Food influencers are one of the most popular creator genres. This makes food influencer marketing a great way to introduce your brand to the world. However, the process can be a bit tricky.
There are plenty of food influencers, and plenty of influencer marketplaces. In this article, we’ll be going over what food influencer marketing is, why you should be using it, top marketing trends in the field, and a step-by-step guide on running successful food influencer marketing campaigns.
What Is Food Influencer Marketing?
Food influencer marketing is when restaurants, food-related companies, or chefs team up with content creators to promote their products. There are plenty of food influencers on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Since a promotion for you is also content for these creators, these collaborations typically go smoothly.
So first, let’s take a look at the why, and then move on to the how of food influencer marketing.
Benefits of Food Influencer Marketing
There are many benefits to using food influencer marketing over traditional marketing, from the medium allowing you to be more specific and choose a targeted audience, to budget and variety reasons. Let’s explore the benefits of food influencer marketing together.
1. Targeted Audience
Working with content creators allows you to promote to a very targeted audience. Let’s say you’re promoting a new diet food item or a vegan restaurant, you can choose healthy food influencers. This ensures that the audience you’re targeting is interested in your product.
2. Building Trust and Authenticity
Every day, people grow more suspicious of traditional marketing. According to data, 84% of millennials don’t trust traditional advertisements. At times like this, influencer marketing can offer a healthy alternative.
Consumers are far more likely to trust a creator they see every day. The idea that this is only one person, as opposed to a huge company, and they’re just sharing their new favourite burger joint, is significantly more effective than a billboard.
3. Boosting Engagement
If you’re trying to gain a social media presence, then it makes the most sense to advertise on social media. Food influencer marketing can give you 1k followers on Instagram in 5 minutes, as it is a much better solution for boosting engagement.
4. Variety
There are plenty of different creators who can be active in your food influencer marketing campaign. From workout influencers to kid influencers, there are various genres of creators that can promote your brand.
This means your marketing won’t get boring, and it continues to grab attention throughout time.
5. Budget-Friendly
Promoting your brand can be a mutually beneficial deal for your brand and influencers. Your restaurant is the content. This means that your marketing efforts can be significantly more budget-friendly with food influencers.
Step-by-Step Guide on Food Influencer Marketing
So now that you know why you should opt for food influencer marketing, it’s time to learn exactly how this process goes. The most important step is knowing exactly what you’re looking for. So let’s jump into it.
1. Have Clear Goals and KPIs
First and foremost, you should determine your goals and KPIs. So you need to know what you’re hoping to reach, and how close you are to reaching it. Make sure to relay this information across your team, so every member is aware of what they’re trying to achieve.
2. Choose the Right Influencers
It’s also important to pick the right creators. Here’s a list of everything you should keep in mind when picking influencers:
Avoid Over-prioritizing Numbers
While follower counts and total likes can be important, they should not be your number one priority. There are factors that are significantly more important when choosing a creator. Engagement rate is also a big contributing factor.
A massive follower count may be great for increasing brand visibility, but it’s not the best choice for converting views to sales.
Don’t Overlook Company Values
When choosing a digital creator to work with, make sure their values align with your company. This can oftentimes be more important than follower count and engagement rate. Mostly because you’re not just selling a product, you’re selling a brand.
Let’s say you run a similar business model to Hooters. In that case, working with Christian influencers is not just unhelpful but also harmful for your brand. So your influencers should match your brand.
Don’t Ignore Macro or Micro Influencers
We already briefly mentioned that micro influencers can get you the most sales, and macro influencers offer you more brand visibility. For the most successful campaign, it’s important to make use of both of these resources.
Do Not Skip on Reviewing Social Footprint
The internet can occasionally feel like a minefield. To avoid accidentally giving your brand a bad reputation, make sure to check out each creator’s online footprint. If there are any controversies that feel too much for your business, exclude that specific influencer.
Do Not Skip on Influencer Marketing Platforms
A great place to find creators is through influencer marketing platforms. While some of these solutions may not be particularly budget-friendly, there are free influencer marketing platforms that you can opt for as well.
3. Have Clear Budgeting and Compensation Plans
As already mentioned, having realistic expectations is important. This also includes budgeting and compensation. Set your budget and have concise compensation plans that allow for flexibility without letting things get out of hand.
4. Keep Your Members in the Loop
You have a team to work with, so make sure to keep everyone in the loop. From budgeting and goals to tools and data, provide access to all the members of your team to get the best results.
5. Develop a Plan and Ideas and Execute Them
The next step is making your plans and executing them. Introduce your own ideas, but allow for creativity. You have handpicked the creators on your team; let them share their experience and bring their own twists to your campaign.
6. Monitor and Engage
After starting your campaign, it’s time to monitor and evaluate your success. Influencer marketing campaigns can be very successful, but they need constant supervision. It’s also helpful to engage with your campaign from the brand’s side.
Like, share, and comment. Cross-promoting can help your campaign perform better and allows you to build long-term relationships with influencers. This method works best if your timing is accurate.
7. Measure Results and ROI
The last step of any marketing effort is measuring results. There are many benefits to influencer marketing, but you won’t be able to get the full effect without clear measurements. Being aware of small details allows you to make the necessary changes and tweaks, leading to better ROI with each new campaign.
Now that you know how to pick the right influencers, how to run a food influencer marketing campaign, and why you should do it in the first place, let’s take a look at some of the top trends and success stories in food influencer marketing.
Top Marketing Trends in the Food Influencer Marketing Field
You never have to abide by the trends to be successful, but it certainly helps. Here is a list of trends that typically work in food influencer marketing, and some success stories of brands or local food joints that made use of them.
1. Short-Form Videos
Short-form content is currently dominating media, and marketing is no different. Creating catchy, short, and vivid videos is a great way to grab your audience’s attention. An example of this marketing technique is Takis’ Face the Intensity campaign.
Along with the launch of their new flavors, Takis started a campaign with the slogan “Face the Intensity”. This campaign capitalized on Gen Z’s interest in gaming and partnered with content creator Ninja to bring the heat. Short videos were the main medium used for this campaign.
2. Food Competitions
Another option is starting a competition and letting your audience do their thing. This is best explained with an example. You might have noticed the popular candy Twix has a left or right tag on its packages.
Following a campaign by Mars, Incorporated, consumers started making videos about the left and right candies. This had turned into a competition about who could taste the difference between the two. The campaign led to a lot of user-generated content for Twix and was an overall success.
3. Cross-industry Collaborations
While influencer marketing itself is a cross-industry collaboration, you can take it one step further by starting a brand that’s active across two or more industries as well. For an example of this, let’s take a look at PRIME.
An energy drink carrying the face of YouTube’s biggest personalities, PRIME managed to carve a corner in the gaming and fitness industry. With Logan Paul and KSI on the cover, this product was bound to be a success.
4. Collaborate with Celebrities
Another successful marketing trend in the food industry is collaborating with celebrities. This is more than just putting a face on your product. For a better explanation, let’s take a look at the chain bakers, Crumble Cookies.
This bakery offers unique flavors every week, and does so in weekly collaboration with celebrities. Their Kardashian/Jenner week took the internet by storm, making them a well-known name in LA.
5. Local Influencer Activation
If you’re a smaller local brand or food joint, then using the power of local influencers may be greatly beneficial. A good example of this method is El Pollo Loco’s Mexican grill restaurant and its Tostada launch.
When the new item was coming out, El Pollo launched a massive campaign across social media. With the help of various macro and micro influencers, the Mexican restaurant managed to gain millions of views and hundreds of customers.
Ainfluencer: Best Solution for Food Influencer Marketing
We already mentioned the benefits of using an influencer marketing platform. If you’re a brand or business looking to make use of one, then Ainfluencer can be a great start. There is so much that makes this platform special; let’s take a look at a few of them together.
As a DIY influencer marketing platform, Ainfluencer offers you the opportunity to fully customize your experience. You can chat with unlimited influencers and negotiate pricing until every involved party is satisfied.
In addition to that, Ainfluencer is completely free. There are no platform fees for brands, the only fee is the 20% taken from the influencer’s side of every deal. So the platform is 100% free for businesses.
Ainfluencer Features
Here is a list of this platform’s key features:
- Discovery features with more than 20 filters and AI-assisted matching,
- 5+ Million creators on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube,
- In-depth reports on audiences,
- Chat feature and direct communications,
- Escrow system offering secure payments,
- Campaign creation and streamlined management,
- Global access with 6 supporting languages,
- Seamless integration with Shopify,
- Unlimited access to all features, including chats, searches, and campaigns.
So what are you waiting for? Sign up on Ainfluencer now to enjoy the food influencer marketing field!
Conclusion
Food influencer marketing is one of the best ways to gain an audience. Food brands, restaurants, cafes, and all kinds of food joints can make use of this marketing strategy. Hopefully, influencer marketing campaigns can result in impressive success.
FAQs
1. Is Food Influencer Marketing Expensive?
Not particularly. Since food creators’ content revolves around reviews and trying new places, most brand deals are mutually beneficial in terms of content as well. This is why, in comparison to the likes of fitness influencer marketing, food influencer marketing is more budget-friendly.
2. How Do I Connect With Food Influencers For Affiliate Marketing?
While influencer marketing platforms are perfect for the purpose they serve, they often don’t include any affiliate marketing services. An Amazon affiliate marketing platform, such as AlgoRift, offers access to the most profitable aspects of affiliate marketing.
The platform can help both affiliates and brands by:
- Helping affiliates find high-converting products,
- Optimizing strategies, promotional and otherwise,
- Tracking performance to enable brands to discover the most helpful affiliates,
- Refining collaborations and maximizing ROI on affiliate campaigns.
Join AlgoRift now and enjoy the thousands of affiliates on the platform.
3. Which Social Media Platform Is Best for Food Influencer Marketing?
Since short-form videos are the best way to capitalize on food influencer marketing, TikTok is the best platform to be active on. Instagram is close behind, and YouTube Shorts is after that. However, there is no one answer for marketing techniques.
