10 Food and Beverage Marketing Strategies For Your Business

Food and beverage marketing encompasses traditional advertising and digital efforts, including the company website, social media posts, and email — anywhere prospective customers come into contact with your brand.

Execute your food and beverage marketing strategy effectively, and you stand to raise brand awareness, win new customers, make more sales, and boost customer loyalty.

If you want to grow your business from strength to strength, here are the strategies to weave into your food and beverage marketing plan.

Food and Beverage Marketing Ideas

Take a look at these food and beverage marketing ideas to inspire your next campaign, improve your strategy, and inform your marketing materials.

1. Use Product Recommendation Quizzes

Interactive product recommendation quizzes are an effective food industry marketing strategy that improves customer engagement, brand awareness, and product sales.

For example, Plum Deluxe, a craft tea company, implemented a quiz on its Shopify website. An impressive 23% of quiz takers placed an order, for a much higher average order value than non-quiz-taking customers.

Integrating quizzes into your e-commerce website personalizes the shopping experience and reduces decision fatigue for customers, ultimately encouraging purchases. 

It also supports zero-party data collection. Use customer data to learn about customer preferences and improve your product offering, or to segment your audience and send personalized marketing messages that are more likely to resonate.

2. Play on the Senses

Our senses influence our perception of food and beverage brands. Just think of that inimitable Subway smell, the audible crunch of a raw carrot, or the vibrant colors of the supermarket fruit section.

When marketing food and beverage products on digital channels, it pays to awaken those senses with carefully crafted visuals.

Smoosy, a fruit and vegetable smoothie brand, does this effectively. While the colors of a blended smoothie are appealing, they know that an image of fresh fruit and vegetables is more likely to excite the senses.

That’s why the brand’s product quiz results page doesn’t display the finished smoothie product. Instead, it presents layers of colorful fruit and vegetables within a glass. Much more evocative, the image translates the freshness and health benefits of the smoothie.

This sensory experience makes the product more appealing and a purchase much more likely.

3. Provide Social Proof

The Michelin guide has long indicated the best restaurants around the world. And even when sampling the culinary delights of the local bistro, we tend to check Google reviews and TripAdvisor before deciding where to eat.

As in many industries, the opinions of fellow customers significantly impact our purchasing decisions. When we see that others have enjoyed a dining experience — or a food or beverage product — we’re much more likely to try it.

So, another key food industry marketing strategy revolves around social proof, like customer reviews, testimonials from industry experts, mentions in respected publications, or the logos of respected and high-profile customers.

You can feature this social proof on your website, product packaging, and content marketing campaigns. You can even — as in the case of Plum Deluxe — showcase social proof on your quiz loading page, making it more likely that customers will purchase the products you recommend.  

4. Use Subscriptions to Retain Customers

Food kits, food delivery boxes, and subscriptions have been growing in popularity for years. They provide a range of benefits for customers, including:

• Convenience and time-savings

• Lower food and beverage bills

• Variety and customization

• Support healthy eating

• A more sustainable way to shop

  
  

They also benefit food and beverage brands. Subscriptions provide a steady stream of revenue, maximize customer lifetime value, and foster customer loyalty.

Plum Deluxe offers a subscription via its Tea Club program. Each month, subscribers receive a hand-selected seasonal tea based on their beverage preferences. There are discounts for longer subscriptions and the option to gift a subscription to a friend.

Food and beverage brands can also add subscription options to their quiz result page. Highlighting cost savings and convenience at this point in the buyer journey helps increase subscribers.

5. Create Bundles and Discounts

Next on our list of food marketing strategies are bundles and discounts, which incentivize larger purchases and increase average order value.

Smoosy, for example, offers a 2% discount on 12 packs of smoothie mix, free shipping on 15 packs, and 5% off on 20 packs.

Alternatively, bundle different but complementary food and beverage products, like wine and cheese or tea and biscuits. Offering tiered incentives also encourages customers to buy in bulk. Used strategically, these marketing tactics can help food and beverage brands drive sales and improve inventory turnover.

6. Use Retargeting Email Marketing

Retargeting customers through email marketing effectively re-engages shoppers and encourages repeat purchases. 

Plum Deluxe uses its product quiz and Klaviyo integration to send follow-up emails to quiz takers. These remind users of their quiz results and provide a link to the results page, encouraging conversions even after a user has left the website.

7. Create Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs are another food and beverage marketing strategy that develop long-lasting customer relationships. They boost repeat business and increase customer spending.

For example, Smoosy’s membership program offers points for purchases. Shoppers earn bonuses for completing their member profile, logging in with their social media account, and referring friends. Customers can then redeem these points for discounts on future orders.

Food and beverage loyalty programs can also offer free treats, complimentary delivery, branded merchandise, and early bird access to new products. Alternatively, incorporate gamification into your loyalty program, including leaderboards, badges, and levels (or tiers) to engage users.  

This food and beverage marketing strategy is a great way to inspire customers to spend more while gathering valuable data on their preferences and buying habits.

8. Launch Unexpected Collaborations

Unexpected and surprising brand collaborations generate a buzz, creating chatter on social media, PR coverage, and backlinks to your site. They also help attract new audiences.

Some of the most memorable food marketing collaborations include the partnership between Skittles and French’s Mustard and the collaboration between Pringles and The Caviar Co. Customers were intrigued by these flavor combinations, and many gave these novel products a try.

To launch a successful collaboration, you don’t have to work with a fellow food and beverage brand. Both McDonald’s and Pop-Tarts have enjoyed collaborations with footwear brand Crocs. Meanwhile, Coca-Cola teamed up with lifestyle brand Highsnobiety to release a limited-edition fashion collection inspired by classic Coke delivery uniforms.

The key to a successful collaboration is a carefully coordinated campaign across both brands, so you successfully reach both customer bases.  

9. Offer Limited Editions

Limited-edition products are another top food and beverage marketing strategy. They use scarcity and exclusivity tactics to generate FOMO — shoppers are scared of missing out when limited products are available.

This creates a sense of urgency, where shoppers are encouraged to purchase quickly, based on emotional — rather than logical — decision-making. It also drives brand awareness and interest.

Lay’s recently launched limited edition flavor options, including tzatziki, honey butter, and masala. By making these products available for a limited time only, the brand encouraged a surge in purchases and bulk buys. Lay’s also benefited from increased media coverage and brand visibility.

10. Create Helpful Content and Guides

Providing valuable content positions your food or beverage brand as an expert within the industry and builds trust with your target audience.

Food and beverage products provide a lot of scope for creating valuable, engaging, and interesting content. Think recipes, product comparison guides, ingredients spotlights, and nutritional tips.

Plum Deluxe has a blog that covers a host of tea-related topics. Customers can read about the differences between specific teas, social rituals relating to tea, and recipes for innovative teatime treats.

This fresh and original content supports the brand’s SEO strategy and provides interesting content for Plum Deluxe’s marketing channels.

Brands can also partner with food and beverage-focused influencers to expand their reach and create a bank of authentic and relatable marketing materials.

Enhance Your Food and Beverage Marketing With Visual Quiz Builder

A product quiz is a great way to enhance your food and beverage marketing strategy.

With Visual Quiz Builder, creating, launching, and managing your quiz is easy. With a user-friendly dashboard and AI tools, you can build branded quizzes that appeal to your audience.

Embed your quizzes within your Shopify website, then harness analytics, zero-party data, email capture, and integration with marketing software to drive customer loyalty and conversions.

Ready to get started? Sign up for a free Visual Quiz Builder trial and create your first quiz in minutes.

Food and Beverage Marketing FAQs

What is food and beverage marketing?

Food and beverage marketing is the promotion of food and drink products to customers through a variety of marketing channels, including brand websites, social media pages, promotional emails, product recommendation quizzes, and more. 

What are 5 examples of food marketing?

Plum Deluxe’s tea recommendation product quiz and Smoosy’s smoothie-flavor finder are both great examples of food marketing. Both use quiz marketing to help guide customers through the customer journey and towards a conversion with personalized product recommendations and a streamlined checkout process.

The unlikely collaborations between Skittles and French’s Mustard and Pringles and The Caviar Co, as well as McDonald’s collaborations with footwear brand Crocs are all examples of limited-edition food marketing strategies.

How do you promote food and beverages?

Food and beverages can be promoted through a range of marketing strategies, including product recommendation quizzes, social proof, subscription services, product bundles, retargeting emails, loyalty programs, limited editions, brand collaborations, and content marketing.