With only 2 months left of 2023, it’s time to get planning for 2024! We consider this the most wonderful time of the year—industry insights converging with sales data and trends are like Christmas for us. This year, we’re seeing three opportunities for emerging businesses that will help long-term growth starting in 2024.
Consumer Testing
Sure, you like your brand, but do your customers?
Our world is becoming more interconnected, and brands that tap into their customers, engaging them in the design process through testing and acting on their feedback, see the most success.
The right consumer testing can lead to a 96% correlation to increased retail sales. This kind of consumer testing should go beyond whether the customer likes a product or not; consumer testing should be able to identify the consumer’s purchase intent and what drives them to pick one product over another. Good consumer testing can identify things like claims bloat, reasons to believe in the product, and design choices that inevitably convert to sales.
Companies that keep their consumer at the core of their brand are 60% more profitable because people want to be seen by and in the brands that purchase.
Want to see our consumer testing in action? Enter the Packaging Lab!
Scalable Design
Scalable design is all about easy iteration and intuitive expansion. When looking at updating or redesigning your packaging, a scalable strategy ensures your packaging will work well across your current portfolio of products and easily adapt to future portfolio growth.
For consumers, scalable design means your products show up consistently online, on shelves, and in peoples’ homes. Scalable design considers these elements at the forefront of the design process.
This approach to design allows a company to save in the long run. By investing upfront, CPG product packaging iterations are easy to manage and don’t require you to invest in a redesign as new products, packaging, or campaigns are launched.
Quality Content
Consumers are engaged online and in-store now more than ever, and it will only continue to drive what it means to create quality content. Quality content provides the consumer with the information they are looking for without having to search. For CPG brands in particular, there’s immense value in your content being the through-line of your cohesive brand experience across all channels. Your brand personality should be truthful and unique to your brand, with the flexibility to change your tone (be it verbal or visual) to fit the channel.
A library of distinct, high-quality, owned assets allows for “aha” moments, allowing for your imagery to connect more holistically to your target consumer, instead of the deja vu of a stock-heavy visual strategy. Quality content is not just in the visual appeal, it also encompasses how you talk about your product, brand, and consumer experience. Messaging gives your brand personality and allows you to speak your audience’s language.
Lastly, quality content is accessible to all. Using alt-text, image descriptions, and other accessibility features increases your site’s useability for all.
Bonus! The 2023 Buzzphrase You’ll Hear A lot in 2024: Retail Media
We focus on CPG branding and packaging design at Skidmore Studio, but we would be remiss if we didn’t explore how retail media will impact your future success. As search evolves toward data privacy, major retailers are forming media networks to share their tremendous amount of high-quality, first-party data with marketers. This unique data set provides transparency, segmentation opportunities, and closed-loop attribution in a way that search targeting cannot.
The stats on retail marketing:
- A 20-30% greater return on ad spend (ROAS) from audiences of retail-owned channels, according to Albertsons Media Group
- By the end of 2026, Retail Media is expected to outspend linear TV
As a challenger CPG brand, being an early adopter means more opportunities to disrupt your category. Here are some tips for getting started:
- Budget beyond silos – Depending on the company, traditional retail support can come from sales or marketing budgets, by looking at this as a combined “brand” budget, these two teams can find areas of opportunity and unified tactics to get your product on shelves.
- Start small – Identify a couple of key partners and set your budget and learning goals. Testing with detailed learning goals allows you to refine your approach based on actionable insights from real shoppers in the purchase decision moment.
If you’re worried about the content lift for retail media, now is a good time to breathe.
Currently, retail media networks create simple user experiences on websites and owned apps reminiscent of display advertising, meaning a clearly defined messaging strategy is crucial for success. Being a digital presence on a trusted shopper app is a way to grow your audience awareness through easy-to-execute tactics such as static banners and sponsored in-app search. As the retail media landscape evolves, so will the content used—think video, social commerce, and refined in-store experiences.
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