Introduction

Being in the FMCG industry you want your products to be picked up from the shelves regularly. For that, you obviously need a loyal customer base. Your competitors’ products are mostly placed near yours and may look similar to the customers. So, by all means, you need to increase your brand equity.

Learn from leaders

Whether you are targeting a global market or a limited geographical area, there is a lot to learn from the previously successful FMCG marketing efforts. Of course, you don’t have to imitate other brands; rather, just figure out what works in the market.

Start by making your customers familiar with your brand and products. Just like people recognise Nestlé’s logo easily. They have been also hearing “Have a break, have a Kit-Kat” for many years. The company tries to target busy, hard-working people who relish chocolates. Like in any other industry, you need to know your target customers really well.

You can clearly see that this video is aimed at men (although everyone else loved it too!). What looked like just another motivational video, turned out to be so funny when you least expected it! Now you know why old spice is so great at attracting male customers? The description of the video reads “People say there’s no limit to how many videos you can watch with your eyeballs. But thanks to this new Odor Blocker Internet video, we think we just found it.“ Did we mention that the video has over 9 million views?

Know your prospects

If a part of your target audience is the young generation, you need to pay special attention to them. The youth constitute a large part of the population and are quite active in the digital space. They also enjoy personalization in everything. When Coca-Cola figured out that 50% of teens and young adults had not even tasted coke in the past month, they won the youth back by personalizing the packaging for them. As a result, young adult consumption increased by 7% in just 3 months!

Standby society

The FMCG giant, Unilever recently shared an article from Forbes titled “Big Brands And Businesses Are Aligning Their Missions With Millennial And Gen Z Consumers
”. The article highlights the inclination of Generation Y &Z towards brands that adopt sustainability practices and work for social welfare. Standing by the society in the bad times matter a lot. Nestlé showed its concern and efforts towards youth unemployment through #All4YOUth.

Similarly, P&G’s Children’s Safe Drinking Water (CSDW) Program is a non-profit program for the society. These brands had also shared videos for and CSDW. You can also work for social welfare in your special own way. For instance, P&G set up a mobile laundry unit to help out areas hit by tornadoes.

P&G regularly posted about this initiative on Facebook and that is how we came to know about it! When you work for a social cause, people should be aware of it, in order to appreciate and support your vision. Leverage social media to let the world know you are there to help. All this makes it easy for people to accept you as a part of their daily lives.

Leverage social media

A majority of your prospects hang out on social media. Social media presence has become mandatory for any FMCG brand. Check out how Nestlé posts the very popular GIFs, cinemagraphs & images with pan & zoom effects on its Twitter handle.Here, you may also find a lot of posts related to #bakesomegood, #endchildlabour etc. This is how you need to involve your audience consistently. Instagram is great for sharing pictures for those who follow you and Linkedin is more about career growth, company culture etc. You can have a look at social media activities of Unilever on Linkedin & Instagram.

Let the ‘Liquid’ Flow

So, what do your prospect like to know? What campaigns would they like to participate in? You should focus more on the liquid content and keep the linked content somewhat limited. Liquid content is something your audience enjoy watching/reading and also love to share. This is the kind of content that goes viral. Linked content, on the other hand, is something related to your business interests. No matter what you post, add a touch of your brand to it. Also plan your content according to upcoming holidays or occasions, because sales rise and fall according to the season. Apart from the planned content, be prepared to post spontaneous stuff on the current affairs and answer questions from your fans/customer.

Humanize your brand

You may want to humanize your brand. After all, everyone behind your brand name is a person, they have emotions, feelings and may also have a family. Here’s how a son interviewed his dad, the CEO of Unilever:

Involve your customers

Social media campaigns can draw a hell lot of attention to your brand. The condition is that you launch some really interesting campaigns keeping your brand and customers in mind. You may simply tie-up with malls, airlines or cinema-theaters to introduce your product samples to people or you may involve your customers in creating some content online. Oreo spotted a Facebook fan using a fork to dunk the cookie in the milk and they launched ”snack hacks”. Customers loved to try out new things with Oreo and showed off their own hacks too.

So, was it a success? American Marketing Association shared an insight titled, “Oreo engages consumers with a fan-fueled digital media campaign”. Oreo gained more than 23000 followers on Twitter, which resulted from a steep rise in the customer engagement. You should also encourage your customers to do new things with your products. Customer involvement can pump a new energy in the product usage and social media content. One of the best social media campaigns was by Walkers Crisps, watch this video to know more:

Did you notice that watching the above video, gave you a clear picture of the campaign? As if you have seen it happen! Moreover, you were totally engaged in the viewing experience, waiting to see what happens next. Videos are fun to watch, enticing and can be shared widely. This is why videos have become a preferred way of explaining concepts (Explainer videos), teasing the audience about what is about to come (Trailers & Teasers), showcasing your company’s strengths in a professional way (Corporate videos), sharing facts and stats (Infographic videos) etc. Videos can create an emotional appeal, make your audience laugh/cry and even scare/shock them. You may want to go for live-action videos or animated ones, both of them have their own set of strengths and varieties. We want you to see this beautiful video done in 3D animation:

Team up with celebrities

If your target customers are fond of some celebrity or follow some influencers, you can ask those personalities to join you. For instance, L’Oréal Paris had signed up 5 of the UK’s most influential and inspiring beauty YouTuber fanatics to create content. They named these five as “The Beauty Squad”

Events add visibility

Always make it a point to attend events that are related to your products or business. It doesn’t just improve your visibility but also gives you a platform for personal interaction. Events and occasions also give you a chance to create compelling content that can be shared at the right time. You can also try to be totally unique and out of the box with your videos. Although it seems a bit risky it can be quite rewarding if done right; just like this video from Heineken, that quickly shot to fame during the 2014 Super Bowl.

Technology Enlightens!

Today, you cannot afford to stay behind on the technology front. Technology will play an important role in determining how you interact with your customers in future. Malibu, the world’s no.1 coconut flavoured rum, launched the #BecauseSummer campaign. During the campaign, they sold internet of things enabled bottles at Tesco, UK.

Customers could use their smartphones to tap on the the iconic sunset logo on the bottles to enter a world of cool stuff…like recipes, competitions, bar locator and playlists.

Coca-Cola Magic App was quite a hit during the Christmas season. Augmented reality(AR) offers many such amazing applications for marketing. A few years back, Pepsi had introduced cans that could be scanned through the augmented reality Blippar App. It was a part of its Super Bowl promotion. Similarly, Heinz had also introduced an app for the customers to scan the bottles and get an interactive recipe book. You can also use AR to attract your customers. AR can show them what’s inside the packaging, how to use tips, nutritional facts or even some wonderful stories.

Do you wish to immerse your audience in your message? Why not take them on a tour of your factory? No, we are not talking about a video tour. Yes, we know an actual tour is not possible for so many people! How about a virtual reality tour? Virtual reality can take your audience as close to the reality as possible.

Want to peep into the office of a leading FMCG brand and look around? Here’s the video. Want to celebrate and have fun with some happy people? Here you go! And how about an exciting roller-coaster journey inside a refrigerator? Do watch this, it’s really great!

We are pretty sure that you are all charged up to do some great marketing for your FMCG brand. Before starting, understand who your target audience are and what goes well with your brand. Start planning….success is on its way.