Digital CPG Blog

While the Gen Y, or people born between 1980-2000, are in fact “digital natives,” that doesn’t mean theyare actually most reachable via social media marketing.

When looking at which types of decisions influence purchase decisions for electronics, 46.9% of Gen Y’s are most influenced by in-store promotions, 44.3% by word-of-mouth marketing and 39.8% by Internet advertising.

Only 28.7% were influenced by social media, which makes sense given the fact that you are whatyou’re more likely to be what you “like” on Facebook, not “what your friends like.”

Social customer service could develop in a number of ways this year:

• More brands creating specific customer service communities, to resolve disputes away from their main social channels.
• Greater use of apps to address specific issues for customers.
• Greater integration of technologies (such as P2P) to support customer service and ‘self-serve’ customer communities.
• Simpler segmentation on Facebook and Twitter (learning from Google Plus).
• Advances in monitoring and geo-targeting to allow brands to respond quickly and locally to resolve customer issues.

I agree that customer service online will continue to expand greatly. Marketers often believe that consumers want to engage, but we talked earlier this month about how they really just want value. Offering great customer service will become a big part of social and will be a differentiator.

Qué Rica Vida, the Hispanic lifestyle website with more than 300,000 registered members, has launched via e-mail an exclusive deal on eight brand-new products — from breakfast cereals to fruit snacks to dinner kits – combined in a single try-before-you-can-buy offer. For $18, Qué Rica Vida will ship to consumers’ doors a sampling of General Mills products before they’re available on shelf, a $30 value. Additionally, members get $8 in coupon savings to buy the products they like at their local stores.

According to Rodriguez, the innovative online sampling pilot is a key component of the General Mills’ strategy to showcase its popular brands, given that a majority of online growth is fueled by Latinas.

The site “is expanding quickly in the digital space, and we’re working hard to offer fresh, relevant content and resources to our members,” said Rodriguez. “We can build stronger brand engagement with Hispanics by showcasing value — whether that is an exclusive value-add sampling offer or a series of quick family recipes to quell the dinner-hour dilemma.”

Awesome program!

Yesterday, we talked about how you should probably be on Pinterest (and we’re featuring it again below!). Today, here are many more places your customers would love to see you:

1. On YouTube As the second largest search engine, YouTube provides moms an easy way to not only search for products, but to also learn how to use them. Create short videos — less than three minutes — that tell moms how to create solutions with your product. Use mom vloggers or mom employees to produce videos in order to create a relevant connection with the female audience.

7. On iTunes More and more moms are listening to podcasts. It’s easy and inexpensive to create a podcast for your brand. Consider what solutions you can offer mom and pull up a microphone. For example, if you are a car company, create product podcasts on travel ideas or destinations for families. If you are a food brand, consider a cooking podcast. If you can’t find a radio guru in your hallways, think about contracting with a mom podcaster to host your show for you.

“I pinned it.” Chances are if you are a mom you have heard this phrase in reference to Pinterest, a self-expression engine powered by its users. Members post images to the site that inspire them, as well as create and share collections across endless categories. The social-sharing site then collects the images, or pins, on “boards” that other users can follow and comment on. For example, a search for “playtime ideas” results in pages of pins including 101 things to do with your toddler to DIY craft ideas.

“Love it [Pinterest]! There are tons of pictures of anything and everything. I love daydreaming about future houses, finding new recipes (and trying them out), finding craft projects, finding school projects (we homeschool).”

From emotive aspiration to functional inspiration, Pinterest empowers moms with their user-generated content by saving them time, money and hassle—all commodities that mothers run scarce on. According to Comscore, there was an 1100% increase in unique mom visitors to Pinterest from May to October, 2011. On top of which, moms spend an average of 13.7 minutes per visit.

Tapping into our social listening dashboard and online communities, we discovered what moms really think about Pinterest…and it seemed that the site was all the rage among moms as a source for ideas, ideas and more ideas.

So, is your brand on Pinterest? It probably should be!

The deals and steals of 2011 may be over, but perhaps you are already planning for 2012.  In that case, you should know, while Cyber Monday may get all the attention, it’s really Christmas Day that has the highest engagement rates:

In fact, interactive video ads that ran on Christmas Day 2011 resulted in engagement rates six times higher than Cyber Monday, according to Web video start-up Jivox.

This coincided with serious growth in online Christmas Day sales, which IBM found jumped 16.4% year-over-year.

What explains this behavior? “We saw online consumers delaying shopping to the very last minute and retailers becoming more aggressive, with typical post-Christmas sales promotions running online on Christmas Eve,” according to Diaz Nesamoney, CEO of Jivox.

Along with retailers, the findings have implications for brand marketers, too. “For those of us in digital marketing, this has resulted in higher online ad spend as brands increasingly look to engage consumers online,” Nesamoney explained. “Also, this has implications for brand marketers that will need to plan accordingly to the evolving holiday season commerce cycle.”

Many marketers already have the tools they need to realize the benefits of personalization, but most insist on using the same tired techniques when examining “average” consumer behavior. The myth persists that consumers within the same demographic will behave in identical ways.

For example, the “average 32-year-old female” evokes a snapshot image of a married mother of two in a middle-income household of four.

Picture this: Anna is 32. She is single, earns $90,000 a year, and owns a condominium in a trendy urban neighborhood.

Her grocery trips tend to be frequent and quick, and Anna spends little time meandering through the aisles. Instead, she moves deliberately, straight from fresh produce, to cheese and wine, to frozen meals, stopping for a few items in the personal-care section as she checks off her list.

Now another picture: Julia is 32. She and her husband are both employed and pool an annual income of about $150,000. Their schedules are packed with extracurricular activities for their four children. Julia grocery shops just a few times a month and makes an occasion of it. She scours aisles for new convenient but healthy products, browses the magazine aisle, and, as a treat, grabs a latte at the Starbucks kiosk.

In reality, the commonly held view of a 32-year-old female can be wildly different from how actual people in that demographic engage with a brand. Not only do Anna and Julia’s lifestyles diverge from that of the “average” 32-year-old woman, but their behavior is much different.

Consumer research often reveals a frustrating disconnect between perception and reality — what consumers claim to want and what they actually purchase.

For example, while some indicate that email is their preferred way to receive offers and coupons, many shoppers actually demonstrate a higher use of direct mail. Similarly, while some consumers tell us that they never purchase chocolate, their in-store transactions tell a different story.

Behavioral data is a powerful tool for deciphering that disconnect and more intimately understanding the consumer—what they actually want vs. what they say they want.

How will you use behavioral data to segment and target your customers?

Mobile commerce sales will reach $6.7 billion this year. Wowsa!

If 2011 was a year of apps, commerce and analytics, what does 2012 have in store for mobile marketing? Here are five trends:

1. Your Site, App And Brand Will Be Mobile-ized

Half of all mobile phones currently sold are smartphones. By the end of 2012, we may see eight of every 10 phones sold being a smartphone.

To keep up with the growing market, mobile-optimized content becomes the standard.

Brands will also move rapidly to deploy “tablet-specific” applications that better utilize the form. In 2012, app mania will be as much about tablet apps as 2011 has been about smartphone apps.

2. More Attention – and Dollars – Shift To Mobile

A recent eMarketer CMO survey revealed that more than 80% of all CMOs are prioritizing digital — and specifically, mobile — as two areas of focus for 2012 and moving forward.

3. You Will Buy More Stuff Via Mobile (and Social)

According to new research from comScore, 38% of smartphone owners have used their phone to make a purchase at least once. While digital content purchases like music, ebooks and TV episodes were the most popular items bought in September, clothing, accessories and event tickets were also purchased. There’s a place in the mobile commerce sphere for retailers across all verticals.

4. App Mania Continues — But More Meaningful Ones

In 2012, branded apps will be more about loyalty and commerce and less about awareness and engagement. They will deliver value. They may provide special deals or coupons or exclusive content, but they will be stickier and more meaningful.

5. Marksmanship Marketing: Segmentation, Targeting And Optimization

Insights will allow marketers to create personal level profiles for mobile users, tracking attributes and insights into mobile customer behaviors both within the mobile channel and in relation to a brand’s other digital properties. It will also mean more personalization in terms of advertising and content, and exciting new possibilities with geolocation.

The last few years have witnessed manufacturers of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) embrace social media with great enthusiasm. When it comes to social media, industry giants like Kraft and P&G have adapted rather impressively, having not just a Twitter or Facebook presence, but also putting immense efforts at being the ‘customer’s brand.’ Let us look at some reasons why CPG brands should give social media marketing its due importance:

• Of the total companies surveyed (The Shopper Technology Institute Study) 76% said that the budget for social media has increased in 2011 compared to the previous year.
• The survey confirms that consumers are willing to connect with brands via social media; although this is mainly influenced by the degree of emotional connection they have with the brand. For manufacturers of consumer packaged goods, this translates into an opportunity waiting to be explored.
• The most commonly used networking channels by CPG brands are Twitter and Facebook. For the 11% that don’t use either one, we recommend they start doing so, considering the fact that Facebook and Twitter are two channels where they are most likely to find their target audiences.
• A joint-study, conducted over a two year period bycomScore and dunhumbyUSA, found a median 21% in-store sales increase among shoppers who had been exposed to online ads for CPG brands compared to those who had not seen them. Almost one-quarter of campaigns received a boost of +40%.; a good reason for CPG manufactures to further increase focus on their online promotional strategies.
• According to eMarketer, 2011 is likely to witness 35% increase in online CPG advertising. Although the growth will slow, consumer products are likely to have as much as 10% of the total ad spending by 2015.

P&G’s re-entry into e-commerce via Facebook indicates just how crucial social media is becoming to CPG brands. The company recently added “Shop Now” buttons to the Facebook fan pages for several of its brands including Gillette, Olay and Tide. The global giant is one of the many CPG companies that are exploring the concept ‘e-tailing’ with renewed interest and are talking internet marketing more seriously than ever before. Considering the fact that the modern consumer is willing to make purchases online, the recent upsurge in social media activity by CPG brands isn’t surprising at all.

We’ll share some more info in tomorrow’s post about how to connect successfully with your CPG customers on social media.