Five Ingredients for CPG Brands to Unlock Data-Driven Marketing Impact at Scale
September 25, 2023
Consumer packaged goods (CPGs) contribute a staggering $2 trillion to the U.S. GDP, accounting for more than 10% of the total U.S. GDP, a report from the Consumer Brands Association (formerly Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA)) found.
With CPG goods accounting for such a large portion of the economy, brands face an increasingly competitive market — not just in terms of competing with other brands, but also fighting for consumers’ attention amid an overflow of content on their phones, computers, TV, and just about everywhere else.
In the 1970s, experts say people were exposed to an average of about 500 ads per day. Now, it’s estimated that people see anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 ads — every single day.
To keep up with the competition and effectively connect with the right customers in a highly digitized and often overstimulating world, it’s important for brands to cut through the noise. But how do CPG brands effectively capture consumers’ attention? How do they connect with the right target market, at the right time?
Traditional marketing methods focused on creativity and storytelling can still be effective — but to be the most efficient in the modern world, CPG brands need to make data-driven decisions and be strategic about how who, when, and how they connect with consumers. They then must adapt those methods based on what they learn.
That’s where the CPG Marketing Model enters.
CPG brands that want to be the most effective will use technology to gather data, connect with consumers, and make changes to their systems based on the information they learn in the process.
As detailed by McKinsey & Company, for CPG brands to unlock data-driven marketing and make an impact at scale, they need:
As in traditional marketing, CPG brands that aim to have a modern, data-driven impact need to identify consumers’ wants and needs and where there is room to grow.
Knowing your target consumer is the first step in the new CPG marketing model.
Marketing and innovation directors should take the time to research and gather as much data as possible on current and previous customers to learn what drew them to their products, and continue fostering that relationship with them. They should also gather data on new potential customers to find effective, tailored ways to connect with them and guide them through the sales funnel.
But where does that data come from? That’s where technology and data-based systems come in.
The key to data-driven CPG marketing is data — but how do brands gather that information?
Technology is the tool with which brands can effectively connect with consumers and gather powerful data to make informed marketing decisions.
This includes things like:
Many of these are interlinked — for example, a smart product (like a t-shirt with a QR code on the tag) may also be a connected product that has information from the farmer who grew the cotton for the shirt, and the company that dyed the fabric.
This all would typically be connected to a smart products platform, like one powered by Blue Bite, which would give the consumer access to this information. It would also give the brand an overview of the product’s life cycle, including how the consumer uses it.
These tools allow CPG brands to access powerful insights and data on their products and how consumers are connecting with and using them.
Traditional marketing methods try and appeal to consumers at certain times — but with the new marketing method, CPG brands can, and should more effectively tailor when and how they’re connecting with customers.
A standard print advertisement on a subway may connect with a target consumer both on their morning commute to work and as they’re headed home — but they might not even see it as they’re focused on their phone instead. Traditional advertising methods are more a shot in the dark and have less chance of connecting with ideal consumers.
Coupled with technology and data, brand marketers can more effectively tailor:
CPG brands can change individual advertisements or messaging based on who views a product or ad and when to most effectively connect with consumers.
The brand can show a different message to a consumer who scans a QR code on a digital ad in a store at 12 p.m. local time in Tokyo than they show to a consumer who scans a QR code on the same product in a different store at 4 p.m. in New York City.
Having the right teams to manage your systems and come up with creative ways to implement them and put the marketing into action is crucial. You want team members who are on the pulse of what consumers want to see and know how to present it to them in a way that fosters a genuine connection.
This isn’t limited just to marketing and innovation managers, however — your products development team, content and strategy team, sales team, and social media team all need to be connected to the same goals and vision.
Additionally, CPG brands must have the capacity to scale operations and efforts — especially when there’s room for growth to expand to new consumers or with new products.
As teams gather more data from these smart, connected products and advertisements, they should alter their CPG marketing methods. The capability to adapt products and messaging based on powerful insights empowers companies to more effectively connect with consumers and boost their efforts — and ultimately grow their bottom line.
Dive even deeper into how today's innovative brands are tackling CPG marketing and learn:
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