Marketing for FMCG: Why Digital Is the Fastest Way to Reach Your Target Audience [5 Reading Tips]

FMCG Marketing Reading Tips — Source: Pexels/Artem Beliaikin

Every day, people consume fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). These include food with a short shelf life, newspapers, hygiene products and detergents. In other words: the demand for FMCG is high – and the market is extremely competitive.

There is hardly any other industry where brand preference plays such a big role. Once customers are satisfied with a product or brand, they also trust it in the long term. Established brands benefit from this. Newcomers, however, have a hard time.

Marketing for FMCG: A Hotly Contested Market

For marketers, FMCG mean a race against time. As quickly as the products land on shelves, so quickly are they bought and used up by consumers.

That is why FMCG marketing is mainly about quickly building up one’s own brand and strengthening the trust of consumers.

Whether it is due to shelf life or for reasons of topicality: the short life span of the products means that FMCG brands only have little time to influence the purchasing decisions of customers. Compared to more durable products and services, which have around 6 customer touchpoints, FMCG have an average of only 4.6 touchpoints before a purchasing decision is made.

Marketing for FMCG: Digital Is the Fastest Way to Reach Customers

In order to directly reach customers, FMCG brands rely primarily on digital advertising and thus secure market share in the long term.

According to Statista, FMCG retailers invested half a billion euros in digital advertising in 2021. Most of the money was spent on search engine and social media advertising via Google, Facebook and Instagram.

Due to the wide target audience, FMCG brands cannot do without traditional channels such as print brochures, newspaper, radio and TV advertising.

However, the trend is clearly moving towards digital channels. According to a survey conducted by the ARD broadcasting network, 95 per cent of 50- to 69-year-olds use the Internet. Even among those over 70, this figure is already as high as 77 per cent.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, digitalisation in the food retail sector picked up enormously, resulting in rapid growth of the e-food sector. Online shops that complement analogue offerings as well as additional digital services such as live chats and review portals are no longer the exception in the food sector.

Marketing for FMCG: Seizing Opportunities

The increasing digitalisation of the industry should not only be seen as a challenge, but also as an opportunity for manufacturer brands and young companies.

FMCG marketing benefits particularly from high-quality data that covers the entire customer journey – from the first encounter with a brand, for example on social media, and a visit to the brand’s website to making a purchase and possibly a repeat purchase in the shop. Thanks to comprehensive insights into consumer behaviour, digital offerings can be optimised. Personalised and emotional experiences also help young companies inspire consumers and hold their own in the market.