Social Media Basics

I’ve already shared how a little bit of chance combined with hard work channeled my career into the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry. Over the years, this focus has been funneled even further into Aurora Marketing Group’s specialty: supporting small, premium CPG brands.

Consumers choose premium CPG products based on many different aspects of their value, but we always consider how our products will fit into and augment their lifestyle. While there are many different facets of marketing, social media marketing is an undeniably critical arm of marketing for virtually all brands.

The world of social media has evolved quickly, becoming an intimate space where individuals and brands alike curate personas that represent their ideals and beliefs. Social media has certainly increased consumers’ awareness of advertising, but this has not rendered people completely resistant to marketing. It just means that the rules of the game have shifted.

Here are a few basic tips for developing a social media strategy that speaks to the premium CPG brand consumer. 

Community Management and Engagement

Carefully curating what, when, and where you post your content is a big part of every brand’s social media strategy. But what happens after you post is equally important.

Community management relates to remaining relevant by responding to topics and events that matter to your consumers. Monitoring your industry and tracking conversations that relate to your brand means keeping up to date on your competitors’ activity, as well as any current events or trends that affect your industry.

Sometimes this can be as simple as responding to a seasonal trend. To identify less obvious trends, you must listen to your community. Following hashtags, reading comment sections on your posts and related products’ posts, and setting up notifications for your brand name and industry-related buzzwords are a few good places to start. You can also search for conversations on social platforms about your general product and industry, and browse the most relevant results to see what consumers are saying.

Community engagement is another crucial aspect of social media strategy. Community engagement happens when you interact with people who are talking about your product or interacting with your brand. It’s important to make sure that messages, comment replies, and other types of engagement (such as sharing content on stories or liking people’s posts) are conducted in your brand’s voice. Community monitoring and community engagement can also provide valuable, unfiltered feedback.

Recipes

A great way to deliver value to your consumers while advocating for your food or beverage brand is by posting innovative recipes that use your products. Particularly those that offer additional usage occasions can be beneficial to the brand.

Whether your consumers are full blown foodies or just people who appreciate a good meal, a recipe shows your social media audience how they can use your products to create impressive and tasty meals. This communicates that your brand understands good food, potentially sells your product as one of the ingredients in the recipe, and establishes your page as a source of content that will be useful to your audience in the future.

Social Awareness

Your consumers may or may not be passionate about social and environmental causes, but they are definitely aware of them. Since premium CPG brands must show how they align with the consumer’s lifestyle, social consciousness can have a place in your marketing strategy, specifically on social media. Without getting political or pandering with empty messaging, there are a handful of ways to convey how your brand participates in these larger global dialogues. 

Honesty and transparency are the most important things to keep in mind when your brand engages with these issues. Don’t speak to a cause that doesn’t authentically align with your brand’s identity, and don’t talk about supporting that cause unless you truly (and publicly) plan to do so.

Consider your brand as a person. Your consumers are more likely to purchase something from someone they see as a like-minded friend rather than an apathetic corporation disconnected from the global community. 

Collaborations

Collaborating with influencers / content creators is a great way to personify your brand. Our advertising-saturated world has clearly created an environment where consumers will trust what someone else says about your brand more than they will trust the brand’s own message. 

Be intentional about who you select because when an influencer advocates for how your brand fits in with their lifestyle, it shows your consumers how your product will contribute to the lifestyle that they want to have, so it’s critical to ensure that you share the same values.

These are just a few of the basic tactics that premium CPG brands can employ to create effective, meaningful impact through their social media marketing. If your CPG brand’s marketing strategy could use Aurora’s thoughtful care and magic touch, reach out at info@auroramarketinggroupllc.com