This is a bit of a loaded question and it may tread a fine line between asking for help and marketing so I’ll accept it if this gets pulled.

The History

My wife has developed a reusable food pouch for babies and toddlers to be used in the same way as the regular pre-filled pouches you can buy in shops. These however, you’re able to fill with your own home made food and therefore control what goes in and get more variety than you’d get buying Ella’s Kitchen and the like.

We’ll happily admit it’s not an original idea, we came across (and bought) some on a trip to Florida last year. On first seeing them we realised they were a great idea and couldn’t figure out why we had yet to see or hear about them over here in the UK. On returning home we found there were some on offer if you looked hard enough but the designs weren’t great and the graphics weren’t particularly appealing to kids. My wife went back to the drawing board with a wish list of features and designed the one you can see on the site from scratch.

nomnomkids.co.uk

Sales are growing steadily and we’ve just started exporting to Czechoslovakia and USA so it’s about time to be thinking about the next stage.

The Questions

Pouches for grown ups
We considered doing a more grown up version of these that could be used by adults for whatever use with the thought that it could be ideal for sportists who like to make up their own energy food. I can’t help think that while that’s a great idea there’s little market for it. I’m much more likely just to have a decent meal beforehand and bosh a gel or two if I’m on a long ride and if I’m honest those happen once in a blue moon. I certainly wouldn’t go to the trouble of preparing something but then I’m not really target.
The questions are then –
• Would you buy one (or a set)?
• If so how big should it be?
• How should it look?
• Any features required?

Marketing
Publicity has been mainly through word of mouth, Facebook and Twitter up to now but it’s a large amount of work to keep the momentum up and it’s hard to be heard in the sheer volume of social media.
It seems the next step ought to be to use Adwords but neither of us have any idea where to start. We’re not averse to learning on the job and don’t need anyone to hold our hands in it, especially as we can’t yet afford to pay anyone for their time but I’m struggling to find some good advice I can trust from someone that isn’t offering to sell me something first.

Does anyone have any tips or links to good advice on using Adwords?

Hope that makes sense and hasn’t been too much reading. Any advice or comment are appreciated.

Cheers

Gary

Definitely marketing!

Get this book and read it cover to cover. People can give you pointers but you really need to understand Adwords yourself.

Advanced Google AdWords, Second Edition by Brad Geddes

Marketing.

But:

• Would you buy one (or a set)? – hmmm maybe. Would have to try some homemade ‘adult’ mush first to see if was a goer.

• If so how big should it be? – We are sort of conditioned by current ‘mush in a packet (gels)’ to be quite small. Beyond that I probably tend to look for solid food. But again, I’d have to try some ‘adult’ mush food first to decide.

• How should it look? Not clear as that will no doubt look like a bag of cat sick. Probably black with a re-writeable bit so you can label it.

• Any features required? Mega durable and never, ever leak. Operable by one hand and your mouth with no bits falling off.

Would you buy one (or a set)? – hmmm maybe. Would have to try some homemade ‘adult’ mush first to see if was a goer.

You make your own mush, they’re just providing the packaging.

It’s a no from me. I don’t know anyone who makes their own ‘mush’ to eat, people make their own food, but it’ll be solid, gels are convenient (and come in their own packaging), but I can’t imagine people would voluntarily put something into gel form if it didn’t otherwise need to be.

You make your own mush

Yeah I know. I’d have to try and make some. I sometimes make my own bars and am happy with those. The challenge would be to make something really tasty in a bigger volume than a gel. Might be all futile though as if I’m riding long enough that I need more food than a couple of gels, then I’m going slow enough to eat proper food.

er, dunno – possibly a bad idea.
OP – Why don’t you rock up at an event with some of your own homemade mush, some recipe sheets, some trial pouches and demo them out.

Yak

Not a bad idea that, only a couple of potential problems:-
I’m not sure the giraffe, lion, monkey graphics would work in the rufty-tufty world of cycling and while we’ve got a good few ideas for baby food to go in them, I wouldn’t know where to with sports nutrition.

More than happy to send you a pouch to try though if you’d want to give it a go and see how you got on. PM me if you’re interested and we’ll get one in the post.

Cheers for all the input folks.

Gary

I’d buy them. I’d have to be confident that it wouldn’t open by accident, so put something like “Lock” in the brand name. I’d also want it to be as easy to open and close as other things I open and close easily with one hand, so how about incorporating the word “Zip” too.

“LockZip”, there you go.

MLC – it’s got a double ziplock on the side so there’s little chance it would come open unintentionally so long as you do it up right but you’d struggle to do it one handed as it is as it’s got a separate screw cap. We’d certainly have to work on the delivery system for roadies. At least with gels you can tear the top off with your teeth.

Like the name though. Cheers ;o)

You might get the ironman/ultra crowd interested? Some of them are all over anything new. Get some recipes with chia seeds or one of the other magic ingredients.

Adwords are all about keywords – what do you want to be found for? Think about some of the more obscure phrases that’ll be cheaper, ie ‘baby food’ will be expensive, but ‘squeezy monkey food pouch’ will be cheaper. I’ve found it’s a pretty linear relationship between budget and clicks. So if you get X clicks for a fiver a day, you’ll get 2X for a tenner.

Actually, I’m looking for a job. It’s much more complicated than that and you really need an expert 🙂

Ironman sounds very much like a niche within a niche but it could also have some potential as a first step on that ladder if they’re particularly keen on that sort of stuff. Never heard of chia seeds will have to looks them up.

Re the job – maybe we should talk but there’s not much money in it – yet. Where are you based?