Revisiting the Best Ads for Meal Kits

THIS WEEK’S FODDER
☀️ Good Morning

You’re reading Marketing Fodder, a newsletter dedicated to helping you improve your Facebook and Instagram ads.

Today, we’ll be revisiting an ad category that I covered in the beginning (when this newsletter only had 4 subscribers!), meal kits. The Facebook ads we’ll be examining are from these two companies:

1. Blue Apron

2. HelloFresh

STARTER
Marketing Headlines

• Barry Schwartz polled SEOs about whether they were impacted by Google’s August 2024 core update (which is not done rolling out yet), here are the results.

• Black Friday & Cyber Monday are not that far away, here’s how merchants are preparing.

• How keyword clustering can benefit your SEO.

• Google now allows you to “Chat with Gemini” from Chrome’s address bar, but it won’t provide you with assistance based on the webpage you’re looking at.

MAIN
Meal Kits

Trends:

According to Google Trends, search interest for HelloFresh has been significantly higher than Blue Apron:

How I Analyze Facebook Ads

A great Facebook ad communicates the benefits of the product or service, not solely the features. Think about it like this: a feature makes the product better but a benefit makes the customer’s life better. So, focusing on how your product or service makes your target customer’s life easier (or better) helps get the conversion.

Alright, let’s see how these companies market their meal kits:

#1: Blue Apron

The Good:

• Blue Apron is a big player in the meal kit delivery space. This ad is a great example of identifying a pain point and addressing that with targeted ad copy. The ad copy highlights company’s “NEW” 15-minute meals and text within the image reenforces that idea with the phrase, “Time-saving meals.” Focusing on one pain point, like lack of time, is an effective way to grab the attention of a potential customer.

• Putting a blue “Order ASAP” button on the image is smart because it helps prompt the viewer to click the ad.

The Bad:

• The food in the image looks ok but not excellent. I would try a more recognizable entree.

The Recommendation:

• Blue Apron likely wants to be the meal kit for everyone, but they would likely see better ad performance if they focused on targeting specific segments like busy parents, work-from-home warriors, or couples who want to cook together. I would test some ads that specifically speak to those segments.

#2: HelloFresh

The Good:

• HelloFresh is also a major player in the meal kit space and this ad reveals another pain point that meal kits try to address: “expensive groceries.” The focus of this ad is the $4.99 per meal, which is prominently displayed in the image.

• The large, bold text of the image is eye-catching. This style can be more effective because people are so used to seeing realistic or kitchen counter style food photos.

The Bad:

• The image is too noisy. The large and busy text prevents the food dishes from being the focal point.

• The description section (below the URL) is lackluster, providing more information or another reason to sign up is better than saying “Sign up.”

The Recommendation:

• Test having less text within the image.

• Add more information to the description section.

• Test “Order Now” instead of “Get Offer” for the call to action.

Pro Tip

Get back to the basics:

• Product.

• Price.

• Place.

• Promotion.

How to think about the 4 Ps of marketing in the context of e-commerce and paid media.