martijn bertisen quote web

This year, The Great British Bake Off is offering more drama than usual - good news for grocers and supermarkets selling food ingredients, bakeware and higher ticket items like mixers.

Grocers are already trying to tap baking enthusiasm but a strategic marketing approach targeting excited audiences in the final few weeks and beyond will pay dividends. The passion people feel about food is reflected in a host of metrics, with almost 11 billion food-related video views on YouTube globally in 2015.

Bake Off fans will be hungry for extra entertainment, inspiration, ideas and ‘how tos’ - and they will also need practical details for sourcing and ordering ingredients. To make the most of these opportunities, think about the customer journey and especially how consumers are using mobile devices. In the UK there are more than 500,000 recipe searches every day, with more than half coming from mobile. After a Bake Off episode customers will search for similar recipes and relevant advice. Following Pastry Week, Google Trends identified questions like ‘How to make shortcrust pastry?’ They will hunt for the right ingredients and decide whether to order online or visit a store.

Once in the kitchen, shoppers start watching online videos for instructions. Bake Off launches a winter of baking in the UK with 38% or 64.2 million views of baking videos taking place in Q4 as the nights get longer and people turn to indoor pursuits. Retailers need a strategy to interact with consumers every step of the way. If it’s Patisserie Week, roll out your own recipes and promote your premium products. Create and serve appropriate content via search and video.

Make sure all website pages, ads and other touchpoints are joined up and offer store locator and online ordering information. And be ready to gather data on those cookery-mad consumers so you can keep engaging with them with relevant, more personalised messages. There are dozens of micro-communities passionate about aspects of cooking, from jam-makers to barbecue obsessives. It makes sense to develop a year-round integrated marketing and promotional strategy focused on these groups to turn their passion into profit.

Martijn Bertisen is UK sales director at Google

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