The 3 Keys to Marketing a Food and Beverage Brand

The first step to building your Food and Beverage marketing strategy and selling more products via retail is to focus on your digital marketing strengths and weaknesses.

By utilizing cost-efficient ways to connect with consumers, you’ll achieve the engagement and ROI necessary to grow your brand. 

And while there’s no “one-size-fits-all” solution, our experience as a food and beverage brand marketing agency has uncovered three foundational elements to successfully market your brand online: 

F&B Brand Marketing Tip #1: High-Quality Visuals

When it comes to CPG brands, high-quality visuals are everything. Your target audience eats with their eyes, and high-quality images help consumers associate your brand with top-tier products.

Motion matters. Incorporate short videos or gifs with your marketing to bring your products to life and stand out from the competitors by showing consumers just how tasty they can be. It’s an effective solution according to a Wyzowl study which found that 96% of people watch videos to learn more about a product and 84% of people have been convinced to purchase after watching the video.

Consumers are as turned off to stale product shots as they are to stale food. Be sure to place your product in the appropriate environment and showcase it in the proper context. For instance, if you offer a BBQ sauce in your product line, display it in the context of a recipe. Similarly, if you sell rice, make it the highlight of a mouth-watering, home-cooked meal. 

Don’t dust off the old digital camera. Work with a food and beverage marketing agency that specializes in food styling and photography – DO NOT try to photoshop these images yourself! Although this is an additional investment on your marketing budget, it’s usually a one-time expense that will produce imagery that can be used for many years to come. 

F&B Brand Marketing Tip #2: Digital Ads

We live in a digital world, so digital advertising needs to be a foundational element of your F&B marketing strategy. Once you have high-quality images and great content to capture consumer attention, develop a strategy (and a corresponding budget) for digital ads that promote your products to the right people in the right places.

Study the data from your current website and social media metrics – where are you getting the most engagement? Whether it’s Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc.– be prepared to pay to play or else you can expect your content to be basically invisible. This is why it is so important that you designate specific marketing dollars to make sure that your target audience is seeing your content.

We recommend developing engaging ads on social media and then using geofencing to strategically place them around retailers that sell your products. This will ensure that your customers see these targeted ads close to the point of sale.

As always, make sure to track and measure all of these efforts along the way. Reports that include data like media, location, clicks and conversions will identify what is working and what needs to be improved. 

Try to let your CPG marketing campaigns play out for at least a month so that you have enough data to make informed decisions on next steps. For best results, hire a shopper marketing agency that can spin up paid ads quickly and effectively.

F&B Brand Marketing Tip #3: A Clear Call to Action

The final key to successfully marketing a food and beverage brand is to have a strong call-to-action. Like with anything else, your customers want to know what is in it for them – we call it the “Who Cares” Test which should answer exactly why they need to choose your brand.

Take the “Who Cares” Test to assess your brand’s ability to create relevance for consumers

When you create an ad campaign, think about what is relevant to your target audience and what will encourage them to make a purchase. 

According to Statista, 88% of consumers used a coupon code to make a purchase. Whether it is a new recipe on your website, a free shipping promo code, or a coupon, implant an incentive that makes them want to click on the ad.

As you look to improve the marketing efforts of your food and beverage brand, keep all 3 keys in mind.

Find creative ways to capture the attention of your customers with high-quality visuals, target and engage them strategically with paid ads, then convert them with a relevant call-to-action that drives clicks through incentives. 

And if that seems like too big of an undertaking at the moment, just remember – it’s what your competitors are doing. To be more agile and targeted with your approach, partner with a food and beverage marketing agency who can jumpstart your marketing ROI and grow your brand.

It all starts with a retail marketing playbook. Learn more today.