5 ways to stretch your foodservice marketing budget
Like most foodservice marketers, you’re looking for ways to connect with operators and offer solutions to get them get through these unprecedented times. The challenge? Finding creative ways to reach them if your marketing budget has been impacted by COVID-19 related cuts. Here are a few low-cost tactics to reach operators while keeping an eye on your bottom line:
1. Sharable presentations and content
With far fewer face-to-face meetings, your sales team and brokers will appreciate any Zoom-friendly presentations you can offer. This is also a great time to create simple one-sheeters with recipes and ideas of how to use your products for takeout-friendly menu items.
2. Programmatic advertising
If you’re not familiar with programmatic media, it’s a way to purchase media on hundreds of well-known websites through real time bidding. While there are several tactics, the most well-known is retargeting (think of those ads that follow you around after you’ve looked at something online). This type of media buying is surprisingly affordable and can be a great way to meet your customers where they’re at online 24/7.
3. Case inserts
What better way to reach your current customers than with inserts right in the case of product? From information and a trial offer rebate on new products, to usage ideas and recipes, this is an easy and inexpensive way to engage with your top operators. (Just be sure to print on food-safe paper if the insert comes in contact with the product).
4. Paid social
A lot of foodservice manufacturers have begun to see the power in connecting with operators via social media, but many are still relying on organic posts and seeing only sporadic engagement for their efforts. For a minimal investment, you can boost posts to significantly increase the visibility of your posts. Better yet, invest in a paid social campaign to increase your followers so that future posts gain more traction.
5. Digital media
Gone are the days when you need to spend thousands on a print ad. Foodservice media partners continue to expand their digital capabilities, and many options are quite affordable, and through A/B testing, allow you the opportunity to see what messaging resonates with operators.
Looking for ideas on how you can stretch your marketing budget? Anita Nelson would be happy to strategize with you.