With COVID-19 changing consumer behavior, your food and beverage brand will need a recovery plan. Click here for a 5 step marketing strategy.

5 Step Post-COVID Food & Beverage Marketing Strategy | Union

5 Steps for Developing Your Post-COVID F&B Marketing Strategy

COVID-19 brought with it an unprecedented crisis for food &amp; beverage brands. Overnight, your customers experienced a dramatic shift in their daily lives, <a href="https://union.co/articles/how-poor-cx-is-crippling-your-food-and-beverage-revenue">upending traditional buying behaviors and channels</a> and forcing brands and marketers to play catch-up. 
As consumer behavior shifts, so too does your <a href="https://cms.union.co/industries/food-beverage">F&amp;B marketing strategy</a>. To secure success in 2021, your marketing plan needs to evolve to meet the new demands and expectations of the post-COVID consumer. To help you get started, we’ve put together a guide for your F&amp;B brand as you define your post-COVID 2021 marketing strategy.
While researching for our latest whitepaper, <a href="https://union.co/white-papers/food-beverage-brands-driving-growth-in-a-covid-and-post-covid-world">Driving Growth in a COVID and Post-COVID World:</a> <a href="https://union.co/white-papers/food-beverage-brands-driving-growth-in-a-covid-and-post-covid-world">What Food &amp; Beverage CPG Brands Need to Know About Changing Consumer Trends to Secure Success in 2021</a>, it became clear that many standard marketing plans weren’t going to succeed in a post-COVID world. Many plans don’t take into account COVID-19’s impact on consumer behavior. 
After careful review of the available data, our team identified the critical elements of a standard marketing strategy most impacted by the coronavirus. We then put together the below playbook for how F&amp;B brands can COVID-proof their 2021 marketing plan.
Reshape your post-COVID marketing strategy through this five-step approach:
<ol><li dir="ltr">Evolve your brand and marketing key messaging.</li><li dir="ltr">Adjust your brand’s media strategy.</li><li dir="ltr">Build a more robust digital ecosystem.</li><li dir="ltr">Track your actions to ensure an ROI.</li><li dir="ltr">Craft a holistic approach.</li></ol>
Let’s break it down.

The messaging that resonated with your pre-COVID audience may not have the same impact in 2021. As we said in an earlier blog post, consumers are more likely to relate and internalize messaging that reflects their new focus on value, safety, trust and overall health. 
Be transparent and honest with your customers.
Do not make wild claims about your product, your ingredients or your safety precautions. 
Do feel free to spotlight any supply chain or ingredient changes your brand has made due to COVID. Take your customers behind the curtain and show them firsthand how COVID has impacted your business. 
Our research shows that consumers are concerned with improving their immune systems, health and well-being. If your CPG brand or product includes active ingredients that offer a proven health benefit for your customers, take this opportunity to rework your messaging to incorporate these benefits and highlight this message.

Evolve your brand and marketing key messaging

While some media channels have seen an increase in consumption (such as in-home and online) during COVID, other more traditional methods have seen a decline in consumption. These media consumption trends are expected to continue in 2021. 
This means that many CPG brands will find themselves needing to adjust their media mix/targeting to ensure brand visibility and engage with their consumers. 
Brands can further improve the return on marketing investment by leveraging their first- and third-party data to create more robust targeting parameters to ensure that an ad is relevant to its intended audience. Take stock of your primary data streams and incorporate opportunities to layer on automation, machine learning and personalization to further enhance your campaign’s performance and ad relevance scores.
For example, at Union, we work with our data partners and clients to develop customized audiences for our campaigns. These audiences are built using first-party sources (such as remarketing lists or CRM databases) and then expanded and refined using a combination of predictive modeling and third-party data points to ensure that we’re able to deliver the most relevant message to the right audience at the specific time it’s needed to drive action.
The result is less money spent on wasted marketing efforts and more budget allocated to the messaging and media that secure a positive ROI.<h3 dir="ltr">Forge personal connections with virtual events</h3>
Demonstrations, conventions and sampling have all fallen by the wayside during the pandemic. What were once tried-and-true opportunities for brands to engage with consumers on a personal level are now no longer viable marketing tactics.
However, consumers are still craving these one-to-one interactions with their favorite brands.
Now’s the perfect time to examine your current marketing strategy and look for ways to interact and engage consumers through live streams, augmented or virtual reality experiences, and digital-first conventions.
<h3 dir="ltr">Double down on content</h3>
More time at home means more time for your customers to engage with your content. Satisfy their never-ending thirst for new stimuli by doubling down on your produced content pieces. 
We are not just talking about blog posts either – though blogs still have their place in a well-rounded F&amp;B CPG content strategy. Focus your content production efforts on creating more visual and engaging pieces of content. Content like video tutorials, interactive recipe books, or even augmented or virtual reality experiences gives your brand more opportunity to share your key marketing messages while also creating a richer content experience.

Adjust your brand’s media strategy

If you haven’t already, now is the time to invest in online retail or digital purchasing systems that allow your customers to purchase your CPG goods from your website directly.
If your brand is more retail-centric, look for opportunities to integrate with grocery and convenience store online ordering platforms. Not only does this help to improve the customer journey by reducing friction points, but it can also provide your brand with additional opportunities to <a href="https://cms.union.co/services/data-brand-strategy/brand-identity-messaging">reinforce brand messaging</a> throughout the entire customer interaction.
Your website and supply chain are not the only digital areas that may need improvement. As you evolve your marketing strategy to improve its effectiveness in a COVID and post-COVID environment, you may need to also invest in new technologies and systems that support your new marketing initiatives (AR platforms, game design, tutorial hubs, etc.).

Build a more robust digital ecosystem

Revenue is not the only KPI impacted by the changing shift in consumer behavior and supply chain disruptions. Fewer sales mean less marketing budget for many F&amp;B CPG brands. This puts increased pressure on marketing teams to ensure that they are efficiently driving results with every dollar spent.
A core benefit of a brand taking more ownership of its customer experience is that it also creates additional opportunities to capture customer data and attribute it to specific campaigns and initiatives. Determine what KPIs are most valuable to your team and create the systems you need to ensure you can drive a successful return on investment.

Track your customers' actions to ensure ROI

Do not silo your initiatives. Your updated key messaging needs to carry through your online platforms and <a href="https://cms.union.co/services/performance-media">marketing campaigns</a>. Which then needs to tie into your measurement and attribution frameworks. To drive success in 2021, no aspect of your COVID and post-COVID playbook can live in a vacuum.
Need help bringing everything together? As one of the largest performance marketing agencies in the southeast, we partner with medium and enterprise-level F&amp;B CPG customers to create and launch data-driven digital campaigns that deliver a provable return on investment. <a href="http://www.union.co/contact-us">Schedule a call with us today</a>, and let’s get started working on your 2021 COVID and post-COVID marketing strategy.

Craft a holistic approach

Union is a creative &amp; performance marketing agency that creates omni-channel campaigns, unleashing creativity on a data-driven world, helping brands produce memorable, measurable and repeatable results. Obsessed with data-driven performance, we believe every marketing dollar should be viewed as an investment. Our clients expect a meaningful return and we prove the ROI of our work with quantifiable data.