How to Respond to a Crisis as a Packaged Food Brand to Keep and Make New Customers

 

Are you wondering what you should be doing right now as a package food producer amidst the covid-19 crisis? I'm going to give you three things that you need to be focused on in your business right now to maintain your current customers, and also to potentially grow customers now, and in the future. These three things apply to all package producers of any type of food or beverage whether you are a farmer's market vendor, selling to retailers, selling to food service, or you are selling online as an ecommerce business. For the best packaged food advice, please subscribe to this channel and click on the bell. You'll be notified every time I release a new video all about starting and growing a profitable packaged food business. 

 

Hey there, I'm Siri Kimball and I am the creator of food business success. I have helped hundreds of packaged food business entrepreneurs start and grow profitable packaged food businesses, including getting on the shelves of major retailers and online stores all across the country. 

 

Whether your business is booming right now, or it's come to a screeching halt during this covid-19 crisis, these three things that I'm going to give to you next are things that you need to be implementing right now to help retain customers, or to grow them in the future. I'm going to go over each one and give you some great examples and ideas on how to implement them. Okay, let's talk about each one and I'll give you some ideas on how to implement them quickly. 

 

Communication

You need to launch or continue your crisis communication now. So if you haven't done this, then this needs to be your first priority. What you want to do is craft a statement that is about your business functionality, how it is operating under the current climate, let people know whether you are open for business or not, and how they can support you. If you do have employees, mention how you're taking measures on ensuring their welfare. Keep the message on brand, but I do caution you to keep it respectful and in a sensitive tone, being aware of the situation going on around us. This statement should go out in an email to your email list as well as posted first thing on your website, social media platforms, and in any other platforms that allow it. You want to pin that to the top of the feed so that's the first thing people see if they come to your social media platforms directly. 

 

Call To Action

The second thing you want to do is to clarify your call to action. I'm going to call this your CTA. Within your CTA, you want to clarify your message, and tell your customers what you want them to do next. For example, let people know how they can purchase your products. Other examples are offering incentives like free shipping or bundling packages. With some freebies you offer, you could ask for donations to employee relief funds or a go fund me in some cases. Some businesses are also promoting customers to purchase gift cards in advance. You want to be really clear in your message; what should your customer do next, and how can they support you. You want to include the CTA in all of your communications that we just talked about like your email,website, etc. If you already sent out that first round of crisis communication, but you did not have a CTA, then go ahead and send a followup email in a reasonable, appropriate amount of time that includes your CTA. 

 

Engage With Your Community

And lastly, I want you to think about how to engage with your community. People are looking for things to do. They have problems that need solving and they need comfort.You need to be really proactive and think about what value can you offer to your customers right now. Think about the problems that they're experiencing and what kind of a solution you can offer. People are probably bored. They're looking for fast ways to get food on the table, indulgences (to make this whole shelter in place or quarantine a little bit better), ways to boost their immunity,  stay healthy,recipe ideas, and they're just looking to be entertained to some extent. This is your opportunity to get out there and really connect with your loyal fans and create new fans. 

 

An example of something you can do is doing a prerecorded video or doing a live video of you using your product. You can be putting together a recipe or showing people how easy it is to make a meal using your products. You can put together new recipe ideas and send those out to your customers and fans using social media, or an email. I love the idea of using giveaways. This has an added feature and added benefit of growing your email list. So if you set it up correctly, then you are actually gaining people's emails. I highly recommend looking for partners to help split some of the costs, especially if you're going to do some advertising. The pay per click costs are down significantly because there are so many people on social media right now. Giveaways are a great way to engage and pick up new customers and new raving fans. 

 

You can also pose a question. Ask people questions on your social media. Ask them to get involved and bite them in. “What are your recipes?”, “How are you spending your time?”, or  “What flavor would you like to see from our brand?”. Find ways to engage with your customers right now. They need you more than ever. This is going to build super raving fans, and brand loyalty that you cannot buy going forward. 

 

So those are the three things that I really want you to be focusing on right now in your business to manage your customers that you currently have and to build a new client base. If you're looking for inspiration on how exactly to word some of this, I just highly recommend you go find some brands that you already like and trust. Go onto their websites and social media and take a look at some examples and then pull together pieces of those that feel like they fit you and your brand and feel authentic for your customers. You are not too small of a brand to start doing this now and communicating with your customers. They want to hear from you. People have time, and they're opening their emails, So get in front of them and show that you are being responsible and you are being responsive to this crisis as a business. 

 

Are you ready to start or grow a profitable packaged food business? Grab the free business checklist and read my top 10 mistakes and how to avoid them. A free PDF by clicking on the link below. I highly recommend you head over to www.foodbizsuccess.com and check out all the awesome courses like the accelerator. I have a ton of free resources on that website as well. Use this time to really dig in and start that dream of yours and let's make your food business real!

Close

50% Complete

Two Step

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.