4 P’s for Digital Marketing how to adapt in your FMCG Business
Digital marketing for FMCG companies doesn’t mean retiring the tried and tested 4 P’s which formed the holy grail of marketing for years. Instead, it involves tweaking the marketing mix for FMCG products to bring them into the current era. Digital marketing trends in FMCG allow marketers to not just capture the consumer at the final buying stage, but also to establish a relationship with them from the start, something that was not possible before. This requires marketers to formulate a holistic FMCG digital strategy to not just influence their consumers, but also to personally engage with them.
How Digital Marketing Can Help FMCG Brands
Incorporating a strong digital marketing strategy in the overall marketing mix offers many clear advantages to brands.
1. It helps your brand to stand out from other brands
The FMCG sector is marked by a large variety of similar products, which offer consumers a wide range to choose from. One of the biggest advantages of having an effective digital marketing strategy in place is that it helps brands create a unique brand identity. This helps consumers form a strong opinion of the brand, which will ultimately influence their purchase decision.
2. It provides a unique way to display your brand
Reach of virtual shelf display is way high than the traditional physical display strategy.
Digital Marketing helps you reach your specific target audience, making your overall marketing strategy more cost-effective, enabling top-of-mind awareness, which can influence purchase decisions. Products can also be places contextually in digital marketing similar to traditional marketing.. Through tools like AdWords Smart Display, you can showcase your products while consumers browse through similar categories. For example, if you are a skincare brand, you can display your ads next to beauty blogs your consumers are browsing through.
3. It helps You to Gain Consumer Insights and Increase ROI
digital marketing helps you track every aspect of your marketing efforts. FMCG brands spend large sums on hoardings, TV commercials, print ads, radio ads and more. But, the results of these activities are very difficult to measure effectively. Only speculative figures can be produced, but not the definite conclusion.
Whereas, Digital marketing, helps you monitor and measure every aspect of campaign. Analytic tools helps brands to recover information about number of impressions, clicks, conversions and more. Moreover, It also find out exactly which ad prompted the consumer to make the purchase. Detailed consumer insights can be fetched from Advanced analytics. With the comfort of tracking digital marketing offers, FMCG brands can refine marketing strategies and make it more cost-effective.
4. Mobile phone and tablet usage is only going to increase from here
Offline purchases might still form the bulk of FMCG sales but the future belongs to mobile phones. Mobile phones and high speed, affordable internet have penetrated almost every section of the Indian audience. A significant portion of Indian consumers are shopping for FMCG products online through various apps and this number is only going to grow. Digital marketing trends in FMCG need to keep up with the increasing volume of customers who prefer to shop online.
FMCG Digital Marketing Strategy Techniques
Digital media offers a variety of platform for FMCG brands to market themselves. Such various platforms assist brands to meet a number of marketing objectives, right from building awareness and brand establishment to driving conversions and cultivating brand loyalty.
1. Build strong brand communities through content marketing
By creating informative content, FMCG can drive conversation among consumers and build strong communities. Having a solid community is very important for developing a loyal consumer base.
Digital marketing can help building your strong brand’s community through a number of innovative Content Marketing Strategies. Smart use of content marketing is required because it helps establish your authority in the space.
Another advantage of content marketing is creating SEO-friendly content that is essential for FMCG brands. A strong SEO plan along with Strategies For Content Amplification is important because it drives consumers to your website. Keyword-optimized content also helps consumers to find you when they are searching something similar to your brand, which goes a long way in establishing your brand’s credibility in that domain.
2. Strengthen digital presence using various social media channels
Facebook is indisputably one of the biggest boulevards for digital marketing. The Facebook Custom Audience Tool can benefit you broaden your target audience and reach them through campaigns. FMCG brands can also use Facebook to get deeper understandings into consumer behavior.
However, Facebook is not the only platform but just one of the many such channels. Digital marketing for FMCG brands needs to be incorporated over different channels to have the maximum impact. This includes Youtube video, Twitter ads, Instagram posts and considerably more. With an increase in the number of FMCG products displaying up online, Google Ads are also another important possibility for FMCG marketing.
3. Consistently engage with your potential and existing audience to encourage brand loyalty
Conventionally, FMCG advertisements were a one-way interaction, with brands updating consumers about their products over TV commercials, radio spots & print advertisements. Advertising was done mostly when there was a new product or service to stimulate. This is why brands were incapable to consistently engage with their buyers.
Digital media is shifting all of that eternally. Digital marketing has an advantage over customary marketing when it comes to creating user engagement. Digital marketing drifts in FMCG products are directed towards establishing your brand as a constant occurrence in your consumers’ lives. Through shareable content, useful information and meaningful communication, brands can continue to stay significant at all times.
4. Increase consumer base through Influencer Marketing
By using influencers, your brand can tap into their vast number of followers and upsurge consumer awareness of your products. Influencer advertising is also very advantageous for FMCG brands because consumers are more likely to consider in the trustworthiness of your brand when an influencer whom they trust endorses it to them.
5. Email marketing
With the number of English-speaking consumer’s huge online presence, regional language online users are also on rise. For FMCG brands, this offers a huge opportunity to leverage digital marketing to fascinate this new wave of consumers. The Growth of Local Content Online will be one of the key factors that can influence FMCG sales in small to medium size cities.
6. Sell Your Products Online
While this may sound self-evident, not many FMCG products actually sell their products online. To this day, even if FMCG advertisements are being displayed on digital media, their marketing efforts are aimed at influencing the consumer’s in-store purchase decision. But with the launch of many websites that let you purchase FMCG products online, an increasing number of consumers are beginning to shop online. In this case, even if a consumer has every intention of purchasing your product, they will choose a competitor’s product if yours is unavailable online. FMCG brands can choose to Sell Products Through Amazon And Facebook or similar sites to increase sales.
Selling products online also gives you the advantage of being able to reach consumers beyond a limited geographical location. For example, a local makeup brand can start selling their products nationally by making it available online. This ultimately increases the consumer base for FMCG products, a key factor in eventually increasing sales. With A Few Simple Steps, Selling Online Through Amazon and other sites is a very easy way for FMCG brands to increase their online presence. For example, Raaga Professionals, a personal care brand, sells their products through Nykaa. In this way, their content marketing through blogs can direct consumers to a clear point of purchase.
7. Run campaigns in local languages
For most FMCG brands, tier 2 and tier 3 cities offer the next big avenue for growth. At the same time, most consumers in these areas are becoming more digitally connected. While the number of English-speaking users online has more or less peaked, regional language users are only going to grow from here. This has been facilitated in a huge part by the dual penetration of mobile phones and internet connectivity in India’s smaller towns. A Study Conducted By Google And KPMG estimates that the number of non-English speakers using the internet will grow by around 18 percent annually. Additionally, 99 percent of these users will access the internet primarily through their mobile phone. For FMCG brands, this offers a huge opportunity to leverage digital marketing to attract this new wave of consumers. The Growth Of Regional Content Online will be one of the key factors that can influence FMCG sales in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.