How to Market a Vegan Business the Right Way: Sandra Nomoto on PYP 549

Plant Yourself - Embracing a Plant-based Lifestyle

It started with Tofurky, and soy milk, and Boca Burgers.

Then the vegan / plant-based lifestyle grew in popularity, and with it demand for more vegan options at the grocery store.

Innovations in food tech allowed the market to explode, with vegan cheeses and meat analogues that are practically indistinguishable from the "real thing."

Vegans want more than animal-free food, of course. There's clothing, and jewelry, and makeup, and sports equipment that can all be made cruelty-free.

And even if the product or service itself isn't inherently vegan (say, accounting or photography or event planning), humans like to do business with those who share our values. So being a "vegan travel agent" or a "vegan massage therapist" also became a potential point of differentiation, and possible advantage.

Along with the growth of the vegan market, the internet has enabled an explosion in niching, where businesses that cater to a tiny slice of the population can now be viable thanks to international ecommerce and communities unbounded by geography.

So here's the question: how can vegans market their businesses to take advantage of affinities in the vegan community, without alienating everyone else?

And here's another question: should they even try?

Today's guest, Sandra Nomoto, is the author of Vegan Marketing Success Stories, and a successful marketer of vegan businesses. In the book, she presents case studies of many different vegan businesses, and how they developed and implemented marketing campaigns that helped them grow and thrive.

In our conversation, we talk about the landscape for vegan businesses, and the tightrope walk that many may have to do to establish credibility and goodwill within the existing vegan community while simultaneously reaching outside of that community to the general "veg-curious" public.

Enjoy!

Links

Vegan Marketing Success Stories

Sandra Nomoto's website