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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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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