Yes, we are in a time where the entire country and the world is going through a very difficult time with the covid-19 pandemic. People are unable to reach the retail stores and business outlets to pick up their favorite products for their daily needs. Do you agree that everyone is going through an online mode of purchase sitting at home looking for alternative solutions for their day-to-day shopping? I believe it is a great mistake as a brand if you don’t present yourself in the place where your audience is.
Surveys and reports say that there was a 40% growth in the E-commerce segment in 2020, crossing 38 million dollars. This is indicating that users are still purchasing and consuming the product but just the shift in the mode of purchase has been changed. Honest question to you — how much are you ready to change your mode of sales? Are you doing anything about it or are you just saying the market is bad?Here are a few techniques that will help you to take your FMCG brand online and establish your business much stronger!
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Build Social Media Presence
Due to the lockdown, a lot of people are at home and spending a lot of time on social media.Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are great social media platforms for engaging with your targeted audience. You need to show the goodness of your product and build a persona behind the product so that people start connecting with your brand. Have regular engaging content on these social media pages as well as run small campaigns like a contest, giveaway, etc. which will give a great boost to the brand-building exercise.
E-commerce Platforms
As mentioned earlier, people have not stopped purchasing or consuming FMCG goods and that has changed the way of buying. Even if you have a great distribution network, it is very important that you have your products listed on E-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, etc. You can also explore bulk buying platforms like IndiaMART, Amazon business, etc. It is not just about how much money you make by selling your products on E-commerce platforms, it is about increasing the Brand Visibility that you get for free of cost on these platforms as they have millions of visitors browsing on their website. This also becomes a marketing cost. So don’t think twice before listing your products on E-Commerce platforms, just go for it !. If you are a niche-based seller you can also choose local online aggregators and specific product E-commerce platforms. ( For example, if you are selling soap you can also so check on medicine-related E-commerce platform to sell your product online )
Content Outreach
It’s not just enough if you talk about your product, your main aim should be for people to talk about it. Nowadays reviews given by people are helping customers to consider purchasing online. As everyone spends a lot of time online, maybe reading blogs and articles or watching videos that are generated by people is going to add a lot of credibility to your brand. Just to give you an example, if you are a masala brand,then you can reach out to homemakers, YouTube influencers etc. — and they will post a cooking video with the masala powder and will endorse the same. This will create a community and there will be trust built on the market which will help you establish the brand.
Go for online Paid Marketing
As the lockdown is on and businesses are down, the online media has become a more viable and much cheaper option for brands to showcase their product to a targeted audience. Due to the lockdown, it is observed that there has been a decrease in the cost per paid media and this is because larger brands spend on digital media.And accountability is much higher when it comes to digital media paid advertising. You can micro-target your audience and communicate based on the buying stage that they are in. We believe Advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, Google display and Youtube work really well to establish your brand as well as pushes people to buy your product online wherever it is available. You can start as small as Rupees Hundred per day and target as small as one Kilometre of radius. Don’t you think it is a great option to put your product in front of people who are ready to buy your product? I believe in that too.
Go for Product Innovation by people
Recently we have been experimenting with the FMCG brands that we handle digital marketing for. We approached our followers and consumers to come up with the innovative product that they can make using the ready made product that we delivered to them. Just to make it clear, there is a lady who made wonderful donuts out of gulab jamun mix which is one of our products. We never even imagined you could make delicious donuts out of gulab jamun mix. This gave a different perspective about what we can do with our own product and people loved that too. Since people have a little better time than before they find happiness in doing things differently with very accessible products that they have. This kind of user-generated content will make the brand stand out in the market.
We are sure there are many more avenues to market your FMCG products digitally and it definitely requires experience and investment in time and money. This is the best time to experiment and find out how it works for your own brand and products. If you think you are facing a crunch of time definitely you will have to seek help from people who are experts in the domain. We at Alter Marketing Solutions Pvt. Ltd. work with a lot of FMCG brands which are accepted worldwide and make great use of digital marketing for market expansion. Our approach of hyperlocal communication and domain expertise helps different types of FMCG brands.We’ll help you make your product a digital rockstar! You need any help to take your FMCG product digitally, please reach out to us at [email protected] or give us a call at +91 99864 60086.