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.

For consumers, Facebook’s Like button is a pathway to getting discounts, promotions and special offers. Marketers have a more narcissistic view, according to a new study.

Citing the “Variance in the Social Brand Experience” study from the CMO Council and social CRM firm Lithium, apost from digital intelligence firm eMarketer stated that:

• 57 percent of marketers thought a ‘like’ meant the content on the site was agreeable;
• 41% thought it meant customers wanted to be heard;
• 33% of marketers said they thought customers were looking for incentives or rewards for their ‘like.’

From the consumers’ perspective, the study says they engage with brands through social channels primarily to:

• Be eligible for exclusive offers (67 percent);
• Interact with other consumers and compare experiences (60 percent);
• Find games, contests, and other unique experiences (57 percent);
• Find service and support from their social networking site (50 percent);
• Share ideas for new products and features (41 percent).

There was also a difference between the two groups in terms of perception of customer loyalty. Of the 132 marketers surveyed in the study, only 24 percent thought a ‘like’ meant the consumer was also a loyal customer. Conversely, 49 percent of the 1300 consumers surveyed said they liked a brand because they were already loyal customers.

Most damning was the revelation that, though brands are seeing benefit to the use of social media, less than one-fifth (17 percent) have yet to fully align social channels into the marketing mix.

Ouch.

Bottom Line? Give your customers and fans whatever is valuable to them!  Don’t assume they just want to talk to you. Engage is a huge buzzword, but value is what marketers should really be thinking about.

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving and you’re all caught up! Last week, we talked about “Social Moms”  and continuing on with that research, let’s discover how much “liking” women do on Facebook:

The research focuses in particular on the consumer-packaged-goods category, based on an analysis of 40 CPG brand pages on Facebook. Women account for 65% of CPG Likes, while they make up 55% of the U.S. Facebook population overall and account for 57% of all Likes. This lends support to the notion that women are more apt to Like a CPG brand than men.

“It is very interesting to note that older women make up a large percent of Likes for CPG brands than for average pages analyzed. My assumption is that older women tend to be the decision makers for CPG products in their family,” wrote Fred Stuk, Vitrue’s analytics manager, in the company’s blog.

Looking at the Facebook audience more broadly, it’s clear that younger users tend to be overrepresented when it comes to Likes. For example, 13-17s account for 29% of Likes generally, although they only make up 6% of the U.S. Facebook population. Similarly, the 18-24 age group is 24% of the Facebook audience, but drives about 38% of Likes. By contrast, the 35-44 bracket makes up 28% of the audience, but only drives 8% of Likes.

On the face of it, f-commerce seems to be taking off, so should brands be launching F-commerce stores? Econsultancy investigates:

Brands use Facebook for two reasons: to reach the widest pool of consumers by going where their customers are congregating; and because of the potential for consumers to share information with each other, effectively marketing the brand to their friends.

So why do consumers use brands on Facebook? Ultimately, they’ll buy from retailers they know and trust. A social media campaign may not yet mean that consumers buy from the brand on Facebook, but if [UK retailer] ASOS is anything to go by, it will influence sales through the brand’s site.

And, after all, isn’t that a better result for the retailer [or manufacturer] who’ll have more control over the buying process?

But f-commerce shouldn’t be simply a replica of an e-commerce experience. Nor should it cannibalise sales from the brand’s website. Facebook can be a great place to trial exclusive or new products, as long as the brand is prepared to listen to feedback and act on it.

I agree with this analysis. As we talked about earlier this week, putting all your eggs in the Facebook basket is dangerous. But Facebook can be an extremely viable piece of your strategy.

For better or for worse?

A comScore analysis of online ad impressions from July shows CPGs have become the heaviest users of “socially enabled” ads that appear on sites outside Facebook but include “visit us on Facebook” or other “Click to Facebook” appeals to get users to brand pages.CPG marketers are 10 times more likely than advertisers to use “socially enabled” ads, which appear outside of Facebook but urge visits to a Facebook site, finds a comScore analysis.

They were 10 times more likely than advertisers generally to use socially-enabled online ads.

“In many ways the fan page is replacing the brand website as the primary destination for outbound marketing online,” said a comScore executive.

The only thing that makes me nervous about this is that it is a short-term strategy. Yes, Facebook is HUGE, but wasn’t MySpace? I worry when marketers spend all their time, energy and money building on one platform only to have it disappear a few years later. ultimately, marketers should have a diversified strategy that always includes their own brand website where they have full control on collecting data and emails.

Ah, the Brits are selling personalized cans of soup on Facebook – here are the details:

The pop-up store allows Heinz fans (and-only fans) to send personalised ‘get-well’ cans of Heinz soup to friends suffering from post-summer distress disorder – i.e. Autumn colds and chills, for a £1.99 ($3.00) PayPal payment via an store app on the brand’s Facebook page.

The customised cans feature a personal get-well message on the label, via a custom store app on the Heinz fan-page from London-based social media agency We Are Social.

What we really like about this Heinz pop-up fan-store is that it taps into Facebook strengths – gifting – an eminently social activity, and personalisation (although not, in this case, via the social graph). Personalised gifts in Facebook make real sense. Kudos Heinz.

Heinz is emerging as something of a poster-child for f-commerce in FMCG/CPG – earlier in the year it opened a pop-up fan-store in Facebook to support the launch of a new line of ketchup by offering fans exclusive fan-first access to the product before it became available in-store (also by We Are Social). And last month, Heinz ran a social couponing campaign, where the value of the coupon doubled when shared.

Energizer Personal Care brand Schick Intuition just launched a new, interactive coupon-oriented Facebook application (www.facebook.com/schickintuition) asking customers to tune into their intution while they tune into some of the top social media influencers: Melanie Notkin, Founder of The Savvy Auntie, Kimberley Clayton-Blaine, Executive Producer of TheGoToMom.TV and MommyToMommyTv.com and Audrey McClelland, Founder of MomGenerations.com.

“Schick Intuition is excited to escort consumers on the journey to discover the secrets to simplifying their active lifestyles,” says Chit Itchon, senior brand manager Schick Intuition. “We’re looking forward to interacting with our fans through this program, and start a dialogue around simple tips that can make a difference in their daily lives.”

Now until October 30, 2011 fans can visit www.Facebook.com/schickIntuition to take the “Intuition IQ” quiz and discover if they are “Simple Carefree,” “Simply Flexible” or “Simply Smart.” After taking the quiz, fans are able to download a $3.00 coupon for any Intuition razor or 3ct. refills.

We talked yesterday about how Facebook was more of a loyalty program, not a customer acquisiton tool and judging by the latest numbers, more CPG brands should be using it:

The best-selling packaged-goods brands saw the defection of some of their most loyal customers over the past year, per a study by Catalina Marketing, which examined shopper loyalty-card data related to the top 100 CPG brands. According to Catalina, these brands experienced a 46% dip in loyalty among their best customers, although they still managed to grow their sales by an average of 2.2% during the 52-week period examined in the study.

Pop-up try-vesting f-commerce store? No it’s not just a hodge-podge of the latest vocab but an actual campaign –

Confirming its trailblazing status as a pioneer in social commerce for luxury brands, Burberry has launched a pop-up ‘tryvertising’ fan-store on its Facebook page to promote the launch of its new fragrance Burberry Body to its 7m+ fans.

And the best thing for Burberry fans is that the cost of getting the fragrance delivered to your door is $0 – the fan-store is actually a sample-store, offering free samples to Burberry fans.  We think it’s smart and slick and sets a new standard for tryvertising on Facebook.  The Burberry Body sample store features a like-gate, a count-down timer, an attractive order form, and plenty of opportunities for users to share the news.