Cost‑effective marketing strategies for small plant‑based brands

How to build awareness, grow your audience, and drive sales for your business

With lower budgets and less market presence, smaller plant-based brands can find competing with bigger, more established food companies and fast-scaling plant-based brands daunting. However, smaller brands need not fret – there is plenty of room to maneuver with creativity, community-building, and practical, cost-effective marketing strategies. 

1. Sharpen your digital presence

Your digital presence is your storefront, voice, and brand identity rolled into one. For emerging plant-based brands, digital marketing can be a powerful equalizer. A well-optimized online presence can deliver immense visibility without relying on expensive ad campaigns. 

Utilize digital marketing tactics. For example, optimize your website and content around plant-based search terms that are getting the most searches, without compromising the quality of your content for your users. Aligning your blog posts, product pages, and meta descriptions with the language that your audience searches for can dramatically increase searchability. 

You can further invest in content marketing by creating educational and purpose-driven content, such as recipes, tips, or stories that help build brand trust and encourage sharing. 

Remember: content is king, and it has a cumulative effect. You might not see immediate results, but blogs written today can drive traffic for months or even years (just make sure you keep updating them!). 

Don’t forget email marketing. Email is a powerful tool to nurture your audience with exclusive offers, content, pre-launch teasers, and feel-good updates. 

2. Nano and micro‑influencer partnerships

Influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways for brands to not only build trust but also get a huge thumbs-up from people driving conversations. This doesn’t necessarily mean big celebrity endorsements. Nano-influencers (with 1,000 to 10,000 followers) and micro-influencers (with 10,000 to 100,000 followers) tend to have higher engagement rates than mega influencers¹ Specifically, nano-influencers on TikTok tend to have the lowest cost per engagement² This may be attributed to their more personal connections with their followers, especially in niche areas. 

Focus on creators who align closely with your brand’s values and develop long-term relationships where possible. Offer commission-based incentives or unique discount codes to track performance and reward their impact. 

3. Activate locally at events and farmers’ markets

Showing up in person matters. While digital reach is important, nothing beats in-person engagement, especially for food and lifestyle products where taste and texture matter. Set up a stall at farmers’ markets or vegan fairs, or host pop‑ups at wellness cafés. This offers real-time engagement with your audiences and also gives your brand visibility among consumers who are keen to support local and ethical businesses. 

Don’t underestimate the power of local activations: sampling at yoga studios, sponsoring a plant-based cook-off, or co-hosting cooking workshops can generate word-of-mouth exposure. 

Maximize these events by setting up signup lists for your email marketing campaign or collecting testimonials for your socials. Sampling in person also shortens the customer journey – someone who tastes and enjoys your product in a community event is more likely to make a repeat purchase and drive future sales than someone who has seen your product online. 

4. Collaborate with like‑minded brands

Partnerships are powerful when done right and strategically. Partner locally with complementary ethical businesses that align with your brand’s values, such as plant-based restaurants, eco shops, or plant-forward cafés and propose to collaborate. 

Launch co‑branded giveaways, shared email blasts, joint events or bundled products that can significantly extend your reach. For example, a small plant-based cheese startup can collaborate with a cafe or restaurant to provide plant-based meal offerings to their consumers using their product. Or a plant-based snack company could include free samples of their products with food deliveries from restaurants with whom they collaborate. Ask your partners to shout out your product in their next newsletter, while doing the same.

These kinds of cross-promotions are often low-cost or no-cost. The key is to ensure mutual benefit where each partner brings value to the other’s audience while reaching potential new customers.

5. Focus on measurable, scalable campaigns

One of the biggest challenges for small plant-based brands is knowing which marketing efforts are actually working. To avoid wasted resources, set clear SMART goals for each campaign, whether it’s gaining new subscribers or sample redemptions, or hitting a specific engagement rate on TikTok. 

SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. Here is an example of a SMART goal: Launch a three-month influencer collaboration campaign with five micro-influencers aligned with plant-based or sustainability values.

You can use UTM³ parameters and unique tracking links to monitor performance across channels, such as conversions or cost-per-acquisition for your digital ads, or sales from each influencer partnership. For example, if you’re working with several micro-influencers, set up unique tracking links and discount codes to track their conversions separately. 

Once you’ve identified the top-performing channels, double down on them. This knowledge will help you reallocate your budget toward tactics with demonstrated results. 

Final thoughts

You don’t need a six-figure marketing budget to make a meaningful impact in the plant-based space. Small plant-based brands can succeed by shifting traditional advertising budgets into community-centered and performance-driven tactics. 

By focusing on your community, leveraging your ethical and local strengths, and building intimate partnerships both online and in community spaces, small brands can thrive and build a loyal customer base that grows with them. 

Whether it’s through a local market stall, a co-hosted event, or a viral social media post, the key to getting people’s attention and trust is connection. Authentic brands, after all, are the ones people always come back to.

For more support on your alternative protein strategy, get in touch with our experts at [email protected], and subscribe to our newsletter and podcast. 

1. https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing-benchmark-report/#toc-5
2. https://www.dash.app/blog/influencer-marketing-statistics
3.  UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module – these are small snippets of text added to a URL of your webpage to help track the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns in Google Analytics or other analytics platforms you are using. They show where website traffic is coming from (e.g. Instagram, email, or a partner’s site) and which campaigns are driving clicks or conversions.