What makes a meal service successful? Is it easy to make dinners for working professionals? Parents who need assistance with grocery delivery and easy pre planned food options? Individuals who want to lose weight and think having a pre portioned meal service gives them the best opportunity to manage their food?
Blue Apron has found prosperity in an industry that is starting to be inundated with options. They use diverse marketing tactics that rely on traditional advertisements and online content marketing. The company saw a need for education regarding food being cooked at home and providing an easy to access option to menus, instructions and materials needed to make professional grade meals. Who does not want to come home and cook with their partner,friends, or family and make something they would pay a large amount for at a restaurant?
What makes Blue Apron marketing so successful?
1.They are able to represent their product in a desirable way with a strategic marketing plan.
This might sound like a simple task, but as people in the marketing and advertising industry know it is much more of an accomplishment to succeed. Senior marketing director for Blue Apron, Rani Yadav, says the company’s main goal is to create excitement around a particular meal before it is delivered to the consumer. They do this by talking extensively about the recipes. They sound out strategic messages about the recipe such as they are easy to do at home but have the quality of an expert chef. Blue Apron creates fun and fascinating content about the recipes on Facebook and other social media and marketing outlets to get people talking about them. These innovative marketing ploys often result to a large amount of sharing and consumer engagement online.
2. Blue Apron has consistent goals with their product and message that are based on fun, but also consumer loyalty.
If they equip consumers with knowledge and present it in a fun way then they will build brand loyalty. A direct quote from Rani Yadav, “”Everything we do is in service of making cooking fun and easy for our home chefs,” she says. “By using that lens to develop content, product features, and recipes, we’re able to create an experience that our customers want to make part of their daily lives, and they stick with us. We constantly get love letters from customers saying we’ve saved their marriage, given them confidence in the kitchen, or helped them get their kids interested in cooking. That customer feedback motivates our team every day.”
Conclusion:
Once Blue Apron tried to cut their marketing expense to appease investors and the customer base dropped significantly. In an industry that is so important to people when it comes to health, activity, body image, bonding and so much more, marketing matters. The result was that they had to put out a $100 million dollar marketing scheme to get their lost customer base back and generate additional growth.
Using a diverse marketing approach does equal sales. That is the real reason Blue Apron is so successful. They went from a start up company to an industry leader, and large asset holding company, within a year. Blue Apron targets all of the suggested questionable groups in the first paragraph and many more across various marketing platforms. They do not try to target just one purpose for someone wanting to cook a meal at home. The company message is consistent and they utilize all of their channels to a mass target audience.
Here is where they put their marketing resources:
Digital:
Podcast Ads
YouTube Sponsorships
Display Ads
Sponsored Reviews via Native Ads
Offline:
TV Advertising
Radio Ads
Direct Mail
Result: Marketing to various channels works. I am a Top Chef, I have won Chopped, and I will Beat Bobby Flay because I use Blue Apron.
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