These days, it seems like everyone is a self-proclaimed foodie, wine connoisseur or café-crawler. Thanks to increased food options and the rise of visual content sharing platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat, it’s easier than ever for food-lovers to share their dining experiences with their social networks. Food businesses can leverage these customer photos to promote their brand.Visual content is one of the most important marketing tools food brands have at their disposal. In fact, according to Dazeinfo.com 92.6 percent of people make buying decisions based on visual factors.In this post, we’ll talk about how your Food and Beverage (F&B) brand can use fan photos to strengthen your marketing on Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat.‍

Use Instagram to ShareWith a user base of 400 million, Instagram has a larger audience than Pinterest and Snapchat combined. This alone speaks to Instagram’s value proposition – the platform allows your business to reach one of the widest consumer network.

In the F&B industry, a company’s basic marketing tool is the visual appeal of its products. In fact, #food is the 25th most used hashtag on Instagram, with over 181 million tags. This reflects the enormous promotional potential of F&B content currently being shared on Instagram.

So how can F&B brands gain the highest conversion rate from Instagram marketing? Captioning with your brand hashtag, re-gramming consumer content, and setting up influencer account takeovers will allow your brand to reach a wider audience while validating your brand with social proof.

‍Use Pinterest to Inspire

‍Pinterest is a visual inspiration tool that allows members to discover and save relevant user-generated content. What sets it apart from Instagram? Pinterest is not only raising brand awareness; it’s driving purchasing behavior. About 25 percent of consumers reported purchasing a product or service after discovering it on Pinterest.Food related content is the most popular content consumers interact with on Pinterest, underscoring the opportunity for food brands to increase direct sales through this channel. F&B marketers should optimize their use of boards, re-pins and hashtags in order to gain optimal conversions from Pinterest.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the most successful Pinterest marketing campaigns avoid in-your-face promotion. Instead, they take the time to share, re-pin and like contributions from others – particularly from other companies that aren’t direct competitors, but may offer a product or service that’s complementary to their own.

‍Use Snapchat to Connect

‍Snapchat is now the third most popular social network among millennials after Facebook and Instagram. The only platform to feature time-constrained photo and video sharing, Snapchat’s unique value is the sense of urgency it creates around content.According to Kathryn O'Connor, Free People's Director of Marketing, Snapchat provides a way to gain consumers’ full attention because of the “self-destruct” feature. With each photo or video message disappearing within ten seconds, followers are constantly guessing what comes next.

For a successful Snapchat marketing campaign, creativity wins the most users. Use Snapchat to connect your food brand with consumers by delivering exclusive Snapchat content – rewards and coupons, new product previews, special sales and backstage content create an elite experience for your in-the-know customers.

‍Launching your Visual Strategy

‍Food and beverages are first and foremost about quality and taste, but visual advertising spreads the word about your brand to consumers. Visual content is a core competency for food businesses, and Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat provide key channels for distributing this content. Pixlee can work with your food brand to develop visual marketing strategies for these three platforms and more. How about a lunch and learn? Request a demo below.