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Influencer marketing is rising, with almost all major companies allotting significant portions of their budgets to this strategy.
Hundreds of studies give you even more reasons to jump on the influencer marketing wagon.
The problem is that doing it wrong can damage your revenues and reputation.
To avoid that, read the guide below.
We’ll tell you what problems influencer marketing solves for Consumer Packaged Goods companies and how to leverage it for your company.
Of course, we’ve included plenty of examples to get you more inspired. Keep reading below!
TL;DR
- Influencer Marketing is on the rise: Many major companies allocate significant budgets to influencer marketing, but it's essential to do it right to avoid damage to revenues and reputation.
- CPG Problems Solved by Influencer Marketing: Influencer marketing addresses CPG industry challenges, such as short product lifespans, the need for recognizable packaging, and changing consumer loyalties.
- Leveraging CPG Influencer Marketing: Success in CPG influencer marketing requires clear goals, alignment with consumer needs, and choosing authentic influencers who can provide valuable content and drive quick purchases.
- Benefits for Small Brands: Influencer marketing helps small brands raise awareness, save on marketing costs, and leverage user-generated content.
- Benefits for Larger Brands: Established brands use influencer marketing to increase reach, build relationships, promote values, test new channels, and boost revenue while staying relevant.
- Pro Tip: Successful CPG influencer marketing involves working with a top CPG marketing agency that follows best practices, selects the right influencers, and uses the right platform to achieve desired results.
What Is CPG Influencer Marketing?
CPG influencer marketing harnesses the power of influencers to create high-quality content around your brand, thus elevating its visibility and appeal.
This marketing strategy leverages the trust and authority of content creators to communicate with a niche audience through collaborations with influencers on various social media platforms.
That’s what our influencer platform helps CPG brands with.
And we found this approach extremely successful.
Unlike traditional advertising, influencer campaigns on social platforms offer CPG brands a unique opportunity to engage directly with potential customers, leveraging authentic content that resonates with the target market's preferences and purchasing decisions.
Pro tip: This approach requires a deep understanding of audience demographics and engagement rates to tailor influencer content effectively.
7 CPG Influencer Marketing Benefits [inBeat’s Experience + Stats]
Here are some benefits our CPG clients have noticed over the years, and the statistics that back them up.
1. Enhanced Brand Awareness
At inBeat, we noticed that Influencer marketing for CPG brands significantly amplifies brand visibility and awareness.
Through strategic partnerships with professional influencers, our clients can leverage the influencer's extensive reach on social media channels to introduce products to a broader audience.
The authentic and creative content produced in these collaborations ensures that the brand message resonates with a wider yet targeted audience, effectively increasing brand recall.
2. Higher Engagement Rates
Engagement rates are a critical metric in assessing the impact of your influencer marketing efforts.
Insider tip: After years of working in this niche, we noticed that nano and micro - influencers tend to have highly engaged audiences.
Their honest reviews and personal endorsements encourage meaningful interactions, such as likes, comments, and shares, thus fostering a more active and engaged community around our clients’ CPG brands.
Many recent studies back this up:
Nano influencers, known for their smaller follower counts, boast the highest engagement rates across major platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.
This high engagement rate, coupled with lower cost per engagement, especially noted on YouTube at $0.04, positions nano influencers as an attractive option for brands seeking cost-effective yet impactful marketing strategies.
Micro-influencers, known for their specific niche content, generate up to 60% more engagement than macro influencers, offering a cost-effective alternative for brands.
Furthermore, the average cost for an Instagram influencer collaboration stands at $363, whereas user-generated content creators charge around $396 on average.
3. Authentic Connection with Consumers
The shift in consumer behavior toward valuing genuine and relatable content has made authentic connections a cornerstone of effective marketing.
Influencer campaigns offer our clients’ CPG brands the opportunity to present their products through genuine experiences and stories told by influencers.
This authenticity helps build trust and credibility among potential customers, influencing their purchasing decisions more effectively than traditional advertising methods.
In fact, only a minimal 8% of consumers identify brand names as the primary driver behind their CPG purchases, underscoring the diminishing impact of brand loyalty on consumer behavior.
Conversely, 96% of US and UK buyers interact with influencers.
Besides, a staggering 87% of Gen Z consumers have made beauty product purchases based on influencer endorsements within the past year, illustrating the profound influence of influencers on purchasing decisions, particularly within younger demographics
4. Access to Niche Markets
Collaborations with influencers who cater to niche audiences allow CPG brands to penetrate specific market segments more deeply.
These influencers bring a deep understanding of their followers' preferences and needs, enabling CPG brands to tailor their marketing efforts to match the unique demands of a niche target market, thus optimizing the relevance and impact of their marketing messages.
Insider tip: When you talk to your current or potential influencers, ask them their opinions about your brand. You’ll be surprised at the insights you can uncover.
5. Cost-Effective Marketing Solution
Compared to traditional advertising channels, influencer marketing campaigns offer a more cost-effective solution for CPG brands looking to maximize their marketing budget.
The ability to negotiate long-term partnerships with influencers can lead to more favorable rates and the creation of repurposable content, enhancing the return on investment over time.
On average, brands allocate $257 per influencer collaboration, reflecting the financial commitment companies are willing to make in influencer partnerships. Instagram remains the most favored platform for influencer marketing, with 76.7% of marketers incorporating it into their strategies.
Furthermore, a significant 71% of marketers plan to increase their influencer marketing budgets, signaling confidence in the ROI of influencer partnerships
6. Boost in Conversion Rates
Influencer recommendations serve as powerful endorsements, leading to a noticeable boost in conversion rates.
Influencers' ability to sway their followers' purchasing decisions, coupled with targeted influencer marketing strategies, ensures that the products are presented in a compelling context, encouraging immediate consumer action.
Influencer marketing has a notable effect on consumer behavior, with more than half (56%) of consumers reporting purchases influenced by influencer endorsements.
Pro tip: This trend is even more pronounced among women, with nearly half indicating that influencer marketing swayed their purchase decisions
7. Leveraging User-Generated Content
Encouraging and leveraging user-generated content from influencer campaigns offers CPG brands an invaluable resource for authentic and organic content.
UGC enhances the brand's digital presence and provides fresh, relatable content that can be repurposed across marketing channels, increasing the brand's reach and engagement with minimal additional investment.
CPG Influencer Marketing: Complete Plan
It’s not enough to decide to use influencers for your next marketing campaign to see your sales soar; it takes a little more work than that.
You have to strategize, set your KPIs, find ways of measuring results, and ultimately be ready to improve any campaign.
1. Know Your Goals
Let’s start with what your company wants.
An influencer marketing campaign should have specific goals like any other marketing campaign.
Insider tip: Some marketers we’ve worked with believe that influencers’ content is best used for awareness when, in fact, it’s an excellent tool to drive sales directly from those influencers’ pages.
Besides, specific goals are the cornerstone of setting appropriate KPIs and measuring your results.
2. Set KPIs
Evaluating your influencer marketing efforts hinges on tracking specific KPIs that align with the campaign's objectives.
Here are a few of the most common KPIs in CPG influencer marketing campaigns:
2.1. Engagement Rate
This KPI measures the level of interaction that influencer content receives relative to the influencer's follower count or the reach of the post.
For CPG brands, high engagement rates on posts featuring their products can indicate strong audience interest and a positive response to the influencer's product recommendations or reviews.
This includes likes, comments, shares, and saves on social media platforms.
2.2. Conversion Rate
Conversion rates are critical for understanding how effectively influencer content drives specific actions, such as product purchases, sign-ups for trials, or website visits.
For CPG brands, tracking the use of unique promo codes or affiliate links shared by influencers can offer clear insights into the direct impact of influencer marketing efforts on sales.
2.3. Brand Mention Volume
This KPI tracks the frequency of brand or product mentions across social media channels during the campaign.
An increase in brand mentions can indicate heightened brand awareness and interest among the target market, contributing to broader marketing efforts.
2.4. Audience Growth
Building a community is essential for many of our clients’ CPG brands.
Monitoring the growth in social media followers or subscriber counts following influencer collaborations can indicate the campaign's effectiveness in attracting potential customers to the brand's digital presence.
2.5. Content Reach
The total number of unique users who have seen the influencer's content featuring the brand.
This KPI helps CPG brands understand the scale at which their products are being exposed to new audiences, crucial for increasing market share in a crowded market.
2.6. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Especially relevant for digital campaigns, CTR measures the percentage of viewers who click on a link within the influencer's content.
A high CTR on links directing to product pages or promotional offers for CPG brands can signal strong consumer interest and intent to purchase.
2.7. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
This metric calculates the cost of acquiring a new customer through the influencer campaign.
If you’re looking for efficient marketing channels, understanding CAC in the context of influencer marketing can offer insights into the return on investment.
Besides, it will help you compare it against other marketing channels like traditional advertising or organic social media efforts.
3. Know Your Target Audience
Of course, the first step here is to gather demographic and psychographic data about your potential customers.
Use contact forms, social media listening tools, and data from your sales team to create a buyer persona.
But it’s also essential to understand what your CPG consumers need:
- Functional, durable, and high-quality products
- No-regrets purchase decisions
- Easy purchases
- Eco-friendly, ethical products
- Customizable options
- Different subscription models
- A wide range of products
- Advice for products
- Authentic content
- A story that helps them integrate those products into their lives according to their values
- Product discounts, cash prizes, contests, etc.
As such, you need to choose influencers that are:
- Authentic
- Opinion leaders
- Relatable
- Knowledgeable
- Inspirational
Insider tip: Your target market will need to look at plenty of tutorials with valuable tips on using your products.
Secondly, they’ll need to make quick purchases
You want your influencers to offer fresh perspectives on how to use your products, inspire, and create urgency.
4. Write a Creative Brief
When crafting a creative brief for CPG influencers, include detailed information that aligns with your brand's marketing goals and the influencers' ability to connect to their audience.
Here’s a template we use, so feel free to ‘steal’ it:
And here’s a quick rundown on creating an effective influencer brief:
Campaign Overview
Objective: Clearly define the purpose of the influencer marketing program.
The objective should align with broader marketing efforts and business goals, whether it's increasing brand awareness, launching a new product, or driving sales during the holiday season.
Target Audience
Demographics & Psychographics: Detail the target demographic, including age, location, interests, and lifestyle.
This ensures influencers can tailor their creative content to resonate with the right potential customers, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.
Key Messages
Unique Selling Propositions: Highlight what sets your CPG brand apart, whether it's the natural ingredients in your personal care products or the innovative technology behind your latest beauty brand launch.
Influencers can weave these USPs into their narrative, making the influencer content more compelling and relatable.
Campaign Deliverables
Content Types & Channels: Specify the types of content you expect, such as Instagram stories, YouTube tutorials, or Pinterest pins.
Ensure these content deliverables leverage the influencers' strengths and are suitable for the platforms where your target audience spends their time.
Creative Guidelines
Tone & Style: Provide guidelines on the desired tone (e.g., friendly, professional, humorous) and visual style, ensuring the influencer's content aligns with your brand's image.
This section can also include do's and don'ts to maintain brand consistency.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Measurement & Evaluation: Outline how the success of the influencer marketing efforts will be measured.
KPIs might include engagement rates, click-through rates, and conversion metrics. This clarity helps influencers understand how their performance will be evaluated.
5. Understand and Find Potential CPG Influencers
We discussed what your brand and target audience want.
From our experience, CPG influencers have wants too, which transcend the monetary rewards.
These include:
- A company that allows them to be their most authentic selves
- To be trusted by the brand they work with and their audience
- To promote products and brands they believe in
- Transparency
- Clear contracts
- The possibility to offer discount codes and prizes straight from their accounts
- Recognition for their efforts
At this point, you need the right tool to find those influencers.
Remember that you, your influencers, and your customers must click perfectly.
You also want to save money in the long run, meaning you’d need to repurpose your influencers' content on various platforms.
Here’s where inBeat.co comes in handy.
First, you can use inBeat to source influencers and organize their work FOR FREE! Second, you can use our platform for CPG marketing and product seeding, incentivizing content creators to stay motivated for longer.
Insider tip: Discuss the budget, including payment terms and any performance incentives. Transparent communication about compensation fosters trust and motivates influencers to align their marketing efforts with your campaign goals.
6. Content Creation & Approval
Next, you’ll need to implement the campaign.
The first step here is content creation and approval.
Briefing Sessions
Start with a detailed briefing session with each influencer, ensuring they fully understand the campaign's creative content requirements, key messages, and the USPs of the CPG product they will be promoting.
This step ensures the influencer content aligns with the brand's vision and campaign goals.
Content Creation
Encourage influencers to use their unique voice and creativity to craft authentic content that resonates with their audience.
Whether it's creating engaging product reviews, compelling storytelling around the product, or innovative unboxing videos, the content should highlight the product's benefits and how it fits into the target audience's daily lives.
Review Pprocess
Establish a clear process for content review and approval.
This could involve a collaborative platform where influencers submit their drafts for feedback. Ensure this process respects the influencers' creative freedom while adhering to brand guidelines and campaign objectives.
7. Campaign Execution
Executing the campaign also entails several strategic steps.
Here’s what we advise our inBeat clients to consider:
Content Scheduling
Work with influencers to schedule content publication across chosen social platforms during optimal posting times.
This scheduling should consider the campaign's timeline, product launch dates, and any seasonal considerations, such as the holiday season, to maximize reach and engagement.
Cross-Promotion
Encourage cross-promotion across different social media channels to amplify the campaign's reach.
Influencers can tease their upcoming posts on one platform to drive traffic to another, increasing the campaign's overall visibility.
Communication & Support
Provide ongoing support to influencers throughout the campaign.
This includes answering any product-related questions, offering additional resources, and being available to discuss any concerns or ideas they might have.
Community Engagement
Encourage influencers to actively engage with their audience's comments and questions related to the campaign.
This interaction can enhance the sense of community, drive deeper engagement, and provide valuable insights into consumer preferences and feedback.
Legal & Compliance
Ensure all influencers adhere to FTC guidelines and other relevant regulations by clearly disclosing their partnership with your brand.
This transparency is crucial for maintaining trust with their audience and avoiding potential legal issues.
Logistics & Distribution
If you’re running a product sampling campaign, coordinate the logistics of sending product samples to influencers in a timely manner.
Ensure they have enough time to experience the product before creating content, especially if they're expected to provide personal testimonials or detailed product reviews.
8. Monitoring and Scaling Your Campaign
Monitoring and scaling an influencer marketing campaign are crucial to maximizing its effectiveness and ROI for CPG brands.
This phase involves analyzing performance data, refining strategies, and leveraging successful elements for future campaigns. Here’s how to approach it:
Performance Analysis
- Track real-time metrics: Use an influencer marketing platform or social media analytics tools to monitor key performance indicators such as engagement rates, reach, and conversion rates. This real-time data helps you gauge the campaign's impact on your target market and purchasing decisions.
- Assess content performance: Evaluate which types of influencer content (e.g., product reviews, tutorial videos, or lifestyle posts) and which platforms (e.g., Instagram, YouTube) yield the best results. This analysis will inform content strategy development for current and future campaigns.
Feedback Loop
- Influencer Feedback: Collect influencer feedback on the campaign process, from the creative brief to the execution. Their insights can offer a deeper understanding of the campaign's reception and any potential areas for improvement.
- Audience Sentiment: Analyze comments and direct feedback from the audience to assess their sentiment towards the campaign and the CPG products featured. This qualitative data can provide valuable insights into consumer preferences and behavior.
Scaling Strategies
- Expand Successful Collaborations: Identify high-performing influencers and explore opportunities for long-term partnerships. Scaling up with influencers who have already proven effective can amplify your marketing efforts and strengthen brand-influencer relationships.
- Diversify Platforms and Formats: Based on performance analysis, consider expanding the campaign to additional social media channels or experimenting with different content formats to reach broader or new audience segments.
- Leverage PPC Campaigns: Complement influencer marketing efforts with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to further increase visibility and reach. Targeted ads can help recapture the audience's attention and direct traffic to specific landing pages, enhancing conversion opportunities.
- Retargeting: Use retargeting campaigns to reach users who have interacted with influencer content but haven't converted. By showing them relevant ads based on their engagement, you can increase the chances of converting them into customers.
- Iterative improvements: Use the data and insights gathered to continuously optimize the campaign. This might involve tweaking the creative content, adjusting posting schedules, or refining target audience segments.
- Invest in emerging trends: Stay informed about the latest trends in influencer marketing and social media to identify new opportunities for engagement. Experimenting with new platforms, technologies (like AR/VR), or influencer niches can provide a competitive edge and invigorate your marketing strategy.
Remember: Monitoring and scaling an influencer marketing campaign is an ongoing process that requires attention to detail, flexibility, and a willingness to adapt based on performance data and market trends.
By staying proactive and responsive, CPG brands can maximize the impact of their influencer marketing campaigns, driving meaningful engagement and ultimately, sales.
5 Awesome CPG Influencer Marketing Examples
Even though we have plenty of experience as an influencer marketing platform, we did our research before writing this article.
And we noticed a lack of quality examples from smaller brands.
Most CPG companies mentioned are Snickers, Pringles, or Mars.
That’s why, in this section, we’ll discuss genuine examples from our real clients’ experiences.
Let’s dive in.
1. Bluehouse Salmon
Bluehouse Salmon is one of inBeat’s customers.
This company sells organic salmon, and as you can agree, it’s pretty hard to find a new twist every time you do a marketing campaign.
Sure, they retail delicious, healthy salmon, and their clients love them, but that proposition doesn’t bring too much marketing material.
However, Bluehouse Salmon rarely invests in marketing because they’ve filled their entire content calendar with user-generated content.
Bluehouse Salmon's IG is mostly user-generated content.
Just a minute’s worth of scrolling on their Instagram account shows you these beautiful recipes from people who’ve tried their salmon.
So, the brand hits multiple birds with one stone:
- Raises awareness
- Creates desire
- Limits its marketing budget
- Shows fans’ and in-house recipes
- Sells its products
2. Hurom Cold-Press Juicer
The Hurom case by inBeat Agency illustrates a strategic shift in influencer marketing for a kitchen appliance brand.
Facing high CPAs due to outdated promotional content, Hurom transitioned to health-focused messaging, emphasizing the benefits of their products for gut health and skin care.
This approach, supported by data-driven analysis of UGC, including hooks and CTAs, significantly improved brand relatability and trust.
The results were impressive, with a 36% reduction in CPA and a 2.5x increase in ROAS over 12 months, showcasing the impact of content that resonates with consumer values and lifestyle preferences.
3. Prose
The Prose case study by our sister-company, inBeat Agency, highlights an innovative approach to generating a consistent stream of high-quality user-generated content for their advertising needs.
Facing the challenge of needing a vast quantity of content to support a substantial media-buying budget, Prose implemented a scalable micro-influencer recruitment strategy.
This strategy involves influencers who, after taking a quiz on Prose's website, receive personalized hair care products tailored to their curly hair needs.
These influencers then create and share videos showcasing how they use these Prose products, with the elegant product packaging also being a highlight for creators.
This approach produces 50 unique content assets each month, demonstrating the effectiveness of personalized and relatable UGC in driving brand engagement and supporting advertising strategies.
4. Soylent
Soylent's influencer marketing campaign strategically utilized micro and macro influencers to promote its new product lines to niche audiences interested in outdoor activities, hiking, and gaming.
The campaign focused on influencer sourcing and providing creative direction for content creation that resonated with each specific audience segment.
The result was the production of 35+ reusable content assets, leading to over 5 million impressions.
This approach effectively raised awareness for Soylent's new offerings by tapping into influencers' authentic connections with their followers.
And this proves the power of targeted influencer collaborations in reaching diverse consumer groups.
5. Deux Par Deux
Deux par Deux, a children's clothing retailer with a strong presence in North America, leveraged influencer marketing to generate content for their new collection launches, which led to a 30% growth in their Instagram following.
Facing challenges with scaling their marketing resources for collection releases, they collaborated with influencers, particularly mothers, to create over 200 unique, relatable content assets depicting real-life parent-child scenarios.
This content strategy fueled their advertising campaigns and enhanced their online shopping experience, driving significant follower growth and attracting over 500 unique clients to their direct-to-consumer segment, which constitutes 20% of their business.
Kickstart Your CPG Influencer Marketing Campaign
CPG influencer marketing is a complex project, but you can pull it off if you’re following the best practices.
Remember to choose the right platform or CPG marketing agency to help you navigate all challenges, from selecting the right influencers to signing the right contracts and ultimately getting the desired results.