adjust your initial goals: move from posting to boosting or publishing social media ads and speak to a broader audience. Once again, start small. Experiment with choosing a demographic and geo-targeting an ad or boosted post in a small area for a short time. Follow the same “Marketing is a Process” concept and keep reviewing what works and keep trying things to make it better. With a little time, perseverance, and minimal budget spend you will probably start to see some results.
From DIY to professional marketing – when to make the leap?
Years after teaching my kids how to ride bikes it came time to teach them to drive cars. The financial implications and stakes increase across the board – from protecting the family car to buying new insurance policies and potential traffic or accident tickets. You should expect a professional marketing firm to be a more significant expense as well – but one that fits into your budget. In a recent post, NewPoint’s Stephanie Bossung spelled out some guidelines on how to think about your marketing budget:
As a general rule of thumb, we say an annualized food marketing plan should be at a minimum 7–12% of revenue. But for emerging brands trying to cut through a crowded marketplace, the first couple of years might land in more of a 15–25% range. There’s an upfront investment of getting your product out in front of people.
Of course, with the more significant expense should come more professional analytics tracking, competitive monitoring, strategic, creative, and data-driven posts against goals set with your marketing team.
BUT…
Do not consider hiring a professional social media or marketing services firm if it does not fit in your cash-flow. It will be frustrating for both parties if you require a 1-1+ match on your investment immediately. Once again, marketing is a process. Unless you are using your food social media marketing to drop coupons or send discount offers for your e-commerce or Amazon site, it will take a long time to see a direct correlation to product sales.
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.