The Fastness of FMCG
It is true that all industries require advertising and promotion, but FMCG brands need it the most. Why? It is because like their fast moving consumer goods, these brands also witness fast moving customers for whom FMCG products are just commodities and who would not mind switching brands frequently for a similar product to suit their convenience and affordability. This, combined with short shelf-life of products, poses a tougher challenge to FMCG brands compared to brands in other sectors and industries who can ensure long-standing customer loyalty. Amidst cutthroat competition, it becomes all the more necessary for FMCG brands to establish themselves online.
Why choose online marketing?
But why is going online necessary for FMCG brands when most of their products are sold in sturdy shelves of brick and concrete shops?
It is because going online will greatly assist FMCG brands to reach their potential customer base and that too, in a more strategic and personalized manner. In addition, it will also help them fan out to people belonging to Generation Z and Generation Alpha who are way more frequent in their use of the Internet.
Since the Corona pandemic, online marketing has seen a massive boom, and the opportunities that going online offers are making more and more brands turn to digital marketing, while abandoning traditional ways of promotion. Parle today allocates about 25% of its advertising budget to digital promotion compared to 10% prior to the pandemic. Brands like Nestlé and Dabur have also increased their digital footprint following the pandemic.
While there are many options for platforms that FMCG can opt for when turning to online advertising, here we will exclusively look at YouTube and the strategies that it offers to FMCG brands in marketing their products.
FMCG and YouTube: an ideal pair?
But why YouTube? Won’t just Facebook and Instagram suffice?
For the plethora of strategies that social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram most certainly offer to FMCG brands, YouTube offers a lot more. Moreover, YouTube also sees a relatively high-degree of engagement by people from several age groups and various walks of life, giving it an upper hand amidst many other social media platforms. Most FMCG brands like Emami, Godrej, ITC, Nestlé, etc. have already established a significant presence on YouTube by using these strategies effectively. Therefore, in this competitive world of ours, it becomes highly essential especially for FMCG brands with their expertise in fast moving goods with short shelf life to establish a considerable presence on YouTube, aside from that in social media platforms.
Let us look at some of the strategies that YouTube offers to FMCG brands and how brands can in turn utilize them to dominate this platform.
- The domination of and through video
We are aware that YouTube is first and foremost a video-oriented platform. So, unlike Facebook and Instagram which allow only limited durations of video content, YouTube offers an ideal space for longform content. From reels with a few seconds’ runtime to hours of explainer video, YouTube has it all, which allows FMCG brands to exercise their freedom in video content creation apart from just product advertisements.
FMCG brands can utilize this opportunity by creating more elaborate videos about their products, or educational and informative videos about the same. They can also opt for video explainers depending on their product, as well as video reviews.
As of March 2021, Coca Cola has been the most successful FMCG brand on YouTube, with 3.28 billion uploaded video views. What enabled them to reach this epitome is their constant and regular upload of videos, ranging from short reels to advertisements. Moreover, personalized, emotional and customer-centered videos as part of CocaCola’s several campaigns, also contributed towards CocaCola’s rise.
Therefore, the primary focus of an FMCG brand aiming to dominate YouTube should be to come up with visual ideas that resonate well with their target audience.
- Advertise yourself, intellegently
While advertisements can be put up on multiple social media platforms, YouTube offers some ideal features for advertisement campaigns that FMCG brands can utilize.
The two options of advertisement platforms, TrueView ads and Bumper ads, that YouTube offers enable brands to put their video advertisements at the start or end of popular videos. For FMCG brands, this can result in brand awareness and customer interaction. There is also the option of Masthead ads, which can greatly skyrocket views for a brand.
FMCG brands must ensure that their advertisement campaigns are so engaging to their audiences that they choose to watch them even despite having a skip option. Relating to the audience on a deeper or personal level may help to achieve this. CocaCola’s Share A Coke campaign allowed customers to interact with the brand by getting to have it engrave names and nicknames on bottles of coke. Such a personalized advertisement accelerated the anticipation of the audience, gluing them to it for a glimpse of their own names or nicknames. If not opting for such ambitious campaigns, brands can increase engagement by posing questions and puzzles in their advertisement, which is a great way to get audiences rooted to the video for answers in the end.
Therefore, such customer centric videos greatly help to increase audience interaction with the brand. What better way to do it if not through a video, and what better place if not on YouTube?
- Influencers’ Influence
As Facebookish or Instagrammable it may sound, collaboration with influencers can greatly help a brand to skyrocket their presence on YouTube. Brands, and especially those of the FMCG sector, aim to reach out to a wide customer base, and most customers today would head directly to YouTube for elaborate product reviews and detailed comparisons between products or brands. Upon searching for a specific product, they will be greeted by a plethora of videos by influencers. And most FMCG customers watch certain influencers for reviews. This is where literally the influence of the influencer influences.
FMCG brands can utilize this strategy by having influencers do elaborate product reviews, longform explainers, and even comparisons between old and new products. Additionally, brands can also collaborate with popular YouTube video creators for promotion of their products. For example, FMCG brands dealing with pencils and paper can collaborate with art tutors on YouTube for promotion of their products. Unbiased opinions from influences result both in an increase of customer loyalty and feedback for the brand.
- Who and where is the right audience?
Now that we have our ingenious video content in our hands, how do we bring more and more people to engage with it? Also, how do we target the suitable audience? Every other brand is uploading their videos on YouTube these days, so how do you make sure that you stay ahead in the race?
The answer to all of this is SEO optimization. In this age of heavy internet traffic, it is crucial for brands to optimize video titles, descriptions and tags with relevant keywords so as to boost search engine visibility.
YouTube also offers brands the flexibility to optimize their content so as to target or reach out to a region or vernacular specific audience. One can see this strategy deployed by global brands like Cadbury and PepsiCo. whose different product advertisements cater to target audiences situated in different countries. Effective SEO optimization ensures that engagement happens between the suitable product advertisement and the ideal customer base.
Utilizing the above mentioned tips effectively can result in an astonishing rise in customer engagement with the brand. Studies have shown that about 90% of customers have known and brought a brand after knowing about them through YouTube. In this fast-moving world, brands must ensure that they utilize the invaluable opportunities offered by YouTube to the fullest extent, alongside any of the other social media platforms in their online marketing strategy.