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Influencer Marketing: A Recipe for Success in Promoting Canadian Food Products

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Charlotte Leung

By Charlotte Leung,Contributor” on April 21, 2023

www.linkedin.com/in/charlotte-leung-pr

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Introduction

The Canadian food market has a huge potential market for the industry to promote with its exclusive rich and diverse culinary heritage, artisanal wand specialty products to appeal to a wide range of tastes and preferences. Alight with the recent emergence of influencer marketing as a powerful tool for promoting products and services, including those within the food industry.

With the power of influencer marketing, PR agencies can work to bring these products to the forefront, boosting their brand awareness and ultimately increasing sales. In this blog post, the role of influencer marketing will be discussed in promoting Canadian food products and how PR agencies can collaborate with influencers to reach a wider audience.

The Power of Influencer Marketing in Relation to the Food Market

Influencer marketing is based on the idea that people are more likely to trust recommendations from individuals they admire or respect, rather than direct advertising from a brand. With the benefits of promotion from a trusted individual followers trust, this form of marketing is influential and reliable compared to traditional advertisements.

Especially in the Food Market, customers rely on the visual appeal in purchasing the product as it is what they are going to consume into their body. The sensory nature of the food experience allows social media platforms to be a perfect stage for influencers to showcase their culinary creations and recommendations to promote the products.

Sensory appeal: Food is a sensory experience, and influencers can captivate their audience by showcasing visually appealing dishes and sharing their personal experiences with taste and texture. This sensory appeal can encourage followers to try new products and recipes based on the influencer’s recommendation.

When food influencers share their culinary journeys with success in cooking the recipe with the food ingredients, it makes the product endorsement more authentic and relatable. The food recipes shared by influencers can increase brand visibility and generate interest with the content they generated. Their trusted followers will believe in their honest reviews and recommendation to take action in purchasing the product. With live streams where these food influencers broadcast themselves cooking with the ingredients, they can even interact with their followers in providing recommendations on how to cook or what to cook with these ingredients to further promote the products.

Furthermore, certain food influencers focus on specific niches, such as veganism or keto-diet which can enable brands to target a highly relevant audience with tailored messages and promotions, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.

All these benefits from influencer marketing to the food market can create real-time engagement through social media platforms to create a sense of community and promote the food products.

The Role of Influencer Marketing in Promoting Canadian Food Products

With the rise and popularity of social media platforms, Influencer Marketing is one of the most effective promotional methods. When influencers are promoting the products from their perspective, it makes the promotion more effective as consumers trust the opinions of their favourite influencers rather than in traditional advertisements.

The power of Influencer Marketing lies in a couple of factors, including authenticity, trust and credibility, targeted audience, increased brand visibility and awareness, high engagement rates and cost-effectiveness.

  1. Authenticity: As Influencers like to share their life and things they enjoy or like to use with their followers, these contents are seen to be genuine and relatable content, making their promotions less advertising-like. By incorporating Canadian food products seamlessly into their content, an authentic connection can be created between the brand and its audience. This engaging content can showcase the unique aspects of Canadian food products to resonate with the brand’s target audience.
  2. Trust and credibility: Influencers often have a strong fan base and connection with their audience who will believe in their sharings and buy the products they mentioned and share as reliable sources of information and recommendations. This trust is an endorsement in increasing the likelihood of consumers purchasing the promoted item.
  3. A targeted audience and high engagement rates: Influencers usually have a dedicated following within a specific niche, allowing brands to target a highly relevant audience. Once the Canadian Food Brand has streamlined a certain audience type to pitch the products to, they can simply find an influencer with relevant followers. This targeted approach can lead to higher engagement and conversion rates compared to broader, less focused marketing efforts. It is also easier and more effective for PR agencies to target the right audience for a particular Canadian food product, potentially driving sales to the brand.
  4. Increased brand visibility and awareness: Collaborating with influencers can significantly increase a brand’s visibility on social media platforms. With the shared content featuring a brand’s products or services, their audience becomes more aware of the brand, which can lead to increased interest and potential sales. When compared to the traditional advertisements that would only be shown to a random scope of people in the public, there will be a higher chance that these products can be seen by more audiences. By partnering with the right influencers, PR agencies can help Canadian food products reach a wider audience, expanding their reach and increasing brand awareness.
5. Cost-Effectiveness: Influencer Marketing Can Be More Cost-Effective Than Traditional Advertising Methods, Especially When Working With Micro-Influencers. With The Choice To Choose From Nano, Micro, And Macro-Influencers, Different Brands Can Choose Different Types Of Influencers To Work With Matching Their Budget In Promoting The Products To Maximize Their Profits. Even Working With Nano-Influencers Is Useful As They Usually Have An Audience Who Are Very Engaged, Making The Collaboration An Affordable And Effective Option.

Canadian Food Market

With the benefit of working with influencers, storytelling can be served in a way to promote Canadian food products with diverse aspects from introducing cultural origins to the locally-sourced ingredients used. Influencers can bring these stories to life by fostering a deeper connection between the audience and the product.

The Canadian food market is a diverse and thriving industry with Canada’s multicultural heritage and vast natural resources alongside the focus on local and sustainable ingredients. With the characteristic of Canada being a culturally diverse country, there is a wide range of diversified cuisine to be enjoyed including culinary from Indigenous, French, British and Asian.

Canadians are also becoming more focused on locally-sourced and sustainable ingredients prioritizing the use of fresh, local and seasonal ingredients to support local farmers and producers. By using more organic products, there is a trend to be more health-conscious and people are seeking healthier options for food including organic, gluten-free, plant-based, and other health-conscious food options in the market.

The Canadian food market is also known for its artisanal and specialty products, ranging from hand-crafted cheeses and charcuterie to small-batch chocolates and craft beverages. These products often emphasize quality, craftsmanship, and unique flavours, appealing to consumers looking for distinctive food experiences. The uniqueness of these artisanal products is a new market for different Canadian Food Brands to branch out and promote their products.

Furthermore, the geographical location of Canada brings an advantage in providing seafood and natural resources as a food export market reaching over 190 countries worldwide for salmon, lobster and mussels. In order to keep up Canada’s reputation for quality, safety and sustainability in Canadian food products, influencers can be used to promote and sustain the quality of the Canadian food market locally and worldwide, making the Canadian food industry an exciting and dynamic sector for both local and international businesses.

How PR Agencies Can Work with Influencers

PR agencies can work with influencers in the food market by developing effective strategies and collaborations to promote Canadian food products or brand image. Firstly, PR agencies have to identify the right influencers through extensive research in aligning the target audience of the brand to the brand’s value such as the influencer’s audience demographics, engagement rates, and content style. These food influencers need to have a good engagement rate of following and their followers have to be interested in Canadian food products. In finding the right influencer, a clear campaign strategy has to be developed in listing a clear and mutually beneficial strategy for the partnership with a clear outline of expectations, deliverables, and goals. It also has to highlight the client’s products or services such as sponsored posts and products.
PR agencies serve an important role to create guidelines for influencers in promoting the product and as a bridge to connect them to the brand. Depending on the food brand, PR agencies can give different scopes of creative freedom for influencers to voice the client’s product adhering to the client’s brand guidelines. PR agencies are responsible to establish clear goals and KPIs with measurable objectives for the campaign and to track the success of the collaboration using relevant metrics like engagement rate, reach and conversions. Agencies should make use of the first collaboration experience in fostering long-term relationships in building relationships with influencers through social media, events or email. This can be done by offering exclusive events and compensation to influencers to ensure they feel valued and motivated to create high-quality content. In evaluating the success of the collaboration, PR agencies have to keep track of the campaign’s progress continuously by comparing it to the initial objectives and KPIs and providing feedback to the influencer to optimize the performance. This is useful for both the client and the influencer to improve their future work. In addition, the constant conversation can help maintain ongoing communication for potential work and to leverage influencer-created content to repurpose and share the content generated by the influencer across the client’s marketing channels.

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