Month: December 2022

The 3 Step CPG Marketing Strategy to Gain Lifelong Customers

Posted on by Elise Stieferman

How to Build an Effective CPG Marketing Strategy

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) – a massive category with a lot of nuances to consider. Some goods are purchased daily, while others have a longer life cycle ranging from months to years. 

The goal that unites all CPG brands? The need to build brand affinity to gain a lifelong customer, regardless of the frequency of purchase. Achieving a high customer lifetime value requires ongoing, personalized investment. It’s about relationships, not just reach.  

There is a low switching cost for CPG brands, and competitors can swoop in and take your customers. There will almost always be MANY other choices and consumers are becoming less loyal. Building loyalty requires going beyond transactions and forming authentic relationships that delight users and create long-term brand advocates

So, how can brands create a CPG marketing strategy that optimizes the consumer experience – that attracts new customers and nurtures existing ones? We recommend a three-pronged approach to accomplish this goal:

  1. Be consumer obsessed
  2. Invest in outstanding content
  3. Lead with digital marketing tactics

How To Be Consumer Obsessed

If you don’t understand and deeply care about your key consumers, going beyond demographics, you will lose their attention every time. That’s why it’s critical for brands to do extensive research on their best customers. Understanding consumers’ pain points is a key first step in this learning phase – what challenges will your product solve for? How will it make consumers’ lives better? Make sure you acknowledge how you will alleviate their frustrations as you go-to-market. 

Next, determine what motivates these individuals:

  • Are they parents focusing on creating a safe home environment? 
  • Are they executives seeking products that insinuate prestige and luxury? 
  • Are they athletes looking to enhance their healthy lifestyle and improve performance?

Understand your audiences on a granular level to ensure you are speaking their language and appealing to what they care about.

Lastly, ensure you’re placing this message on channels where your core consumers are most engaged. This improves marketing ROI by decreasing media waste. Consider things like:

  • Their hobbies and interests
  • Where they most commonly shop
  • Which websites and social media platforms they visit
  • What publications or streaming services they subscribe to

At the end of the day, make the customer the hero of your brand story, rather than yourself. This will allow your brand to show up during foundational times and influence key decision-making moments. Remember, it can even impact generations of consumers as parents pass on their preferences to their children.

Why It’s Important To Invest In Outstanding Content

Once you understand your target audience, work on cultivating a memorable brand image and voice. All the audience research in the world will not reach its full potential unless the content you’re promoting is highly relevant and engaging. Even the strongest media strategy cannot override the impact of poor creatives on performance. 

So, how do you achieve creative content excellence? This, of course, goes back to point number one – know your customers and what keeps them coming back. You shouldn’t speak to the safety-focused mother the same way you speak to the influence-focused executive. However, consumers are inundated with ads every day. It’s important to be strategic in showcasing your brand’s story, ensuring your ads are impactful and not disruptive for the wrong reasons. 

Now, this can get very expensive, very quickly – if not done strategically. That means your brand does not need to show up on EVERY channel. Instead, create one or two meaningful content pieces, and identify ways to adapt this to each channel.

Lead With Digital Marketing Tactics

The purchase funnel is becoming shorter as information is available at our fingertips. Consumers can search for a product, read reviews, compare brands, and make an informed purchase in a matter of minutes. Most of the time, this is done digitally. Fortunately, this is also an environment where CPG brands can test and learn quickly.

A digital media strategy helps brands account for each stage of the consumer journey – whether on D2C, e-commerce marketplaces or in-store channels. Digital media placements also allow CPG brands to evaluate their content effectiveness and make small adjustments before buying the expensive TV spot or billboard. Start small and build scale once you have done the analysis to understand what works and what doesn’t. 

CPG marketers have an exciting opportunity to identify ways to drive marketing ROI for their brand. The key is straying away from early mass media investment. Instead, prioritize smart learnings through audience-first digital activations with creative excellence. Here’s how to bring this to life:

Create Brand Awareness and Affinity

Every effective CPG marketing strategy starts at awareness – testing and amplifying messaging with prospecting audiences. Then, by activating a flexible, omni-channel approach, we can learn who our best audience is. We’ll also learn what channels we can reach them on and what messaging resonates best with them.   

Get in front of potential customers early in the discovery phase. Search and retail media channels are particularly effective tactics to show up where consumers are actively looking for products. Consider these CPG brand awareness building tactics:  

Prime Audiences to Purchase

Crossing the boundary from ad impression to ‘add to cart’ can be challenging. After reaching users in the discovery phase, deploy smart segmentation and retargeting to stay top of mind. It’s important to reach users across various media touchpoints from social to display to digital video with an omnichannel strategy. 

Tips for establishing consideration: 

  • Target messaging and use effective frequency exposure across channels to make sure your product makes the shopping list. 
  • Understand how many interactions you need before a customer will remember your brand and make a purchase to optimize your budget.

Move Seamlessly to Sales Conversion

As a consumer nears purchase, machine learning and algorithms need to get to work. Use AI to predict and serve the right messaging at the right time. Also, use technology like dynamic creative optimization to tailor messaging to complement previous touchpoints – such as add to cart or existing cart reminders.

Tips for keeping your clients loyal to your brand: 

  • Use loyalty card data to understand frequency and cadence of purchase to serve your ads in the right place at the right time. 
  • Serve ads for complementary items to previous purchase, with sufficient buffer time post-purchase 
  • Surprise customers with incentives, promotions, or gifts

Want to learn more about how to create a best-in-class CPG marketing strategy for your brand?

We’ve got you covered. View the complete CPG Digital Marketing Playbook below.

Coegi’s CPG Digital Marketing Playbook

Top Consumer Trends for 2023: What They Mean For Digital Marketing

Posted on by Coegi

Consumer behavior trends are constantly evolving. This is especially true for shopping preferences in 2023 as 90% of consumers are noticing price increases. Consumers are switching brands more than ever before. Brands must be highly adaptive to consumer trends to keep up with these changes and fend off the competition. 

So, brands, it’s time to meet (and reintroduce yourselves to) your consumers. 

Here are our top six key consumer trends for 2023, and the insights you need to capitalize on these trends for your brand: 

  1. Customer-first approach
  2. Brand loyalty risk
  3. Omni-channel shopping
  4. Social commerce proliferation
  5. Connected device adoption
  6. Influencer growth

Apply these 2023 consumer trends to your brand’s marketing

#1 – Taking a Customer-First Approach

Putting customers first is no longer an added value proposition – it’s an expectation. 19% of marketing executives report ‘fostering relationships with customers and increasing brand loyalty’ is their top priority for 2023. To do so, brands need to find unique ways to engage consumers and authentically insert themselves into their story. As a Netscribes article quotes, brands must, “go beyond the commodity to fuel engagement and advocacy by delivering context-specific interactions at the right junctures of the consumer journey.” 

Key takeaway: Brands must build a relationship with consumers in order to break through the clutter. Prioritize first-party data collection to understand your customers and provide a more personalized experience based on their interests and needs.

#2 – Preventing Brand Loyalty Risk

In the face of an economic downturn, consumers display less brand loyalty. Surveys found nearly 60% of US consumers are less brand loyal due to increasing costs of goods. Household names are losing their power as curious and price-conscious consumers shift towards value, price, and convenience. However, loyalty programs can help. 78% of consumers report that strong loyalty programs make them more likely to purchase from a brand or retailer. 

Key takeaway: Create ways to incentivize customer loyalty, either financially or with exclusivity. Remember – it’s more expensive to win over new customers than invest in your existing ones!

#3 – Optimizing Omni-Channel Shopping

Consumers are split between online and brick-and-mortar shopping. 75% of consumers report purchasing and researching products on both in-store and online channels, per McKinsey’s 2022 Consumer Pulse Survey. So, brands must give both channels attention to ensure they work together seamlessly and enhance the consumer experience. Integrations such as click-and-collect shopping help bridge this gap. 

Key takeaway: Blend traditional and digital channels to be present at every key customer touchpoint. Then, ensure the shopping process is seamless from exposure to check out to shorten the path to conversion.

#4 – Taking Advantage of Social Commerce’s Proliferation

Social commerce is on the rise with platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest adding new in-app shopping features and shoppable ad formats. Through these integrations, brands can engage customers in the moment without disrupting their social experience. E-Marketer forecasts over 50% of US users will make a social commerce purchase in 2023. When done well, social commerce promotes quick product discovery, a simplified shopping experience, and less friction in driving purchase.  

For more on social commerce, view our full 2023 Social Media Advertising Trends article here.

Key takeaway: Explore different tools to utilize social commerce, making it as easy as possible for a customer to add your product to their cart. Consider retargeting audiences from paid social media or influencer campaigns with shoppable ads to build trust and drive ROI.

#5 – Understanding Connected Device Adoption

Expect greater adoption of smart technologies in 2023, including connected cars, connected TVs, and smart speakers. More responsive technology advances, such as click-to-buy CTV ads or seamless re-purchasing through smart home devices, will pave the way for IoT-driven commerce. As these technologies continue to develop, test ways to use these devices to enhance your customer experience and drive e-commerce.

Key takeaway: Do the research to understand if your consumers are taking advantage of these advanced technologies. If they are, test interactive ad formats on connected devices and explore other IoT integrations such as voice shopping applications with smart speakers. 

#6 – Lean Into the Growth of Influencer

Influencer is the new word-of-mouth marketing. Authentic and relatable content from social creators drives full-funnel results for brands who do it well. Social media platforms are making it easier for influencers to monetize content and collaborate with brands, further paving the way for the social commerce boom. In 2023, the influencer market is projected to reach $6.16B, with TikTok on pace to gain the largest share of influencer ad spend by 2024. 

Key takeaway: Blend influencer marketing into your paid social media strategy to build authenticity, grow trust, and boost e-commerce. Adopt an omnichannel influencer strategy across multiple platforms and lean into useful, entertaining short-form video content to maximize exposure and engagement. 

Use these 2023 consumer trends to analyze your current CPG marketing strategy. Take your advertising to the next level by leaning into high growth areas and being the first to adapt to changing consumer preferences in 2023. 

For more marketing trends, view our 2023 Digital Marketing Trends and Predictions podcast episode.

MediaPost – 2023 Media Planning – Strategize Macro, Plan Micro

Posted on by Elise Stieferman

The end of the year is both an exciting and anxiety-ridden time for marketers. Media planning for 2023 presents the opportunity for a fresh start, and yet there’s the sometimes-debilitating weight of not knowing where to begin.

So how do you forge a smart path forward for 2023 media planning without wasting time and energy? The answer: Strategize on a macro level, but plan on a micro level.

For a long time, annual planning was the norm. Now, media planning 12 months in advance is more challenging. As the digital landscape shifts on a continual basis, tactics must be adjusted on the fly to flex with the needs of your business.

View the article

HIPAA Compliant Healthcare Marketing and Ad Targeting

Posted on by Coegi

Healthcare Marketing Compliance Guidelines

In healthcare marketing, compliance is of the utmost importance. At Coegi, we work with many healthcare and pharmaceutical clients to continuously navigate this highly regulated industry. Continue reading to learn more about what it means to be a compliant and ethical healthcare marketer with this guide. 

Who sets the regulations for healthcare marketing compliance?

In 1996, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was passed to protect sensitive patient health information from being disclosed without consent. However, when it comes to understanding HIPAA for healthcare advertising, there’s a lot of room for interpretation. This leaves many advertisers unsure if certain marketing capabilities are compliant and ethical. 

This is especially true for pharmaceutical advertisers using health information to target audiences for prescription drugs, medical devices, and other pharmaceutical products through media. To provide an industry standard, there are committees devoted to giving pharma advertisers direction – including  the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA), and the National Advertising Initiative (NAI). 

The NAI is one of the leading bodies for defining healthcare marketing compliance regulations. Founded in 2000, the NAI published a set of codes for targeted advertising and online profiling that is supported by the U.S. FTC. The most recent revisions to the code provide media targeting best practices, including a definition for Sensitive Health Information to provide pharmaceutical advertisers with more concrete direction for targeting consumer populations.

How does HIPAA affect healthcare ad targeting?

The first step is understanding if your brand’s core consumer audience falls under the ‘sensitive’ category. This will impact targeting capabilities. According to the NAI, there are two subsets of sensitive information: 

  1. Data about a health condition or treatment derived from a sensitive source 
  2. Data about certain sensitive conditions regardless of the source of the data

The NAI only provides a few sensitive categories. These include drug addiction, STDs, mental health, pregnancy termination, cancer, and all conditions predominantly affecting children that are not treatable with OTC medications. For other health conditions, the NAI provides guidance to help determine whether pharmaceutical targeting segments are considered sensitive. However, this guidance does not offer a clear list of compliant targeting capabilities. 

One of our leading media buying partners, The Trade Desk (an NAI member), also has a healthcare targeting policy. Using its own multi-factor analysis process, it defines whether a condition is high, medium, or low sensitivity to determine allowable targeting capabilities. Coegi recommends using these guides to inform client conversations and recommendations when aligning on the brand’s own definition of sensitivity. 

How do you approach pharmaceutical targeting compliantly?

The goal is to aggregate enough compliant data about an individual to create a complete picture. This allows you to meet their needs accurately while preserving their privacy. Make sure pharmaceutical advertising campaigns are compliant by examining the data sources informing them. Look for two specific criteria:

  1. Consent: Guarantee the audiences reached provide the brand permission to market to them
  2. Deterministic data: Validated user information so marketers know they’re reaching a person who gave consent

Despite the challenges, pharmaceutical brands still have a variety of ways to target patients. We can use first-, second-, and third-party data and machine learning to identify relevant consumers who are likely to be receptive to receiving advertising from your brand.

Best Practices for HIPAA Healthcare Marketing Compliance

  • Ensure FDA and HIPAA compliance of campaigns including messaging and targeting with legal counsel.
  • Use de-identified information from third-party data providers for patient behavioral targeting.
  • Gain opt-in consent from users for sensitive health segment targeting and geo-targeting. 
  • Leverage data partners to reach HCPs on a 1:1 basis at scale. 

Healthcare Consumer Ad Targeting

Once you determine whether your target is in the sensitive or non-sensitive condition category, use the following tactics to reach healthcare and pharmaceutical consumers:

Modeled Targeting

Modeled targeting using de-identified information from third-party data providers is compliant according to the NAI. The NAI’s Guidance for Health Audience Segments quotes, “the use of offline marketing segments that are also modeled, not based on any user-level purchase, behavior, or activity, would also be considered non-sensitive.”

From a blog post by Yeehooi Tee of PulsePoint, not all audience models are created the same. It is critical to analyze data collection methods. There are key factors to understand when evaluating health data segments. These include the source of the seed data, modeling attributes, the seed-to-output ratio, and many others. 

Contextual Targeting

There are no regulations on using contextual targeting for a consumer audience. This is a popular approach for reaching patient and caregiver audiences in a compliant manner. 

Connected TV is a useful medium for contextual healthcare targeting. A TV ad for a specific health condition can feel less invasive, yet still relevant, using contextual targeting. With third-party data partners, personal information is de-identified for HIPAA-compliant CTV targeting.

Geo-Targeting

For both sensitive and non-sensitive conditions, geo-targeting a consumer audience requires the user’s opt-in consent to target by location data (like a clinic location). However, even with opt-in consent, there are still limitations for sensitive topics, such as reproductive health or addiction recovery, when it comes to location-based targeting. 

There are other forms of targeting patient audiences using geographic data. For example, using data partners, pharmaceutical brands can target programmatic buys to specific zip codes that over-index for a condition. Using anonymized provider prescription data, data can be matched to zip codes with the highest lift in specific prescriptions and even mapped to these households via IP addresses. This enables omnichannel online targeting to reach healthcare consumers through display, video, native, and social media channels. 

Condition-Based Targeting

We use third-party data providers to access unique condition-based healthcare segments. This anonymized data is not subject to some of the strict HIPAA guidelines, as it cannot be tied to personally identifiable records. This allows you to reach your relevant audience at scale with minimal media waste. 

Interest Targeting

Interest-based targeting can reach patients as well as caretakers with interest in a specific condition or topic. This expands reach to the key decision-makers in the healthcare process. The content consumers are reading or searching for online typically defines “Interest”. To engage these individuals as they are consuming relevant information, consider contextual targeting methods mentioned above. 

For more of my tips on the best strategies and channels for healthcare patient and provider targeting, view the video below:

Healthcare Provider Ad Targeting

Healthcare providers are relatively easier to target than patient segments due to publicly available information and fewer privacy restrictions. However, there can be challenges with achieving scale and managing higher costs. Regardless, brands can reach HCPs across the wide range of content they consume and the multiple devices they use.

Because you’re targeting by profession rather than a condition, there are fewer restrictions for HCPs. Let’s explore some of the most effective forms of compliant audience targeting for HCPs: 

ID-Based Targeting

ID-based targeting allows pharmaceutical brands to reach HCPs with a compliant audience-first approach. National Provider IDs are personal identifiers for specific healthcare providers, including their practice location and specialty. 

Utilizing this data set via demand-side platforms (DSPs) such as PulsePoint, MedData, CrossIX and HealthLink allows for compliant, one-to-one HCP targeting across multiple channels and devices.  Brands can target HCPs both by specific medical specialty or by an individual NPI number. 

Geo-Targeting

Brands can also use NPI numbers to target relevant practice locations for particular physicians or specialties. By targeting a geo-radius around point-of-care locations with high volumes of particular diagnoses or treatment types, brands can remain compliant with HIPAA and the NAI while also reaching the target audience. Another opportunity for geo-targeting physicians is geo-fencing industry conferences and events where large groups of professionals congregate.  

Contextual Targeting

Contextual targeting tools can look at categories, keywords, and tags on web pages to deliver highly relevant content to HCPs through programmatic channels. At Coegi, we map these to the National Library of Medicine MeSH Taxonomy to ensure the most relevant terminology is applied to our digital media. 

Rx and Dx Targeting

Through data partnerships, brands can target NPI numbers of providers who commonly prescribe certain prescription codes. Likewise, brands can target by diagnosis using ICD-10 codes to find their core HCP customers. 

Depending on each client’s goals, Coegi provides a recommended HCP targeting strategy. Even with fewer restrictions, we investigate and understand the source of the data segments associated with NPIs. 

For more on healthcare marketing compliance and best practices, read this Q&A article with more insights from myself and Pulsepoint’s Malcolm Halle or contact Coegi today. 

MediaPost – Search Beyond Google: The Future of Brand Discovery

Posted on by Coegi

Search: It’s Google’s world. We’re just living in it.

This may have been true in the past, but not anymore.

Google is still the dominant traditional search engine, but AI advances and shifting consumer behaviors have changed the world of search as we know it. Social media and ecommerce have become mechanisms for consumers to discover and purchase new items, without leaving their preferred apps and platforms.

Marketers need to understand and adapt to the new ecosystem of search and brand discovery.

Let’s unpack these three key aspects of Search 2.0.

    • Search is social.

    • Search is ecommerce.

    • Search is omnichannel.

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