Last week, we hosted the first session of a three-part workshop series with Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) entitled “Recipe For Success—Starting and Scaling Your Food & Beverage Business.” Session #1 focused on building your brand through digital promotion and protecting your brand through trademarks and other brand protection mechanisms. We covered the legal aspect in our Part 1 blog post, so let’s move on to the digital marketing segment.
Giselle Waters, a content strategist from Mad Fish Digital, shared insights on which social and digital platforms are most relevant for food & beverage brands, what types of content are optimal for each, and some overarching key elements of success. The platforms listed below share your brand and products with the world, and when done right can lead to effective word-of-mouth marketing, and new, better engaged consumers. Let’s re-cap:
Marketing & Promotion
Different platforms are positioned with various kinds of content in mind, and used distinctively by consumers for different objectives:
Instagram – Great for sharing high-quality images, short videos, and Insta stories to showcase the story of you and your brand.
Pinterest – Useful for sharing recipes and lifestyle photos relevant to your products that your consumers may want to save for later reference (i.e., “pin”).
Facebook – Ideal for sharing videos, your process and articles related to the cause or mission your food brand stands for.
YouTube – Great for sharing longer form videos, including videos related to your products’ process, videos featuring influencers, and cross-posting video content.
Medium – Geared toward written articles and blog posts about your product, passions, and your company, aggregated alongside other relevant industry content.
Regardless of which digital channels you use to market your brand, Giselle identified three elements of success that can help your brand reach consumers:
Authenticity – Make sure you are presenting your true self. Who are you? Who do you serve? Make sure you are telling the truth, because your consumers will find out.
Packaging – Your packaging has to be distinct, fun, and should consider how people will interact with your product. Also think about how people might share your product on digital platforms. How “instagramable” is your product and packaging? Will someone find it engaging and unique enough to share it on social media, thus providing you with “free” marketing?
Innovation – Your product or service should offer a unique hook, either through the packaging or product/service itself. In the end, you need to innovate and illustrate your unique value to the consumer.
We touched on these topics and more during our first OEN Workshop session. If you would like to dive deeper into these topics, please join us for the next two sessions either in-person, for those in the Portland area, or virtually through our livestream – there is still time to register! You can find more details about upcoming sessions here. And you can check out the full recording of session #1 here.
