Digital CPG Blog

Research shows that getting consumers to like a fan page has some positive effect on conversion rates. In fact, where commerce is concerned, Facebook could replace the thumbs up icon with a foot – as in “foot in the door” – because that’s what brands are getting with the like. It’s a social gesture that potentially manifests in the consistency rule kicking in (yes, pun intended).

Social commerce platform provider 8thBridge wondered just what effect the “like” had on purchase behavior, so the company conducted a survey to find out.

The above graphs are what they found.

Do you encourage “small steps, big steps ” approach in your strategy?

“If we ever move, it had better be to someplace with good grocery delivery, because I’m not sure I can live without online ordering!”—a mom

Here are some of our favorite rituals of the online mom shopper:

1. She’s shopping around, because she knows that options are only a click away. A full three-quarters of moms shopped online in the past 30 days and half would do all of their shopping  online. That’s a lot of online shopping! She’s using a variety of tools and services to get the job done: 53% of moms use expert parent sites to get product recommendations and 48% use retailer websites. One mom told us: “I was in the Babies R Us store in the gates aisle and I went on my phone to the BRU website and ordered the gate online, with the “ship-to-store” option, so that I could pick it up while I was at the store. I saved $10!”

Action: Execute complementary digital, mobile, and in-store programs that leverage each medium’s ability to support moms’ needs and behaviors.

2. She’s shopping as a sport, promoting savings to build social currency and seeking discounts and deals before buying items big or small. She uses coupons, barcode scanners, QR codes, and buying services to compete—84% agree with the statement: “When I save money on a shopping trip by using coupons, sales or other deals, I feel like I won.”

Action: Give mom offers at unexpected times and in new places. Enable her to share with others and reward her efforts to create loyalty.

3. She’s reading the labels and is willing to make trade-offs based on price, effort and availability; but she won’t skimp on safety. More than half prefer purchasing organic or natural alternatives when shopping for groceries. Case in point? This mom says: “I will spend a little more at the farmer’s market or Trader Joe’s, because I know I am supporting something I love and believe in.”

Action: Detail Dr. Mom with info & ingredients; educate her on causes in support of children’s health and safety.

4. She’s demanding convenience, rewarding brands that simplify her life and will pay more to make her life easier. Thirty-eight percent would pay for online shipping to save time, and 35% of moms agree that simplicity, multiuse, and convenience are the biggest priorities in the technologies she buys. One of our moms hasn’t shopped in a physical store at Christmas in 10 years: “Let’s put it this way, I recycle A LOT of cardboard!”

Action: Demonstrate that you get her needs by focusing on convenience, ease of use and saving time.

How can you put these steps into action for your brand?

Let’s take a quick trip to Sweden to get some digital marketing inspiration. I am loving the concept and think it would be a great way to engage blog communities.

To seed buzz and demand for the opening of a new online store, Swedish interior design retailer Lagerhaus (no they don’t sell lager) has implemented an interesting variation on the online pop-up fan-shop trend.

Rather than take the traditional route of opening a temporary pop-up shop on their Facebook page, as Oscar La Renta, Burberry, Chanel, Joop!, Electronic Arts, Heinz, and others have done, Lagerhaus created a distributed pop-up shop widget for blogs – and invited leading popular interior design blogs to embed the widget on their blogs and customise it with their favourite products (see campaign video below).

…what’s smart about this alternative blog-based pop-up shop campaign is the extra reach and credibility they have.  By embedding the pop-up shop on popular blogs, more people are more likely to see it – than on a brand’s Facebook page, and it will have  implicit, if not explicit, third-party endorsement from the blogger hosting the pop-up shop.  It’s social proof, baby.

CPG’s core demographic – the young mom – is usually a very active blogger, and this seems like a no-brainer to try back here in the States. What do you think?

Need a primer on social commerce or just a break from work today? Look no farther:

“Social moms” (defined as females with at least one child who actively participate in social networking) are quite influential. They’re more likely to do just about everything:

How Social Moms Access Content
The social mom is highly active in accessing social networks via mobile devices. Fifty percent of all moms actively participating in social media access platforms via mobile devices, in comparison to 39 percent of females overall, and 37 percent of the overall population in general.

How Social Moms Shop
Social moms tend to be cost-conscious, being 56 percent more likely to download coupons than the general population. They are also more likely to shop online for CPG products than other product categories, with the research showing that 86 percent are more likely to shop online for cosmetics than the general public, as well as skincare products (85%), hair care goods (74%) and fragrances (68%).

Social Moms: Likes and Dislikes
The growing influence of women and moms is increasingly apparent, and so too is their level of activity in social media. Moms who actively participate in social media are 81 percent more likely to become a fan of or follow a brand online, 86 percent more likely to post a status update, and 84 percent more likely to comment or post content than the general population. The research also shows that social moms definitely aren’t shy in sharing their advice and reviews of products with others. This segment is 85 percent more likely than the general population to share frequent advice about beauty and cosmetic products, 28 percent more likely to provide frequent advice about online shopping/e-commerce and 6% more likely to post a product review online.

Let’s have a bit of fun today and let this infographic take us through the process of social commerce. It’s as easy as 1-2-3-4-5!

How are e-commerce and bricks-and-mortar retail influencing each other?

Opening Keynote speaker Keith Anderson, Senior Analyst at the RetailNet Group responds:

For the first phase of e-commerce (essentially the last 15 years), most business models were based on the assumption that e-commerce was a substitute for physical retail.

For some shoppers, categories, and trips, it is—and will increasingly be over the next decade. But driving the next phase of e-commerce innovation is the idea that online-offline integration can be even more transformational. We’re about to undergo a major transition from the majority of shopping experiences being “pure-analog” to the majority being digitally-influenced.

One of my clients, a multichannel retailer among the largest in the country, told me this week that around half of the traffic to their site is from shoppers looking for information about the store—operating hours, local events & promotions, or doing product research.

Mobile search, proximity-driven offers, and local inventory transparency will increasingly influence outlet choice. List-building and list management apps will have major impacts on basket size and mix. Ratings and reviews are already often a factor in brand or SKU choice.

It’s also increasingly common to see retailers offer an “endless aisle” via in-store kiosks or tablets. So retailers aren’t just supporting their stores with their sites, they’re supporting their sites with their stores.

Some in the CPG industry think that e-commerce is only relevant to high-involvement categories like electronics and media like books, music, and video.

But we have hard data that shows that shoppers will increasingly use technology to make key decisions—or let the technology make the decisions for them.

Learn more from Anderson at the conference:

The Smarter Shopper: Marketing to the Digital Consumer
Tue – Wed, September 20-21, 2011
Stamford, CT
Register now >
Don’t forget – Use the code “digitalcpg” at registration for a 10% discount just for DigitalCPG.com readers!

Gen Y moms want more than just the basic tenets when purchasing products. In essence, they want to be part of something larger and like they are contributing to positively changing the world on those social, environmental and health factors. Here’s how to capture their global do-gooder interests:

• Engagement is key. Don’t just market your wares, engage your customers — online and off — around your efforts. This group wants that dialog online, so be accessible and embrace your customers for their opinions, congrats and complaints. But these women also crave real-world connections, so mobilizing them to join your brand in taking offline actions builds sustained loyalty.
• Walk the talk. Authenticity and transparency are tantamount. If you are just getting onto the green spectrum, don’t fret (you are moving in the right direction), but be transparent about where you are and where you want to be. Getting your own house in order through your business practices, product development and charitable efforts builds trust.
• Market with meaning. People in this demographic consume information constantly and at a rapid pace. Incorporating relevant, useful educational content deepens the brand/consumer connection and gives them something to propagate as a way of adding value to their lives and the lives of their peers.
• The power of incentives. Moms are still the primary budgeters and spenders in the household, so deals and incentives are effective tools; but they also grew up in the gaming generation. To resonate with these tech-savvy women, consider incorporating gaming mechanics into your marketing. Tying the incentive to offline action, such as making positive lifestyle changes, adds some social currency to the deal.
• Impact is paramount. Coupling attractive rewards with competitions, challenges and pledges that tie to meaningful action can generate extended engagement. Making that action measurable and trackable satisfies this generation’s desire to make a global positive difference and measure the impact.

How has your brand brought social and environmental causes into your online marketing efforts?

Dive into these two great presentations on your lunch hour or your mid-afternoon slump:

Here’s an interesting new start-up in the CPG space:

Consmr, besides not liking all of its vowels, is attempting to build the Yelp, or Rotten Tomatoes, of consumer packaged goods (CPGs). While at this point Consmr may not be able to offer you a thoroughly detailed treatise on the value of Scope over Listerine, that’s the bent of its long-term goal.

Consmr Founder and CEO Ryan Charles left his full-time job at Zagat (where he was the head of mobile and was responsible for its partnerships with Foodspotting and Foursquare) at the end of March to pursue his new startup. Why?

The genesis dates back to the height of the recession, he says, when a lot of we consumers became more discerning (and price conscious) in regard to their daily product decisions. While there’s been tremendous growth in web research on CPGs, the sources for this information are fragmented. There’s no Yelp or LibraryThing, or sites taking advantage of crowdsourced data or social integration to help you choose which product is right for you. And he has a good point; all-in-one sources for movie, TV, book, and restaurant recommendations (to name a few) are alive and well, so why not for CPGs?

What will motivate people to write reviews on toothpaste? Well, from experience, we know people are pretty passionate about their toilet paper and toothpaste, but Consmr will also be incentivizing users through game mechanics, which will give CPG manus a good opportunity to hook loyalty programs into the platform.