Digital Media Strategy Template for any Consumer Product- Combining Google, FB and E-Com Portals

But how many people search for your category’s products online? This used to be first response of anyone whenever someone used to hear that all our marketing efforts are “digital first”. The people with better understanding of consumer products and digital media usually asked the question, “But aren’t all horizontal eCommerce players targeting the same keywords for which you want to bid? And surely you can’t outbid an Amazon for a generic keyword where they are bidding right?”

All very relevant and correct questions. Yes, not a lot of people go to google for a generic search to begin the purchase journey for many consumer products. Yes, the Amazons and Flipkarts will outbid you for every generic search for every category they are into. But does that mean that the scope for Digital as a medium is limited in such a category? No, not at all.

India is a digitally advancing economy. In today’s day, 15% of all purchases in India are digitally influenced, where as e-commerce accounts for only 4%. Obviously these percentages would vary across categories (e.g.- mobile phones will have a very high ecommerce percentage, where as automobiles will have low ecommerce but good percentage in digitally influenced). The same goes for any consumer product. A multiple of anywhere between 3-6x can be taken while estimating the digitally influenced numbers viz a viz the ecommerce numbers

At a personal level, it really hurts to see brands burn millions of dollars on digital media in the name of awareness and engagement (read clicks, views, impression, likes- add any vanity metric that doesn’t impact revenue to this list). Someone once correctly said, “Engagement is not a metric, it is an excuse”. And then these would be the same people who would say digital media isn’t giving the kind of ROI as it used to. Yes, the cost of advertising on Fb, Google and Amazon is increasing every year. But what is actually driving up the costs is people chasing vanity metrics even till this day. Vanity metrics and vanity campaigns can be a post for another day.

For any consumer product today, there are 3 mediums which is must as of today. The 3 giants of modern advertising- Google, Facebook and Amazon. And all 3 have to support each other because when done well and in sync, the overall output would be much greater than the sum of them individually.

I am sharing a basic digital media strategy that every consumer product (be it a CPG/fashion/electronics/appliances etc) which is sold online can follow if they want marketing to be a cash positive machine right from day 1. Obviously, it goes without saying that this will work if and only if you have a kickass and differentiated product. And the better your digital content gets, the lower your costs will get as well.

While this might differ for few products/categories, as a rule of thumb- Facebook is to be used for prospecting, google search and Amazon Ads for conversion, and Google Display/Facebook for remarketing to people who have already shown intent. How well these 3 are interlinked to provide a seamless experience to the customer and topped up with additional things (marketing automation in the website, emailers/SMS/chatbots/assisted selling) will determine the final ROI of any marketing campaign in the consumer space.

Facebook( For Prospecting)

Almost everyone in any consumer company’s TG is present on either Facebook and Instagram. And with all the personal data that everyone provides Facebook with, they know each and everyone of us better than we ourselves do. Whenever you either exhaust the low funnel customers or low funnel targeting is driving the costs insane, upper funnel targeting on Facebook is the only way out. Facebook gives you the option to go beyond just demand fulfilment( people explicitly searching for your category or your brand on Amazon/Google) and target people who are exactly like your existing customers and are the most likeliest to purchase in future. These are the steps to follow:

a)    Every business will have their first party database( qualified leads, existing customers etc). If you do not have a first party database, you don’t deserve to be a modern consumer brand. Start running Facebook ads with similar audience/lookalike audience targeting. This is the most powerful feature of Facebook ads where Facebook will show the ads to only those people who have the same characteristics as that of your existing customers.

b)   Experiment with multiple ad creatives and multiple ad formats including statics, slideshow videos with captions, regular video and carousel ads

Now the mistake most people make is expect people to click on the ad, land up on the website and make a purchase. Unfortunately, this is not how a consumer will behave. And if you measure effectiveness through this, you will think Facebook ads are not working/have very high ACOS and will give up on Facebook.

You don’t realize that the same guy sees the ad on Facebook, clicks/may not click on the ad, registers the brand name in his mind and searches for the same on Google/Amazon. Get this corrected through either 1 of this 2:

a)     Have a lead gen form in your website/use lead gen ads on facebook- People are more likely to fill that form after clicking an ad rather than directly making the purchase

b)  Move away from last click attribution- please move away from this archaic way of measuring effectiveness of ads.

View through conversions in a bigger window can also be a good way to understand which ad groups are working

Google Search

Now that you are generating demand on Facebook, people will start looking for you/your category on Google. This is a very common occurrence for any new brand. A consumer sees a very impressive ad of your brand on Facebook. The features/pricing are probably too good to believe for the consumer. To check the legitimacy of the brand, the first reaction is to google the brand. If you are not the first result with an impressive landing page( in sync with the ad the consumer saw), you will lose the consumer and come to a false conclusion that the FB ad sucked. But what actually sucked was not having a search strategy in place to supplement your FB.

a)   Always protect your brand keywords( they come very very cheap) with search ads to ensure a consistent experience for the consumer

b)      Retarget Facebook ad clicks on Google through RLSA ads

c)      Start bidding on feature led( the same features which you are highlighting) generic keywords

d)      Start bidding on exact long tail keywords

Obviously such keywords should be identified early and a SEO strategy should be in place so that you start ranking organically for these keywords. Organic ranking also helps in building up credibility.

If budget permits, start bidding on fully generic keywords on which the ecommerce giants also bid. But there is a smarter way to ensure customer eyeballs on these generic keywords. Yes, it is Amazon Advertising

Amazon Advertising

More than 50% of product searches are beginning on Amazon. When a product search begins on Google, it ends up either on Amazon or the brand’s website. But when a search begins on Amazon, it ends on Amazon. Not being on Amazon is not an option for anyone anymore. If your customer is there on Amazon and you don’t show up on Amazon with the exact same product that you promote online, the chances of him ending up with a competitor’s product is high.

a)    Generic Keywords- Bid on all possible generic keywords on Amazon as long as it makes economic sense. Optimizing the bids for your target ACOS is something that you will need to do. Since you are not bidding on costly generic keywords on Google and Amazon is doing that on Google, so when the customer lands on the Amazon page clicking on that ad, you should be on top

b)  Brand Keywords and Feature Led Generic Keywords- These would be less costly and is again important to give a consistent experience to the customer

Of course, ad formats like Headline Ads and Product Display Ads are very powerful ads to drive sales at very low cost if done correctly.

A good product page and a brand page with clear communication and good reviews goes a long way in ensuring conversion. And this has to be consistent with your FB ads, display ads and the landing page of the website

This is a basic media strategy for any consumer brand which focuses on ROI driven digital marketing. Of course, there would be lot of additional things- blogs, native content, video content through Youtube, offer based remarketing- Google Display and FB, lead nurturing strategy etc which would be there over and above.

But it is possible to build a cash positive marketing strategy for any consumer brand right from day 1 if we get the metrics right, the creatives right and the execution right. For any new brand without fluff and without millions of $ of VC money to burn, it should always be “Sales overnight, brand overtime”. And this is a sure-shot guaranteed way to achieve that( provided you have a kickass product :P)