In-Recipe Campaigns for CPG Brands: What You Get and How It Works

Crafting a compelling brand story through recipes is a powerful way to engage your audience, boost brand awareness, and drive conversions. Whether your food brand’s marketing strategy is to increase the visibility of your brand or optimize product sales, recipe-driven campaigns offer a meaningful way to connect with consumers through food experiences that inspire and excite them.

Using the right combination of evergreen and seasonal recipes can elevate your brand and help you connect with your audience. Let’s dive into how this strategy can be effectively implemented and measured for maximum impact.

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The Strategy: How to Create a Brand Story with Recipes?

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Recipes have the unique ability to tell a brand's story by capturing the essence of its values, quality, and relevance. The key lies in combining both evergreen recipes that resonate year-round, and top-relevant recipes that align with seasonal trends or specific target audiences.

For example, let's look at how a coffee brand leverages a recipe-based brand story to attract coffee lovers:

Example: Holiday Coffee Moments for Coffee brand

• Target Audience: Coffee enthusiasts or convenience seekers
• Storytelling Focus: Emphasizing rich, aromatic blends or smooth, balanced coffee options.
• Recipe Focus: Special holiday coffee recipes that highlight the warmth and comfort of illy Coffee, such as Holiday Cinnamon Latte, Coffee Mocha Cake, or Peppermint Infused Espresso.

By positioning these recipes in a way that ties back to the brand values—premium quality and exceptional taste—you craft a meaningful narrative that resonates with your audience, driving both conversion and consideration.

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The Distribution: Where Will My Sponsored Products Be Seen?

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Effective distribution is essential to maximize reach and engagement. Recipes, when placed across the right platforms, can generate substantial visibility for your brand. The goal is to position your sponsored content where it will be seen by a large and relevant audience.

Key Platforms for Recipe Distribution:

1. SideChef Recipes: Featuring your recipes in popular recipe apps or websites ensures a high level of engagement. SideChef's curated recipe collections can amplify your content to millions of food lovers.
2. Newsletters & Articles: Sending your recipes via newsletters and featuring them in articles on food-related websites ensures your content reaches a dedicated audience.
3. Social Media Channels: Leveraging social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest helps to drive engagement through visual content, like mouth-watering images of the recipes and interactive stories.
4. Partner Platforms: Collaborating with retailers, influencers, and food bloggers helps expand the reach and target new customer segments.

For example, distributing a holiday-themed coffee recipe across SideChef and social media channels resulted in 2.3 million impressions—demonstrating the power of strategic recipe placement.

Let’s deep-dive in some of these sponsored placements. We’re going to show some examples of brands in various channels.

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1. Targeted Ads Matched With Relevant Recipes

Showing contextual food ads within recipes had turned out to be a very effective marketing tool—showing the product within the context of the recipe (e.g., showing how illy coffee is used in a holiday coffee recipe) allows for seamless integration of the product into the user experience. 

We’ve tested the effectiveness of contextual ads, where we compared ads showcasing a branded item that matches with an ingredient in the recipe, vs a randomized product ad. We’ve seen the contextual food ads are 3x more effective in terms of CTR compared to the non-targeted ads.

That’s huge - CPG brands can target high-intern shoppers within content that actually matches with their branded items.

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2. Increase Brand Visibility in Recipe Titles and Recipe Images

To maximize brand exposure, consider integrating your brand name directly into the recipe title and prominently featuring your product in the recipe image. This can be done in multiple ways: we can include your product naturally within the image itself—such as incorporating it into the dish or placing it as a key ingredient in the scene.

Alternatively, we can create a custom cover image with a split design, displaying your brand alongside the original recipe. This approach ensures that your brand is immediately recognizable, reinforcing its association with the recipe and increasing engagement with your target audience.

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3. Tell Your Brand Story In Food Articles

Articles provide another impactful avenue for food brands to tell their story, showcase their products, and position themselves as essential ingredients in consumers' kitchens. From listicles like Coffee Lovers' Delight: 10 Irresistible Recipes Featuring illy® Coffee to deep dives into cooking trends, well-placed articles educate and inspire readers while seamlessly incorporating branded products. By leveraging high-quality content across food media platforms, brands can build credibility, drive discovery, and encourage trial in an organic and engaging way.

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4. Feature in Newsletters Reaching High-Intent Shoppers

Featuring food brands in newsletters is a powerful way to engage consumers directly in their inboxes, offering curated content that aligns with their interests. Whether it's a seasonal recipe collection or a featured product spotlight, newsletters create a direct and personalized connection with an audience already interested in food and cooking, increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversions.

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5. Grow Engagement Through Social Media Posts

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Social media offers an incredible opportunity to engage with your audience in a visual, interactive way. Sharing visually appealing recipe posts that include branded products can drive excitement and increase awareness. You can also use social media ads to amplify reach, driving traffic to the recipe pages where users can continue to prepare for shopping and cooking.

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6. Showcase Your Product In Recipe Videos

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Video content is one of the most engaging ways to capture audience attention, and integrating your product into recipe videos can significantly enhance brand visibility. Whether it’s a step-by-step cooking demonstration, a quick recipe reel, or an in-depth tutorial, your product can be naturally incorporated at key moments—with your product being unpacked, poured, mixed, or plated. 

This dynamic format allows viewers to see your product in action, reinforcing its value and usability in real-life cooking scenarios. 

Additionally, branded overlays, callouts, or end-screen mentions can further highlight your product, ensuring it remains top-of-mind for consumers looking for inspiration in the kitchen.

Here’s an example of a recipe video for Doritos we’ve launched recently.

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The Insights: How Will We Measure the Campaign Performance?

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Tracking the success of your campaign requires robust metrics to understand its effectiveness. Here’s how you can measure campaign performance in terms of sales, engagement, and overall impact:

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

1. Total Number of Orders Sent to Retailers: This helps assess how many consumers were driven to purchase your product through the recipe content. Our in-recipe campaigns are optimized for highest numbers of order sent, and we guarantee we hit the campaign target we set upfront.
2. Product Performance: Identify the top-performing products featured in the recipes and determine which items generated the most sales.
3. Most Popular Recipes: Measuring which recipes performed best gives you insight into consumer preferences and interests.
4. Sales Lift: Measure the increase in sales attributed to the campaign's influence, comparing the period during the campaign to before and after.

Curious how recent brand campaign have been performing? Read our latest Success Stories.

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Beyond Sales: Analyzing Additional Metrics

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In addition to the direct sales data, several other metrics help gauge the overall success of the campaign. We deliver these results in collaboration with an independent third-party, Pathformance.

1. Incremental Dollars: This measures the additional revenue driven by the campaign. It's crucial for understanding how much extra profit was generated due to your recipe-based branding efforts.
2. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Evaluate the efficiency of your advertising dollars and how they correlate to actual sales. A strong ROAS indicates that your recipe-driven campaign is both effective and profitable.
3. Category and Item Performance: Assess how specific product categories (e.g., coffee or kitchen appliances) or individual items performed in response to the campaign. This allows you to refine your strategy for future campaigns.
4. Geographic Performance: Analyze how different regions respond to the campaign to better tailor future efforts to high-performing markets.
5. Halo Effect: This refers to the positive impact a campaign may have on other similar products in the same category. A successful coffee recipe campaign for Illy, for example, could drive increased sales not only for coffee but also for related products like coffee accessories.

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Conclusion?

Use recipes to reach a highly engaged audience, build a compelling brand story and run the most efficient performance-driven campaigns.

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Leveraging recipes as part of your brand’s storytelling strategy is an effective way to engage your target audience and drive conversions. By focusing on both evergreen and seasonally relevant recipes, distributing content through the right channels, and carefully measuring the results, you can create a meaningful narrative that resonates with consumers and encourages action.

Ultimately, integrating your brand into delicious, memorable recipes creates a lasting connection that not only promotes the product but also elevates your brand story, ensuring it stays top-of-mind for consumers.

SideChef provides two tailored advertising solutions for CPG brands, designed to meet different campaign objectives:

• In-Recipe Campaigns – Focused on driving conversions and increasing sales lift. Success is measured by the number of orders sent to retailers and cost per order (CPO). We deliver contextual ads and sponsored ingredients within recipes, making your branded item the default product in retailer checkout. We provide an incrementality study to measure the sales lift.
• Recipe Sponsorships – Designed to enhance brand awareness and storytelling, with campaign performance measured by cost per thousand impressions (CPM). We bring visibility to your brand within recipes. Inquire our team for more info.

All campaigns can be used in conjunction with Shoppable Recipe Newsletters, which reach over 100K subscribers with an open rate of 20%+.

Connect with our team to explore our campaign solutions, request a demo, or access a case study tailored to your product category.