marketing The biggest challenge of all....marketing

FeistyParrot

FeistyParrot

When my husband was looking for a job and started bottling his hot sauce recipes with his business card on it to network, I thought it was a fun creative idea, and people certainly would remember him...what neither of us expected was the popularity of the actual sauce, we kept getting asked (by friends and by strangers) where they could buy it. It was made in our kitchen in South Florida, so no we couldn't sell it and we were spending a fortune making and giving it away!

A friend suggested we should look into either a shared kitchen or a manufacturer, so I set to it. We discounted the community kitchen idea as we both have full time jobs and felt that for us the co-pack route was the better option, so I hunted them out...some really are easier to find than others! Eventually we found two we were happy with and eventually settled on the one.

Then it was into test batches and logo design, label design (I never expected this to be as involved as it is), nutritional info, do we or don't we need shelf stability testing (jury STILL out on this one!), label printers, pepper sourcing and we have met some great people along the way...it has been busy and interesting. Everything has taken much longer than we expected, but we are now seeing the first production run around the corner and the conversations have all turned to marketing!

Our newest headache is the website, building one is out of our comfort zones and the quotes vary so wildly that it is hard to know what to pick or where to start...content, ecommerce, system management, it's almost like learning another language!

Of course the website is only one part of any marketing and now we are racking our brains to come up with other ideas....it's a whirlwind!
 
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Sounds like you're having fun though. I'm new to all this, but many people on here recommend hitting the farmers markets and festivals pretty hard... good face to face and product exposure. Good luck!
 
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I website tightly integrated in social media and SEO optimized will do wonders. I can post on Facebook, that will turn into a tween then land on my webpage. That is a simple example but there is so much you can do. 
 
Here is a friends company and he does complete hosting and website work. 
 
http://www.thinklever.com/
 
Best of luck!
 
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I was ready to offer my help until I read ecommerce.  I've never messed with it.  I used to run a ton of sites as hobby but I haven't really fooled with anything since my son was born 2 years ago.  Kind of want to start up again.
 
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Marketing locally through direct sales and FM is the best way to grow immediate sales.  I-net sales are (depending on who you talk to and who you believe...) marginal to phenomenal.  It takes a long time to build an online sales presence that will generate significant sales.  For immediate income, go to FM's and work your local market.
 
Most consumers like to Buy Local and support their local entrepreneurs.   Use it to build local sales, repeat customers at the FM and local stores, generate some local buzz, get some good feedback...... Get an online site as soon as you can, but don't rely on the web for huge immediate sales. 
 
Have Fun!   and
 
 
:welcome:
 
salsalady
 
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When I started selling beyond my immediate circle of family and friends, I did the website (with e-commerce) first, got myself into a distributor and some grocery stores second, and the farmers markets third (just started recently)
 
If I had known then what I know now, Id have done it in exactly the opposite order. You get a far higher return on your effort and investment from a farmers market than you will from building an online store. 
 
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Matanzima said:
 
When I started selling beyond my immediate circle of family and friends, I did the website (with e-commerce) first, got myself into a distributor and some grocery stores second, and the farmers markets third (just started recently)
 
If I had known then what I know now, Id have done it in exactly the opposite order. You get a far higher return on your effort and investment from a farmers market than you will from building an online store. 
 
Click to expand...
 
Yep - that's exactly how I did it - Farmer's Markets ~> distributor/stores
 
Farmer's markets = direct marketing and best profit. 

Ps - a few thoughts about doing farmer's markets since so many people seem to think this is an easy way to get product out there. First, there are no easy ways to do anything, especially in the food business. It's taken a hell of a lot of work to be in farmer's markets and be successful there. Waking up at 05:00 AM is just a part of it. 
 
Suggestions:
1. don't skimp on your market set-up. Spend a few hundred on fitted table cloths, banners, placards describing the products, tasters, signage, etc.
 
2. Legal stuff (very important). Check with your state and county. Most states have requirements for signage (e.g. prices must be clearly posted - I use a nice frame & easel) and county is going to require you get get a health permit (for every county you do tastings in). One of mine is $408 a year, another is $290 a year - just to put a drop of sauce on a taster & give it to someone.
 
3. More legal stuff: You'll have to have a handwashing station ($120 insulated 2 gallon thermos with hands-free spigot/soap/paper towels) and Nitrile gloves (not latex as people have allergies to latex).
 
Failure to comply with these codes can result in severe fines and even suspension of business license. Depending on your market org, they may not care or even pay attention, but you can bet the health inspector will drop by for an inspection and if you aren't compliant they will shut you down bigtime.  
 
You'll also need to carry at least 2 million dollars in liability insurance, and you would be very very smart to add the market association or specific market to your business vehicle insurance.  An ounce of protection is worth a lb of cure. There are ways to mitigate the risk - but bottom line is that there are terrible people in the world looking for ways to screw you - with a food business you're an easy target. If someone at the market sees you aren't displaying a current health dept cert or any other violation, you can bet they'll make some kind of claim that your product made them sick. Do it the right way and you won't have to worry about all that. 
 
I'd give more detailed advice, but I am not familiar with all of the laws in your city/county/state - I'm only an "expert" in my own area's laws. 

salsalady said:
 
Get an online site as soon as you can, but don't rely on the web for huge immediate sales. 
 
Have Fun!   and
 
 
:welcome:
 
salsalady
Click to expand...
 
Perfectly stated. I've been in business for a little over a year and have close to 1000 customers - and I only do 5-8 web orders a week. And that's a lot considering how slow it was at 1st. 
 
Web is a break-even proposition at best. It's very hard to get a 1st time customer to buy a food product online. Even when I get a guy like Scott Roberts saying my product is "the best tasting sauce he's had this year!" it resulted in like 4 orders.  Some reviews fail to generate any despite reaching 300-400 views. 
 
Seems like a lot of folks start a hot sauce company, launch a website and sit back and wait for the money to roll in. Well that's gonna be a hell of a long wait. Those seem to be the folks who spam the chileheads groups 100X a day believing that's hard work.  
 
Get out and sell your product. Meet with stores. Sell at festivals and farmer's markets. The world sure as hell isn't gonna come to you, so you have to go to them. 
:cheers:
 
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Quick suggestion.  You might want to toss up a launch page with a countdown or estimated date until your site is finished.  This way you could go ahead and begin pushing your domain around to create a bit of buzz for your product.  That way you've got some folks waiting on launch and ready to place orders.
 
Google launch page to see what I mean
 
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While that's true, it only builds a buzz for someone going to their site. Hard to get people to your site if they don't know your site address & product.

Just saying - gotta spread the word to drive site traffic or a countdown is kinda useless.
 
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Which is why you throw up a launch and go ahead and start creating a buzz for the site.  Gives you a jump start for once you get the site lives and rocking.  Sort of eliminates some of the hassle so to speak. 
 
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When you announce a product you should have people to announce it to. Build your audience. Like being in a band. You don't form a band and release a record the next day, to 0 fans. You play shows, etc. Build a fanbase. When you release that record people are waiting because they have heard the songs live. Or a demo. And hopefully you have collected emails at shows, and gotten Likes. The shows here... are like farmers markets. The demo, your prototype. Sell your products locally. Get emails. Build it up... when you go global, you will have supporters that will help you push your products to the masses. Loyal supporters want you to succeed as much as you do.

And social media that shizz up.
 
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Thanks guys, we know we have a long winding road ahead of us and probably of things that we can't possibly foresee right now! When we first started looking into this, someone told us that hot sauce was a cut throat business, but from our experiences so far I found this not to be the case at all, the people we have met both online and offline have been lovely, interested and helpful. From a newbie taking a hobby to a business this has been a wonderful experience and a breath of fresh air to meet (or read posts from) such nice people.
 
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Amen to that too - I've found the only people who are "cut-throat" in this biz are the d-bags who you wouldn't like anyway, sauce or no sauce. lol

Mostly it's an amazingly helpful & supportive group of folks who are always quick to lend a word of advice or a helpful link when called upon (& sometimes even if not. Lol)

Thanks to folks like SalsaLady, THP, JayT, Scovie, JuJu & far too many others to list I probably saved a year of time & countless mistakes when launching my business - the feedback was highly instrumental and really helped worlds.
:cheers:
 
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If anyone needs a consultant for social media help, I'd be glad to offer my services. LIke everyone has said, you need something integrated so that you can post on one thing and it can show on all the others. Everything I post for Texas Tears on my Instagram shows up on both Twitter and Facebook, and anything posted on Facebook shows up on Twitter, etc. I could have it do more, but this is all I need for now until I have a need for my E-Commerce website to be up and running.
 
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