There are many different ways to grow your sales numbers. You can increase your market penetration, by going deeper within your existing market in order to reach new customers. You can focus on market expansion, moving into new geographical areas to find new people. Finally, you can increase buy rate, finding new ways for your existing customers to use your product so they buy it more frequently.
Today on the Real Food Brands Podcast, host and Brand Strategist Katie Mleziva breaks down how to think about alternative usage ideas for your brand. These are new and different ways for your customers to use your product they already buy and love, which hopefully leads them to buy it more frequently. We have a few ideas to get you started, but what we really want to happen is that we’re able to spark some ideas of your own based on what you know about your products and consumer.
A Glowing Example of Alternative Usage Ideas
The first question you may have is what exactly defines an alternative usage idea. When you think about what this term means, a go-to example is Elmer’s glue and the slime craze. For those of you that don’t have a younger child, you can make slime at home by combining glue with contact lens solution. It’s gotten to the point where Elmer’s has created a special line of glues (colored, glow, sparkles, etc.) that are specifically promoted for making slime.
So an alternative usage is something that’s not what your product was originally intended for, but that you’ve identified or heard from your consumers is sort of aftermarket DIY hack or new spin on something that wasn’t obvious at first blush. This can lead to incremental growth—increasing buy rate among customers you already have. With that in mind, here are some ideas that may get you started thinking about new alternative usages for your product.
10 Alternative Food and Beverage Product Usage Ideas (+ 5 of your own!)
- In a soup…maybe working with a Vitamix blogger to get your idea out there?
- Blended into a smoothie
- Mixed in with oatmeal or as a cereal topping
- Crumbled up for a crust in sweet or savory recipes
- Chopped up in an egg bake
- In go-to dishes like lasagna, quesadillas, pad thai, mac ‘n cheese that can hold up to experimentation
- Rolled up in a stuffed chicken breast
- As a mix-in for hummus or other dips
- As a pizza topping (or a fruit pizza if you have a sweeter flavor profile)
- Mixed into cookie dough or a plain dough
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Katie suggests picking out three from this list that spark your interest or get you thinking, and go from there. Just like with anything else in the food and beverage business, you won’t know what will work until you (or your team) get in the kitchen and try some things out. Don’t be afraid to reach out to your customers to ask how they’re using your product. The answers may surprise you.
How to Share These Alternative Usage Ideas With Your Consumers
After you’ve tested out some ideas and have a better sense of what works, there are a few ways you can make some noise. The first and most obvious place to go is your own website and social media. You can also reach out to other food brands to see if they might want to cross promote and share audiences, which is a great way to get in front of new people.
One fun way to both come up with new ideas and market at the same time is to run a recipe contest. Be careful, however, that you’re able to handle the volume of entries that may come in. In the episode, Katie tells an anecdote from her days at Kraft Foods when they ran a cheesecake promo where the entire Philadelphia Cream Cheese brand team had to judge twenty-five cheesecake recipes a day.
In the spirit of sharing, we’d love to know what ideas you’ve gotten from this episode. What outside the box usages have you come up with for your product? We can all use someone to celebrate the wins both big and small, so reach out in the Round Table Facebook group and let us know.
Now, let’s go shake up shopping carts!
In This Episode:
- Three approaches for growing your sales.
- What an alternative usage is and how you can learn from Elmer’s glue.
- How alternative usages can result in incremental growth.
- Why your product might work for something that may surprise you.
- How to brainstorm new usages for your product.
- 10 ideas to get started.
- How to take advantage of alternative usages to market more effectively.
Quotes:
“We want people to think about the general flavor profiles: sweet, salty, creamy, crunchy. What is the flavor profile and texture that you’ve got and how else can they use that? We want them to get creative.” – @RealFoodBrands
“Getting insights straight from your consumers is always fantastic. People usually love to tell you about themselves and their great ideas ” – @RealFoodBrands
“Even if you can’t go play mad scientist in the kitchen today, the best time to think out of the box is right now, when your interest in piqued and you aren’t distracted.” – @RealFoodBrands
“When you’re in-person, some of these alternative usage ideas can be a nice bridge to get people to not only try the product but use it in multiple different ways so they will be more likely to use it up and repurchase the product.” – @RealFoodBrands
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