Food marketing is an interesting industry. Everyone needs to eat, so it’s a little difficult to create a sense of urgency— Mother Nature does that for us. However, food marketing presents its own set of issues and obstacles. Reaching our customers and presenting our products can be an issue, especially with the market becoming overly saturated. The food marketing industry faces challenges every day of the best ways to showcase brands while simultaneously earning the trust of our customers.

So, what exactly are the biggest problems that we food marketers face? How do we overcome them, and what actions can we take to get there?

Problem #1: Targeting Your Customer’s Top Priorities

As food marketers, it can be a bit difficult to remove ourselves from our job titles and walk in the shoes of our customers. Just when we think that we know exactly what our customers want, they pull a fast one that makes our heads spin. If we can’t physically be in front of our customers to find out what they want in our products, how will we ever get to the bottom of their wants and needs?

One advantage that we food marketers have is that we are in the midst of the digital age, with endless information right at our fingertips. It’s easier than ever these days to collect data, and it can pave a path that leads us to our ideal customer.

If you’re struggling to determine what kind of customer can benefit from your brand and its products, you can start finding the answer by referring to social media and even online Q&A communities such as Quora. Pay close attention to what potential buyers are saying; what are their thoughts and concerns? You can get a general idea of gender and age group, as well preferred product price points, and even what they expect out of a product like yours.

Other customer priorities can consist of elements such as:

• Convenience: Can your product be consumed on the go? Is it easy to open and to prepare?
• Attractive food packaging design: Is it pleasing to the eye?
• Trustworthy brand: Do customers recognize your name and trust your brand?
• Quality products: Are your products healthy and safe to consume?
• Freshness: Does your food packaging keep your products fresh for the first bite?

If you can’t find exactly what you’re looking for with this method, consider generating a survey that you can mail out to e-mail lists subscribers. This is a direct way that you can target your customer’s top priorities and remove the guessing game factor. Survey Monkey is a fast and convenient tool to use to generate surveys and collect data.

Once you know what your customers want, marketing your food product becomes a whole new ball game. The key here is to really listen to your customers, even when they are saying things that you don’t want to hear.

Problem #2: Building a Credible Brand

In a sense, food marketing is a lot about branding. Like we mentioned earlier in this post, selling food in itself isn’t extremely complicated. The United States is a society that centralizes milestones, celebrations, and holidays around food. Not to mention, we kind of need food to stay alive. The mere concept of food sells itself.

What it comes down to is selling your brand and what makes you stand out from competitors. The quality of your food, reputation, and food packaging presentation plays a large role with building a credible brand.

One way to build a credible brand and establish trust is by maintaining a consistent image across your food product packaging. This means investing in quality packaging that has high quality print, professional artwork and bold colors. Customers remember your logo and expect a certain color scheme and presentation from your brand. You can easily enhance your company’s image with an overhaul of your food product packaging.

In particular, flexible retail packaging can help boost your company’s image. It achieves this by offering an innovative packaging option. Flexible retail packaging is also perfect for getting creative with your presentation with high quality rotogravure print. It might not be the answer to all of your branding problems, but it’s surely a big piece of the puzzle.

Problem #3: Learning to Trust Overseas Packaging Factories

This is a big problem amongst food marketers. The quality and safety is always top priority for your company, and food marketers have every right to be concerned. Overseas factories have been presented in a negative light over the last several years, and many food marketers run in the opposite direction at the thought of placing an order from a Chinese factory.

Unfortunately, many food marketers are passing up wonderful food packaging opportunities with this mindset. Sure, Chinese factories had some negative press, but let’s not make sweeping assumptions over their entire industry.

We both know that not all Chinese factories are created equal. There are Chinese factories that put workers in horrible working conditions. The factories are dirty and their products are unsafe. This is undeniable.

However, there is another side to that coin. There are also Chinese factories that manufacture food packaging in pristine conditions. They sincerely care about the quality of their product and value their customers.

To take it a step further, there are Chinese factories that are run and operated by American citizens. These companies take pride in their China-based factory and its workers. They can offer better prices for better products compared to what’s available in the US. Often this cost advantage can be the difference between winning and losing at the retail level.

Food marketers certainly have their work cut out for them. Every day presents new challenges for understanding your customers and learning what truly matters in their eyes. By listening to our customers and learning how to present our products in a competitive fashion, we can rise to the top of the food marketing industry and build a better brand.