Strategies for CPG ecommerce leaders to win more customers on more channels than ever
All in all, it’s been a tough year for national CPG brands. Price sensitivity has driven shoppers to abandon national brands for options they perceive to offer greater value—and people are less likely to complete a purchase when they reach a national CPG brand’s product page than they were a year ago. With these trends in mind, we’ve put together a few smart ways for brands and their leaders to respond.
At the same time, post-pandemic economic uncertainty, inflation, evolving advertising technology and social and environmental causes are affecting consumer shopping behavior. Based on our latest industry report, here’s what we know:
- Ecommerce sales are increasing, but growth has slowed since COVID
- Inflation is causing consumers to be more price-conscious and less brand-loyal
- Consumers are willing to pay a “virtue premium”
- Consumers are becoming more responsive to relevant ads
Given the tumult of current economic conditions, CPG companies face specific difficulties in the world of ecommerce. To sustain growth in the coming year, this is our advice for CPG brand leaders.
Invest in a unified analytics and reporting solution
Over the past two decades, CPG brands have individually invested in analytics tools according to their own brand- or product-specific budgets and priorities. But given the behavioral trends in both shoppers and competitors, it’s time for multi-brand houses to unify their analytics and reporting across the organization. This can be a difficult (and political) process, but the benefits of having all of a brand’s analytics laddering up to a unified system far outweigh the costs.
Disparate data sources tell disparate stories, making it difficult (or impossible) to get a comprehensive understanding of brand and product performance across a brand’s portfolio. If various brand managers are appealing to different reporting tools, they won’t have a clear picture of which brands are succeeding relative to others, which brands need extra attention, and what tactics are truly effective when it comes to accomplishing organizational objectives. The only way to make truly data-driven decisions across a brand’s portfolio is to have an established, agreed-upon source of truth for analytics and reporting. If every brand is reporting from the same source, every brand can be managed strategically from a portfolio-wide perspective.
Companies that can unify their analytics tech stack reap several benefits. First, they get a comprehensive view of every campaign’s performance relative to other campaigns, enabling stronger strategic decisions. Second, these companies can more easily spot effective tactics and spread them to other brands (e.g., a successful experimental TikTok campaign for Brand A can be quickly identified, reverse-engineered, and applied to brands B, C and D). Third, it consolidates the cost of technology by reducing redundancies.
Enable shoppable media on the channels your audiences use
Shoppable media is on the rise, and customers are developing expectations accordingly. In PwC’s June 2023 consumer insights survey, 37% of respondents believed ads linking directly to offers and promotions were most influential when making purchase decisions—making it the type of ad respondents found most effective.
With consumers becoming more and more accustomed to shoppable content from brands, CPG companies should enable their online channels with content that links directly to the offers and promotions they’re promoting.
Enrich the shopping experience at every consumer touchpoint
Because brand loyalty is eroding so rapidly, bolstering a rich and brand-consistent experience for customers at every touchpoint is imperative. Brands can do this in several ways:
- Ensure and enforce price consistency across retailers to ensure your customers are getting a fair price on your products
- Maintain consistent copy and images across Product Detail Pages to inspire consumer confidence
- Aggregate ratings and reviews to give shoppers a full picture of your brand
- Collect data at every customer touchpoint to optimize the customer experience
Managing a CPG brand portfolio with PriceSpider
PriceSpider’s brand ecommerce platform helps brands enact all this and more. Our proprietary crawler technology gives brands real-time data on how their products are priced and presented across all retailer sites, and our analytics tools provide them with engagement and conversion data for every touchpoint along the ecommerce customer journey.
PriceSpider is trusted by the world’s largest consumer brands, including Procter & Gamble, the Kraft Heinz Company, Hasbro, Samsung and more. If you want to see how PriceSpider can help you build a bigger, better CPG brand, book a free consultation today!
