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Full Transcript

Stephanie
Welcome to Small Bites with Stephanie. This is me sharing my three decades in CPG. I'm going to boil it all down to one quick lesson at a time. No lectures, no workbooks, just something useful you can take with you.

Have you ever noticed how some brands get fierce, loyal fans everywhere they show up, and others get tried once and forgotten? It is rarely about the product alone. So here are my five most important bullets for creating brand love.

All right, you ready?

Now the first one is actually table steaks. This is a great product, but it's got to solve a real problem or fill a real gap. The truth of the matter is what it has to do is it's got to be something better than how people are already doing whatever they're doing to begin with. One of my favorite examples is crustables. It's sandwiches that people can buy, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches already packed in a box with the crusts taken off, right? Remember that product? That product is really fascinating because how were people solving that before? Well, they were making their lunch. So now all of a sudden there's a new product on the market. So think of it in terms of how were they solving the problem before? Here's something better. It doesn't have to be what is another product already on the market, right? Because there weren't already peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the market.

All right, number two, consistency at every touch point. Same taste, same performance. It ships on time every time. Think of every single touch point any customer or consumer has with your brand and make sure that it's the same every time because one bad experience will undo dozens of great ones. So you really want to go through all of those components. And some of them are not that sexy. We love marketing because it's sexy, but the truth of the matter is all that logistics and operations is incredibly important.

Three, easy to find again and again. Your product is always in stock, available where they shop. You've got subscribe and save. Loyalty dies the moment they can't find you. People move on very quickly. They're fickle, even when they love you. Something else gets their attention. Think of that dog, right? Squirrel, they're going, they're going after the squirrel. They're no longer in the conversation. That's the consumer. We want them just make sure that we're always servicing them where they want us.

All right. The next one is real engagement. Make sure you have content-rich emails and social, behind-the-scenes access, meet the founders' moments, things that really make the brand feel human.

And finally, being heard. This is really important. Be responsive to customer service. That, you know, make sure you actually listen to feedback. Act on it. Things are going to go wrong. They always do. It's okay. It's how you fix it that matters.

None of this happens by accident. All of this is deliberately built, one touch point at a time.

So we are food business success. We mentor early stage founders with real coaching strategy, tools, and systems to help them avoid common pitfalls and build a brand that lasts. We're also home to the Launch and Grow Accelerator. So until next time, happy selling.