What kinds of people are most likely to purchase your company’s beverage product? For soft drinks manufacturers and bottlers, a crucial step in establishing your marketing strategy involves defining the target audience and fully understanding the type of consumer you aim to reach.
The target audience is defined by factors such as age, location, behavior patterns, lifestyle characteristics, socioeconomic position, and more. Carefully defining your target audience is considered to be the foundation for all of your subsequent marketing decisions. Once you know who you’re trying to reach, you can customize your pitch, and it’s easier to promote your beverages successfully in ways that bring value and capture your consumers’ interest.You can find effective ways to optimize marketing spend, increase sales of your beverage products, and outsmart competitors, all by carefully tuning your marketing campaigns and messaging to speak a language that’s right for your particular audience.
How to Identify Your Target Audience
The starting point in narrowing down your target audience is understanding what problems you solve with your beverage product. What needs do you aim to fill? Once this has been defined, you can start to understand which groups of people share these same problems or needs.
The process of narrowing down the target audience generally requires conducting beverage industry research. It’s not just a question of establishing the ages or income levels of consumers who are most likely to purchase your product. As pointed out by Lukas Borisovas in MyDrinkBeverages, it’s best to start by assessing what motivates different groups of consumers, e.g., what are their dreams and aspirations? What is it that they are passionate about?
Conducting market research is vital. It provides the essential information that will help you create a brand that your target audience will be attracted to while giving you the insight to develop something new and exciting that stands out against the competition. It allows you to invest your marketing spend in the group of consumers that is the most likely to buy from you.
And it’s not just about understanding consumer dreams or aspirations. If you want to be successful in making sales, you need to understand your consumers’ pain points, according to Josh Gallant on Foundation. You need to pin down the different types of consumers you want to reach, and then tailor all of your marketing efforts accordingly. This can include the following:
- Conduct an analysis of each feature and its specific benefits, then make a list of what groups of people have a corresponding need
- Consider specific demographics based on age, location, gender, socio-economic status, family status, and profession
- Take into account the “softer” aspects of your consumer persona such as personality, beliefs, values, lifestyle, and interests
- Knowing the above, formulate carefully your added value, i.e., what is unique that you bring to the table
Look at target audience demographics as well as their needs, motivation to purchase, problems they are facing, and what they are passionate about.
The more exact and detailed you can be, the better. You want to convey quite clearly what it is you do best. Leverage your beverage industry research to clarify what your core offering is and who would benefit most from the product you provide.
Attracting Your Target Market with RC Cola International’s Portfolio
For beverage manufacturers and bottlers, one of the great things about partnering with RC Cola International is that we invest so much in food and beverage market research. We have narrowed down the target audience for each of our products, developing marketing strategies that are designed to be maximally effective.
Each product is marketed to meet the needs and interests of a specific consumer persona. Consumer personas (i.e., detailed pictures or representations of your ideal consumer) bring the target audience to life, helping you understand the typical traits and pain points of the group you’re aiming to reach. And while the consumer persona is actually hypothetical, it should be based on research and analysis conducted on real consumers.
The following sections provide an overview of the consumer personas for each one of the beverage products in our portfolio. For soft drinks manufacturers and bottlers, it’s important to be aware of the diverse groups of consumers we’re reaching, and to understand the specific target audience of each product.
Rad Rain for Persona Ron
An energy drink powered for peak performance, Rad Rain is for athletes like “Ron” and other consumers who are dedicated to sports and who want to have a competitive edge.
Designed to refresh body and soul, Rad Rain comes in a variety of flavors: Regular, Sugar-Free, Cran-Orange, Mango Guava, and Acai-Blue. The packaging does a great job of representing the product, with its bold colors and designs that are appealing to sporty consumers.
RC Cola Neo for Persona Natalie
Sweetened with a mix of stevia and natural cane sugar, Neo has 50% fewer calories than regular cola and appeals to health-conscious consumers, like “Natalie”, who are interested in a full-flavored beverage with fewer calories and no artificial sweeteners.
Neo is particularly popular with Gen Z, the most health-conscious generation ever. The product’s green text and simple packaging targets individuals focused on health and freshness.
RC Cola Refresher for Persona Roland
The product’s target market is a cosmopolitan consumer, such as “Roland”, who loves indulgent drinks and new tastes in their favorite cocktails. With its mixers in orange and lemon flavors, Refresher brings innovation to mixed drinks, providing tastes like Tonic Water with Citrus and Ginger Ale with Cranberry. RC Refresher is a versatile beverage product that is perfect with cocktails, but it is also delicious as a standalone drink.
Royal Crown Cola for Persona Chloe
This true southern cola has a long history. It was first produced by Claude A. Hatcher, an innovative pharmacist who lived in the state of Georgia, in 1905. Royal Crown Cola is made with real cane sugar and it has a full flavor.
The product targets young, trendy people like “Chloe” who are into “authentic” craft beverage products; and this is a group that’s grown significantly in recent years and continues to expand. Also available is Royal Crown Cola Slim, a version of Royal Crown sweetened with stevia with 50% fewer calories, which appeals to more health-conscious consumers.
Let’s Work Together: Brand Building with RC Cola International
From Neo to Rad Rain, RC Cola International has created effective consumer personas for each of our brands, and we’ve developed a comprehensive marketing strategy based on each of these personas that is designed to help manufacturers and bottlers maximize sales.
We provide the support needed by soft drinks manufacturers and bottlers for professional brand building with our strong team of experts, who offer ongoing support with everything from marketing, advertising, and sales to packaging design, merchandising, and sales promotion.
We’re a big believer in the power of collaboration. Your success is our success, and we believe that by working together, we can help you develop marketing strategies that are a good fit for your local market and budget and allow you to grow your profits and increase sales.
Become an RCCI manufacturer or bottler today.
