7 Tips For Marketing Your E-commerce Food Business
Whether you’re a startup or expanding your existing brick and mortar online, these tips for marketing your E-Commerce food business will help it be a success.
Competition is stiff in the e-commerce food world and standing out from your competitors can be a challenge. By marketing your business effectively you can give yourself an edge and help your products reach the audience they need to. Here are some tips on how to best market your e-commerce food business.
1. Have A Unique And Current Business Idea
One way that you’ll be able to successfully market your e-commerce idea is if you have identified a gap in the market and come up with a business idea that takes this gap into account. You need to offer a service or product that is new or unique in some way so that you are able to market it to people and effectively show your potential buyers why they need it. Part of doing this is understanding your market, your competitors and current food trends.
I understand that putting a unique spin on something isn’t easy, but here’s a great example of how one small town artisan helped grow his food business using E-Commerce built on BigCommerce.
Michael Antonopoulos (friends call him “TonTon”) created the perfect product for the perfect audience in Ashland, Oregon.
2. Know Your Target Audience
In order to successfully market your e-commerce food business, you need to know who you’re selling to.
Antonopoulos knew his audience well; which allowed him to create a unique and original product line that could sustain a business.
Consider who your product works best for and what type of people would be motivated to buy your products.
For example, people are lot more health conscious than they used to be and as a result they want to be able to purchase foods where they can see and understand the health benefits. This is particularly true in the workplace where people often turn to sugary or fatty snacks to get them through the working day. As a result, employees and companies are an ideal demographic for healthy snacks and you can tailor your marketing and production efforts to suit this audience.
By thinking about what your audience needs, like easy access to healthy snacks or lots of variety, you’ll be able to better market your product.
3. Use Social Media Platforms Suited To Your Product
Social media is an important marketing tool for all businesses but you can really harness the power of social media if you find platforms that are suited to the product or service you’re selling.
Remember that food is very visual and people love seeing photos of aesthetically pleasing meals and snacks. This is why a great way to market your e-commerce food business is by using social media apps that emphasise visuality such as Instagram and Pinterest.
Pinterest drives 10x as many food and drink shares as Facebook.
The top content types in the food category are shorter step-by-step how-to articles and listicles.
These types of platforms allow you to visually curate your brand. Social media provides you with a space where you can interact directly with your followers and prospective buyers and it’s a good way and monitoring what kind of interests they have so you can tailor content to suit them.
Another small Southern Oregon company, MaMosa’s in Grants Pass, Oregon is absolutely killing it on social media. Everything about MaMosas is on point starting with their company culture which is serving up tasty local, natural, organic, or non-GMO always!
They get everything from local farms first, otherwise they source your food with as much detail and love as they give to prepare it. Ma Mosa’s is a from-scratch kitchen, providing real feel good food and atmosphere that makes you feel like part of the family!
This feeling extends seamlessly into their social media presence; which is absolutely mouth watering.
4. Create A Website People Want To Explore
Your website is a reflection of your business and for an e-commerce business it is often the first point of contact people will have with your company. For this reason, your website needs to make a good first impression because if people feel like they can’t use or don’t like your website then they don’t have a platform to buy your products.
Make your website engaging, interesting and user-friendly.
Consider the images, colours and designs that you use and ensure that it the interface is easy to navigate. Your e-Commerce food business should include a clear, well-designed logo and immediately explain what sets you apart from other companies. Make sure all links work and include links to popular products and any deals or promotions that you might be having. The site needs to function across all browsers and devices, especially mobiles and load quickly. Potential customers will quickly be put off if they have to wait for pages to load or if they can’t navigate it properly. Have a clear search field and consider features such as different language options and accessibility features.
5. Publish Interesting Content
Keep customers engaged with your company by regularly publishing interesting, unique and useful content that ties into your business. Providing value to current and potential customers helps to build a connection with them and establish trust and authority. Valuable content may also widen your reach because consumers are likely to share and post it on their social media networks. The more helpful information you publish about your business and food-niche, the higher Google will rank you for relevant keywords which will give you more visibility.
So how to learn what content your audience will love? Here are five tips to get you started
Online and offline content have one very important thing in common and that is visibility. Often times simply publishing content doesn’t produce the results you’re after, and that’s why it’s so important to make sure that the content you’re publishing has a purpose and a strategy. Click here to find out how to Engage and Entice Your Target Audience.
6. Consider Offering Free Shipping
As an e-commerce business, you will be competing with a lot of online retailer giants. In order to remain competitive, consider offering free shipping. Customers often see shipping as an unnecessary cost and it could be the deciding factor that makes them choose another company. If you don’t think shipping impacts your customers’ buying decision, you might want to take a quick look at these stats:
• 9 out of 10 consumers say free shipping No. 1 incentive to shop online more.
• half of consumers say same-day shipping would make them shop more online.
7. Include Customer Reviews And Testimonials
The success of your e-commerce business depends a lot of how much trust consumers have when it comes to your products or services. Some of the biggest influences on consumers’ purchasing decisions are reviews and testimonials left by customers. People value the feedback of those that they see as their peers and the more positive feedback you receive, the better reputation you will have online.
That’s why investment in customer experience is so important. Businesses simply can’t expect customers to support them if the if the business isn’t doing things to make their customers happy.
What can you do to build reviews? That’s a great question.
a) You Can Deliver a Delightful Experience
Much of the time, and for obvious reasons, the customers with the greatest motivation to post reviews online are those who have had a negative experience with a product or service.
Don’t give your customers that opportunity! Go out of your way to go above and beyond to give your customers the best experience.
b) You Can Ask Your Customers for Reviews
One of the quickest ways to build great reviews is to promptly ask happy customers for them. Asking for reviews is all about timing, don’t wait too long and don’t be too aggressive — keep it casual.
Display testimonials and positive reviews on your website or social media and regularly check online spaces to see what people are saying about your spaces. One visible negative review could change everything for you!
Marketing your E-Commerce food business won’t be easy, but by following these tips you will be well on your way to making your online venture a successful extension of your business.
