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Ten years ago, most people would have laughed at the thought of ordering things like canned goods and boxed cereal online, but if you asked one of the 90 million Amazon Prime members living in the United States today if they’d order these items online, they’d likely say yes.
The company’s multifaceted approach seems to be working, as Amazon accounted for 18% of U.S. online grocery sales in 2017, raking in an estimated $2 billion in food and beverage sales.
With these numbers, it’s clear CPG (FMCG) brands can’t ignore Amazon anymore. While they understand the need to adjust their marketing strategy with an added focus on digital, it can be a challenging adjustment. The key to long-term success is understanding how to use modern marketing technology to track performance in real time. Digital marketing moves much faster than offline marketing, and the brands that make quick adjustments will come out ahead.
To start, CPG brands need to adjust their marketing strategies to reflect the coming shift in the sales cycle as brands now must compete for digital shelf space and drive online traffic to their products.
Indeed, for CPG brands, the overarching takeaway from Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods should be to focus on digital. A rapidly increasing number of today’s consumers aren’t spending two hours at the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon, so you cannot count solely on organic product discovery through optimal shelf space in physical stores. Instead, brands need to engage customers at multiple digital touchpoints to stay top of mind and get their products into the online shopping carts of consumers across the globe.
Moreover, they must set clear KPIs and keep a close eye on bottom funnel metrics.