3. Marketing
Leveraging Online Marketing Channels to Build Your Brand
The number of online marketing channels is broad and continues to rapidly evolve as new platforms launch and gain acceptance with various audiences. These channels, often search or social media driven, provide opportunities to promote your business and products in a highly targeted manner. They provide the ability to engage individually with your customers, find out what customers are saying about your brand, promote new products, increase website traffic, and ultimately drive brand loyalty.
Overview of Online Marketing Channels
Popular online marketing channels are often mistakenly referred to in whole as social media when in fact, they can generally be grouped into four primary categories based on the type of activity they encourage including social networking, microblogging, photo/video sharing and search. It’s important for food businesses to consider their marketing objectives and decide which online channels best support meeting the objectives to right-size the resources invested in building and maintaining an online presence.
Data gathered and considered accurate as of December 2020.
Social Networking
| Type/ Channel |
Who Uses? | How it’s Used | Food Business Opportunities | Limitations |
| 69% of U.S. adults use Facebook; driven by ages 18-64; Only 46% of adults 65+ and 51% of teens use Facebook. | The social media pioneer, user share photos, quotes, and points of view. Users post their own feed and interact with feed from others. | Highlight events, promotions, new products and insert themselves in relevant usage occasions. Free to create profile page. Paid promotion of content through Facebook Business Manager. | Actual two-way conversations are rare. | |
| >160 million U.S. users. 77% of users have at least some college education. More than 37% of people 20-49 years old use LinkedIn. 49% have income >$75k+. | Largest networking site for business professionals; users’ network with other professionals about common business interests, seeking employment, self-promotion. | Share company news, highlight new products and offer thought leadership. Free to create profile pages. Paid promotion through sponsored posts that appear in the users’ feed; targeted by rich demographics, experience level and job function. Specifically target individuals and send messages through Sales Navigator. | Business-to-business site, so less useful to reach consumers; may be a great fit for businesses serving restaurants, institutions or food manufacturers. |
Microblogging
| Type/ Channel |
Who Uses? | How it’s Used | Food Business Opportunities | Limitations |
| 22% of U.S. adults on Twitter. Skews to younger audience, though shifting older. | Users send and receive Tweets, short posts, up to 280 characters. Tweets can be messages, include links to relevant websites and other resources. Twitter users follow other users. | Place ads and sponsor tweets to get them in front of target audiences. Highlight events and promotions, share videos, drive traffic to company websites. | Character limit may make some messaging difficult. | |
| Tumblr | 31 million U.S. users. Hosts more than 480 million blogs. 40% of Gen Z and 30% of Millennials use Tumblr. | Microblogging channel with heavy photo/video focus. Users post content to their feed. Can be accompanied by text without length restrictions. Other users can comment on posts and repost to their boards. | Share content that highlights product usage or new product news. Sponsor posts to drive exposure with their audience. | Not particularly efficient for sharing time-sensitive posts. User interaction through comments only. |
Photo/ Video Sharing
| Type/ Channel |
Who Uses? | How it’s Used | Food Business Opportunities | Limitations |
| 116 million U.S. users. Skews younger – 75% of 18–24-year-olds on Instagram, but only 8% of adults 65+. | The dominant photo sharing app lets users upload photos and short videos. Users can caption posts, use hashtags and location-based geotags to make posts searchable by other users. Posts appear on followers’ feeds and are viewable by the public when tagged. | Sponsor posts to target specific types of users. Shopping possible through in-app shopping cart. Post can be made shoppable or brands can provide collections through an editorial approach. | Visual media not ideal for longer descriptions, narrative or storytelling. | |
| Snapchat | 98 million U.S. users. 69% of 13–17-year-olds and 62% of adults 18-29 use Snapchat. | Photo and short video sharing intended for quick and temporary viewing. Users exchange pictures and videos meant to disappear once viewed. Users can add filters, lenses or other effects. More social-focused than other photo-sharing platforms. | Share images and video with targeted uses through sponsored posts. The platform allows businesses to build brand and product awareness, showcase services and drive traffic to company websites. Provides for in-app shopping. | Temporary nature of images. 1:1 engagement time consuming to maintain. |
| TikTok | 80 million U.S. users. 60% between 16-24; 26% 25-44. | Short-form, video-sharing app that allows users to create and share 15-second videos, on any topic. | Similar to other social sites, sponsored ads can build awareness or drive users to purchase. | Current age of user-base may limit impact on sales. |
Search Engine
| Type/ Channel |
Who Uses? | How it’s Used | Food Business Opportunities | Limitations |
|
87 million U.S. users. About 1/3 of people from 18-64 use Pinterest; but only 15% of people 65+. |
Visually driven search engine lets users find, gather and organize ideas like recipes, home and style inspiration, etc. Users search topics similar to how they would Google, with the returned items being “pins” from other users. Users can then save and store them to their personal bulletin board. |
Highlight the brand offering, share product use ideas and recipes. Sponsor content and target audiences by demographics, interests, and keywords. Often, food companies navigate the user to a website or online shopping cart. |
Useful only for visual relevant content. Not useful for time sensitive information. |
|
| YouTube |
73% of U.S. adults use YouTube. 38% log in several times a day Nearly 90% of adults 18-49 use YouTube. |
Users create and share videos on a wide variety of topics for educational and entertainment purposes. | Share content highlighting product uses, recipes, and promotional events. Multiple options to place ads at start of other video content; not necessarily relating to the content it’s preceding. Video discovery ads can place an ad in the stream of results for a given search allowing a food company to place their ad within other relevant content. |
Useful only for video relevant content. Not useful for time sensitive information. |