Jar Goods is a female-founded, family-owned business that creates restaurant quality foods to simplify delightful meals at home. Their versatile, clean label, certified non-GMO tomato sauces contain vine-ripened tomatoes, pure olive oil, fresh onions, garlic and basil to create a tomato sauce that is so thick and rich, you’d think it’s homemade!
A small vegetable garden, a family tomato sauce recipe and frustrating grocery experiences led Melissa Vitelli to become a food entrepreneur. The goal? Become an “inner aisle disruptor” and create a brand that serves the consumer - instead of being just another brand in search of consumers to serve them. With just $150 initial investment, Melissa joined forces with her sister-in-law Laura to bottle Pa Vitelli’s tomato sauce by hand. The duo soon found themselves with a cult following and in the elite Chobani Food Incubator.
Several years in, they had successfully crafted a line of nationally-sold products that truly stood out in a stagnant sea of sameness. Now, the Jar Goods team needed the right service to help them get the attention of the media - and more consumers. They had previously worked with PR freelancers - who were more affordable than traditional agencies but produced poor results, or done outreach themselves - which was frustrating, inefficient and not impactful. The team needed to increase their brand awareness, generate social proof, improve conversion rate - efficiently and effectively.
How could they outsource the most inefficient parts of PR to get press coverage without spending precious capital on a traditional agency’s retainer? Enter PR Volt. A solution for Jar Goods to get more media awareness with better media targeting and outreach at scale - on a budget.
PR Volt’s Campaign Management Team worked with the Jar Goods team to dig further into the brand’s story, uncovering what people love about Jar Goods’ sauces and connecting the dots with expert knowledge of upcoming topics media would be covering, which media would be interested (hint: not just food writers), and how to optimize interested responses to the campaigns. The result? An overarching strategy that not only targeted building a media footprint for Jar Goods’ well-made sauces but that also got the media interested in the story behind the sauces.
The PR Volt team used expertly-segmented pitches to parenting, lifestyle, food, and business media contacts to seize upon timely topics the Campaign Manager identified like pandemic-era cooking shortcuts, affordable foodie gifts, easy back-to-school recipes, National Hot and Spicy Food Day. The Jar Goods team knew that tasting was believing and the PR Volt team knew that the media love reciprocity, so PR Volt crafted sample-driven call to actions to get editorial attention.
PR Volt’s signature drip sequence added more efficiency to the outreach process, leveraging the power of persistence to get more interest from the media. The PR Volt team also used its proprietary competitive monitoring process to identify and target specific media who had covered Jar Good’s more popular competitors and who needed to know about this feisty sauce company with a growing, loyal following.
Within a few short months, Jar Goods garnered media interest from Southern Living, The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Real Simple, getting Jar Goods’ story into the hands - and minds - of influential media.
Here are some of the highlights of their results thus far:
Jar Goods has garnered interest from and been featured in influential food outlets and more.
Jar Good's campaigns have reached 1800+ contacts reached, yielding a 57% open rate and 5.8% interested rate across all campaigns, 143 interested leads across Tier 1, Tier 2 and various food outlets, and placements in The Spruce, VegOut Media, The Vegan Pact, ManTripping, and Smart Women Solutions and more.
"PR Volt has consistently delivered quality leads from publications of all sorts - from major magazines and outlets to bloggers and influencers. The campaign coverage we launched has driven brand awareness, website traffic, and conversion to sales. Our Campaign Manager is very organized, able to identify the most effective pitch angles, and is a pleasure to work with!"