Food Trucks Roll into the Future

Food trucks have been a major fad since 2008, when the L.A. area saw the birth of the soon wildly popular Korean tacos served by Kogi BBQ trucks. Almost immediately, food trucks began popping up in streetscapes from coast to coast, offering both niche foods and mainstream foods.

Now food trucks represent an estimated $2.7 billion in revenues and a consumer behavior shift toward eating food on the move. Entrepreneurs, in particular, find food trucks a great way to test new products and new dining concepts without investing in high-overhead brick-and-mortar restaurants. Even restaurants are testing food trucks to reach customers interested in easy, casual food at easy, casual prices--competing with fast-food and fast-casual dining, in particular.

The most popular food trucks in 2017 are offering favorites like gourmet grilled cheese, burgers, and tacos (of course). Above, Mac Mart, which is both a food truck and a mac 'n cheese restaurant. Consumers are also flocking to food truck festivals around the country, enjoying different cuisines in one park or parking lot.

In some areas, the fad for food trucks is starting to fade a bit, partly due to overexposure and partly because of cities resisting the trucks to allow traditional restaurants some space to regain customers. Yet food trucks also represent a major opportunity for B2B marketers, including insurance firms that want to offer just the right coverage for food trucks.

The food truck fad is likely to evolve as the marketing environment develops and consumer behavior shifts, but for now, food on the move remains popular in many locations.

B2B Content Marketing for Thought Leadership, Value Added, and Entertainment

B2B content marketing has always had the goal of establishing a brand or company as an authoritative thought leader and adding value with information.

Now the goal is to entertain as well as to provide information or education. Why?

• One reason is clutter--so many brands are adopting content marketing for differentiation, it's harder to stand out. Brands need to have the right content for their audiences (and their strategies).
• Another reason is media access--B2B customers want to be able to access content marketing via any digital device and through a website or social media. This diversity of points of access makes attracting and retaining an audience more challenging.

Not surprisingly, IBM is an expert in B2B content marketing. Its US home page has links to free downloadable subject guides, developer info, free tools, authoritative studies, and more.

The IBM YouTube Channel includes sub-channels for Watson and other categories of interest to a range of B2B buyers.

The IBM Twitter account (tweet above) posts videos and other content of interest--not just product/service related but general interest, as in the AI content promoted above.

And IBM's Facebook account similarly posts frequently with ever-changing content for B2B buyers, as well as serving as a recruiting tool.

Virtually every post has visual interest, whether a photo or video, to add to the appeal. It's not just a data dump, it's content marketing in a format that fits the B2B audiences' preferred method of accessing information. Importantly, the content marketing is ready 24/7 whenever a buyer anywhere wants to learn more about a subject of interest.

Hotel Chocolat's Very British Brand

Now that the UK-based Hotel Chocolat has gone public, it has additional resources to support an expansion strategy. The company began as an online retailer of luxury chocolate gifts, targeting UK consumers and businesses.

A decade after establishing itself on the web, it opened a physical store. Now the company has more than 80 shops across the UK plus an actual hotel adjacent to a cocoa plantation on Saint Lucia.

At one time, Hotel Chocolat had a handful of US stores but closed them a couple of years ago. It retains its online presence selling to US customers, however.

Eyeing another round of international retail expansion, Hotel Chocolat has a franchise presence on Gibraltar and is also opening company-owned chocolate boutiques in Copenhagen to assess the opportunities for this very British brand.

Hotel Chocolat has more than 100k likes on Facebook, 52k followers on Twitter, and more than 3k followers on Pinterest, among other social media activities.

Marketing with Segment Personas

Walmart Canada's marketers know they're not trying to attract everybody, but targeting specific segments whose needs, wants, and preferences they can profitably satisfy.

A segment persona is a realistic yet fictitious profile representing how a buyer in the targeted segment would typically behave, think, feel, and react to marketing activities. Creating a persona helps marketing personnel to look beyond stereotypes and understand what drives the targeted segment--insights that are so valuable when planning marketing outreach to specific segments rather than a more anonymous "mass market."

Walmart recently decided to target women with young families. As part of the targeting process, it developed a segment persona to represent this consumer--someone who, research shows, perceives costs in the value equation in terms of money, time, and effort, not just purchase price.

Naturally, Walmart's marketers quickly realized they needed to update the persona to account for major life events. When women in this segment have a baby, for example, they tend to be even more careful about how they spend their time, money, and effort. Walmart may be known for low prices, but it's also trying to position itself as helpful to this segment by making shopping less time-consuming and effortful.

Above, an image from Walmart's Live Better e-mail newsletter, which offers advice and ideas for the target audience. The main Walmart message of low prices is making headway in Canada, where its sales are up amidst economic uncertainty. Even the average revenue from a single shopping cart is up. With an eye toward shoppers who prefer organic foods, Walmart Canada is now carrying own-brand organic products.

Segment personas work in B2B marketing, as well. Dun & Bradstreet sees chief marketing officers as a key customer segment, and it creates personas to help it understand what this segment wants in the way of content marketing.

I wrote about Lululemon's use of segment personas here. For more about segment personas, see this MarketingLand article and this ClickZ article.

21st Century Trade Shows

Virtual trade show

Trade shows are still alive and well, bringing B2B marketers together with customers in person or online. 

Marketing Profs recently ran an insightful article summarizing why businesspeople attend trade shows. The top reason, of course, is to see what's new. Here are the main reasons, from most cited to least cited:

1. See new goods and services.
2. Collect information for planning purposes.
3. Gather ideas on near-term trends and changes for decision-makers to consider.
4. Meet with experts.
5. Meet with people who can "make things happen."
6. Meet people with common interests.
7. See friends and travel to interesting places.

Not everyone visits a trade show in person. One growing trend is toward virtual trade shows that take place online. For example:

• Dow Corning has an always-open virtual trade show featuring its solar products.
• The virtual trade show of the Southern United States Trade Association presents website 'booths' showing specialty foods produced in the South.
• The 90-day Lighting & Interiors Today virtual exhibition features individual booths with up to 20 products on display.