How social media helps your food and drink brand to flourish!

Welcome to part one of our brand new foodie digital marketing series – ‘How you’re using digital marketing in your business’. As you know, digital marketing is our life’s work and we THRIVE on helping food and drink brands to reach their goals. So, we’ve been reaching out to some of our favourite food & drinks brands out there to delve into how they’re using digital to get ahead – and how you can too! We’ll be looking into their social media marketing, email marketing and PPC to really get into the nitty gritty of how these fabulous foodie brands use digital to get ahead.

With 20+ years of food & drink marketing experience under our belts, we know food marketing like the back of our hand and we know that social media has become an integral part of our daily lives. It’s where we connect with friends, family, and colleagues, and where we share our thoughts, opinions, and experiences. But social media is not just a platform for personal use; it’s also an incredibly powerful tool for businesses to build and grow their brands. Anything from sharing content with their audience to answering customer queries; it’s easy to say that social media needs to be one of the main pillars of a businesses brand awareness.

But how does social media help your food and drink brand to flourish? We put this question to some of our favourite brands out there. We wanted to see exactly how social media helps them in the digital world. We’ve done a deep dive into their businesses to really get down to the nitty gritty of why they use social media and how it works for them. Are you ready? LET’S GO!

So how does social media help your brand to flourish?

There are so many reasons out there as to how social media helps food and drink brands to flourish. Number 1 is increased brand awareness. Social media provides an easy and cost-effective way to increase your brand’s visibility and reach a wider, tapped-in audience. By creating and sharing compelling content on social media platforms, you can attract new followers and customers, and keep your foodie brand top of mind for your target audience.

Not only this, but social media helps exponentially with direct communication with your customers. This can help you to build stronger relationships with your customers and gain valuable insights into their needs and preferences. By engaging with your audience on social media, you can address their concerns, answer their questions, and provide personalised support.

Another method of talking with your customers means more ways of engaging with them in purposeful ways. Social media offers a range of features that allow you to engage with your audience in meaningful ways. You can run polls, contests, and giveaways to encourage interaction and generate excitement around your brand. You can also leverage user-generated content by reposting and sharing content created by your followers, which can help to build a sense of community around your brand.

It goes without saying that for all brands, increased website traffic is an absolute must for any eCommerce brand. Social media can be a powerful driver of website traffic. By including links to your website in your social media posts, you can direct your followers to your site and increase your chances of generating leads and sales.

Finally, showing your brand personality on social media can put you a head and shoulders above the rest. Social media allows you to showcase your brand’s personality and values. By creating a consistent tone of voice and visual style across your social media channels, you can help your brand to stand out from the competition and build a loyal following. You are also able to gain a competitive advantage by enabling you to monitor and respond to your competitors’ activities. By tracking your competitors’ social media channels, you can gain insights into their marketing strategies, identify gaps in the market, and adapt your own approach to stay ahead.

So how do YOU use social media?

We’ve been surveying some of our favourite food and drink brands – from Suma Wholefoods to Unrooted Drinks, there is an overwhelming consensus that social media is here to stay for brands and businesses. 85% of the brands we spoke to use Facebook whereas 100% of them use Instagram. Instagram is definitely a favourite for aesthetic food ecommerce brands such as TeaPro and Canna Coffee!

What is particularly interesting, only 60% of those brands interviewed utilised TikTok as one of their social media platforms. For Salcombe Dairy & Spice Pots – TikTok is a new avenue for their digital marketing channels to varying levels of success! For Kabuto Noodles – TikTok has been key in their recent social media success. They put a heavy focus on TikTok and it paid off massively! They went viral and hit 4.4M views in a funny office related video. The feedback and brand awareness that they received was unparalleled. Moving forwards, they continue to post weekly with a general theme of hilarious relatable work life and foodie based content. They are now taking time to spread the love across all platforms and put focus back on growth. They know the message that they have of great tasting healthy snacks is hugely important to share. What a win for Tiktok as a brand awareness channel!

It’s easy to see how important social media is for any eCommerce brand. For all brands, social media is one of the most important channels. Food and drink brands Tors Vodka, Cake or Death and Cornish Cheese Co – all local to the South West! – can credit huge amounts of their top of funnel journey to the help of social media.

So we’ve delved into organic social media and how it can benefit top of the funnel digital marketing. What about paid and earned media? Out of the brands that we spoke to, 74% of them have run a Paid Social Campaign to varying levels of success. 64% of these brands have been able to generate leads from this activity with many of them citing that whilst paid media has worked for them, they weren’t able to sustain the amount of lead coming through leading to wasted budget and time. We know that the key to a good paid social strategy lies within brands’ sales and marketing funnel. You can learn more about how we can help your strategy and sales funnel here!

So there we have it! Some of our favourite brands stepped up to the plate to show how they’re using digital marketing to get ahead. Interested in taking your next step in the digital marketing world? Let us help. Check out our guide to uncovering the hidden profit potential behind your business to unlock the next steps of your digital marketing journey.