Essential marketing tips for your food business
Agatha Ionnau loves the challenge of working closely with small business owners and being her own boss she has the flexible working hours she needs as a mum with three kids.
As part of the Lunch Bites series The Business of Food held during May 2020, Jane Del Rosso spoke with Agatha from Emporia Marketing to understand more about her passion for food and small business and gain tips for those establishing or running a food business.
Agatha explained that her approach is to ‘really get in’ and understand each unique business and then develop strategies that are specific to that business and its product; and overall guide the business through a marketing strategy. This approach is responsive to the business at that particular point of their life cycle (beginning, established, expanding or diversifying) and is an affordable option for clients who have time to implement a marketing campaign once it is developed for them.
Agatha has stayed positive during the shutdown, by focusing on having her basic needs of a roof and food and a healthy safe family - and demonstrating that attitude of thankfulness to her children to assist them be positive at home and also while adjusting to school life at home. You can hear more about her positive approach and how that carries through to her client work by watching the full episode on our YouTube channel.
During the shutdown, Agatha says it’s critical to stay in touch with your clients as much as possible in a variety of ways to check how they are going and to provide support/a service as possible. This includes staying connected through online meetings, phone calls, dropping things off to clients and/or emails. Through the home isolation phase, Agatha has experienced a changed focus to her business, with even more social media and online activity and can see how many other businesses are communicating differently especially through upgraded websites.
Agatha shared with us how the core principals of marketing are: diagnostic, strategic and tactical; and suggests the shutdown we are experiencing presents a great opportunity to conduct extensive research on customers – and this secondary research is something any business can do themselves. Her essential marketing tips are:
spend a couple of hours online via Google as you can learn a lot about your competition / market segment
observe your customers when they are shopping (in shops/farmers markets/online traffic etc) - whenever possible visit a retailer in person, stand in front of your category and watch how people are shopping in that area and how they are making their decisions
try and ask a customer some key questions, to really understand what they are after - as this is direct insight into customers habits
undertake research at the start of your business and then ongoing so that you get genuine customer insight to help grow your business
it’s easy to focus on strategy and tactics, but they need to be based on what is happening for your customer. Otherwise your strategy and tactics won’t be on target.
overall market research is part of reviewing and refreshing your market plan every year to ensure you understand your market segment (which will change over time). This refresh presents a chance to look at the bigger perspective and pivot as opportunities arise.
For her clients, Agatha’s expertise lets her understand all the data a business has about their customer and market segment and then draw down on the insights as relevant to their product and industry. Often a business can be assisted to identify opportunities they may not think about i.e. a product packed for retail sales may also be suitable for food service with some adjustments.
Recently, food retailers experienced the odd challenge of people stock piling basics like flour, pasta, tinned tomatoes etc. Large supermarkets had to ask customers to stop panic buying which is very rare in Australia and for a short time the artisan foods were competing within an unbalanced marketplace. Then customers quickly shifted to online, whether it was shopping for food and clothes, getting together with friends and family or even conducting medical appointments online where possible.
Proving the importance of being online at the moment. For some businesses a change to their marketing strategy and tactics will be needed to reinforce their brand and assist their customers be safe. Overall, Agatha suggests you try and stay positive, be empathetic and conscious of just being there for your customer and approachable beyond just making a sale.
To view other Lunch Bites sessions, visit The Business of Food You Tube channel. You can also see who we are chatting to next via our FaceBook events page.