How to spark growth in your CPG brand’s retail ecommerce strategy

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) brands selling in retail typically have not enjoyed the luxury of using performance marketing capabilities often available when selling direct-to-consumer (DTC). However, these capabilities have become necessary for driving growth in retail e-commerce, a space growing incredibly fast and offering CPG brands extraordinary opportunities

So how do CPGs gain access to performance marketing capabilities when selling to consumers via retail e-commerce? The answer is to bridge the ‘data divide’ that has traditionally existed between CPGs and retailers using new technology. Below, we share everything you need to know about this emerging opportunity.

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CPG brands who sell DTC often enjoy major advantages when optimizing their advertising. Since they control their online store, they can directly access and own the data generated by shoppers who interact with their online stores. When CPGs sell to consumers through retail, however, they don’t own the data and can usually only access a small portion of it at the retailer’s discretion.

Accessing more data about retail sales is a huge opportunity when you consider that around 45% of online grocery orders happen through in-store click-and-collect programs. Most consumers prefer to shop at their favorite local grocery stores, so retail ecommerce is a huge piece of the puzzle for CPG digital marketers. The number of consumers buying through retail e-commerce channels represents a massive amount of data. That data can give CPG brands the insight to more accurately understand their return on ad spend (ROAS) and optimize their campaigns to be more effective and move the needle on their growth goals.

In addition to having access to less data, CPGs selling in retail have also run into challenges with inventory accuracy. The best available inventory data from retailers or traditional where-to-buy tools is usually outdated, causing consumers to land on out-of-stock or error pages that create a hassle for them and a poor experience with both the brand and the retailer.

Solution: The Rise of Performance Marketing-Based Retail E-Commerce Through Shoppable Media

What is shoppable media? Shoppable media is digital content that allows consumers to shop online for your products. For example, a shopper may run across a button on your blog, a social media post, email marketing, even QR codes— anything that can include a hyperlink. That link will take the shopper to the shoppable media landing page, which shows a list of retailers. Then, with the click of a button, they’ll be taken to their preferred retailer’s website with your product already added to their cart.

With the largest network of retailer partners, Pear connects your content, media, and ads to only those retailers near the shopper that have the advertised products in stock. This direct link to inventory data guarantees consumers won’t be frustrated by landing on error pages or clicking to a retailer to find that the item isn’t available. Pear understands real-time, up-to-date inventory data from retailers that is much more accurate than the weekly, monthly, or quarterly updates most brands get. This way, you can ensure all your retail ecommerce ads have a clear path to purchase, and you aren’t wasting ad spend sending a shopper to a retailer that is out of stock.

Most importantly, Pear returns the data from each conversion event down to the UPC and individual purchase level with 30+ retailers. This data allows you to directly link ads, content, and creative to results so brands can build custom audiences of their retail shoppers, understand and improve ROAS, and optimize your marketing spend toward the tactics driving the most growth.

What Is Performance Marketing and What Impact Does it Have In Retail Ecommerce ?

CPG marketers gain performance marketing capabilities in retail ecommerce when they get more visibility into which tactics are working by confirming transactions with retailers. You can define performance marketing by its four core capabilities:

Building Audiences‍

With visibility into retail sales data down to the individual and UPC purchase level, you can begin building audiences. You can create two main types of audiences: custom and lookalike. Custom audiences involve individuals who have taken a specific action. Pear automatically sends data to your ad managing platforms, which then use machine learning to derive insights into their likes, dislikes, behavior, etc. to drive more desired outcomes.

With Pear, you can then use that information to create lookalike audiences for each stage of the funnel. For example, top-funnel audiences who arrive at your landing page, middle-funnel audiences who click to add a product to their cart, and bottom-funnel audiences who complete a purchase at one of our retailer partners. Gathering insights about these audiences can help you make decisions that propel each campaign toward its specific goals, from awareness to purchase.

Optimizing Campaigns

Your media team and ad platform partners have goals to drive sales and other behaviors, and the way to do that is to make ads more effective. One way is to tell your ad network you want to optimize a campaign for top-funnel awareness, middle-funnel link clicks, or bottom-funnel purchases. Because Pear can send purchase data to the ad networks from our retail partners, the network analyzes that data in real-time. It uses machine learning to recognize patterns and automatically make updates to the campaign to make ads more and more effective. This is the most effective way to drive sales velocity, but is also effective for top and middle-funnel goals.

Testing & Learning‍

Pear makes it easy to split testing campaign variables like copy and creative to discover what’s resonating with consumers and what isn’t. Near real-time insights make it easy to make quick decisions mid-campaign to put the most investment behind the most effective ads to drive the most goal completions.

Retargeting To Shoppers‍

Using custom audiences and the full-funnel visibility of Pear, you can learn who added to cart/purchased and then follow up with personalized actions. For example, if someone added an item to the cart but didn’t purchase it (abandoned cart), you can message and communicate with those users to nudge them as a reminder and generally communicate with more specific language to move them down the funnel. If they made a purchase, you could serve them coupons to inspire a follow-up purchase and begin shaping consumer shopping habits. Before Pear, only CPG brands that sell DTC could do this — now, it’s available to all who sell in retail.

Adding Performance Marketing Capabilities to Your Retail E-Commerce Toolkit Can Spark Growth

Pear makes performance marketing capabilities accessible to CPG brands selling in retail, empowering you to merge your retail and e-commerce strategies into one cohesive retail e-commerce strategy that’s as optimizable as any DTC program. Contact us to see a demo and find out exactly how you can begin optimizing for ecommerce growth. →

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