Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) brands are increasingly using influencer marketing as part of their wider marketing strategy. But how effective are FMCG influencer marketing campaigns at driving positive results for brands?

To evaluate, let’s look at three influencer marketing strategies that work for FMCG brands in 2020.

We’ll look at:

• How FMCG brands use influencer marketing to connect with niche audiences
• Why it’s crucial FMCG brands use influencer marketing to share their ethos
• How to use influencer marketing to drive sales and build a community

The rise in FMCG’s online presence

The food and grocery market is predicted to grow by 14.8% to 28.2bn by 2023 and within that, online purchasing is the fastest growing channel. As an acquisition channel, online purchasing will see a 52% increase by 2023. 

Alongside that, we’ll see small and established brands utilising influencer marketing to directly impact buying decisions from discovery right through to purchase.
 

Strategy 1: Connecting with niche audiences

Many FMCG brands pride themselves on their niche target audience. Vegan food, for example, has seen an increase in interest over the past five years. 

Source

Interest in the search term “vegan food” over five years

 

In line with this, we have seen brands cater their products and entire business towards this exact audience. 

When armed with an influencer’s audience data, you have access to the types of people who follow them. Compared to traditional TV advertisements where it’s difficult to accurately predict who will view your ads, working with specific vegan influencers, you can be confident that their audience shares their views (or at least has some interest in them). 

This brand and interest association is one of the most powerful aspects of influencer marketing. Working backwards, decide what type of people you want to reach and then find an influencer who’s audience best matches your ideals. 

Holland and Barrat understand this sentiment all too well. When promoting their vegan pot noodles. They partner with vegan influencers to help spread awareness about their new product. As the influencers they work with are vegan too, there’s never a concern around the authenticity of the content. 

 

Strategy 2: Focus less on products and more on ethics and ethos

A study by Unilever revealed brands who focus on using their business to drive positive social impact, see higher growth than those that don’t (by twice the amount). It’s clear FMCG brands need to adapt to this consumer demand for more corporate responsibility to be shown by brands. 

This works well for FMCG brands who use influencer marketing to drive awareness for their ethos, ethics and beliefs. Brands who remain solely product focussed will have a harder time generating enough attention online than those who share their values with the world. 

This shift in marketing tactic has resulted in  brands increasingly using influencer marketing as a method of sharing awareness about their ethos and less about promoting their products. 

Drinks brand, Dirty Lemon, was built on Instagram and has since amassed over over 100k followers. 

Their strategy is simple – their influencer marketing strategy promotes the lifestyle they think their ideal customer should have or aspire towards. 

The influencers they work with share the same ethos and beliefs as the brand and as such, product placements are subtle and unobtrusive. 

From the beginning, Normandin, the company’s founder stated they never wanted to rely on the product alone. Instead they wanted to harness the power of the brand and use that power to sell products. 

Strategy 3: Use influencer marketing to reduce the pressure to ‘price drop’

For many FMCG brands, the most common method of gaining a large share of the market is to price your products lower than your competition. However, with influencer marketing, you have the chance to sell a ‘feeling’ or ‘community’ instead of just a brand, which in turn results in consumer buy-in. 

When your brand partners with like-minded influencers, you leverage the connection an influencer has with their audience. This puts less pressure on brands to consistently offer discounts or price drops and instead drives full-price sales through the influencer’s connection with their audience.

The key to effective influencer marketing campaigns for FMCG brands is to ensure you understand the connection consumers feel about the influencers you plan to work with. When you keep all of this front of mind, you’re able to create a credible campaign that establishes your product/service as something the consumer wants or needs. 

By partnering with influencers who are already a fan of your brand the content they produce is more authentic and fits naturally within their feed. 

Premium craft Spirit brand, Sipsmith has over 72k followers and uses influencer marketing as an integral part of their overarching marketing strategy. By working with influencers, they were able to discover a team of gin-enthusiasts to promote their product to their audiences – despite the product being more expensive than some of their competitors.

 

 

Sipsmith found value in developing long-term relationships with influencers. In turn, they have built a loyal network of passionate gin-lovers. A search for the hashtag “Sipsmith” populates over 43,316 results. This highlights the network-effect influencer marketing has. It also touches upon encouraging your own customers to become your biggest advocates. 

Instead of competing with other gin brands on price, they were able to use influencer marketing to highlight the value of their brand and as such, can keep their prices high.

Final thoughts

In 2020, FMCG brands will increasingly integrate influencer marketing within their wider marketing strategy in order to drive brand awareness as well as sales. The brands who will succeed will be those who make the focus of their campaigns less about the products and more about the company ethos. 

Whether brands promote a vegan diet, healthy lifestyle or positivity, it’s crucial that FMCG brands take some element of social responsibility and work with influencers who share the same ethos. This way, authenticity will run not only through the brands’ own content but earned influencer content too. 

What FMCG influencer marketing strategies will you try this year? Leave a comment below.