We love working with food and beverage clients. As a team of foodies ourselves, we pretty much analyse, scrutinise and whateverise food marketing on a day-to-day basis (making us hungry every day, all the time).
Here are a few things we’ve learnt from our own experience with our food clients or have observed from the successes of others.
1. Your food has to look good
One amateur shot of an artfully crafted meal on Instagram can turn your unknown restaurant into an online phenomenon.
Business from Melbourne’s Naughty Boy Cafe doubled when they released ‘freakshakes’, which, as you can see, make both your eyes and teeth tingle at the same time.
However, we’re sensing too many cafes getting into this #freakshake trend now, so for you, it may be time to think of something refreshing.
2. Can’t be at the top of the ladder? Then be at the top of your category
The book 22 Immutable Rules of Marketing said it best when it stated its famous ‘law of the category’. Coke was the leader of the general soft drink market, so Pepsi became the leader of the youth category by marketing the brand as a soft drink for a younger audience. It didn’t matter that their marketing excluded the older audience: since all the “cool kids” were drinking Pepsi, other demographics wanted in too.
Starting your own beer brand, restaurant or cafe in a market that is flooded with new beer brands, restaurants and cafes? Although it may be incredibly difficult to be a leader in such a highly competitive market, you can be a leader of a category: you have to find your point of difference to truly make an impact.
With a tagline of “Ice cream from magic,” Nitrogenie stands out from your typical ice cream parlour in Brisbane in that it’s able to provide customers with restaurant quality ice cream creations with the help of liquid nitrogen. Full of neon colours and smoke, Nitrogenie makes itself unique by providing its customers with a specific kind of theatrical experience with each visit.
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3. Create great content
Mini Oreo Cheesecakes
Posted by Tasty on Saturday, 21 November 2015
When it comes to online marketing, there’s always something you can do better. Have a creative approach to what you do and provide unique, engaging content that people could actually find useful and share with friends.
What has always worked for our clients is thinking outside the square – don’t aim to copy your competitors, but aim to do something that’s different (yet useful for your target market at the same time). For example, since many Facebook and Instagram pages are cluttered with image-only posts, integrating video has helped us increase engagement, social shares and website visits in the past.
Tasty, which is part of Buzzfeed, has some fantastic video cooking recipes on its Facebook page.
4. Implement SEO and social media
Are you a beef supplier looking to supply more meat to restaurants in Sydney, a restaurant in Sydney looking to attract more people Googling “best Thai Restaurant Bondi Beach” or a business launching a new kind of tea and specifically want to target women who have just had a baby?
You can accomplish all of this with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and social media.
Some quick tips for SEO
Read the two following blog posts:
Some quick tips for social media
- Be specific with Facebook advertising. Enabling you to target ads to recently married homeowners, employees of specific companies, and much, much more, Facebook has become a very powerful tool for targeted marketing
- Instagram is great, but it is becoming saturated. Increasing rate of (quality) posts and shout out programs (where other, more prominent Instagrammers promote your page on your behalf) is one way to increase page followers and ROI.
These are just some online food marketing tips to get you started. For more, check out these great tips from experts in the restaurant industry – 126 Expert Ideas For Your Restaurant Business Plan.
