Over the last year, we’ve seen consumer preferences and behaviors shift. As marketers of fresh produce, we’ve pivoted many times in the last year, and we’ve learned that the 2021 consumer behaves a little differently than in the past. Here are a few quick tips for how to reach them.
Pro-Tips To Help You Better Reach Consumers
Provide Content That Aligns With Prevailing Mindsets
We are all spending more time at home now more than ever before in 2021. Even with some areas of the country beginning to “open up” businesses and restricting mask wearing mandates, time at home has become a “norm” that over time, people have come to appreciate.
Meantime, being at home more has created more opportunities for our team and our clients to create and share recipes that will inspire our audiences in the kitchen! In fact, a recent study says that 56% of consumers report doing more cooking at home since the start of the pandemic, and Eat This Not That reports that 60% of Kroger shoppers are experimenting with global flavors and recipes.
Now is a great time to produce “copycat” recipes! Since more people are cooking at home, but craving that “dining out” feeling, we’ve found that recipes that are “dupes” or “copycats” are resonating well. According to Google Trends, the term “copycat recipe” saw a big spike during the beginning of the pandemic, and finished out the last 12 months above where it started.
Pro Tip: Analyze your recipe library to find your best-performing recipes. Next, organize them by categories, such as daypart, difficulty level and ingredients. From there, create new recipes that will fill in the gaps for a robust recipe library.
Showcase Health Benefits
One of the Biggest Food Trends of 2021 is “benefits-based marketing.” According to the Hartmann Functional Food and Beverage Report in 2020, at least half of adult consumers claim to use functional food to treat or prevent a certain condition.
It’s estimated that 90% of consumers are looking for functional benefits in their food, so a shift in messaging and positioning can help make your product be more visible and relevant to a wide range of consumers. Some of the functional benefits that consumers are looking for include immune system boosters and mood boosters.
Pro Tip: If you’re unsure of how to change your messaging to benefits-first, contact us – we can help!
Drive e-Commerce
When was the last time you used e-commerce to make a purchase from a vendor? Online purchasing has become part of our “new normal” – and especially for groceries!
According to Business Insider, “US food and beverage retail e-commerce sales were expected to total almost $24 billion in 2020 and surpass $38 billion in 2023, giving the industry a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.3% during this span, per an eMarketer forecast from 2019.”
Another recent study by The New Consumer shares that 45% of all consumers prefer online shopping for food or beverage!
With statistics like these, it’s safe to say that if you’re not driving e-commerce sales, then your brand might be missing out.
Pro Tip: Measuring purchase intent can be tricky for fresh produce, but there are e-commerce solutions for all budgets.
We know you worry about sending consumers the right messages at the right time. Let’s chat. We have solutions for all budgets that can help you improve affordably and swiftly.
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