Drink Simple Marketing Strategy
Ananya Sahni, Landon Mukaigawa, Jiabao Li, Kexin Li
Title: Drink Simple Marketing Strategy Report
Subject Area: Marketing Strategy for increasing product and brand awareness
Region: United States
Industry: Plant-based organic food and beverage
Company: Drink Simple
Challenge
In 2021, 8 years since inception, Drink Simple, a local and sustainable venture manufacturing and distributing a health drink made of maple sap, still struggles to create a solid brand image and market presence. Burdened with the baggage of the word “Maple” and the related image of a sticky and sugary maple syrup, the brand needs to educate consumers to remove these misconceptions. Thus, the challenge at hand was to inform the audience to increase their awareness and thereby increase customer acquisition from the early adopters to early majority in a cost-effective manner. This in turn would help the brand capture a significant market share in the growing industry. Utilizing our connections with the company, our Boston-based STRT 7976 consulting group engaged with Drink Simple to address a few of the core challenges and provide recommendations for a marketing campaign for the organic plant-based drink:
• Increase product category and brand awareness.
• Resolve misconceptions around the word maple.
• Increase customer acquisition.
• Grow market share
``Making Your Case`` As A Stepping Stone
Elucidating our Professional Core: Our Choice
As business strategy students with vested interest in marketing and the go-getter spirit of entrepreneurial ventures, we were extremely excited to make an impact on the community and bring people together to lead a healthier lifestyle. Drink Simple allowed us to gain knowledge, experience working with small businesses and see through the process of encountering challenges to achieve success.
We believe Drink Simple was a perfect match for us to demonstrate our skills, put theory to practice and form connection within the industry making it a win-win situation!
Embedding in the Business Realities: Developing Trust
To tackle this challenge, we decided to analyze the market and industry to understand where Drink Simple stands among other competitors and the overall trends.
For market analysis, we collected data on market size and used PESTEL analysis to understand the external factors affecting the industry. For our Industry analysis, we used the Porter’s Five Forces framework to learn about the industry attractiveness and profitability in the competitive environment. In addition, we analyzed other competitors’ current marketing strategies to find gaps and learnings. We also deep dived into our customer segment. For example, the demographic of current consumers, channels they use to learn product information and acquire the product, need and demand for a new product as well as health drink consumption trends.
Some of major sources for our research were Statista.com, PRNewswire.com and MotorIntelligence.com.
Generating Value: Analyzing and Solving the Challenge
After analyzing the data that we collected we used the Gap Analysis methodology to find opportunities in the current marketing strategy as per the 4P’s (Product, Price, Promotion, Place) framework. We concluded that the potential gaps include:
• Target audience being too broad for a niche product.
• No emotional connection that can be attached with the brand.
• Low customer engagement.
• Chance to increase awareness among influencers and opinion leaders.
• No retargeted advertisements across social media platforms.
• Not enough information or benefits provided on the package.
Based on the gaps and findings from our research, we used 4Ps strategies (product, price, place, promotion) to develop several recommendations for the company both in the short-run and long-run.
Recommendations that can be implemented in the short run include:
• Rebranding and modifying the brand image to create an attractive brand persona.
• Optimizing the website with more keywords and implementing more PPC ads on Google.
• Enhancing the content strategy and retargeting efforts on social media.
• Expanding digital footprint, such as earned PR exposure through blogs.
Recommendations for the long run include:
• Hosting sponsored events, focusing on cardio intensive exercise.
• Establishing a community thorough a social and interactive club.
• Hosting annual sap tapping experiential events.
• Engaging in paid PR advertising
Drink Simple Team:
Ananya Sahni, Landon Mukaigawa, Jiabao Li, Kexin Li
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