CPG marketing campaign success can be measured with numerous metrics, but customer engagement is one of the most revealing, as it is closely related to profitability. If customers aren’t interacting with a brand’s content, it’s fair to assume the campaign is not yielding meaningful impressions, increasing brand awareness or customer acquisition as the brand hoped it would.
Campaigns that perform poorly are a significant waste of time and resources, so it’s in the CPG brand’s interest to get customer engagement right, but it’s harder than it looks.
Why Customer Engagement Is Hard To Get Right?
Customer engagement is tricky for marketing teams. CPG brands have to know their customers, understand their needs, motivations, interests, what is of value and what triggers a response. It doesn’t help that these items are continually shifting and vary among different segments of the customer base.
To further complicate the issue, enrollment in CPG loyalty programs can be as low as 5%, an incredibly low participation rate, given the time and investments brands devote to them.
Boring Content
Brands have a shorter time to impress and engage than ever before. In just 7 seconds, a consumer sizes up the content. Is it appealing, interesting, unique, or helpful? If not, they will move on, click away from the website, social media post, or app.
If a brand’s entire marketing campaign is static, cookie-cutter content devoid of interest or interactivity, engagement is likely to be low. Traditional print or digital marketing techniques no longer hold as much interest to consumers. Digital content, especially video content, on the other hand, is what speaks to consumers. As example, TikTok’s engagement rate for brand posts is over 5%, while other social media platforms are wallowing at sub 1%.
* Image Source: MarketingCharts, “Study Says Post Engagement Rates on TikTok Far Outperform Other Platforms” 2022
Can’t Reach Actual Customers
CPG brands that make most of their sales through big-box retailers struggle to reach actual customers with their marketing campaigns. For example, when a customer purchases a box of cereal or a bottle of soda, there’s no way for brands to gain useful insights into that customer.
Marketing teams rely on a shotgun approach to spread marketing campaigns across potential consumer markets, hoping to land some of the shots.
Unattractive Rewards
Brands must understand their customers to create effective rewards with variety and perceived value. Substantial thought and effort go into the selection of both the rewards program and actual rewards selected.
Introducing rewards that do not connect with the consumer is an expensive endeavor on multiple levels, from the actual cost of the reward and the execution of the campaign to lost sales. This is especially harmful to CPG brands within competitive discount-driven industries like cosmetics and nutrition.
Difficult to Share
Brands are missing a major source of engagement if their marketing campaigns lack shareability. Consumers like to share products they bought, deals they found or received, and companies they liked. If consumers can’t find a quick social share button or the content lacks visual appeal, they’re less likely to share it with their social network of friends, family, and followers.
It’s a major missed opportunity because reviews from trusted sources, like family or friends, are over 12x more influential in increasing brand awareness and reputation. If brands can effectively encourage consumers to advocate for them, it’s a fantastic way to attract new customers.
Increase Engagement with Abrio
Abrio’s product item level QR code solution takes customer engagement to the next level, enabling each product item to become a bridge for brands to directly connect to their consumers.
Brands can execute various campaign formats that use interactive and interesting content to boost participation, promote social sharing and drive repeat purchases. Using Abrio’s analytics, brands can actively monitor campaign progress, such as identifying how well each type of reward is performing. With this level of information, brands can then make informed and timely adjustments to ensure strong campaign performance.