Connect with us

MARKETING

Wild Planet Foods + Instacart

Published

on

Wild Planet Foods + Instacart

Tinuiti Live 2023 was jam packed with thoughtful keynotes, engaging networking opportunities, and practical fireside chats. This year’s sessions challenged us to question our way to clarity and there’s no better way to do just that than with an insightful Q&A.

Elizabeth Marsten, VP of Commerce Media Strategic Services at Tinuiti sat down with David DeRobbio, Partnerships from Instacart and Max Rudy, Director of E-commerce from Wild Planet Foods to chat about all things Instacart during their Tinuiti Live breakout session. Wild Planet Foods is a sustainability-driven canned seafood brand – whose vision is to transform fishing into a force for good. Tin fish is experiencing a renaissance these days and Wild Planet was on a mission to take on its competitors, the whales of tinned fish, with the help of both Tinuiti and Instacart. 

To kick off the session, Marsten asked Rudy why he was interested in joining the team at Wild Planet, and at first, many of us were surprised to find out that he wasn’t…

“I was not originally interested in working for a tin fish company due to environmental concerns, etc. but when Wild Planet shared their story and mission, I had a change of heart. Not only is this a better tasting product, but it is doing everything right in the sustainability area to try to be a net positive solution.” 

—  Max Rudy, Director of E-commerce from Wild Planet Foods

 

Advertisement

Wild Planet is the first large-scale sustainably focused seafood company. This is a cause that is integral to the brand and they are successfully showcasing their mission throughout their content and are inspiring consumers to make thoughtful purchases. Wild Planet is currently stealing market share from bigger brands and their strategy on Instacart has played a huge role in that, but Rudy shared with attendees how that wasn’t always the case… 

“When I first started with Wild Planet, my Instacart representative said that we were the only brand eligible for a coupon for free ad space because we were the only ones not spending on Instacart.” 

 

And while they certainly weren’t the first on Instacart, the brand has come a long way since… 

 

“We started our relationship with Tinuiti and within our first quarter, Instacart has become by far our best practice and our driving force of retail media.”

—  Max Rudy, Director of E-commerce from Wild Planet Foods

 

Advertisement

Wild planet didn’t have any funds allocated to Instacart advertising last year, but noted that, “you’re doing business on Instacart whether you take care of it or not, that’s why it’s important to treat Instacart like a customer. Your ability to utilize the tool set gives brands the ability to really democratize the shelf and be able to compete with really big players.”

During the discussion, it was acknowledged that retailers are inherently brick and mortar establishments and that transitioning into a digital company overnight is not a feasible option for many stores. But with the help of Instacart, grocery stores can make a seamless transition into the digital landscape.

“Instacart is a great opportunity for challenger brands to get that virtual shelf space that they might not necessarily get in a traditional brick and mortar experience.”

—  David DeRobbio, Partnerships from Instacart

 

DeRobbio explained how Instacart provides brands with a level playing field with the tools they offer. He described that no matter what the budget is, if you’re passionate about receiving market share, and dialing up your presence digitally, you can do just that with the help of Instacart.

DeRobbio went on to share a few examples of how Tinuiti is working with Wild Planet to achieve success on Instacart through retargeting opportunities and the success they’ve already seen. For example, Wild Planet retargeting display has driven an increase of +54% new to brand sales

Advertisement

 

 

“If you think about what it takes to be able to get on the shelf at the store, and then you times that by over 1,100 retailers – Instacart is truly a productivity enabler.” 

—  Max Rudy, Director of E-commerce from Wild Planet Foods

 

 

Rudy acknowledged how Wild Planet is asking potential customers to take the plunge on their product considering it’s $3-4 more than a regular can of tuna. They highlighted how it’s so important to show real product imagery, content, and solid brand messaging through Instacart’s suite of tools so consumers can be confident in the purchase they are making.

Advertisement

To wrap up the session, Marsten, moved the conversation into the future and asked DeRobbio what should brands do and how should they think about Instacart in 2023 and 2024? He went on to share a few tools brands should consider using moving forward including:

 

  • Brand pages are completely free dedicated landing pages that advertisers can create on Instacart. They empower CPG industry partners to effectively guide consumers, both within and beyond the Instacart platform, towards a thoughtfully curated and easily navigable destination. Brand pages serve as a convenient shopping hub, allowing consumers to delve into an extensive product portfolio and explore a wide range of offerings.

 

  • Shoppable display ads blend personalized messaging, powerful imagery, and “add-to-cart” functionality to drive consideration and bigger baskets. With Shoppable Display, available via Self Service in Ads Manager, brands can easily deliver a more engaging shopping experience.

 

  • Shoppable video encapsulates all the features of Shoppable Display with an added video component. Shoppable Video gives brands the opportunity to capture a user’s attention with auto-play videos that engage shoppers on a new level. These in-line ads, targetable by behavior or keywords, allow brands to tell their story, share their products, and captivate consumers through the added use of motion and sound.

 

DeRobbio also mentioned that Instacart will continue to innovate in more upper-funnel opportunities including releasing a video display API. He also teased new AI features that will help shoppers easily add items from a recipe to their Instacart shopping cart. We’ll keep you posted as Instacart releases more information on these exciting AI features.

“It’s so exciting as the different tool sets come out, there’s always a different opportunity. As a brand you just have to have your story straight and know what you want to accomplish at that point in the funnel.”

—  Max Rudy, Director of E-commerce from Wild Planet Foods

 

Ready to think bigger about your brand’s strategy on Instacart? Contact us today to get started on the platform and make sure to check out this session (and additional Tinuiti Live sessions) on-demand

Advertisement

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address

MARKETING

How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

Published

on

A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

Advertisement

Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

Advertisement

Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

Advertisement

“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

Advertisement

Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

Advertisement

Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

Trends in Content Localization – Moz

Published

on

Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

Published

on

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

(more…)

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

Trending

Follow by Email
RSS