Last year changed Americans' daily lives: group outings were restricted, traveling banned so more time has been spent at home. Consequently, e-commerce growth skyrocketed as Americans started shopping online and discovering new products through e-commerce channels. According to the annual Food & Health Survey from the International Food Information Council1 a total of 85% changed their food habits as a result of the pandemic. As in-store shopping remains restricted, what's a CPG got to do in order to launch new products successfully in the omnichannel? Here are three key considerations.
How well does your retail launch work online?
Many brands would think of e-commerce as an afterthought or perhaps close to launch. Looking back at 2020 and what's ahead, it's obvious that that's far too late. It should be the reverse: until e-commerce is embedded in your go-to-market-strategy ensure an e-commerce expert is on your product innovation team to understand the best formats and propositions for online shoppers. Only when go-to-market teams work in tandem — i.e., merge the tactics for offline and online success — can CPGs guarantee an omnichannel success for their launch.
Optimize for discoverability on the digital shelf
In-store product placement is typically considered one of the most important factors for your go-to-market success. But in e-commerce, product placement is the most critical factor. Thus, the ultimate challenge for any CPG is how shoppers will discover their new products. Don't rely on organic discovery — just like your in-store placement is highly strategic, it's even more critical to be so online. So, your go-to-market-strategy must be built around product discovery online using digital shelf analytics. This way, you'll know exactly what you need to do.
Digital Shelf Analytics software helps you:
- Identify exactly the type of new product to develop by analyzing latest shopper insights trends, but also understand how your target shoppers are using your competitor products
- Assess when the best time to go-to-market is in your category, what promotional e-retail media inventory to test to reach your audience and which search-related keywords to focus on
- Monitor and measure if your go-to-market-launch-strategy was successful in the omnichannel, and optimize accordingly
With this in mind, today's go-to-market teams should then devise a strategy around three phases: pre-, during- and post product launch. It's critical that the specifics of each phase are considered from the vantage point of the digital shelf e.g. distinguish how curbside pickup shoppers may have different needs and basket sizes versus in-store pickup and home delivery or which product content makes you more visible and likely to appear in search.
Monitor and measure with advanced analytics
But how do you know if your go-to-market-strategy has been successful? That's where Digital Shelf Analytics are critical. Going to market with an online-first mindset may be new to many brands. Establish a reporting framework that specifically asks, "what measures will tell me this is a success online?" Include e-commerce only metrics in your got-to-market scorecard, such as the percentages of sales via e-commerce channels and share of search, to verify your strategy and correct your course early. For your reporting framework to be powerful, though, you need the right software that measures your success on the digital shelf with daily, automated insights.
Using Digital Shelf Analytics allows your go-to-market team — not only the e-commerce experts but everyone on the team — to monitor and measure your launch performance in the omnichannel. You'll be able to start tracking your visibility and e-commerce sales right from the get-go with a dashboard that pulls in all relevant insights into one place e.g., how well the new products are coming through on your e-retailer's sites and combine it with your offline data to create a holistic, omnichannel picture of your go-to-market strategy performance.
