When people talk about “social media” marketing, what do they really mean? What is a “social strategy”? How do you get started? How do you measure success? These are some of the the daily discussions we see that usually revolve around how marketers can get more “fans” or make marketing more “viral”. But these questions are questions about distribution, which is an advertising-centric way to think about it.

In advertising, distribution drives content. On the other hand, in social media marketing, content drives distribution – that is, you have to have something important or interesting to “say” in order for someone to be interested enough to engage and pass it along. It is the content strategy that delivers distribution opportunities, audience cultivation and, ultimately, how a social media campaign may play out.

So how do you develop content that provides distribution? Here are four ways to break down social media marketing into specific content and distribution tactics.

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If you live in California, Arizona or any number of states in the Southwest, this will come as no surprise to you: more money is spent annually in the US on salsa than on ketchup.

Salsa surpassed ketchup in dollar-volume sales in 1991 and was worth $931 Mil in 2008 (that’s more than 379 million jars!). Now, part of that may be because Salsa doesn’t last as long as ketchup. But hey, that’s not salsa’s problem.

Salsa first gained notoriety in the 1970s due to increased interest in Southwestern foods, healthier foods and higher tortilla chip sales (you gotta dip all those chips in something). Nowadays, you’ll find many varieties of salsas. Pace introduced 5 new varieties in 2008 alone.

If you read our recent post about BBQ sauce, you’ll remember a problem that small producers have: shelf space. The big guys run the show for salsa much in the same way they do for BBQ sauces. Continue Reading »

There are two kinds of BBQ sauce: The biggest. And the best.

The former can be determined pretty easily. Walk into any supermarket, convenience store or corner market and it will be what’s readily available. Sometimes it will be the only thing available. In case you need to know, it’s Kraft, closely followed by Heinz BBQ sauce. In their defense, they were also the first to market back in the late 40s and early 50s.

The latter is much more subjective. And regional for that matter. Your favorite barbecue sauce may only be available in your favorite BBQ restaurant. Or it might only be distributed within a 30-mile range of where it is made.
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Boosting Your Sales and Distribution Through Online Marketing

When people think of online marketing, they usually think one of three things: e-commerce, B2B lead generation or flashy ads from Fortune 500 companies. But, if you sell a consumer packaged good (CPG) at retail stores – the bricks and mortar kind – online marketing could be your secret weapon to grow your sales and distribution.

You’ve probably heard of email marketing, SEO and social. But simply engaging in these tactics will not necessarily deliver results. The key to success is having a strategy that can engage and activate your customer base – both existing and potential customers.

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“You learn more from failure than you do from success but the key is to fail early, fail cheaply, and don’t make the same mistake twice.” – Former Proctor & Gamble CEO, A.G. Lafley

We love this philosophy because it has so many important lessons – “always try new ideas,” “make sure you have data to learn from,” “be smart about how you allocate budget” and on and on. And while this philosophy helped Proctor and Gamble go from a 15-20% success rate with new products in the 1990’s to a 50% success rate more recently, it is not an approach that only the biggest companies can afford.

So, what does this have to do with Food, Beverages, Email and Social Media? Cost-effectively using online marketing to build a successful food and beverage brand, of course!
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Web Page Optimization is a critical marketing activity that combines search engine optimization (SEO) and website usability to ensure that your website continuously improves as the marketplace evolves. Web Page Optimization occurs on an ongoing basis on existing websites to help websites avoid staying static and uninteresting to customers. Web Page Optimization is designed to accomplish the following:

• Your business has an increasing amount of organic traffic because customers are finding your website via search engines and social media;
• Your customers increasingly interact with you when they visit your website (ie. “helping your customer further down the conversion funnel“);
• Your website is a thriving, continuously improving channel for sales, leads and signups. Continue Reading »

Every month, people in the United States type in the keyword “jeans” more 20 Million times (that’s 20,000,000) on Google. The #1 show on TV last week, NBC’s Sunday Night Football, had less than half that amount of viewers (9.7MM, 18-49). Think about it. Any jeans manufacturer buying an ad on TV could at most reach only half the people they would reach if they bought that keyword on Google. And the people they reach on Google, by virtue of the fact that they are searching for “jeans”, would be exponentially more qualified as targets for a jeans marketing campaign. But this about jeans, not TV vs. Search.

TV is a fantastic media for reaching new customers but it is also expensive if you are a growing company without endless marketing dollars. Search provides a window to reach more customers than most companies could ever imagine and on a pay-as-you-go basis. And for that reason, it presented a perfect opportunity for us to conduct a thorough analysis of the online jeans market. From household names to fledgling brands, we found winning strategies and areas of opportunity that we think are worth pointing out to our clients. Continue Reading »

On occasion, a member of the Thrivepoint team will look online for a product that he or she has a close connection with and provide some unsolicited advice. Maybe it’s a favorite childhood food. Or maybe it’s great smelling candles from back home. It could be just about anything. This time we have chosen Hartley’s Potato Chips. And unless you grew up in Lewistown, Pennsylvania (or know someone who did), you probably haven’t heard of them.

The potato chip market is a $15+ Billion dollar a year industry. There are a few leaders, such as Lays, Pringles, Cape Cod, Zapps and Wise, but there are also a lot of smaller companies out there that have a distribution range of a hundred miles (if that). These companies can use the Internet to increase their sales and distribution.

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You may have heard someone recently say something to the effect of, “Buying media is yesterday’s news. Earning it is the future.” But what is earned media?

Earned media is publicity without payment to the person or company who provides the publicity. One of the primary reasons for the buzz is that earned media is often used synonymously with the term “free media”. The other reason for its recent buzz is that platforms for easily distributing earned media – like Facebook and Twitter – have become very popular over the past couple of years.

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Yesterday, we attended the Search Marketing Expo West event in Santa Clara, California. One of the topics that captured our interest was the Landing Page and Multivariate Testing session. The goal of landing page testing is to increase the number of visitors that become customers on a business’ website.

After listening to the panelists present case studies with results and innovations for testing, we asked the panel about risk management. Specifically, with client budgets on the line, what is the best approach to manage and limit risk from a testing regimen?

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