EMBiz: Marketing Food & Beverage Brands 101

Marketing Food & Beverage Brands 101

Laurel Mintz

Hi everyone, Laurel Minz here, CEO and founder of Elevate My Brand, and this is EMBiz. As you may or may not know, when we started our journey at Elevate, we were really focused on CPG, which is consumer packaged goods. And, a lot of that was focused around food and beverages. So today we're gonna talk a little bit about how to market your food and beverage brands really, really wisely. 

Tip 1: Packaging

So, the first tip I have for you is making sure that you are focused on your packaging. Is the packaging solving a real problem? Now, oftentimes what we see is: brands come to us and they are in a sea of sameness. So, they want to look like all the other brands that are in their space. But that's really problematic, especially if you're going into Big Box Retailers. Because, think about it, when you're on these shelves and everyone looks the same, how is your consumer going to decide to pick your product over anyone else if you all look the same? So make sure that you're really being thoughtful about design solutions. To be sure that your client actually pulls you off the shelf, right? That really has a lot to do with your color choices. So again, looking at competitors and making sure that you are not blending in but standing out. 

Tip 2: Color

And, the best tip around that really is based on color theory. You may remember the color wheel from maybe high school or even grammar school. Make sure that you're using contrasting colors to make sure that again you're standing out with your packaging, especially on shelf or even in a digital aspect. And then, as it relates specifically to food marketing, you want to make sure that you're not using wild colors that aren't actually edible in the wild. Probably not gonna want to use a lot of blue in food branding, right? There's like something that's just off about that. I don't know if you've ever seen a blue mashed potato – it's just not a cute look. So, making sure, again, that you are using colors that are also very appetizing and that happen in real nature in real food and beverage products.

Tip 3: Audience and Messaging

And then, of course, the last one is all about messaging and knowing your audience. Don't use overly complex language, even if your product or service is using a really unique ingredient. Make sure that you define it really clearly so that your audience feels connected to the brand and not othered because you're speaking in all kinds of jargon, you know. 

That's one of our big things here is making sure that you and our clients don't feel like we're using too much jargon so that you really, really understand the essence of marketing and that you feel like you can go execute it on your own and that's what EMBiz is all about. So, those are some great tips on how to market your food and beverage brands.