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It is sometimes the case that industries that look like they are the most fun are actually the least fun to work with. That is certainly not the case when it comes to candy and food marketing. It’s a lot of fun – and delicious, too!
The marketing and creative teams at digital marketing agency Grey Matter Direct in Mount Laurel, New Jersey have brought a huge amount of creativity and success to their candy marketing engagements.
As with all marketing and advertising initiatives, there is a lot involved in candy marketing. The first step that we take is to assess the market and to work with our clients on their marketing strategy. The Grey Matter Direct analytics team studies the competitive environment and comes up with a plan for introducing a candy product to the marketplace. Once our client has agreed to our plan, we them implement that plan.
Once our client’s marketing and sales plan is established, we get busy implementing it. If they are a startup and don’t have a website, we will create one. For a candy client, the website could be a brand identity site where the company and it’s brands are presented to consumers and retail partners. In some cases, a candy website will also offer its products for sale via e-commerce. Either way, the website becomes the pivot point for all of the company’s online marketing.
Contests and promotions are a very important part of the candy and sweets marketing mix. Promotional candy companies like Flix Candy have an advantage because licensed characters drive a lot of the purchase decision.
Promotions like the Marvel Avengers Giveaway that we created for Flix not only generated a lot of interest but also exposed people to the full range of their Marvel Pop Ups Lollipops.
Other promotions, like the Lip Pop Selfie contest create a lot of interest by getting people to post selfies of themselves with the product.
In this case, the hashtag #LipPopSelfie trended and generated huge numbers of submissions. This promotion went on to win in the 2019 Kids Choice Awards.
Social media memes and promotions are an important part of the drive-to-retail push of our toy and candy clients. To get a client’s products into major retail stores, those chains will often require the brand to invest in driving people to their online and physical stores.
The meme at right is designed to drive consumers into the Five Below retail chain to purchase Flix Candy’s “Oh Poop” line of walking candy dispensers.
Another tactic that is critical to success in candy marketing is engagement with social media influencers. For Flix Candy, in order to help influencers generate content for their audiences, we created a retail-style display case overflowing with all of the great Flix candies.
We sent these displays to video influencers on YouTube and Instagram and asked them to unbox the candy and show it to their audiences.
The YouTubers unboxed some of the candy and then gave away the display and the rest of the candy to a lucky fan.
This is just one of the many YouTuber videos we arranged for the Flix Candy display campaign.
There are two types of influencers today – those who will promote your products for free and those who want to be paid.
The latter category is growing significantly. Fortunately, Grey Matter Direct is a YouTube marketing agency who works with free YouTubers who have significant audiences.
While working with paid influencers who can generate large numbers of views and likes is great, we also recommend starting out with free YouTubers. Audiences in any genre tend to follow many different influencers and by combining a series of smaller, free, influencers, you can get to the kind of view counts that you would receive from a big, paid channel.
Email marketing is another powerful tool in candy marketing. Since moms & dads are critical in the decision-making process for buying candy for the home, it is helpful to talk directly to them through email.
Contests and promotions are a great way to build lists of moms to email. Once we create a permission email list of parents, we send emails with information about where to buy products, discounts and promotions.
Email is also the ideal way to remind parents about candy buying for the holidays. Easter, Halloween, Valentine’s Day and Christmas are all peak candy buying times and our emails remind customers to stock up on our client’s offerings.
Please note that child protection is at the center of any marketing that could resonate with kids. That is why we place so much emphasis on building the relationship between parents and our clients.
