Marketing challenges for vegan businesses

In this episode, we sit down with award-winning content writer and editor for cruelty-free businesses, Sandra Nomoto, to discuss veganism and its increasing popularity among young consumers. Sandra shares her experience of becoming a vegan, which was a long and slow process of elimination that started in 2007. She emphasizes that veganism aims to eliminate the use of animal products as much as possible and extends beyond just the food we eat to clothing and household items.

Sandra also offers valuable insights into how businesses can effectively market to the growing vegan population. She explains that the extent to which veganism is emphasized in marketing campaigns varies from business to business and highlights the importance of understanding the needs and values of the vegan community. As an author, Sandra has written two books: The Only Public Relations Guide You’ll Ever Need and Vegan Marketing Success Stories. She also shares how she successfully launched her books through a solid marketing campaign with a 90-day strategy, including daily social posts, weekly blogs, and weekly newsletters.

Listen to this insightful conversation to learn more about Sandra’s journey as a vegan, her tips for marketing to the vegan population, and her successful book launch strategies. You can find more information about Sandra and her books at SandraNomoto.com.

Doug Crowe: All right, welcome to the Author Your Brand show. You’re going to want to take notes, especially today, I’ve got a great guest on. Hopefully it’ll be some spicy controversy going on. We always like that. Our guest today is, her title is Content DC:tor. She’s an award-winning content writer and editor for cruelty-free businesses, which is good, I think. And she also offers a suite of services for authors, including her career in PR. She ran Conscious Public Relations for over 10 years. She’s authored The Only Public Relations Guide You’ll Ever Need in 2019 and Vegan Marketing Success Stories in 2022, which is recently honored by the Vegan Choice Awards. So on her side of desk, she co-hosts the VEG Networking Canada, Canada’s only vegan networking group, and she writes at her own blog. And so welcome to our show today. Miss Sandra Nomoto, Sandra, how are you today?

Sandra Nomoto: Good. Thanks so much for having me.

DC: Good. Okay, before the show started, we talked a little about the vegan thing, and I’m looking for something you know, controversial. So I’ll just say this. If you’re not a vegan, if you don’t know any of them, that is, that means you probably need to understand their world mindset in case you want to market to them. Or maybe it has nothing to do with your book or your product or service might not have nothing to do with veganism, but those are a growing group of people, so you might want to be aware of what their thoughts are so you can market to them. Right? Is that fair statement to say?

SN: Yeah, 100% and think of all of the young folks who are coming up against climate change‌ and the lifestyle habits that they want to espouse. And if you’re a business, you need to be up on this if you want to retain those younger consumers.

DC: Great. Well, let’s focus on the vegan thing that’s very interesting to me, because I’m not one, but I’m interested in knowing more about it, because it doesn’t bother me at all. So how’d you get involved with that side business? Were you always a vegan?

SN: It’ll be five years in April this year, as a vegan, and my previous business was not in this world. So right around the time I closed that company, Conscious PR, was the the same year I happened to go vegan. That was a goal of mine for many years. And then about a year and a half later, after kind of exploring different career options, wondering what my next move was going to be, yeah, I sat down to meditate at the end of 2019 and then that intuitive voice came to me, and it was like, “You’re vegan now, and you’re always going to be writing for the rest of your life. So put those two things together and start helping out this industry.”

DC: It just came to you, right? So I’m going to do my direction, right?

SN: Yeah. And I’ve learned when I’ve ignored my intuition, it just comes back to me years later and stronger and louder. And so I know when I get these, these aha moments, as you may call it, I always follow it.

DC: Nice, very good. Okay, so, um, you weren’t a vegan before this, or just came to you, so you did a diet change that day? Or what?

SN: I was a long and slow process, starting from watching the documentary Earthlings at the end of 2007. Very impactful, free to watch online, and then over a number of years, slowly eliminating animal products from my diet. And dairy was that very last thing for health reasons, I found out I was sensitive to dairy, and it might have been the cause of, you know, these horrible digestive symptoms that I was experiencing for many years.

So yeah, after kicking that to the curb, I found, alright, well, I’ve hit the vegan diet. Now everything else is—becomes much easier to not buy animal products for your clothing or your household and things like that.

DC: So, right. So was it, I mean, the food thing, some people have a challenge with it. Some people, you know, come and go. Was it difficult for you to make that transition?

SN: I mean, like I said, I did it over a number of years. So a very slow process of elimination. A lot of people find it difficult because in their social circles, if they’re, if they’re the only vegan amongst their friends or their family members, again, or do not understand why they’re making these choices, it can be difficult to, yeah, to be sitting, you know, with the turkey on the holiday table and then, but again, if I always, you know, I always bring my own entrees, and whenever people are open to having conversations about why I’m vegan, yeah, I provide, you know, hopefully provide some educational information, and then open people’s eyes to why we, we want to live this lifestyle.

DC: Right. Was it difficult on the, on the non, non food side, I’m thinking, you know, shoes and stuff like that. Was that difficult to go with canvas, or whatever it is?

SN: Not really, because there’s so many great companies right now that are offering, you know, I live in Canada, so winter coats are really important to us, but there’s so many companies that are offering, you know, these, these thick coats that are not made of down. So really great alternatives out there. Same thing with boots. I don’t need to wear leather boots anymore. There’s so many alternatives. I find the probably the biggest thing is, like your car. A lot of car companies are still using leather, but many are switching to plant-based, yeah, leather alternatives. And then, so things like your down comforter, that can be quite expensive to replace. And so there are things like that I still have, you know, around the house, but at some point when they need to be replaced, then it’ll be a vegan replacement.

DC: Yeah, good for you. Okay, so one of the things I find interesting about the topic is people have their, like, their belief and value system, which I always respect, but I always, I’m always curious about when you, you know, take your belief value system and try to push on somebody else. So tell me more about that, in terms of the vegan world, in terms of, like, “Hey, this is what I want to do for me,” and then encouraging others. Or how do you approach that?

SN: Yeah, that’s such a big question, I think. And I think every business approaches that a little bit differently, right? Some are going to be a lot more. Yeah, almost, they almost seem like activists. A great example of this is VFC, which stands for vegan fried chicken. It’s a UK-based company, and they’re all about trying to get people off of eating real chicken products, right? So naturally, a lot of their ‌activism involves: Here’s what a real chicken factory farm looks like, you know. Are you comfortable with that? And then talking about how great their ‌products are, I haven’t been able to try them because they’re not available here. But they, you know, they look delicious.

And one cool thing that they do that I mention in my book is they use the trolls that, you know, comment on their social media posts, and they ‌highlight, they actually use them in their ad campaigns. So these are, you know, bus stations, train stations. They’ve highlighted their trolls as a part of their campaign, just to get people to think differently.

DC: Conversation.

SN: And then they choose a Cluckwit of the Month, and that, that one troll gets highlighted in a blog post and a number of social posts, and so it’s, I just think it’s brilliant, because it’s using your naysayers, people who you know don’t care for your ‌company or your products, and ‌spinning it to ‌market their own company. So yeah, I love that.

DC: So in your world, with your with your book or not, are you focused on people who are already vegan or people who are just considering it, or both?

SN: Both, yeah. I mean, as great as I would love to just market to the vegans, we’re not even 5% of the world’s population yet, and so if you’re choosing that as your ‌primary business audience, you’re niching yourself down. And there’s nothing wrong with that. If you feel like you’ve you’ve got enough of a customer base to run your business, but, yeah, one big thing I learned from my book is that most vegan businesses do cater to omnivores because we want to usher non vegans along this plant-based spectrum and get you closer, get you more away from consuming animals and closer to consuming more plant-based alternatives.

DC: Okay, and then you know just I’d probably be better off asking you this versus meat, but vegetarian versus vegan? What’s the main difference there?

SN: Vegetarians still may consume some dairy and eggs. Yeah, it was sort of this bigger umbrella. And then veganism formed, as I would say, a subset that is really defined by like, as much as possible, zero use of animal products.

DC: Okay, and is your—I forget you about the other people you’re working with. Are they mainly focusing on the aspect for health or for environment, or something else when they go vegan?

SN: It’s, yeah, it’s really different for every business, how much of that, that kind of messaging that they want to put ‌in. One company that I’ve worked with is BReD. It’s a plant-based bakery, the only one in Whistler, which is a snow town about two hours north of where I live and‌ a lot of our stuff is about highlighting the winter season, the snow sports, the athletes, that sort of thing.

And so veganism, every now and then pops in, into the content, but, but, yeah, we kind of look like we always look at, what are the different angles that we can take that are right for your business, so yeah.

DC: Nice. And before you were doing this, you had Conscious publishing. What did you call it?

SN: Conscious PR

DC: Yeah, Conscious PR. You’re using the same principles you had there in your book. I’m guessing, right?

SN: Yeah. I mean, as a PR firm, we mostly did media outreach, publicity for our clients, and then we added social media services closer to the last, yeah, the last few years. Yeah, now my work is quite different. It’s focused more on writing content or editing content that my clients want to draft up themselves first, consulting and then helping folks who want to publish books. So, on the author side.

DC: Okay, and so what are some of the best practices for getting these books out there for your clients?

SN: Yeah, having done this myself for a good number of months, like, yeah, you really got to have a solid campaign. And because there are, you know, about 100 companies that I included in the book, I couldn’t even wrap my head around what, what is my content plan for this launch? So I actually hired a marketing strategist to help me, and she was great. She came up with a 90-day strategy that included daily social posts, weekly blogs, and then weekly newsletters.

So at the time I was only sending out newsletters once a quarter, if you can believe that. So, really stepped it up to two weekly. And then now I’ve scaled back to going to once‌ a month now that, because my book launch phase is now over, but I’m still doing things like this, podcast interviews, and that’s really important, to get the book out there, otherwise it’s just gonna sit on the literal or digital shelf. So, yeah.

DC: Yeah. So how did it go for you with this? How long are you into the campaign now for your book launch?

SN: Well, the ebook came out in September, and then the hard copy and audio in November. So a good. Yeah, I don’t know. I can’t count how many months that is, okay? Yeah. Five months, five months.

DC: And so tell me, how is it’s working for you, sales or engagements. Tell me about the results of your marketing.

SN: Yeah, it’s been so great to see. I mean, it’s not a New York Times bestseller or anything like that right now, but yeah, the sales have been slowly trickling in. And what’s so cool is people around the world finding it, and they’ll post a little story and tag me in it. Just yeah. It’s so cool to hear folks around the world purchasing it and sharing that with me.

And then, of course, I had a few local launches where I got to physically sign books. That’s my absolute favorite thing to do, is sign books for folks. So yeah. So yeah, doing my best.

DC: That’s great. Congratulations on that. Yeah, I’ve got a couple of friends. One of my friends became vegan, I think about two years ago or so. He’s in Texas, and he’s on Facebook saying, “Where can I find a vegan restaurant?” And somebody said, “You’re in Texas. Like, good luck,” you know.

SN: I hear Austin is quite a food town. Yeah, you’ve got to find it in Austin.

DC: Yeah, Austin, for sure. But I don’t think he was in Austin. I think he was way far from Austin. So I’m just, it was just funny. Because, like, why you got to go with that? You know, where the culture goes, and this wasn’t in, yeah, wherever, wherever he was at the time.

SN: Or just learn to be a really good cook.

DC: That’s right, I’m surprised. I just got to make some jokes here, and hope you don’t mind. But, like, so you said you bring your own entrees. Your own entrees to a dinner party.

SN: Yeah, to the family holiday parties. That’s how it goes, and when they’re really good. So there’s a local company that makes these frozen lasagnas and shepherd’s pie. You just stick it in the oven and a lot of folks are like, like, you’re, you’re sure this is plant-based lasagna. It’s like, Are you sure? And it’s, yeah, I find that so great when‌ everybody can enjoy, and you can show people that, ‌yes, plant-based food can be just as good.

DC: Oh, yeah, my daughter’s vegetarian. And, I mean, I saw whenever we go to a restaurant, unless we, you know, go to someplace, which is, you know, barbecue, there’s always an option for her for vegetarian stuff. I’m not sure. That’s why I asked about the vegetarian versus vegan. If it’s hard to get—I mean, if I’m at a restaurant and I order something vegetarian, it still might not be vegan for you, right? Have any kind of dairy something on it, right?

SN: Yeah. And that’s when you have to ask the server, you know, to remove the cheese, or ask them what else they can do to, yeah, to like, flavor those vegetables, because you don’t just want to have boiled vegetables. That’s not good enough for us, right?

DC: No, no, there’s mostly protein in broccoli, of course, but you know, it’s got—that’s probably a big question people give to you. But where do you get your protein, right? And broccoli is a big one. I know. I’m sure the other thing, what else besides broccoli would be good for the protein question?

SN: Oh, yeah. I mean a lot of vegetables, but tofu, tempeh, which is fermented soy, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, grains, things like quinoa.

DC: Yeah, all the things that taste like crap.

SN: It’s actually, that’s where the seasoning comes in. It’s really important. But yeah, it’s actually really hard to be protein deficient here in the west, where we are, where we have these abundance of foods.

DC: Yeah, that’s very cool. Okay, all right, so tell me more about the book. Was it a long process for you. It’s not your first book. So was it? Was it took a while to write it, or what?

SN: It took me three months. So the end of September 2021, I started sending out my first round of case studies, or requests for stories. And then the book was sort of written. It wrote itself by the end of by the start of January 2022.

DC: It wrote itself, huh? Right onto the computer screen.

SN: Yeah. I mean, the nerve-wracking part is just you send out these requests, and are people going to bite, right? So once I got that first one or the first few, I was like, all right, I’m on to something, and we’re going to build a book here. So, yeah, I started getting inspired as the stories started coming in. So I didn’t want to wait till, okay, I have 50 stories. Now let’s write the book I started as they started coming in. And so, yeah, it happened very organically. And yeah, and I would work on it, you know, on my off time when I was working with clients and, and so, yeah, that really helped with that timeline.

DC: What was the biggest challenge for you in drafting and writing the book and getting it out there? The hardest part for you?

SN: I tell people, the hardest part is always just marketing. The easy part is the writing of the book, especially a book like mine, where a lot—there’s a lot of contributors, yeah. It’s the marketing. It’s getting it out there, appearing on shows like this, yeah, signing books, just yeah, getting it out there as much as you can. And I’ve certainly, yeah, been trying to get around in the vegan world, in all those Facebook and LinkedIn groups, but then, but also non-vegan media as well who would be interested in picking it up, or just interested in, yeah, in what I have to say.

DC: What are you saying? What is that? What is the core issue or the core theme of the book?

SN: Well, if you are vegan and running a business or have a marketing role in a business. This will hopefully give you some new tips you haven’t thought of from the contributors and the other examples I provide. If you are not vegan, perhaps you found yourself in a marketing role in a vegan company, and you don’t have that mindset of a vegan, this will give you an idea of some of the things that, again, businesses are currently doing. Veganism and living a plant-based lifestyle is going to become more and more the norm. And so again, even if you’re not there yet, you haven’t started, yeah, just be aware of what’s happening in this industry, because it is getting bigger. And yeah, like I said at the top, a lot of youth are very aware of this sort of thing because of ‌climate change and the way that things are going if we can’t turn it around.

DC: So I can leave that for a topic for a different day. Why is it that vegans, or vegan activists feel they should tell me what I should eat, but as an omnivore, I don’t tell them.

SN: Well, I would challenge you and say that there are a lot of companies that are telling everyone, not just vegans, but everyone, what to eat. And this has happened for a long time when animal agriculture, you know, came into the scene, the meat, the pork industry, the dairy industry, like in the mid-20th century, we didn’t have the internet at that time. We had we had traditional media, TV, newspapers, and they got a heads up on educating the consumer about why you should eat animals, whereas veganism, the term vegan, didn’t even start until 1944. And so I feel like we’re time-wise, we’re decades behind. However, we have amassed a lot of the actual scientific, scientifically proven information to back up our claims that, you know, here are all the reasons why you should try and reduce‌ your animal intake.

DC: Yeah, I understand that there’s the lobbying groups and the marketing, you know, there’s no broccoli growers association. There’s only McDonald’s, farm. I get that, but I don’t think they tell us what not to do. They just tell us you should buy more, you know, drink more milk, buy more pork, but they don’t tell us, you shouldn’t do something. And I think that’s a big differentiator.

SN: Yeah, because, I think, because it’s more positive to say eat this versus don’t eat this.

DC: Right.

SN: Yeah. From a public relations standpoint, we always say it’s better to frame something positively. You know, “Got milk? Got strong bones.” That’s how they won. But now, yeah, and here’s the challenge for vegan businesses, is how to frame that positively. And I think we have all the information we need now to frame that positively so that we can hopefully undo a lot of the damage that a lot of these animal ag, companies have made.

DC: Yeah, but the got milk people didn’t say only drink milk and don’t go meat, or that you can’t eat vegetables. They would still be inclusive, to use a liberal term here, as opposed to vegans are saying you’re destroying the world by having a cup of milk or eating an egg. You know? I mean, there’s, you’ve got to see the difference there between someone who’s omnivore versus someone saying you can only do one thing. Like a carnivore person might be a good a good better debate, because they say, don’t eat any plants, right? Because you’re killing all the insects and the wheat and stuff. But the omnivore person would say, hey, “Buy our product, and you could also buy other products.”

SN: Yeah, yeah. And again, that’s the challenge for folks in this industry, is—we are competing against against omni companies, and so again, just trying to tout the benefits, I think, is really key. Yeah. You know, PETA has been a leader in the space, but, you know, it’s arguable whether they’ve been effective or not. Because of their tactics have been quite controversial in a sense, right?

DC: Yeah, yeah. They’re not, they’re not positive, like you mentioned. Better to be positive about it versus, I mean, these people tossing paint on paintings recently. I’m like, what’s that about? That’s just ridiculous. Like that doesn’t help anybody out, right? Makes no sense to me, but that’s a whole other tangent.

Well, that’s great. Hold up your book again. Let’s take a look at that book for people who want to get that copy there. I love that, Sandra. Read that: Vegan Marketing Success Stories, all right? And that’s available, obviously, on ‌Amazon Canada, not Amazon US. They can print it wherever they go, and they’ll use sustainable paper, I’m sure, because we have more trees now than we did 30 years ago. You probably know that. So that’s a good thing, or digital, you know. So it’s great.

SN: Yeah, ebook, paperback and audio as well. So you can get all of those links on my website just with my name. SandraNomoto.com.

DC: Love it. Any last words of wisdom for people who want to market in that niche?

SN: Just pick up my book. I hope it helps you. And, yeah, if you want to have a convo with me, hop on social. I’m very easy to get a hold of with my name again. Or, yeah, we can do a consult, 30 minutes. And yeah, talk about what you can do with your business.

DC: Outstanding. Links are below here, folks, check it out. Thanks so much for the show today. Sandra, really appreciate it.

SN: You’re welcome. Thanks so much. Doug.

DC: You bet. And that wraps up the show today. If you want to take a look at the vegan lifestyle or for your business, check out Sandra’s book. She knows what she’s talking about. She’s a pro. That concludes our show for today. I’m your host Doug Crowe. Have a good one.