What you missed at Bread & Jam 2017
This year Tabl were honoured to be asked to speak at one of Bread & Jam’s Growth Lab sessions. Since opening shop (so to speak) a little over a year ago, we’ve learnt a lot and were so excited to share with others.
As a company that puts our community at the forefront of everything we do, we thought it was only right to talk about what love had to do with running your business and how working with influencers can help boost brand awareness and help you tell your brand’s story.
Here are the highlights in case you missed it:
Most food businesses are trying to compete for the prettiest picture on Instagram or creating top down recipe videos because that’s what everyone else is doing. But what about that gap in the market that you fit into? How do you make yourself stand out from the crowd?
Find your 5%, suggests Kimberly. What is it that you do that sets you apart from others in the business? It may be where you source your ingredients from or even how you package your goods, but focus on that, as it’s that 5% that will get you noticed by the right audience.
Knowing who your brand is and how your brand behaves is key says Sarah from Granola for Gangsters. Start thinking about your brand as a person — how do they speak and who would they be friends with in the real world? When you know this, then you’ll be able to start bringing your brand to life.
Granola for Gangsters made a conscious decision to focus on one social media platform to tell their brand story. Instead splitting their time across all social platforms, they use Instagram as their main form of communication. Mazz suggests putting in one hour a day to reply to comments, to like your followers pictures and to engage with micro-bloggers. By showing your engagement with your customers and influencers they’ll feel valued and will be more likely to promote your brand organically, which is what everyone wants at the end of the day.
Influencers are people too, and that’s what we learnt from Toral Shah, founder of The Urban Kitchen. Sending someone a product with no back story or relationship may gain you some exposure, but it won’t necessarily convert an influencer into a fan of your product. If there’s someone you’d like to work with, start small — like their pictures, leave a comment and let them discover your brand before going in for the kill.
Having previously worked with influencers and having become an influencer herself, Toral says the key to a successful partnership is sharing the same values. You can get blinded by an Influencer’s following, but at the end of the day, if they don’t believe in the same things, it’s not going to work in the long run.
If you want to know more about how to tell your brand story or how to work with influencers, get in touch at hello@tabl.com.
