Whether it’s during a key selling season, major holiday, or just anytime throughout the year, meat brands tend to assume their retail partners will magically do the marketing work for them. The reality is however that retailers are not going to conduct marketing programs to support your brand (unless you pay them for it,) and most grocery retailers in the USA are naturally more keen to promote on their private label brands over yours.
If you are happy to play in the commodity space (and therefore be very easy to replace at any time,) maybe you don’t need to invest in marketing, but if you want to build a brand, command a premium for all the unique attributes, provenance, and certifications your product represents and stay long-term with the retail customers you already have, you must invest in consumer marketing.
If your meat brand conducts smart consumer marketing programs, like public relations or social media marketing, around key holidays (or even better, year-round,) you can provide even more value to the meat buyers at your retail customers. By being a good marketing partner to your customers, you can help ensure the longevity of your relationship. You can also help ensure that shoppers are not just buying that ham or lamb once a year at Easter, but will consider buying your meat products for other special events or perhaps on a weekly basis too. At the very least, brands should have public relations campaigns around their biggest selling seasons and holidays.
According to our shopper research, we know there are some consumers very passionate about meat, but it tends to be a pretty low-interest category for the majority of shoppers. For that reason, we need marketing programs to keep meat brands and their products top of mind. Sure, meat-eating consumers may buy meat often enough, but it’s usually not something they want to spend much time thinking about. A good meat marketing program aims to leverage all those unique attributes farmers and ranchers work so hard to create (like farm animal welfare, non-GMO, organic, pasture raised, etc) and leave consumers feeling good about their meat purchase. We know consumers that feel good about what they buy are more likely to tell others, who will also buy your products.
