Food and beverage marketing ideas are the best for boosting sales and profit in the restaurant and beverage industry. These ideas are like gold dust - no matter if you’re promoting beverage brands or a new menu food item. Marketing ideas help businesses to better connect with their target audience and potential customers. Often, they involve utilizing an online presence on a social media platform through social media marketing. You could focus on killer photos for social media or content marketing through search engine optimization. You could get creative with live events to market your food and beverages.
We all know just how important marketing is for any business. And if this sounds really creative and fun but just a little complex, this guide is for you. You don’t need to feel overwhelmed by the different beverage and food marketing avenues you can go down. In this guide, we will cover effective food and beverage marketing - from why you should care to the best strategies.
There’s lots to cover, but if you act quickly and effectively, you can promptly see ultimate sales-boosting results. Prepare for exciting inspiration and practical insights into better marketing your food and beverage businesses.
Why You Need Food and Beverage Marketing Ideas
With all that said, why do you need to actually care about marketing your food and beverages? What is so special about food and drink marketing? Well, marketing is essential for driving sales. Experts found an approximate jump of up to 208% in sales following an investment in marketing strategies. And who doesn’t want a 208% jump in their sales? A profit jump means you are running a more successful business.
Let’s take a closer look at why you should market food and drinks specifically. These are the top three:
- There is an increase in visual deliciousness playing a role in purchase behaviors.
Recent studies have shown a trend of ‘visual deliciousness’ playing a role in purchase behaviors. Simply put, customers and potential customers are more drawn to try food and beverages after visual marketing. Social media marketing through photography or reels is essential for driving purchases.
- There is an increase in reviews from customers through Google.
Whether you like it or not, customers reviewing your business online is a part of life in the 21st century. If all goes well, these reviews will be positive reviews. However, it also means investing in marketing that resonates with your brand values and image. This will help reinforce a positive online presence and counteract any negative reviews. Think of marketing as reputation management in the food and beverage industry.
- Food and beverage marketing attracts your target audience.
Finally, using food and beverage marketing helps you to connect with the most desirable target audience. By using specific strategies you can shape how you connect with potential customers. For instance, using Tik Tok versus flyers or even Facebook ads reaches a different demographic. And the more you can control what customer demographic you attract, the more likely customers will resonate with your products.
Top Food Marketing Strategies
There are many ways to market a restaurant or cafe and its dishes. Food is one of the easiest things to sell; everyone loves an easy meal, and most are foodies. When you approach it correctly, food marketing strategies offer a solution. That solution could be a break from cooking after a long day or a delicious meal on an empty stomach. This is why food preparation kits got so popular throughout the pandemic when people couldn’t eat out.
With that in mind, you can use these top food marketing strategies to boost sales. Check out our top three strategy ideas:
As we mentioned earlier, a dish’s ‘visual deliciousness’ is becoming increasingly influential over purchase behaviors. Therefore, one of the top marketing strategies for food is investing in visual aesthetics for social media marketing. This could involve food photography or videography, and you’ll use a social media marketing strategy to reach target audiences. This is an excellent strategy as it allows creativity and capitalizes on an ongoing marketing trend.
You can organize social media marketing yourself for zero cost. You will need a few hours each week, decent photography or videography skills, and a social media platform. You can use Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook. Just make sure that it aligns with your target audience.
2. Use SEO and Boost Online Presence
Another essential way to boost your food marketing is through SEO and investment in online presence. Nobody can buy your food if they can’t find it, and most people sniff out restaurants and cafes online now. With search engine optimization, you increase your ranking when potential customers Google relevant terms. For instance, if someone searches ‘all-you-can-eat sushi in Manhattan’, you can appear in the top three with good SEO. Similarly, having an online presence through a proper website, Google My Business profile, and social media platforms will help.
As the saying goes, you’ve got to be in the game to win. And that’s precisely how SEO and an online presence work. You should always aim to invest to stay easy to reach online. With consistent strategies like keyword optimization on websites and regularly posting and responding to reviews online, you’re onto a winner. Setting up Google My Business and social media platforms is enough to get things rolling.
3. Build a Loyalty Program
A loyalty program is our final favorite food marketing strategy. This is a brilliant way to market your dishes for many reasons. However, the primary reason is that it encourages customers to care about changes to your menu and any new dishes. Loyalty programs enable you to foster long-term communication avenues, meaning you can more easily sell new foods.
You can also entice customers with special discounts and exclusive offers with loyalty programs. This is a win-win. It lets the customer feel content with a ‘special deal’ and like your business values them. It also encourages reliable sales through loyalty program marketing, with receptive target customers and working contact details.
A loyalty program is an excellent avenue for food marketing, especially since formal dining offers many rapport-building opportunities. It also combines fantastically with captive portal data collection. You just use a captive portal to prompt sign-ups in exchange for Wi-Fi access. And let’s be honest, most people want Wi-Fi when sitting down for a complete meal.
Now that you are up to scratch on the best ways to market food products, let’s consider drinks. What about how to promote a drink product? There are many overlaps between marketing food and drinks. However, drink products are a little different. If you think about it, drinks are in a more sociable environment than food and less of the center attraction. You rarely talk in-depth to the bartenders if you go out for cocktails in a loud bar. And if you are going for coffee, the focus is more on the venue atmosphere and catching up with friends.
Drinks often aren’t as ‘make or break’ as food. But then, how does that impact how you should market them? In this section, we’ll introduce you to the best ways to promote a drink product - non-alcoholic or alcoholic. These are the top three promotion methods when it comes to drinks.
One thing that stays the same when marketing drinks vs. marketing food is the importance of visual aesthetics. Your drink should have the wow factor and look visually appealing. Why do you think smoking and fruit-adorned cocktails are so popular? With drinks, you aren’t just selling a taste but a look.
Drinks are often as much of an accessory as something to enjoy. And if you run a bar or pub, customers will be mingling with drinks in their hands. Make them visually ‘wow’ and a worthy conversation starter, and market that through social media. This could be through fancy cocktails, or it could be through beautiful coffee artwork. You could even jazz things up through novelty glasses or cupware. TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook are all brilliant platforms for advertising drinks.
2. Hosting Events
Since drinks are inherently social, hosting events is one of the best ways to market them. This way, you can encourage potential customers to try your drinks and realize they love them, prompting return visits. You could even offer brilliant loyalty program sign-up opportunities while running live marketing events. There are many event ideas to attract customers - you could host cocktail-making classes or run a coffee-tasting experience. Get creative and really evaluate what would appeal to your target demographic.
Another reason events are so good for marketing drinks is that drinks alone generally don’t justify a detour. People tend to detour for a specific meal. But when it comes to drinks, atmosphere, mood, or social plans tend to sway the final decision. Running events gives the perfect opportunity to offer a social plan and atmosphere to get customers over the threshold initially.
3. Email Marketing and Online Sales
Email marketing can be effective when promoting drink products, especially with online sales. With an online sales platform, you can take advantage of the fact that drinks alone don’t usually justify detours. By being able to purchase online - from the comfort of their sofa - you eliminate that barrier. Email marketing has notoriously fantastic sales rates, too. Add discount codes into the mix, and you have the perfect drink sales recipe.
You don’t have to sell from a physical location. In fact, selling online can be one of the best ways to boost drink sales. Setting up an online shop is also easy if you already have a website. And you can sync it with existing strategies to build your online presence and market your drinks through social media. Email marketing and online shops are the iconic duo that drink marketers need.
Final Thoughts: Moving Forward With Food and Drink Marketing
So, let’s move forward with food and drink marketing. Your first steps should be evaluating your products and establishing exactly how they appeal to your target audience. You should be able to pinpoint which section of your business’s target audience it best applies to. For instance, a pumpkin spice latte might best appeal to your 16-25 age demographic rather than your 40-65 demographic. After establishing your exact target audience and using any necessary customer data collection, you can get brainstorming strategies.
When brainstorming strategies, always keep your target customer in mind. For instance, when targeting the 16-25 demographic, you might consider TikTok and Instagram for social media marketing. Whereas, for 40-65 demographics, you may consider Facebook for social media marketing or physical marketing at POS and through posters. Once you know which marketing strategy best fits your target customer, you can prepare your marketing. Remember: target customer research first, marketing strategy choice second. With this simple rule, you can’t go wrong with food and drink marketing.
Beambox fits nicely into this process. And if you are looking for a way to make customer data collection easier, this is the solution. We can automate and streamline the data collection by providing captive portal login software.
When managing prep for marketing, tools like Beambox’s elite Wi-Fi platform can transform your data collection systems. To collect data and start your marketing strategies, Beambox is the ideal Wi-Fi marketing solution. Start your Beambox free trial today. We can help you take your first steps in organizing data for your marketing strategies. After all, you’ve tons of food and beverage marketing ideas to use now - let’s get the data to facilitate them.
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