Let's Work Together
In the early 2000s - before gluten-free was even cool and when being vegan was only for hippies - I launched a CPG health food brand selling to companies such as Whole Foods Market, Amazon (back before everybody was selling on amazon) Jimbos, Gelsons, Lazy Acres, People's Food Coops, Aramark, Lassens, Erewhon and more. With only 25K investment to create and launch the brand, we got to 200K in sales within the first 2 years. My company collaborated with other companies like Evolution Juice, GoRaw, Lidia's Organics and was approached by Van's Waffles and Kellogg Company for further investment. The brand was featured in magazines such as the LA Business Journal, San Diego Union Tribune, C California, InStyle Magazine, Yogi Times, Glee, Oxygen and more. The products were popular among celebrities such as Ellen Degenerous, Gwenyth Paltrow, Joaquin Phoenix and Bill Maher.
With little budget for marketing we had to get super creative and resourceful. With Facebook business pages just launching in the mid 2000s, it was a new tool to many, and we signed up right away seeing the marketing potential. I used all sorts of chat rooms (remember those?) to create an online buzz and education the public on gluten-free healthy treats. We were one of the first brands to help fuel the gluten-free buzz, the raw food trend and using refrigeration as a preservation (shelf life) tool. to do this I got big bloggers (yes, bloggers who were just starting to get popular) and influencers in the industry to try my products or push my products through their blogs. I would cold email and offer free product for giveaways and reviews plus I offered to pay them monthly to put my logo on their web site. I signed up for social media accounts, started my own blog and sent "newsletters" to any email address that purchased product on our site. This was before mail chimp and other automation software. The was the start of digital media and it was an exciting time to be marketing a new innovative product.
In 2013, After 11 years building and running the company, I decided to focus on my family, work from home and stop pounding the pavement as a business owner. I started consulting for small food and CPG start-ups giving them all the tools they needed to succeed in the CPG industry. In addition to consulting I continued to create and develop recipes for digital health companies, magazines, and other brands such as the Honest Company, Pressed Juicery (The Chalkboard Mag), Honest Beauty, North River Farms, Vuori and Prana and continued to work with other influencers, keep up on digital media by doing campaigns and collaborations with big brands like Ruby Rockets, Whole Foods Market, Jamba Juice, Annie's Organic, Nucifera, The Fullest, Suja, Sakara Life, Barre3, and more.
My Own Blog - Pure Kitchen
This space has been a platform to showcase photography, writing style, marketing abilities and recipe development. You'll find all my work in here and all the press we have received. Feel free to explore.
Recipe Development
Here is a sample recipe that I developed for a company to use on their blog and social media accounts to help create a brand story of health and wellness. Click here to see the recipe live.
E-books & Monetizing a Blog
I had the chance to put together a few ebooks over this past year to help monetize my web site. To market them I used social media, sent newsletters, paid for social ads and boosts, gathered and shared testimonials, had a few influencers and companies push the book through their blogs as well. Click to see the ebooks for sale. I can walk you through how to monetize a web site and how to generate leads, gain traffic and social following.
Strategic & Content Partnerships (Brand Awareness)
As a content curator and brand strategist for a digital health company called BasilHealth, I created a buzz, a brand voice and a social media marketing strategy. Part of that included working closely with influencers in the industry and also creating strategic content partners. Here is a sample of a content partnership. We exchanged content on each others platforms and of course linked back to each other (building back links and SEO was part of this strategy). Ava Women was a perfect strategic and content partner for us. Click here to see it.
Newsletter & MailChimp
I've been sending out email newsletters since before automation services like MailChimp. I now use MailChimp to send newsletters to thousands of subscribers. Building this list is key to customer acquisition.
Brand Awareness / Marketing
As part of my marketing and brand awareness strategy back in 2009 I got one of the biggest bloggers to post a review of my products on her website. Oh Joy - aka Joy Cho - is one of the biggest bloggers and influencers on the world wide web. Her blog posts brought tons of leads and sales to our e-commerce store.
In 2009 and 2010 this was a pretty new digital marketing strategy. Check out another sample here.
Selling Products Online & In Stores
Amazon.com launched their "Marketplace" in 2000 and we were selling on their site by 2005, just a year after we launched. See our products here.
We also sold our products through distributors.
Media
Here is a sample of my CPG company's press and media.
We focuses on balancing both online and in print magazine features and local and national as well. They both are key to brand awareness but serve different marketing and media purposes.