Digital CPG Blog

Yesterday, we discussed how CPG brands are winning! with social media. Here’s how you can connect with your social media fans and keep your streak going:

• Social Couponing is Highly Effective: One of the major reasons why people visit a brand’s social media webpage is for discounts and coupons. By offering discounts and giving away coupons, brands a) make their customers feel valued and b) give them a good reason to revisit their webpages. Although some brands are worried that coupons may reduce the premium value of the brand, most agree that social couponing offers unique benefits, one of them being building a loyal customer base. According to a survey from Ipsos Marketing, Consumer Goods, the second most important reason why people visited a CPG brand’s website is to obtain coupons. This explains why the likes of General Mills and Unilever, after partnering with Groupon, have had a solid customer base and a loyal fan following.
• Being Best Friends: It is every CPG brand’s wish to be best friends with their customers. Although coupons and discounts contribute towards making the social consumer feel special, moving up the relationship ladder is all about being available when they have something to say. An overload of sales talk won’t solve your customer’s problems; being best friends is all about listening and responding. Listening in and engaging with your customers online shows that they are important to you and you care enough to be there to soak in the suggestions, act upon complaints and interact with them.
• Going That Extra Mile: When the packaged goods industry ventured into the world of online marketing, it was all about creating interesting online promotional material, offering the occassional discounts and resolving customer complaints when required. This, however, is slowly changing. There are those companies that monitor conversations pertaining to their brands and meet customers’ needs as they arise; and then there are the others that go the extra mile to give their customers much more than they have asked for. General Mills, which has a well connected online customer base, is one such brand.
• Besides marketing their regular range of baked products online, the company also offers gluten-free products aimed at 2% of the population with Celiac disease as well as the additional 10% interested in avoiding gluten, a demographic that was otherwise dismissed as too small and insignificant to target profitably. When the word about General Mills’ gluten-free range was out in 2009, the news spread like wildfire across Twitter and Facebook. Now that’s what we call making customers feel valued!

We’ll finish up the CPG and social media week with do’s and don’ts from real campaigns tomorrow.

The Don’ts

• The @SwansonChicken Account: A definite fit into the ‘don’t’ slot, Campbell Soups’ @SwansonChicken account is updated a tad infrequently than their fans would like. With less than 2,500 followers, the CPG behemoth is an example of how infrequent activity can impact the followers count.
• Where’s my Balsamic Ketchup? Heinz’s Facebook page recently promised fans that they could buy their limited edition Tomato Ketchup with balsamic vinegar, only to inform annoyed customers who had trouble purchasing, that they were experiencing “technical difficulties” with the Balsamic Ketchup tab. This was soon followed by several posts, where the complaints ranged from “Fix that tab! I got fries waiting!” to “How do you get the Balsamic Ketchup you promised on the 14th?” The food conglomerate has assured fans that they would soon fix the glitch. What can the others in the industry learn from this? Fans have little patience; therefore, it would be a good idea to perfect those social media pages and test them before going ahead with promotional announcements.
• Spamming the Ragu Sauce Way: This is clearly an example of what a combination too many tweets with irrelevant content can do to a company’s reputation. While the @Ragusauce twitter handle is frequently updated, a closer look reveals that the posts aren’t the best example of appropriate content. Spamming your followers sure is a ‘don’t’.

The Dos

• Do it Like Old Spice: Previously, Old Spice was known as the brand used by “grandpa”. P&G aimed to change this; and that’s exactly what they did by roping in the hunky, towel-clad Isaiah Mustafa to market Old Spice to the younger demographic. The YouTube videos that were aired were not just a massive hit, but also successfully changed the brand’s image by using the tagline “The man your man could smell like.” For older brands aiming their products at younger audiences, we say ‘Do it the Old Spice Way’.
• Learning from Little Debbie: CPG brands have a lot to learn from American snack cake brand, Little Debbie, which comes across as one of the most human accounts on Twitter. The @LittleDebbie handle features tweets that give the impression that the person handling the account really cares.

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It’s been awhile since we featured an infographic. Here’s one on social media based on AdAge data:

• Auto-posting to Facebook decreases likes and comments by 70%
• B2C Facebook results go up by 30% on Sundays
• 34% of marketers have generated leads using Twitter and 20% have closed deals using Twitter
• 55% of people access Twitter via their mobiles
• 40% of bloggers consider themselves professionals
• 56% of college students said that if they were offered a job by a company that banned social media use, they’d turn it down

From start-up entrepreneur and marketer Neil Patel, here are our favorite lessons from Fortune 500 companies about blogging:

Lesson #1: Let Your Audience Think for You

1. Ask for ideas in a blog post – you write a post where you share an idea you think you’d like to pursue [Think Starbucks and their crowdsourced blogs]. You then ask your readers to tell you what they think. You could also use this tactic to ask your readers what they would like to get as content from you in the coming year. 2012 is just around the corner…so why not give this idea a shot?
2. Create a separate platform for idea creation – My Starbucks Idea is really a huge forum that is open to the public. You can read any posts you want, but you have to be a member to comment and add posts. Forums for private members is really a great way to up the engagement of your audience. However, make sure you test this idea. I did and found that it didn’t work out too well. But you never know… it may work for you.

Lesson #2: Niche Blogs to Build Brand Awareness

When you think about General Electric (GE), what immediately comes to mind? If you are like most people you probably said “light bulbs.”

But GE is so much more than that. That’s why they launched a line of blogs to break the public view that all they do is light bulbs.

Here is what they offer:

• Txchnologist – this online magazine is about all things technology. From how climate has affected the way baseballs are made to self-healing electronics. Pretty much things that GE has its hand in.
• Data Visualization – GE takes all the really complicated yet useful data behind science and technology and creates easy-to-understand infographics.
• Ecomagination – this is the blog for the environmentally-minded GE customer, demonstrating their concern for the environment and how they are tackling the latest issues.
• GE Reports – great daily, detailed stories and reports on issues like the Top Five Technology Challenges Tackled by GE in 2011 and The Unsung Hero of the Maternity Ward Helps Deliver Baby No. 35 Million
• Healthymagination – this blog is dedicated to showing how GE is helping people live longer and healthier lives, for example, by providing top-notch cancer treatment and AIDS/HIV cures.
• The GE Show – this series of videos deals with topics like the future of flight and airplanes, railroads and solar energy, industries that GE creates products for.

Lesson #3: Never abandon your blog for Facebook

• You can’t fully brand your Fan Page experience –you can customize certain aspects about your Fan Page, but you won’t have control over such things as color, logos and messages.
• Facebook notes suck compared to blog posts – there is no comparison between the two. Besides, Facebook Notes hardly get read, right?
• They own the content – of course you could download the content if you wanted to, but why go through the hassle when you can publish the content on your site?
• Lack of SEO – inside Facebook it’s tough to control meta tags connected to photos, videos, updates and notes. On the other hand, you can easily optimize your blog. SEO on your blog will help you control your content’s ranking, bringing you greater visibility unlike Facebook.

Facebook is great for deepening your engagement with your readers, but it should never replace blogging. Ever!

Read more here. Blogging is still one of the most powerful corporate communication tools in my opinion. Other platforms will evolve, but blogging will continue to evolve as well.

A few predictions from MediaPost:

I completely concur with these predictions. What do you think? Is your relationship with mom bloggers changing?