In the highly competitive Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) world, marketing strategies must evolve to capture and retain consumer interest. While brand awareness and driving immediate sales are crucial, mid-funnel marketing offers a valuable opportunity to nurture potential customers and optimize advertising spend. Let’s dive into how CPG brands can leverage mid-funnel strategies to enhance their marketing efforts and depend less on broad awareness campaigns.

CPG brands couldn’t initially access mid-funnel opportunities without the shopper data necessary to build mid-funnel audiences. Spoiler: that’s where we come in.

Instead, the marketing funnel for CPG brands used to look more like this:

1. Awareness
2. Trial (in-store only)
3. Purchase

Marketing teams spent budgets on becoming a household name like Cheerios or offering a money-back guarantee to drive purchase. They usually couldn’t market the trial step in the funnel, and would have to leverage free samples inside brick-and-mortar locations so customers would want to purchase. Only steps one and three were achieved through marketing campaigns.‍

Understanding the new CPG marketing funnel‍

The CPG marketing funnel contains several stages:

1. Awareness: Introducing consumers to your CPG brand.
1a. Product Discovery: Showing potential shoppers where to buy your brand.
2. Consideration: Educating consumers about the benefits of your products.
2a. Trial: Encouraging first-time purchases or product trials.
3. Purchase: Driving consumers to buy, and then buy again!
3a. Sales Velocity: Increasing the rate at which products are sold through brand loyalty.

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A full-funnel marketing strategy offers a comprehensive approach to engaging consumers at various journey stages. Creating multiple touchpoints and ensuring repeated exposure helps keep a brand top-of-mind when consumers are ready to make a purchase. It's important to note that the consumer journey is sometimes linear; individuals might skip stages or engage with a brand unexpectedly. For examples of physical and digital touchpoints interweaving, see Omnichannel ecommerce goes beyond traditional ecommerce. Typically, converting a customer requires 5–9 touchpoints with a brand.

While brand awareness has historically been a major focus, mid-funnel strategies can bridge the gap between initial awareness and final conversion, offering a more nuanced approach to driving sales. For frequently purchased CPG items, the consideration phase can move very quickly.

The role of mid-funnel marketing in CPG

Mid-funnel marketing, or the "consideration" phase, is critical in the customer journey. This stage focuses on educating potential customers and fostering relationships to guide them toward making a purchase. Effective mid-funnel strategies for CPG brands include:

1. Leverage customer data for personalization
Segment your audience: Analyze shopper data to segment your audience based on their behaviors, preferences, and purchase history.
Personalized content: Tailor your marketing messages and offers to resonate with each segment, increasing engagement and the likelihood of conversion.

2. Optimize retargeting campaigns
Behavioral retargeting: Use shoppable ads to re-engage users who’ve interacted with your brand’s website, where-to-buy tools, or social media.
Dynamic retargeting: Showcase personalized product recommendations based on users’ previous browsing or purchasing behaviors.

3. Utilize email marketing
Nurture sequences: Develop automated email campaigns that guide potential customers through their buying journey with valuable content and offers. Follow up with key insights or highlights from downloadable resources.
Promotional offers: Send targeted promotions to encourage repeat purchases or drive additional product interest with a direct-to-cart link.

4. Engage through content marketing
Educational content: Provide content that addresses common customer questions and highlights how your products solve specific pain points.
Case studies and reviews: Share success stories, customer testimonials, and product reviews to build credibility and influence potential buyers.

5. Implement influencer and affiliate marketing
Influencer partnerships: Collaborate with influencers who can authentically endorse your products to their audience. Micro-influencers have proven particularly engaging for consumers.
Affiliate programs: Develop affiliate marketing programs to leverage partnerships for increased sales and brand visibility.

6. Optimize your user experience
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO): Streamline the buying process across your website with intuitive purchase paths (like Pear’s Shoppable PDPs).

7. Use click-level data to refine your strategy
Track engagement metrics: Monitor click-through rates and conversion metrics to understand which mid-funnel tactics are most effective.
Adjust campaigns: Use click-level data to refine and optimize your marketing efforts for better results and smarter ROAS.

8. Incentivize brand loyalty
Exclusive offers: Provide special deals and early access to new products for frequent customers to foster brand loyalty.

Why focus on mid-funnel marketing?‍

CPG products are low-cost and need to be replaced often, so driving repeat purchases and building brand loyalty is essential. With CPG products often purchased in third-party stores or online retailers, creating a strong mid-funnel presence can significantly impact consumer decisions. By nurturing potential customers who are already familiar with your brand, you can build relationships that encourage repeat purchases.

‍The financial impact of mid-funnel marketing‍

In 2024, CPG companies will likely spend approximately $48.79 billion on advertising, with nearly 22.6% of their budgets allocated to marketing. Despite this significant investment, much of it has traditionally focused on top-of-funnel awareness and immediate sales. By integrating mid-funnel strategies, CPG brands can more effectively allocate their budgets, reducing unnecessary spending and driving better returns on their marketing investments.

‍Pear can help you find & build your mid-funnel audience‍

Pear can assist CPG brands in building and managing audiences throughout the funnel. By strategically firing pixel events along the funnel for automatic segmentation by shopper action, brands can effectively engage consumers at different stages:

1. Store Locator page loads = Awareness audience
   For CPGs, brand awareness can also include shopper convenience. Shift the mindset from general awareness to consumers specifically searching for stores that carry your brand.
   
   
2. Retailer clicks = Consideration audience
   Focus on consumers who’ve already been introduced to the brand and are actively considering buying. To touch on the trial aspect of the mid-funnel, incentivize your consideration audience to try your brand with a first-purchase incentive. 

3. Add-to-cart = Purchase audience
   By integrating your ad platform pixels with Pear’s shoppable tools, you can build lookalikes off  of your purchase audiences so you can target the same demographics, areas, and shopping trends. Once you build your audience, you can retarget them too!
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Use your mid-funnel strategy to retarget consumers who’ve clicked a retailer button from a Pear-powered solution. If you want consumers to convert, you should build a nurtured, educated, mid-funnel audience primed to receive shoppable ads, limited product releases, new retailer features or releases, sweepstake offers, and email signups. Once you’ve tracked that shopper data, you can begin to understand what’s driving sales.

Mid-funnel marketing represents a powerful opportunity for CPG brands to enhance their marketing strategies. By focusing on nurturing and converting potential customers who are already aware of your brand, you can be less reliant on broad awareness campaigns and drive more meaningful engagement and sales. Embracing these strategies will help you build stronger customer relationships, optimize ROAS (even mid-campaign!), and ultimately achieve greater marketing success in the competitive CPG landscape.‍

Make every consumer touchpoint shoppable‍

Along with providing unique mid-funnel opportunities, Pear can create purchase paths that bypass the funnel for eager consumers. With Pear’s shoppable tools, you can make every stage of the marketing funnel shoppable, including product discovery.

Why wait? Book a demo today.