If you’ve been watching closely, you might have seen that bacon has taken over…well, just about everything. Every restaurant has a special bacon dish, even sundaes. Liquor stores sell bacon-flavored vodka. There’s bacon-flavored bubble gum, too. And bacon-scented air fresheners are a thing. (Yes, that one is real.) There’s even a Wikipedia page called “Bacon mania,” which looks at the rise of bacon craze and its role in record sales—$4 billion in 2013, according to MarketWatch. Whether you’re a bacon lover or a vegetarian, here’s what you can take from bacon to boost your marketing.
Be Delicious
Your business might not be in the food industry, but that doesn’t mean your product can’t be appealing. Whatever your product or service is, ensure that it’s exciting and that it “tastes” as good to your audience as bacon does. Offering a great product is the first step to marketing success: if you want to be as popular as bacon, you need to be as good as bacon.
Become Synonymous with Deliciousness
Bacon is popular not only because it’s delicious but because it has become synonymous with the idea of delicious. A burger is assumed to be better with bacon. Consumers are willing to try a sundae with bacon because the tagline “Everything is better with bacon” has come to be regarded as truth. So how do you apply this to your business? First, decide what it is about your product or service that you want your customer base to associate with you. Efficiency. Innovation. Amazing customer service. What is the thing that you do so well that it can truthfully be said that “Everything is better with ____”? Fill in the blank and go from there. Highlight that bacon-esque thing in your marketing: make it part of your go-to benefit statements. Make it synonymous with delicious, and the masses will come with their tongues out.
Add Bacon to Everything
Not actual bacon, of course. But once you have established what your business’s bacon is…put it on everything. Good customer service? Offer chat and Skype service too. Good engagement? Join more platforms as soon as you have bandwidth. Great content marketing? Explore new mediums like video and infographics with the same delicious fervor. If bacon truly makes everything better, then you can use it to add extra flavor to all aspects of your marketing.
Inspire Their Senses
Bacon smells great, obviously. The smell of it might bring to mind childhood breakfasts, playing on the nostalgia of the consumer. Whatever it is that makes bacon such a meaningful food for so many people, think of a way in which you can apply that strategy to your marketing. Who is your audience? What are some deeper levels of their experience that you could appeal to?
Shake It Up
Bacon comes in many forms: strips, bits, chips. The same should go for your marketing initiatives. Email marketing. PPC ads. Social media. Content marketing. Not every bacon eater likes their bacon in a sundae, and not everyone likes it in a burger: keep that in mind when you’re targeting audiences across different mediums.
The journey to bacon-esque marketing may not be an easy one, but these points are a good place to start. Get to cooking, folks.