Facebook content marketing for Finnish plant-based protein producers

Abstract

In Finland, the consumption of plant-based protein products has been increasing. Despite a wide choice of imported plant-based protein products in supermarkets, Finns tend to favor local brands. Moreover, Finnish plant-based protein products are experiencing an improved export potential owing to outstanding technologies. Thus, plant-based protein products were considered a noteworthy trend in consumer behavior in Finland which deserved studying from the digital marketing perspective.

Most of the Finnish population are social media users. Specifically, Facebook has been the most popular social network for years. Globally, more companies of any type and size are realizing that digital technologies such as social networks are ineffective without a content marketing approach. In fact, a compelling social media strategy cannot be formulated without a content strategy. The potential benefits of content marketing include improved brand engagement, reinforced brand trust, stronger customer relationships, added value to customer experience, higher search engine rankings, and ultimately increased sales. Therefore, it is important to understand how Finnish plant-based protein producers can leverage content marketing on Facebook to achieve their business goals.

Despite the increasing use of content marketing on practice, the academic insight into Facebook content marketing in the plant-based industry is limited. In response to this knowledge gap, this study aimed at contributing to a better understanding of Facebook content marketing of Finnish plant-based protein producers by building on past research and investigating their current Facebook content marketing activities through interviews and collection of Facebook posts. The thematic analysis of the interviews allowed to learn first-hand how the participating Finnish plant protein producers planned, produced, promoted, and measured Facebook content marketing. The content analysis of the collected Facebook posts helped to identify the main content types, goals and priorities of the posts published by the participating companies. In addition, several theoretical findings were found to be applied on practice. Finally, practical recommendations for Finnish plant protein producers were made based on the empirical findings.