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Influencer marketing is rising, with almost all major companies allotting significant portions of their budgets to this strategy.
Hundreds of studies give you even more reasons why you should jump on the influencer marketing wagon.
Here’s the problem:
Doing it wrong can damage your revenues and possibly your reputation.
To avoid that, read the guide below.
We’ll tell you what problems influencer marketing solves for Consumer Packaged Goods companies and how to leverage it for your company.
Of course, we’ve included plenty of examples to get you more inspired. Keep reading below!
TL;DR
- Influencer Marketing is on the rise: Many major companies allocate significant budgets to influencer marketing, but it's essential to do it right to avoid damage to revenues and reputation.
- CPG Problems Solved by Influencer Marketing: Influencer marketing addresses CPG industry challenges, such as short product lifespans, the need for recognizable packaging, and changing consumer loyalties.
- Leveraging CPG Influencer Marketing: Success in CPG influencer marketing requires clear goals, alignment with consumer needs, and choosing authentic influencers who can provide valuable content and drive quick purchases.
- Benefits for Small Brands: Influencer marketing helps small brands raise awareness, save on marketing costs, and leverage user-generated content.
- Benefits for Larger Brands: Established brands use influencer marketing to increase reach, build relationships, promote values, test new channels, and boost revenue while staying relevant.
- Pro Tip: Successful CPG influencer marketing involves working with a top CPG marketing agency that follows best practices, selects the right influencers, and uses the right platform to achieve desired results.
CPG Influencer Marketing Stats
If you haven’t tried influencer marketing for your CPG brand so far, the cold numbers prove why you should.
A recent Facebook report on 15,000 consumers from around the world found that:
- Twice more people prefer influencer advertising compared to traditional advertising.
- 41% of people in the US aged 18 to 34 claim they follow influencers because they want to discover new products.
- This figure is lower in the beverage industry, as only 33% of carbonated beverage consumers want to discover new products.
- 45% of 18-34 people in the US and 49% in the UK claim they’ve purchased at least once following the food-related recommendation of a content creator. Conversely, 52% of them watch food influencers for tips and tutorials.
- 39% of people in the US aged 18-34 say they follow beauty influencers for practical make-up advice.
- 84% of consumers follow up on their purchase intentions if they receive relevant content.
- 75% of people are willing to try new products if the influencers promoting those products share the same values.
As you can see, using influencer marketing allows you to target an entirely new pool of customers—and particularly people that will heed your messages. The results will be a 64% increased engagement rate and a 110% higher click-through rate.
CPG Problems that Influencer Marketing Solves
Before using influencer marketing for your CPG company, think of the challenges that your industry is facing:
- CPG’s lifespans are short.
- You need easy-to-recognize and memorable packaging so that your customers identify your products fast.
- You have to fight for shelf space constantly, so that means constantly upping your advertising budget to increase sales.
- Loyalties to CPG products can change quickly according to emerging trends—especially category trends.
- After the COVID-19 pandemic, increasingly more people are buying CPG online. That means you need a well-thought system for seamless online purchases and quick delivery, much like Amazon Prime.
Luckily, influencer marketing can solve those problems because:
- Content creators will make it easy for the general audience to identify your products.
- Your potential customers will connect your products to a certain feeling because influencers use storytelling to give a whole new emotional dimension to the things they use.
- Influencer marketing is cheaper and much more successful than traditional advertising for all brands, including CPG brands—just read the stats above again.
- People following influencers are willing to test new products according to their recommendations. Thus, it’s easier to get a chunk of your competitors’ market compared to the era of traditional advertising.
- Commonly used platforms for influencer marketing like Instagram or Pinterest allow users to purchase the things they need within 1-2 clicks.
As a result, you’ll:
- Increase your market share
- Raise awareness on your brand/products or improve people’s perception of your brand/ products
- Increase your online sales rate
- Decrease your marketing budget
- Track results better
How to Leverage CPG Influencer Marketing
It’s not enough to decide to use influencers for your next marketing campaign to see your sales soar; it takes a little more work than that. You have to strategize, set your KPIs, find ways of measuring results, and ultimately be ready to improve any campaign.
But it all starts with this:
Be clear on what you, your consumers, and your influencers want.
Let’s start with what your company wants. It’s wise to set specific goals with an influencer marketing campaign, just like any other campaign. We’re telling you this because some marketers believe that influencers’ content is best used for awareness when, in fact, it’s an excellent tool to drive sales directly from those influencers’ pages.
Besides, specific goals are the cornerstone of setting appropriate KPIs and measuring your results.
Next, let’s look at what CPG consumers need:
- Functional, durable, and high-quality products
- No-regrets purchase decisions
- Easy purchases
- Eco-friendly, ethical products
- Customizable options
- Different subscription models
- A wide range of products
- Advice for products
- Authentic content
- A story that helps them integrate those products into their lives, according to their values
- Product discounts, cash prizes, contests, etc.
As such, you need to choose influencers that are:
- Authentic
- Opinion leaders
- Relatable
- Knowledgeable
- Inspirational
Remember that your target market will want to look at plenty of tutorials with valuable tips on using your products. Secondly, they’ll need to make quick purchases.
So, you want your influencers to bring fresh perspectives on how to use your products, provide inspiration, and create urgency.
Now influencers want:
- A company that allows them to be their most authentic selves
- To be trusted by the brand they work with and their audience
- To promote products/brands they believe in
- Transparency
- Clear contracts
- The possibility to offer discount codes and prizes straight from their accounts
- Recognition for their efforts
At this point, you need the right tool to find those influencers. Remember that you, your influencers, and your customers have to click perfectly. You also want to save money in the long run, which means you’d need to repurpose the content your influencers create on various platforms.
Here’s where inBeat.co comes in handy.
First, you can use inBeat to source influencers and organize their work FOR FREE! Second, you can use our platform for CPG marketing and product seeding, incentivizing content creators to stay motivated for longer.
But first, ask yourself this:
Does CPG Influencer Marketing Work for Your Brand?
CPG influencer marketing has proven effective if you look at the bigger picture outlined by the studies we cited above. On the other hand, what’s the little picture? Specifically, how does CPG influencer marketing help your company thrive specifically?
Small Brand
If you have a small brand that’s not exceptionally well known, influencer marketing will drive awareness. According to a Kantar study, 60% of the people seeing influencer content regarding your brand will follow your company.
And, of course, that evergreen content will help you save money in the long term.
Just look at Bluehouse Salmon—that’s one of inBeat’s customers.
This company sells organic salmon, and as you can agree, it’s pretty hard to find a new twist every time you do a marketing campaign. Sure, they retail delicious, healthy salmon, and their clients love them, but that proposition doesn’t bring too much marketing material.
However, Bluehouse Salmon rarely invests in marketing because they’ve filled their entire content calendar with user-generated content.
Just a minute’s worth of scrolling on their Instagram account shows you these beautiful recipes sent by people who’ve tried their salmon. So the brand hits multiple birds with one stone:
- Raises awareness
- Creates desire
- Limits its marketing budget
- Shows fans’ and in-house recipes
- Sells its products
Larger Brand
Even if your company is already better established in the market, you’re still facing one problem: staying relevant. You don’t want smaller competitors sneaking up on you and stealing your market share. Invest in influencer marketing to:
- Increase your reach
- Build stronger relationships with your audience
- Promote your values
- Test new social channels
- Increase your revenue
Take Diet Coke’s #unlabeled campaign. The company jumped on the inclusion/diverse identity wagon with its 2019 campaign promoting empowered people worldwide. Coca Cola partnered with various influencers that showcase their unique identities, such as:
- Brendan Jordan: LGBTQ+ and beauty
- Doc Todd: US veteran with PTSD
- Keri Grey: American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD); prosthetics user after receiving leg amputation to fight bone cancer
Basically, Coca-Cola wants to build its legacy in the pro-diversity, no-label movement. To achieve this, the brand stripped its logo from the Diet Coke cans and left just the two representative colours: white and red.
That stripping away of labels holds powerful symbolism, but Coke could pull it off thanks to its long-standing reputation. A similar strategy wouldn’t work for lesser-known brands.
In the end, the #unlabeled campaign brought Coca Cola:
- More sympathy from the audience
- The chance to present its values and strengthen its bond with similar-minded customers
- The chance to target new markets
CPG Influencer Marketing Conclusion
CPG influencer marketing is a complex project, but you can pull it off if you’re following the best practices. Remember to choose the right platform to help you navigate all challenges, from selecting the right influencers to signing the right contracts and ultimately getting the desired results.