Digital CPG Blog

The company blog can:

1. Help you sharpen your pitch to prospective customers

When employed alongside the appropriate analytics tools, a company blog can become a means to find out which sales-oriented messaging resonates.

2. Show that your company isn’t run by robots

Prior to the rise of the modern internet, it was often difficult for companies to introduce their people to the world in any meaningful way. This is despite the fact that likeable people are the foundation of likeable companies.

3. Build backlinks

Good SEO never hurts, and quality blog content convince others to link to your website. Enough said.

4. Show that you’re more competent than the competition

In many markets, customers buy from companies they trust. Demonstrating competence (and expertise) can be a huge part of building trust, particularly if your company operates in a service industry.

By publishing useful, insightful information and commentary that’s relevant to the markets you serve, you can often help build the perception that you’re more knowledgeable than the competition, particularly when your competition isn’t publishing.

5. Respond in an emergency

When crisis hits, the ability to communicate response quickly to affected stakeholders should not be undervalued.

While a Twitter account or Facebook page may a suitable platform for such communication, having a platform that you own and control is desirable.

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I really like that last point, and also their conclusion that “a company blog may be the missing component in many social media strategies. That’s because Facebook and Twitter are often better distribution platforms than they are publishing and experience creation platforms.”

Yes, of course it’s great to be where your customers are – you need to do that. But it’s also great to create a unique experience for them on your own web properties. How can you do that successfully through your company blog?

Never fun to read the bad news, but let’s get it out of the way this week so we can concentrate on more fun stuff later this week–

As shoppers’ economic concerns eased somewhat in the wake of the recession, some industry observers predicted that store brands would give up their recent gains, or even decline as the economy rebounded. The expectation proved without foundation, however, and the return to some kind of pre-recession status quo eluded the national brands. To the contrary, store brands held onto the gains and even built on them.

Sales of store brands saw gains of more than +2% in U.S. supermarkets and nearly +5% in drug chains. Over the past decade, annual sales of private label products have increased by +40% in supermarkets and by +96% in drug stores.

It was highly unusual, if not unprecedented, that in supermarkets national brands were negative (minus 0.1%) in year-to-year dollar sales, while their unit sales were up a by modest 1%.

It’s not surprising that store brands held their ground after recording sales surges the past few years. Recessions often force consumers to test new purchasing habits. What occurs, in effect, is a large scale sampling experience. Good results with store brands during these periods invariably breed consumer familiarity and then loyalty to the products and the stores that sell them. While some consumers do return to brands they had been buying before, a large percentage stay with their new private label choices.

via Consumer Goods.

The survey also highlights the importance of information on returns polices. 46% said they always check returns policies before making a purchase online, 43% sometimes check this, while just 11% never bother.Some great graphs from Econsultancy as you integrate your  marketing efforts with your site design:

If you are shopping from a retailer you don’t know well, how would you decide whether to trust the website?

Product Page Essentials

The best product pages need the five things in the chart below, while the experience can also be enhanced with use of video, 360 product views, effective cross-selling, and so on.

What information do you need to see on product pages to help you decide whether to make a purchase?

Basket Abandonment

After adding items to your basket, what would make you abandon your purchase?

Checkout Abandonment

Once you are in the checkout process, what would deter you from completing the purchase?

What do those young’uns want?

Well, as a Gen Yer myself, I can say this recent study is right on:

In general, you can remember that Gen Yers like to shop as an experience, not just a chore and all the things they tend to like fall under that idea. For instance, we love deli counters and prefer brands with a well-developed social and mobile media presence. Is your CPG brand set up to serve and reach the millenial generation?

Twitter and Facebook may be hot now, but blogs were what started it all. So, are blogs still relevant for your brand? Or should you focus all your energy on social networks?

Spark Sheet looks at the pros and cons:

Blogs are a pain to maintain. Readership grows slowly and not always steadily. And it’s hard to communicate your company’s values without sounding like a worn-out press release.

But a survey of the blogosphere reveals a slightly more optimistic picture. In spite of the challenges, smart companies are maintaining successful blogs by telling relevant stories to well-defined and engaged communities.

Corporate blogging works well for brands that create a distinctive voice people trust. Many technology-related businesses find success by providing expert opinions about developments in their industry. Tech companies also benefit from a sophisticated understanding of the Web; they just ‘get it’ when it comes to capitalizing on a blog’s strengths, giving them an advantage over, say, a scuba gear company.

Once a company finds its voice and establishes the best way to engage customers, a corporate blog can focus on building communities around its brand.

In a sense, Lululemon can be credited for fostering an entire lifestyle community built around yoga.

So, what do you think? Does your brand focus on blogs? Is there an alternative? Are corporate blogs still relevant?

I have an iPhone, Kindle, TV, and laptop computer. We have guests staying with us that have all that and an iPad. How many screens do you have and how many strategies does your company have to address each?
Econsultancy reports:

Conversations about three screen strategies became conversations about four screen strategies this year. It looked like tablets would be used concurrently with PCs and mobiles, at least for a while, so fashionable jargon received an update.

Where are we now? Five screen strategies? Five and half screen strategies? The number of screens may explode in the not too distant future.

The three screen strategy referred to the growing tendency for the TV to be on in the living room, with a PC or laptop available in addition to internet capable smart phones.

Those TV ads that urge you to befriend a packet of crisps on Facebook are the baseline example of a three screen strategy; using attention media on one screen to provide an intention media interaction on the other.

It probably is not a mistake to talk about four screen strategies. It looks as if talk of an immediate “post-PC world” is a little premature and that tablets will not be replacing laptops this or next year.

How many screen strategies do you have?