5 Ways FMCG Brands Can Market Better Online 1) Improve Customer Experience The FMCG path to purchase, as it currently…
The online retail marketplace is booming.
Yet, oddly, in this booming marketplace, FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) brands are falling behind.
Which is a shame, because so many of the world's most recognised brands have come from the FMCG space.
Coca Cola, Kraft, General Mills, Kellog's, Proctor and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, the list goes on.
Such brands, once the leaders and pioneers of the marketing world, now find themselves scrambling to catch up in an online retail marketplace that has seemingly left them in the dust.
But there is still hope.
If FMCG's brands step up, let go of the traditional marketing funnel and path to purchase - so effective for these same brands in the past - and embrace the new digital reality fully, they may just find themselves in a position to claim their rightful place at the forefront of the digital retail revolution.
This isn't rocket science, after all.
Here are 5 suggestions to help them get there...
The FMCG path to purchase, as it currently manifests online, is clunky, inconvenient, and disruptive to the online user experience.
Now matter how well an FMCG brand’s digital disply ad is placed, no matter how targeted, relevant, and intriguing it may be, what are the odds that someone browsing facebook, watching a youtube video, or reading their favourite blog is going to interrupt what they are doing to click a link, visit your website, and purchase an FMCG product, really?
Pretty slim.
FMCG brands must accept this fact. Providing a path to purchase is great, but will not produce results in and of itself. FMCG brands need to find a way to make the experience of purchasing their products online a seamless, easy, and pleasant one. If brands are able to do so, their online marketing efforts will begin to pay off in a more meaningful way.
The internet is a strange and wonderful place. A place where things move fast and change can happen in an instant.
In this environment, staying relevant can be tough for products as banal as those offered by FMCG brands. It’s currently a brand voice tightrope walk, but that doesn’t mean relevance is impossible.
Brands which try too hard to be hip can come across as obtuse and invasive, and for many brands the effort simply isn’t necessary at all. When it comes to relevance, it is not so much about what you say, as it is where you say it.
Finding out where your target audience is hanging out online is key, as is finding out where they are getting online in the first place. The current trend toward mobile internet use is too important to be ignored, and FMCG brands need to take heed.
“Right person, right ad, right time” is a concept that isn’t going away any time soon, and brands which can figure out how to make sense of their own marketing data will have a leg up on the rest of the field when it comes to maximising their online footprint through relevance and targeting.
In addition to “right person, right ad, right time”, “right path to purchase” will grow in importance in the months and years to come.
The race to optimise consumer path to purchase will come to dominate the digital marketing conversation soon enough.
“Shoppability”- the ability to purchase items directly from online images/videos/advertisements with a single click (or two) of one’s mouse – will play a huge role in determining which brands win out across the retail landscape. FMCG is no different.
Fashion retail is currently leading the way in this arena. Recent developments like shoppable images on Instagram are beginning to demonstrate the untapped potential of shoppability as a digital marketing concept, and the trend toward shoppable advertising can be expected to spread and develop quickly as promising ROI data begins to trickle in.
For FMCG brands, shoppable online advertising represents a potential game-changer in the ways they can interact with consumers and their customers can interact with them, especially when it comes to the arduous task of moving consumers toward checkout.
In the FMCG world, brand loyalty matters.
People are creatures of habit, and their FMCG purchases reflect this fact. FMCG brands which can find their way onto consumers “favourites” lists can develop customer lifetime value (CLV) numbers unmatched by those of any other retail sector.
Digital shopping lists are already here, and finding a permanent place on as many of those lists as possible represents a veritable coup for any FMCG brand.
In the new FMCG digital retail reality, collaboration between brands and retailers is indispensable.
The retailer/FMCG brand symbiosis has been a reality since the beginning of FMCG and retail, and the digital age will be no different.
Brands can benefit retailers by steering customers and online shopping baskets their way, and retailers can reciprocate by placing brands on customers favourites/online shopping lists.
In this way, the marketing efforts of both the retailer and the brand can benefit both at the same time. Brands and retailers which can make the most of this digital symbiosis will be able to position themselves for online marketing success for years to come.
The reality for FMCG brands is that they cannot exist without the retailers to move their physical products. Exactly what form this movement will take is not entirely clear at this stage, but what is clear is that digital shopping in the FMCG space is beginning to eat up a piece of the FMCG pie which is growing bigger by the day. If retailers and brands can help consumers access products more easily and seamlessly, opportunity abounds for both.