Starting any business is difficult. There are so many things you must do. But, there are an equal amount of things you shouldn’t do.
Nine things NOT TO DO if you start a food business.
Don’t ask your friends and family for their opinion about the product. They probably love you and want you to be successful so they will lie so they don’t hurt your feelings. It is very hard to be critical of a friend or family member. Don’t make a business decision based on this flimsy type of research. People you know won’t tell you the truth. People who are your target, will be brutally honest. That’s what you need.
Don’t package your product like the competition. You have to stand out on the shelf. You must be different. If you want to be distinctive, you can’t blend in. Seth Godin talks about being a purple cow out in the field of brown cows. Jobs told us to think differently. Zig. Don’t Zag. Create such a unique package that you could send a 10-year-old into a store and they could find it.
Learn in the real world, not out of context. If you have two product names, you can’t decide between, see if you can put both into similar types of stores. Test 20 stores with 10 stores with name A and 10 stores with name B. See if one name works better in the context of the store environment while it’s on the shelf. You’ll probably need to do this in smaller, independent stores who will cooperate with your little test. The real world is much better to test than a focus group or an online forum. Do your name research in the real world (a store) not in an artificial world (focus group settings).
Don’t market a product without a story. What do you want your customers to say to their friends when they buy your product? How will they share a story about the product and how will that story make someone feel? The story, the brand and the promise need alignment. Think holistically about this – not piecemeal. Without a shareable story, your product will fail.
Don’t worry about knowing your target. If you have invented the first ice cream made from frozen coffee beans, who is the target you want to reach? It can’t be everyone who drinks coffee. Try to understand the mindset of someone who craves frozen/sweet treats and who can’t get by without their caffeine-laced cuppa Joe. It may be that a hyper-charged frozen treat competes with products that aren’t frozen (Red Bull, for example). The deeper you understand why someone might care about your brand and how they will use it, the easier it will be to convince the right people to try it. Know thy target and the story they will tell about your brand.
Assume the store is your customer. Yes, you sell to the retailer, but the consumer is your customer. You sell through the store to get to them. Yes, you need to motivate the store to carry your brand but don’t think that they will market it for you. The person buying the product off the shelf is all that should matter.
Be stingy, don’t give out samples. There are few tactics as effective as giving away a taste of a product. How can you package a sample to tell a story? Hint: A clever story printed on a napkin can help communicate your points of difference and why the product is special. Another tip is to listen as you sample. How do customers tell their friend, standing next to them, about your product offering? Are they sharing the story you want to tell?
Keep it to yourself and don’t encourage sharing. You must find a way to get loyal fans to tell their friends about your brand. How can you build sharing into the ethos of the brand and how can you use social media as the network to make it happen? What story have you recently shared about a brand you care about? Catch yourself in a marketing moment.
Do the same thing as everyone else. Don’t promote creatively. Maybe the best way to sample a food product is to create an unusual place or method of distributing the samples. Obviously handing out samples in stores help but what if you create a food truck that went to different places in your community to hand out samples? Can you tie your product to an occasion that gives you a built-in audience? New high protein milk could be sampled near a post office on April 15 when people are mailing in their taxes. (Don’t cry over spilled milk). The publicity generated can get you stories on the news and radio. Creating mini versions of a product to hand out can also get trial and raise awareness.
I’m always happy to see new brands popping up on store shelves. Someone is taking a risk. Someone is trying to get noticed. Someone is hoping for a piece of the pie. If you want to succeed with your brand, quickly create, test, fail and start again. It is the path to success in the food business.
Getting a team to help guide you, can be the most important secret ingredient of all. Experience is a great teacher. If you’d like to tap into someone with marketing expertise, who has ‘been there/done that’, give me a call.
