How To Market Your Homemade Jam

_{Ian Renton  | 13/02/2015 | Jam Labels,Marketing Your Food Products}

It is great to make homemade jam and give it to friends and relatives. My late mother made magnificent apricot jam using dried apricots, sugar and passionfruit. Then, she poured the jam into old peanut butter jars. If you want to actually sell your homemade jam, then you will need to be a little more sophisticated than that and you will need to understand all of the laws governing food labels and then apply this to your Jam Labels.

In particular, you should identify the actual food being presented for sale, the ingredients, directions for use and storage and nutritional information including average energy intake. This includes percentages of ingredients and components of food as set down by the Food Standards Code. After reading this information and you are still keen to sell your homemade jam, then you want to sell as much jam as you possibly can within the constraints of your capacity. You're going to need some marketing. The best place to start is with friends and relatives. They might buy some or you may initially give some away for free. Then, encourage your friends and relatives and their friends and relatives to market your jam on social media. This is a great way to start as it is free.

Before you get too far into your marketing, you are going to need packaging materials and a means of transportation. Jam is usually packaged in glass but it can be stored in plastic. To keep your costs down, you will be probably looking for the cheapest form of delivery available. As a manufacturer of food labels and other product labels, we use Australia Post as our primary carrier. They will treat you the same no matter how much volume you do, whereas other carriers will only deal with you if you commit to a certain quantity of items to be delivered.

Before you proceed too far with your marketing, you really are going to need some jam labels. By now, you should understand your legal obligations but of course, you really need to sell your jam and an eye-catching label is important. Before you even begin to design your jam labels for the different types of jam that you plan to sell, then you will need to come up with some branding. In other words, find a name for your jam apart from the flavour.

Of course, make sure you do not copy someone else's brand name. Copyright laws apply even if you accidentally use someone else's name or name that can be deemed to be similar to another trading name. Once you have your name, then you ideally, you will want to come up with a slogan or a tag line or simply a few words that describe then benefits that your customers will experience after eating your jam.

Once your jam labels have been printed, then it is time to get marketing. The first place to start is your local area. Look for opportunities to sell at markets, schools, fairs, fetes and other outdoor areas. This form of marketing is largely inexpensive but it will involve a lot of your time. Another great way to market your homemade jam is to leverage off the work of others.

At this stage, it is too soon to approach supermarkets but there are plenty of small business that might be happy to sell your products. For example, cafes and small local restaurants might be happy to trial some of your jam but you will need to offer wholesale prices. By now, you should be collecting a bit of cash, providing your prices are high enough and you are keeping your costs low. If your homemade jam is being well received, then it is time to ramp up your marketing. The best place to start is with a website. This is a whole new topic but firstly choose your domain name which ideally will be a term that is commonly searched on Google. Then, you can drive traffic to that site so to get even more sales for your jam through Search Engine Optimisation, Google Adwords, social media and other online marketing methods. However, do not neglect referrals and word of mouth marketing as this is still likely to be the best way to market your homemade jam.