There’s no doubt that these are extremely challenging times but what can you do to help maintain sales for your food or drinks business?  

The team here is talking to publishers and working with marketing specialists all day, every day and these are our top tips for keeping your company sales as healthy (as possible) in such challenging times:

Keep providing comments – Nearly all news-based media outlets want content related to the virus. They want to know how it will affect your business or your customers. They want to hear about the challenges as well as the good news stories. Do share stories about how you or your teams are helping people during this this time.

Push your online offering – The food and drink media is continuing to generate content as normal, although we have seen a shift in demand for products which can be bought online or for home-delivery.

Home-delivery – A number of shops and restaurants have already started a home delivery service for people in self-isolation, is this something you could offer?

Products – We have received a lot of content themes related to immunity boosting properties, high nutrition or long shelf life. Is this relevant to any of your products or dishes?

Recipes – These are still requested as frequently as ever. The consensus is that people want to create dishes that use fewer ingredients, can be frozen or suited to batch cooking.

Online Media – The shift from print media to online media is already well documented but we expect to see this process accelerating over the next few months. We think it’s possible some print publications may not survive this period, instead devoting all future resources to their online counterparts.

Think about where your customers will be – At the moment, most people in low-risk categories are still going about life fairly normally. But the expectation is that self-isolating is going to increase, a lot, and potential customers are going to be at home. We think they will have more time to read (especially online), so keep generating online content and write your newsletters too.

Up your social media – Keep this content going. Keep it light, aspirational and positive about the future, if you can. Share your good news stories. Share the help and support you’ve given or received.

Keep pushing out content – The good news is that requests for stories, new products and content continues to flow into us here, so we can carry on as usual generating coverage for our clients. So, you can too. Get on to twitter and search for #journorequest and see what the media is talking about with respect to your particular area of expertise.

Keep shopping locally – And shout about it. It has never been so important to shop locally and buy local produce, than right now. Shout about it on social media, not once, repeatedly. We need to help keep each other in business during this time.

Keep reaching out to your customers, your suppliers and your communities, if you can. Ask for help when you need it.  Don’t forget the Produced in Kent Members Group or The Food Hub Group on Facebook is a great place to reach out.  Look after each other.

Remember, “this too shall pass.”

E-Hugs from the team at Sharp Relations x