Are you earning consumers' healthy eating trust?
A recent survey conducted by the Food Industry Association (FMI) revealed that 41% of people intend to cook more meals at home post-pandemic than they did prior to the pandemic. No surprise there - home cooking habits built up over the pandemic are here to stay for many. What is surprising is the number of consumers who are specifically interested in a healthier approach to food going forward. In the same survey, 49% of grocery shoppers said they are putting more emphasis on more nutritious foods now than they did before the pandemic.
Couple this with the fact that 55% of consumers see their primary grocery retailer as an ally in reaching their health goals and it becomes even more vital that grocery retailers address this trend in their marketing strategies. In doing so, grocery retailers need to initially focus on earning consumers' trust as a reliable source of healthy eating information and recipe content. For many consumers, the confusion surrounding healthy eating can be off-putting, so knowing that their chosen source of healthy eating content has put in the legwork to ensure the information is reliable is important.
Source recipe content from reliable sources
When you share high-quality recipes with your customers, it's easy to build a reputation as a reliable source of recipe inspiration. Building a reputation as a reliable source of healthy eating information and recipe content is a little more difficult. When curating recipe content, it's important to question where the content and its associated nutritional information originated. Pay particular attention to how the nutritional information is compiled. A reliable source of recipe content will enhance its recipes with nutritional information using a tool (in-house or otherwise) that has been tested and confirmed to be reliable.
Leverage the knowledge of dieticians
Qualifications are an important consideration for consumers who are looking for a reliable source of healthy eating information and recipe content, so putting a named dietician front and centre to provide regular healthy eating information is a powerful strategy. Although social media has enabled some dieticians to gain name-recognition, the most important factor here is the qualification and not whether the dietician is well-known. Regularly updated blog content that delves into the confusing world of healthy eating not only adds value for your customers and helps build a reputation for reliability, but it also improves SEO and drives increased traffic to your website.
Regularly share healthy eating tips on social media
It's important to meet consumers where they are right now, and for many people, that place is social media. Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest are all vital platforms for any brand that shares healthy eating recipe content and information. (Tread carefully with TikTok - make it fun, clever and relevant to GenZ and current TikTok trends.) It's important to note that Pinterest has banned weight loss ads, so your focus should be on the functional benefits of recipe content for general health. This is a good policy to apply across social media in general, where many people will identify with messages that support eating for overall health over eating for weight loss. 65% of consumers seek functional benefits from food and drink. Tips that help home cooks add more vegetables to their diets or increase their intake of calcium through nutritious recipes, for example, add genuine value.
Healthy eating recipe content is trending more than ever right now. Here in Recipe Guru, it has become our most requested recipe category over the past year, far out-performing our previous most-requested category which was 30-minute meals. 'Healthy eating' is a broad term that means different things to different people, but by curating healthy recipe content that fits your customer persona and employing the three simple steps shared in this blog post, you can begin to help your customers achieve their health goals one tasty recipe at a time.