A few tips for digital marketing discovery for new food brands
Do you need to create a digital marketing strategy for discovery of a new food brand? If so this tip is for you.
If you’re working on launching a strategy for discovery of a new brand – your work is less about SEO for your brand terms and more about optimizing for discovery when your target audience is browsing – as they won’t yet know your brand’s name.
Trying to be “found” with that kind of online behavior brings to the forefront different online platforms that excel at that type of discovery. The three big players are Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube.
It turns out that 97% of all Pinterest searches are non-branded (facilitating brand discovery), and 70% of weekly Pinners discover new products on Pinterest (that they were not proactively searching for). (Source)
Not surprisingly, the global pandemic has accelerated Pinterest’s role in the grocery decision-making process. Starting in March 2020, Pinterest saw an increase in online grocery activity with the number of online purchases Pinterest drove to grocery retailers jumped nearly 70% over February, and that trend accelerated in April.
Here’s more from the study:
“Before the pandemic, two in three Pinners shopped for groceries online at least once every two weeks—14% more likely to do so than non-Pinners. And the types of recipes they were looking for have also changed; in April, Pinterest saw searches for “quick, easy meals for dinner,” increasing 153% over the previous month.”
Instagram is also a social network where the discovery of new brands is possible via browsing. It is also a network with a massive food focus. There were over 340 million posts on Instagram for #food in 2019 and brands interested in appearing in that environment need visually appealing food photos.
YouTube
YouTube also plays a huge role in food products and idea discovery when a user is browsing. Here are stats from a dated Google’s 2014 report (we can only assume that these trends are more pronounced now):
- Nearly half of all adults watch food videos on YouTube (75% of those views are on mobile).
- And YouTube food videos also drive first-time website visitors.
With 500 hours of video uploaded every minute, video discovery on YouTube requires paid promotion and a well-established channel and engagement strategy, as 70% of what people watch on YouTube is determined by its recommendation algorithm.
You can work to influence the recommendation algorithm through smart video targeting, playlist optimization and YouTube partnerships AND your paid activity is counted toward your organic view counts (unlike Google search were those two parts of search don’t interact).
If you use YouTube TrueView ads, brands see previously existing content views increase by up to 500% after posting new videos.
In 2017, 50% of grocery sales are influenced by digital marketing.
With the increase in online grocery shopping due to the pandemic, it’s reasonable to assume that the influence has increased. The global pandemic led to more online searches and purchases, but it also changed our search preferences based on our collective new way of living, which has impacted food decisions. Based on recent data, an estimated 50% of all US consumers have now grocery-shopped online, a 40% increase over last year. (Source)
US voice-driven searches (across all categories) are now at about 50% of all searches. Voice searches are also impacting food purchasing behavior. In 2020 Amazon, Walmart, Kroger, and other grocery retailers have rolled out voice-driven grocery purchasing options. With the global pandemic, this trend of purchasing groceries (and researching food product information online) is only increasing.
So if you’re working on a digital marketing strategy for a new food product or brand, I would highlighly recommend creating a discovery plan using YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram and supporting your plan with paid promotion of those channels as well as executing a voice search strategy for organic discovery.
That’s your tip for today.
Thanks for listening. Come back tomorrow for another SEO tip.
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