Table of contents:
- Content boosts your SEO and organic traffic to your site
- Content helps build trust in your business
- When crafting your content, you develop a brand voice
- Content marketing starts a conversation
- Commit to a range of content (but don’t spread yourself too thin)
- Create a content marketing schedule and stick to it
- Look for opportunities to work with well-known industry names
- Take some things off your plate
When there’s this many players in the market, it can be hard to make your food brand stand out. But fear not, we’ve got a solution. Content marketing can be the big, juicy cherry on an otherwise functioning, but not super memorable, communication plan.
Food and drink has really taken off in digital marketing. From bitesize video recipes and nutrition-savvy influencers, to food trucks using social media as PR — food is everywhere.
Maybe you’ve thought about content marketing for your food brand before, but you weren’t quite sure where to start? Or perhaps you gave it a go, but didn’t get very far? Don’t worry, this blog post will help you get your slice of the pie — supercharging your content marketing approach and out-performing your competitors.
What is content marketing exactly?
Before we dive into how and why you should use content marketing, let’s start with what it actually is. Content marketing is the bringing together of any written, visual and/or auditory marketing messages, to help promote your business and engage your audience.
Better still, content marketing makes it easy to tell people about your brand — without coming across too sales-y. Whether it’s publishing recipes or food guides on your blog, or recording a podcast with your favourite chefs, content marketing helps cement your food brand’s value while still delivering genuine value to the reader or listener.
Content marketing helps your food brand cut through. Here’s why...
Over on the Scribly blog, you’ll find a whole host of guides on how to get your content marketing strategy off the ground. We’d recommend the ‘Five Pillars of Content Marketing’ and ‘How to Create Content Fast – 10 Content Marketing Tips for Busy Marketers’ to get you started.
But why should you bother?
What can content marketing actually do for your food business? Well, read on to find out!
Content boosts your SEO and organic traffic to your site
Content marketing success relies on a simple formula: the more high-value, relevant and keyword-friendly content you put out there, the higher your website will rank in search engine results.
In simple terms, this means you’ll be one of the first businesses that potential customers come across when looking for a product or service like yours.
Are you a taco truck looking for wedding bookings? Then write a blog post series about the best food for informal, outdoor weddings (and make sure your tacos get a mention!). If you’re trying to break through as a cereal bar snack in a super-crowded marketplace, then use your website copy to really promote what makes you different. Create a dedicated landing page for different dietary requirements or lifestyle choices, and watch the traffic roll in.
Content helps build trust in your business
Having a five-star health and safety rating is one thing, but what else do you need to do to earn trust from your buyers?
Yep, you guessed it: content!
Whether it’s blog posts and social captions that show your expertise, or ebooks and food guides to educate your audience, all these touchpoints help build credibility, reassuring customers that you’re deserving of their trust.
Trust is one of the best ways to keep customers coming back for more — and maybe they’ll tell their friends about you too!
When crafting your content, you develop a brand voice
Posting regular content forces you to think about how you want your business to be perceived — and your brand voice plays a big part in that. Are you going for fun, friendly and a little tongue-in-cheek? Or will a more reserved, formal tone connect better with your buyers?
Try to start with an idea of what your brand voice should be. Then you can tailor your tone of voice (ToV) as your content marketing strategy takes shape.
Content marketing starts a conversation
Great content flows like a conversation between friends. You share a nugget of information to kick the conversation off and (hopefully) they respond. Sometimes that response will come in the form of a comment on your blog post or social upload, other times it’ll be a micro-conversion (subscribing to your newsletter) or even making a sale.
Chipotle and Domino’s Pizza are two great examples of conversational content marketing. Chipotle has become known for its playful one-liners on social media, and for engaging their followers on an individual level. That makes them fun, familiar and memorable to their customer base.
Domino’s Pizza, on the other hand, made it possible for customers to use emojis to order their pizzas online. It was a PR stunt, sure. But it worked! By having to decode their customers’ order requests, Domino’s created heaps of social engagement and conversation.
Even if your brand voice is on the more reserved and formal side, conversational content marketing opens up a narrative for your customers to engage with.
… and by having that conversation, you tell your brand story too
Transparency and authenticity are essential in modern branding. So, let your customer’s in on your secrets, your troubles and your successes. Welcome them into your world. Not only will they learn more about who you are, what you do, and why your food is so awesome, but they’ll become emotionally invested in your brand as a result.
Consumers are becoming more aware of what they’re eating — some will be avoiding certain ingredients or production processes, some will be on the lookout for terms like “plant-based” and “organic”. By letting them know who you are and what’s behind the food you’re making, you also make it easier for them to vote with their wallet.
Boost the impact of your food brand’s content marketing with these 4 simple tricks
Now you know why content marketing is so important for building your food brand, how do you get started with the best foot forward?
1. Commit to a range of content (but don’t spread yourself too thin)
Think food styling and flat lays, in-kitchen videos, new trending recipes, customer reviews, and behind-the-scenes stories. There are numerous ways to share food content — and you can pull them all together faster than you’d think.
Repurposing content on various channels is a great way to get more mileage from your existing content. Celebrating a new product launch? Write a blog post, then break the key points down into social posts — and maybe even upload a mouth-watering video to really bring the message to life!
The secret is to engage your audience on several platforms, without letting your strategy get confused. Consistency is always key in content marketing, so keep it simple at first — with one or two content channels — and then scale up.
2. Create a content marketing schedule and stick to it
And on that point, let’s talk frequency.
Posting irregularly is a big content marketing no-no. Search engine and social media algorithms favour regularly-posted content, so if you’re only publishing every now and then, you’re going to get lost in the crowd.
The solution? Take the time to draw up a content marketing schedule — one that makes sense to you, and your commitments, and that you’ll be able to keep on top of. You can check out our guide here for some content scheduling tips and handy templates.
But don’t worry, you don’t need to set aside 30 minutes each day to stay on top of your socials. Instead, try batch writing posts and then scheduling them using tools like Hootsuite. By making it an efficient process that doesn’t take hours out of your already busy schedule, you’re much more likely to succeed with it. Remember, consistency really is key.
3. Look for opportunities to work with well-known industry names
Partnering with food bloggers and influencers is a great way to give your business a boost. Ask them to review your business or product, they’ll share their review with their customers — and then you can share it with your own. It’s double the marketing for half the effort!
You could even bring a food blogger on as an affiliate to ensure regular content and a close working relationship.
Guest posts also represent great opportunities for food brands. Do you have a say on the upcoming food trends, how food businesses should manage their supply chain, or why tacos make such great wedding snacks? Then identify the blogs and online publications that write about those topics and ask to be featured!
4. Take some things off your plate
Here’s the thing, running a food company is hard work. And content marketing might fall to the bottom of an endless to-do list. If that’s the case, then outsourcing your content creation to a freelancer, or a team of professionals, is the ideal solution.
When you outsource, you know that you’re getting consistent, high-quality content coming your way. You don’t have to worry about SEO or sticking to a schedule, because someone else is going to do it for you.
And that means you get to focus on the things you enjoy doing — and managing all the new customers coming your way!
Ready to get started on your supercharged, results-driven content marketing strategy? Then get in touch with the Scribly team today.
