Content marketing and online advertising can bring immense brand awareness to your CPG brand. In a highly competitive industry, you want to find fresh and innovative strategies to launch a great marketing campaign. This is why content marketing could be your holy grail.
In this article, we’re going to discuss everything you should know about CPG brands and content marketing and how you can utilize it to your advantage.
Table of Contents
What is Consumer Packaged Goods Marketing?
CPG marketing, or consumer packaged goods marketing, is a marketing technique targeted towards perishable items such as food, cleaning products, and body care products to name a few.
Other consumer packaged goods include:
- Drinks and beverages
- Clothes
- Cosmetics and beauty products
- Alcohol
- Household products
Everyone consumes packaged goods on a daily basis which makes the CPG market highly saturated and very competitive. Especially when it comes to marketing your business and standing out among a sea of others.
Because of this, CPG marketing takes a lot more work and a specialized strategy in order to build brand awareness. Do not worry though, if your product is of high-quality and customers love it, you can then shift your focus to your content marketing strategy. The CPG industry will always be in high-demand because it’s a necessity. So, that means the industry isn’t going anywhere as a whole which can be an advantage to you.
Luckily for you, SEO Design Chicago takes a personalized approach to creating a content marketing strategy for your CPG business and can help you stand out.
Digital Marketing for CPG Brands
Consumer packaged goods usually have been sold in traditional physical spaces such as grocery and convenience stores. Although, with the rise of ecommerce, online retailers have been selling CPG brands on internet stores like Amazon Prime. Even Walmart now delivers! This just comes to show that consumers are relying more on ecommerce each year. Meal memberships, make-up subscriptions, and food delivery services are more popular than ever. That’s why companies such as these do a lot of online advertising.
Online advertising has become crucial for the consumer packaged goods industry. As a matter of fact, it has become the standard way of marketing. Not to mention that consumers are becoming more conscious of their purchasing decisions especially when it comes to the reputation of a company. So, not only is online advertising important for brand awareness but also public relations.
CPG Content Marketing
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of CPG content marketing, let’s discuss what content marketing is and the many aspects of it.
Content marketing is a method of marketing that generates and shares valuable and relevant content to attract and retain audience interest. The main goal is to earn profit from this interest.
The kind of content created includes some below:
- Videos
- Blog posts
- Articles
- Social media posts
- Infographics
There’s a reason why top brands use content marketing. It just works. As a matter of fact, Forbes dubs it as the present and future of marketing because it has been proven to yield an increase in sales, saving in costs, and creating loyal customers. Now you can see why content marketing is important for CPG brands.
Think about it. Companies try to sell things to consumers all the time. They try to tell you why you need their product and that you should buy it. Not only is it annoying, but it’s ineffective especially when customers are being fed all of this information that has no substance on the surface. Content marketing shines information in a more wholesome light.
CPG Content Marketing Strategies
Now that marketers and businesses no long have to rely on supermarkets or print advertisements to reach out to customers, digital marketing has paved the way for content marketing.
Before content can be created, though, marketers need to do research to gain insight on what their customers are really looking for. This is why CPG marketers are starting to rely more on analytics. They see the value in having real-time intelligence on their customers.
Once all the data and information have been collected, now it’s time to start focusing on a content marketing strategy.
There are multiple ways to planning a content marketing strategy, but just like every plan you need a goal. In this case of CPG brands, you want to raise brand awareness so that you expand your market.
Here are some CPG content marketing strategies to keep in mind before and during the launch of a campaign:
Trial and Error
Chances are you might need to test different types of content to see what your target audience likes. As a CPG business, some content might work better for other products than it would work for you. That is okay. The trick to attracting customers and getting engagement is to find that sweet spot and it’s going to take some trial and error.
Promoting Your Content
Creating and posting your content sometimes isn’t enough, especially with the amount of content that’s put on the internet on a daily basis. It’s disheartening to not receive the amount of recognition or engagement you were hoping to get after putting a lot of time and effort into your content. Therefore using tools like email marketing or influencers can help avoid your content from getting lost among others.
Research Your Competitors
As mentioned before, the CPG industry is very competitive. That’s why doing extensive research on your competitors can help you get a good idea on what content would work for your targeted audience.
Make a Content Calendar
Another strategic way to have effective content marketing is to make an editorial calendar so you can stay organized. Strong content marketing doesn’t solely rely on quality content but also on keeping your audience engaged. Having a calendar is a great way to be calculating about what and when content should be posted.
CPG Content Marketing Examples
Kellogg’s Rice Krispie Treats Video
YouTube is a platform that a lot of CPG marketers are using to reach prospective customers. Why is this? Because creating videos is a great way for customers to be informed and entertained.
Kellog’s Rice Krispie Treats made a video about a case study during the back-to-school season and saw a 4% sales increase.
Del Monte Foods Inc.’s Green Bean Casserole Campaign
Del Monte Foods Inc. made huge success with its content marketing approach during the Thanksgiving season by cross-selling products and holiday cooking tips. Although, the major factor for the success was advertising this content through social media and TV.
These ads ran on PopSugar pages that were relevant to Thanksgiving.
This campaign yielded an increase in consumer engagement rates by 220% which exceeded the industry average by 30.72%.
Oscar Meyer’s Unsung Bacon Campaign
In the age of health consciousness, especially for packaged foods, Oscar Meyer wanted to launch an awareness campaign about their brand reputation for turkey bacon. For decades, Oscar Meyer was only known for its pork bacon and they wanted to shine more light on their turkey bacon.
Oscar Meyer launched the website unsungbacon.com, including a YouTube video with the same name. This campaign asked people to “stand up for unsung bacon everywhere” and to follow Michael Bacon on Twitter.
Michael Bacon is an Emmy-winning film and television composer. You might know him as the actor of Kevin Bacon, but he’s definitely the lesser known brother. Michael wrote the music for the campaign.
This campaign yielded an increase in sales and 7,929 new organic twitter followers.
Mountain Dew’s Living Portraits campaign
Another great way to utilize content marketing is through digital storytelling and interactivity and that’s what Mountain Dew did through its Living Portraits campaign.
The campaign featured top athletes such as Dale Earnhardt Jr. and had a collage of animated GIFs in the videos. In these videos, there were Easter eggs for fans to find the quote “delve deeper into the worlds of the Dew All-Stars”. This campaign ended up winning the 2014 National Addy Award in the category of digital advertising, websites, and consumer.
SEO Design Chicago CPG Marketing Case Study
For instance, a local CPG company was in need of advertising a new product line due to expansion and wanting to increase their market. The company mostly relied on word of mouth and wanted to increase brand awareness by attracting new customers.
So, what did SEO Design Chicago do?
- Content creation: SEO Design Chicago first studied the trends in their industry to see what would be most successful for their product. Then, the content creation team created a content plan.
- SEO: All header tags, meta descriptions, title tags, and page names were optimized in order for Google and Bing to properly scan and index the company’s webpages.
- Advertising: SEO Design Chicago created an innovative and unique campaign to generate interest in the new product and offers. Both Google PPC and social media advertising that were used to attract a target audience.
What were the results?
- The campaign brought awareness to 14 new products, thanks to organic search and social media.
- The company’s products ranked on the first page for both branded and non-branded searches due to content creation.
Contact SEO Design Chicago for Your Content Marketing Needs
If you’re a local business wanting to raise your company’s presence and brand awareness, SEO Design Chicago can help create a content marketing campaign strategy that is personalized just for you. Contact us today!
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