Baking&Snack - August 2013 - 110

Q&A: DIGITAL MARKETING

ments or voting up and down,
people generally understand that
when you provide a platform for users, they’re partially responsible for
maintaining its integrity.
Mr. Kramer: Maintaining brand
equity gets a little into search marketing and search engine optimization as well. There are a plethora
of food sites out there, and brands
need to identify how people search
for their foods and who the audience is. Often, people are looking
for just general terms like “lunch”
or “dinner” or “fast and easy” or
maybe “grilling” or even by cuisine.
It’s important to build into your
marketing those keywords that
bring your products to the top of
the shopper’s list.

How can branding and the
Web work together to create useful dialogue with
consumers?
Mr. Kramer: Digital has changed
how consumers think about their
food purchases. Before the digital
evolution, people thought about
one item at a time: “I need eggs,
milk, toast, etc.” Today, they think
in terms of solutions for all their
needs, like, “I need everything for
Christmas Eve from the main meal
down to the cookies we’ll leave for
Santa Claus.”
Tailoring media buys is important, too. Brands need to think
about whether they want to be marketing to the 4th of July barbecue
crowd or to foodies.
So, it’s search, making sure your
content and marketing have the
right keywords, buying space on
relevant websites and then also
partnering with bloggers who are
aligned with the brand.
And now there’s a whole other
area you can’t miss — social sites
such as Pinterest, Tumblr or
Facebook, where you can build

your own food portal. That’s a new
approach we’re using.

What is the ideal percentage
of a company’s marketing
plan that should be dedicated to digital media?
Mr. Kramer: The latest research
from Group M, a St. Louis-based
media-buying company, said in
2012, 16.2% of all global ad expense
was digital. I’d say if this was the
average in 2012, then baking and
snack companies should start there
and probably aim higher. Both of
the baking and snack categories
pertain to meal components, so you
want to make sure you’re putting
your products in context and that
necessitates spending a higher percentage of your budget on digital.

How do you measure success of digital campaigns?
Mr. Ross: There are standard ways
in terms of page views, likes and
click-through — but then there are
also ways to measure the impact of
digital campaigns on brand loyalty
and brand perception. You can either look at it simply, like how many
user-generated ideas were received.
Or you can be a bit cleverer about it.
One thing we’ve done with usergenerated content is look at how
many organic SEO results come
from people searching for specific
items or recipes, for example, and
then clicking through. Look at how
much it would have cost to buy that
traffic through paid search engine
marketing such as buying Google
Ad Words.
Mr. Kramer: The programs available through some stores’ frequent
shopper cards are great for measurement, too. In some cases, you
can do a direct email campaign to
all frequent shopper cardholders,
and then you can track the success
of that campaign. So, if you use that

channel to push certain products,
for example, you’ll know which
shoppers received that messaging, and then you can look at who
went out and bought those products
within a certain period of time.

How can digital outlets segment audiences or customize
offers?
Mr. Ross: Audience segmentation
is one of the things digital actually
does better than other types of marketing. A website can tell you exactly where all your traffic is coming
from, and you can use that information to both target certain sites and
social networks and to see how your
campaigns are faring.
Using online content management tools, you can also easily tailor specific messages to different
audiences. If you’ve got a Facebook
campaign running, for example,
and you want to make sure the
people who are coming to your site
through that campaign are getting
a slightly more youthful experience, you can serve up a specific
version of your homepage that’s
tailored to that audience. You can
do that across various platforms
and really measure your success
and fine-tune your messaging.
That’s true in terms of customizing offers as well, and then you’ve
also got all the mobile features that
enable pretty amazing customization. Rather than relying on an
end-cap display, for example, you
can build what’s called a “geofence”
and basically send anyone who is
within 200 yards of these stores a
text about this snack item being on
sale this week.
Google just acquired a bunch of
mapping apps and locater services
to improve geofencing within its
search and mapping apps, as well.
Companies can even push coupons
to mobile users as they’re shopping.

For more on the subject, subscribe to Baking & Snack’s Operations Update e-newsletter at www.bakingandsnack.com.

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