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The Ultimate Guide to Veganuary

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

How to utilise the trend and increase online sales

Starting back in 2014, Veganuary set out to change the world. The UK charity wanted to create a movement similar to Movember to help inspire people to stop eating animals. That first year, 3,300 people signed up to the challenge of becoming vegan for the month of January.

Fast forward to today and an impressive 500,000 people have pledged to be vegan this January. This has doubled the 2019 participants, which broke records at 250,000. That makes a total of over 1,000,000 participants since its beginning in 2014! This is our ultimate guide to Veganuary! Find out more about the challenge and how you can leverage it to AMPlify your sales.

It’s clear that this trend is here to stay and is only getting bigger. Over the last few years, brands have started to take notice. In 2020, more than 1,200 new vegan products and menus were launched with this year being no different. Restaurants and fast-food chains have added to their menus and supermarkets have created space for new items, including investing in their own.

What started as a UK charity has turned into a worldwide phenomenon. There were only three countries that had zero participation last year, with corporations from 192 countries taking part, including the USA, Italy, Switzerland, India, Australia and Singapore to name a few!

People’s reasons for signing up to the challenge differ, but they seem to be motivated by three main sectors – animals, the environment, and health.

The jump in participation this year could be due to the increased awareness of the effects of a vegan diet on the planet, with the help of Sir David Attenborough and others. It could also be  due to the latest lockdown diet trends and the need to be healthier during the pandemic. 

Veganism is growing in popularity outside of the month of January too. Average annual growth in global food and beverage launches with vegan and plant-based claims grew 21% and 58% between 2015-2019, respectively.

With more people interested in the cause and joining for life, media reporting has grown exponentially. In 2020, Veganuary.com reported reaching 12.5 billion viewers via platforms such as news articles, podcasts, radio shows and online media. With #veganuary trending throughout the entire month. 

This exposure is definitely something not to miss out on. With products being featured in The Guardian, PETA, Heart, The Gazette, The Independent and so many more!

How to sell vegan products online

1. Branding and messaging

As you can see from the stats above, people tend to have strong reasons for going vegan. Whether it’s for the environment, animals or health, brands need to make sure their messaging speaks to them. Is your product a healthy alternative to meat or animal products? Is your brand passionate about the planet and animals? Ensure you understand your audience and that your product listings are targeting them correctly. 

A lot of people, especially those new to veganism, aren’t 100% sure what is and what isn’t vegan. Who knew prawn crackers actually contain prawns! Ensure ‘vegan’ is prominent in the title, bullets, imagery, description. Using the universally known Vegan Society icon on your packaging, if possible, will also help increase trust with consumers.

2. choosing the right platform

Online platforms have seen an enormous increase in sales over the last year due to the pandemic. This coupled with the increase in participants of Veganuary, means that online marketplaces will be a big hit this year and next! Even back in 2015/16, Ocado saw a staggering 1,678% increase in sales within its ‘vegan’ category! And in 2020, it changed its inventory of ready meals to nearly 30% plant-based.

Over the years, Amazon has also seen a spike in vegan sales, including an increase of 100% in vegan baking. We’ve seen a rise in our clients’ vegan products too! Since working with Creative Nature, we’ve been able to increase its sales by 750% over a 6 month period! As well as the delicious vegan chocolate brand, Conscious Chocolate, by 521% in 6 months! Read more about our work with the vegan brand here.

 “We absolutely love having marketplace amp as part of our extended team. They’ve been incredible in capitalising sales and working to get new products on Amazon in time during this period. I just can’t wait to keep growing with marketplace amp – Amazon world domination with Creative Nature Baking Mixes and Gnawbles!”

Julianne Ponan, Creative Nature

3. Advertisements

Good branding with the use of keywords on the right platforms won’t always be enough. Especially if it is a new product. For example, on Ocado, 70% of products added to a basket are via the favourites section. Ads are a great way to be seen at the top of search results and stand out from the crowd. 

On Amazon, you can use well-known brands to help people find your listings by targeting other vegan products with Product Attribute Targeting (PAT) ads. Think about how your customer shops and what other products they will be searching for and ensure you appear in those search results.

Conscious Chocolate

4. Good Reviews

Reviews have a powerful impact on Amazon rankings and sales as well as helping customers understand your products. New vegans will want to make sure what they are buying tastes great or is a good alternative to their beloved animal products. Having customer reviews will help to gain trust and turn people from a maybe, to a yes!

To ensure you get reviews on your products, set up Amazon Vine and contact your consumers with follow-up mailers. Here at marketplace amp, we can help you with the setup and distribution of these to ensure your products get the reviews they deserve!

5. Utilise the press and social!

Veganuary 2020 recorded a minimum of 1,370 news articles, reaching more than 2.5 billion people. This year you can already see the impact online with articles ranging from new vegan product launches and brand favourites to recipes and interviews. Being featured in articles, blog posts, podcasts etc. opens up your brand to new audiences to help spread the word of your products. It helps people trust brands and intrigues them to give it a try! 

There are different ways to get featured on other platforms. Make sure you write up a ‘ready-to-share’ press release focused on your products that can easily be shared by journalists and content managers. Send it out to as many people as you can that you believe would be interested. Another way is to offer to be a guest writer for blogs and connect with other bloggers.

Once your content is out there, keep a lookout on social media. Grow your audience by sharing the articles and engaging with the people talking about them. Use the hashtag #veganuary and take part in the conversation to become a trusted voice in the community. All of this will help your organic reach, but you can also use ads to target vegans and vegetarians. Social media knows everything and its advertising power is immense, don’t miss out on it.

Vegan product launches

If you are yet to join the vegan hype, it’s worth using this year to plan a product launch for Veganuary 2022. Take a look at your current best sellers and see if you can transform one for the vegan market. 

Starting now will give you the time to:

  • Create the best product
  • Have awesome product visuals and copywriting
  • Build your online listings
  • Gather honest reviews to attract your audience.

As you can tell, this is a trend that is worth getting behind and it doesn’t look like it’ll be slowing down anytime soon. Here at marketplace amp, we can help you promote your products during this Veganuary as well as help you optimise for the next. Get in contact today to find out how we can help AMPlify your brand on the world’s marketplaces.

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