How Kosher Brands can Beat Amazon | Kosher Marketing 101

Just look in your local Jewish newspaper: Kosher marketing was humming along nicely. Until Amazon bought Whole Foods, that is.

Now, in the age when millions of customers purchase and receive electronics, clothing, furniture and groceries (Kosher and not) within hours from Amazon, the kosher food industry will not be immune to the repercussions of Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods. With already slim margins, Kosher food & wine brands will need to understand how to sell on (or off) Amazon while still generating a profit.

True, Kosher is more of a specialty category with a small niche market and, yes, online grocery shopping, though a $20 billion industry and growing, still has problems solving last mile logistics. Those are certainly challenging hurdles for anyone.

But the one company who can – and will – solve it will be Amazon, with Whole Foods providing wholesome, healthy value and niche, specialty products that kosher consumers are used to locally.

So how can your Kosher marketing adapt to the reality that Amazon could, literally and figuratively, eat your lunch?

Here are three industry-leading Kosher marketing strategies worth implementing now:

Re-Focus Your Kosher Marketing & Brand.

Think hard: what is your Kosher brand REALLY great at? What are you the best at? What problem can you solve that others can’t? What is your brand story really about?

Write it down, step back, rewrite, repeat, refine. Refocus your brand on your core competencies, supplement it with value and then re-strategize your marketing channels to accentuate it.

Amazon’s value propositions focus on selection, pricing and speed, solving pain points for customers who want everything in one place for the best price and shipped immediately.

To put it into perspective for kosher companies, Amazon and Whole Foods can offer the largest selection of groceries at the lowest price, delivered to homes faster than customers can shop in-store.

Ask yourself: how are you differentiated from Amazon? Do you offer services, value and taste that can beat Amazon/Whole Foods? And is your brand strong enough or nimble enough to adapt to their next acquisition?

Find out now. Refocus your brand, uncover your value and accentuate it everywhere.

Think Beyond the Aisle

Most Kosher pre-packaged brands rely on packaging, promotions and loyal in-store customers to sell their products (with good reason since most purchases are made in-store).

But with more customers preferring freshly made foods and healthy options – pre-packaged food & beverages fell by .4% in the first quarter of 2017 while fresh meat grew by 1.7%, produce grew by 1.9% and prepared foods grew by 4%, most kosher pre-packaged brands stand to lose out by biding their hopes on the shelf.

Not only that, but CVS, Kroger’s Walmart and now Amazon/Whole Foods are investing more in freshly prepared foods and less in pre-packaged items, hurting boxed, canned and bottled brands even more.

So what’s a Kosher brand to do without sacrificing margins with promotions?

Create a fresh experience for customers. Share unique and new uses for your products on your website.

Build micro-sites for every brand in your portfolio, complete with a data-centric and customer-centric focuse. Explore partnerships with Kosher marketing strategists, content creators and brand ambassadors to build custom content for shoppers online and offline.

The average shopping trip lasts just 41 minutes; think about ways to create value for the other 10,000 minutes of the week.

2020 Kosher Marketing = Direct-To-Consumer (D2C)

Did you know customers are exposed to over 200 brands a day via outdoor, email, print and social media? That’s a lot of brand exposure, making it difficult for any one brand to stick.

Unless you can capture and control the customer’s focus, you can kiss brand loyalty goodbye. And where do they end up? Amazon.

So control their focus by building out a direct-to-consumer experience online that can’t be mimicked by Amazon. You own your customers, your data and customer journey.

Design a fully optimized online customer journey that captures their attention, gathers data about their journey and helps solve customer pain points before, during and after the sale.

Start by crafting your brand story, establish a community online through a content-based website and control the order fullfillment process with a friction-less e-commerce presence.

If you own your customers, you own their experience and dictate your future. Amazon does it. Whole Foods does it.

Capture and control the experience of your customer or you risk losing them to Amazon’s story.

TO SUM IT UP: Amazon bought Whole Foods for their brick-and-mortar presence, customer data treasure chest and last-mile synergies. Your Kosher marketing will need to adapt by owning your customers, establishing a true brand story, and fulfilling on a friction-less experience from start to finish. Let’s get it done together.