How a Messaging Toolkit Enhances Marketing Efficiency for Food Brands
An experienced food marketing agency helps your food brand leverage storytelling for consistent strategic communications across teams and regions.
A Food Marketing Agency Helps Your Team Work Smarter, Not Harder
If you’ve ever wished you had more hours in the day to tackle your marketing to-do list, you’re not alone. For businesses in the food and beverage industry, deadlines and timelines are especially tight, especially when speed to market is crucial for revenue and profitability. Time is a commodity food brands seem to have less of, and strategic marketing communications have the potential to fall by the wayside.
That’s where messaging toolkits from a seasoned food marketing agency can help. These customized resources streamline messaging creation and eliminate the “can we do that?” questions that can hold up a project. What is a marketing toolkit and how can it help your business? Here’s how we’ve helped some of our largest food clients develop, maintain and get the most out of theirs.
What is a Messaging Toolkit?
If you’ve ever referenced a Brand Guidelines book, you’ve likely seen some components of a messaging toolkit. Branding guidelines often only brush the surface of a company’s story. A toolkit takes this story several important steps further. The toolkit serves as your “Editorial Guidelines” to go beyond brand messaging dos and don’ts. These are sections you’ll often find in a messaging toolkit:
- Messaging Journeys: A brand messaging overview for each of the three stages of your buyer's decision-making journey.
- Tone of Voice: A description of your brand archetype with sample dos and don'ts of how to express different statements.
- Sample Headlines: A collection of snappy headlines and subheadings for use in various campaigns.
A toolkit maps out your brand promise, your product story and more in language your entire team can use or adapt across a variety of marketing materials. It’s also a centralized resource anyone in your organization – from marketing to sales to training – can use.
As a food marketing agency, we’ve developed messaging toolkits for many of our clients and reference them constantly. For us, this document is often the first step to help our clients map out and define their story along the buyer journey. It allows agencies and internal stakeholders to create messages that are always on-brand and appropriate for the company’s intended audiences, including customers and prospects.
Could your team benefit from a messaging toolkit?
Connect for a free toolkit consult.
A Messaging Toolkit Hones Targeted Messaging
On the topic of audiences – we typically recommend that a messaging toolkit include communication samples or templates broken down by each of your target markets. You wouldn’t speak to a chef the same way you’d speak to a wholesale buyer or a consumer, and your messaging should consider these variables.
For our larger food and beverage clients, this often means a message breakdown not only by demographics but also regions or product lines. When communications are mapped out to this level of detail, it helps provide a clear direction on how to effectively bring your messages to market. Your toolkit can even include specific and targeted marketing campaigns for easy “plug and play” communications your sales team can use for effective, on-brand and controlled communications.
Streamline Communication Development Strategically
The larger your organization, the more fragmented your teams. This can be especially challenging if your business utilizes a sales network that’s spread out geographically. Your sales teams need to be in front of your customers constantly; to do this, they need effective communications. This need can cause some salespeople to “go rogue” and develop their own messages in their own voice – not your brand’s.
With a messaging toolkit, your sales team and other frontline personnel have a preapproved and ready-to-roll guide on how to clearly communicate with customers within a defined framework. This empowers the people throughout your organization in ways they value. They have control over their customer communication, yet you have control over the parameters of the message. This streamlines communications, enhances brand perception, improves customer engagement and, ultimately, leads to better long-term results.
How Can a Food Marketing Agency Help You Develop a Messaging Toolkit?
As a food marketing agency, we’ve launched restaurants, branded major food associations and fueled the farm-to-school movement. We've even traveled to Columbia to see, firsthand, how coffee is grown. This level of understanding allows us to “start your project on second” so your messaging toolkit meets the unique needs of not only your brand – but also the industry and markets you serve.
Our deep knowledge of the industry also means we know the value of never making assumptions. Our process is always customized to your needs. It’s a collaborative experience that includes ongoing refinement as needed to address evolving communication strategies. For example, if your food brand acquires a competitor, develops a new product or service, begins to serve a new area or goes through a rebrand, your messaging toolkit should be updated to reflect the shift in business.
Let’s Bring Your Food Brand Messaging Toolkit to Life
If you’re a food brand looking to streamline your marketing communications and enhance your brand’s storytelling abilities, a messaging toolkit can drive results. A food marketing agency like Muse can optimize your marketing game with a tool that handles the details – so you can focus on big-picture strategy and profit initiatives. Reach out, and we’ll show you how we’ve helped others launch and use their toolkit!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Megan Factor is a Content Manager at Muse and a passionate creator, both professionally and personally. She developed her content marketing skills working in a wide range of industries and pulls inspiration from her diverse experiences. Her keen eye for design, penchant for writing, and love of good storytelling work together to create meaningful content that provides value to clients.
More Good Reads
Social Media Tactics For Restaurants & Food Brands
Engage prospective customers with tried-and-true social media tactics.
Change Agent Interview Series: Episode 1 | Chef Ben Bebenroth
Muse founder and change marketer Jackie Bebenroth interviews Chef Ben Bebenroth, founder of Spice Field Kitchen, about how he enacts lasting change through local food education programming.