4 Ways To Amp Up Social Media Efforts For Food & Beverage Marketers

Moms are often the household decision-maker when it comes to purchasing food and beverages for themselves and their families. Social media networks offer an excellent opportunity to reach and engage this audience. According to a recent survey conducted by Edison Research, 81 percent of moms use Facebook, 63 percent use Pinterest, and 53 percent use Instagram. 

These social networking sites can be used to achieve a number of marketing objectives. You can build awareness thanks to the excellent targeting capabilities and high reach potential. You can encourage brand preference through brand ambassadors and influencers. You can even drive trial through incentives and sharing. For marketers, these platforms are powerful advertising tools. You’ve probably promoted some posts and pins and seen some success. Here are some additional opportunities to take your social media marketing to the next level.

1. Optimize reach and frequency

Facebook and Instagram allow advertisers to choose different objectives when they set up their advertising campaigns. Don’t select “post engagement” or “website traffic” when given these options. As a food and beverage marketer, your goal is to sell products, not to get “likes” or website traffic. Using a traditional reach and frequency ad buying approach can be much more effective at driving that desired action.

2. Use sequential messaging

The traditional marketing funnel shows us that we need to first achieve awareness and then consideration before effectively convincing customers to buy. Social media platforms give us the ability to build target audiences who have been exposed to ads and posts. This functionality allows marketers to use a sequential messaging strategy that effectively builds awareness, creates preference, and then drives purchase down to each individual user. This approach is perfect for new product launches or if you’re opening new markets. 

3. Use experiments to optimize

Test different headlines, calls-to-action, images, audience targeting, and more to learn what works best over time. It’s important to be deliberate in what you’re testing and how you’re measuring performance. Don’t just run many different variations and hope the data will teach you something. There are two things you’ll need to do in order to run effective experiments that will lead to better understanding and long-term optimization:

1. Test one variable at a time

2. Choose the key metrics before running the experiment

Social media advertising platforms have A/B testing functionality built in. Take advantage of these for experimentation to ensure there aren’t additional variables that could taint the data.

4. Engage influencers

Influencer marketing is a form of social media marketing that involves endorsements and product placements from users with large audiences on Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook. It accomplishes two things for your product – 1) a testimonial from a trusted source and 2) an engaged audience of loyal followers. Influencer marketing is a great way to gain credibility and encourage trial, especially when launching a new product.

Conclusion

As a marketer or marketing team at a growing food and beverage company, you’ve probably already discovered the power of social media marketing. If you’d like to take it to the next level, download our free ebook that details these four ways you can amp up your social media activities.

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