From awareness to shopability: CPG e-commerce during COVID

For decades, brand awareness has been the cornerstone of the in-store shopping path to purchase: A consumer recognizes your logo or the color of your packaging and tosses it in their baskets. But what do awareness campaigns look like when baskets are easily abandoned digital carts?

Prior to COVID-19, industry experts believed that e-Commerce would gain the most traction among consumers with the greatest financial muscle to flex. While still table stakes for any brand, online shopping was seen as the cherry on top of the in-store experience. 

But the pandemic changed all that. Now, consumers demand both on-and offline channels, BOPIS and other delivery options making shopability of utmost importance. 

This means awareness campaigns are still the foundation of a strong brand campaign but an omnichannel shopping experience is what will take shoppers over the finish line. 

Nielsen’s Global New Shopper Normal Study found that “only 9% of global consumers were regularly shopping online before the COVID-19 pandemic. But as restricted movement orders forced consumers indoors, online adoption skyrocketed, with 27% of global consumers starting to shop online for the first time. In May 2020, 44% of global consumers said they were shopping online each week, with 23% reporting shopping online multiple times each week.”MikMak reported that consumer demand to shop online accelerated by 5 years overnight due to Stay-At-Home and social distancing policies. It also reports that growth was also seen in the amount of time consumers’ engaged with eCommerce content and end sale results. This presents an opportunity for grocery and retail stores to engage with CPG consumers with ads that are relevant to them and their shopping preferences. 

Even during a pandemic, building a brand is just as important today as it was then. A recent Forbes article says, “If you intend to remain relevant post-pandemic, don’t opt out of customer engagement and brand awareness during this time.” 

At Yieldmo, many of our CPG brand clients have shifted campaign strategies to focus on the top of the funnel awareness to help consumers easily shop and convert on products they need. Unique ad formats such as Megashoppper recreates the magic mix of short-form content and the power to engage with the content simultaneously. Scaled to the open web, we bring brands the ability to harness the stream of multi-tasking, fast-paced decision making that consumers revel in today.

CPG brands also have the ability to create a new “in-store” shopping experience that was once reserved for broader categories such retail and automotive with our shoppable patented units like Lookbook or Carousel that help recreate the shopping experience and drive consideration and engagement. 

For brands looking to strengthen these already effective ad units, we recommend adding the Yieldmo AEROS Attention Analytics PMP to make any campaign more powerful – all without increasing cost. Click here to find out how we used a PMP for a brand, which was automatically optimized for AEROS Attention Analytics, to beat the brand’s KPI goal, lifting their VCR performance 14% to an all-time high of 79%.

The pandemic is changing the way we approach everyday life and the way we buy everyday CPG products. Convenience and reliability have become the key talking point of pandemic-centric marketing communications meaning shopability will make the difference between future success and long-term challenges for CPG brands.

There are several ways to work with Yieldmo and get results – Choose us within your DSP or reach out to our sales team at info@yieldmo.com to help you set-up a campaign quickly.