How Small CPG Brands Can Dominate Local Markets With Strategic Social Media Engagement

Standing out in the competitive consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketplace can be tough, especially for a smaller brand with a limited, localized distribution and a tight marketing budget. But being small and local also comes with “home team” advantages, and social media in particular can offer opportunities to shine that don’t overwhelm your finances. With smart tactics and a hyper-local focus, small CPG brands can boost their social media engagement and see their metrics — and their business — take off.

4 Powerful Ways To Boost Your CPG Brand’s Local Social Media Engagement

In many ways, social media marketing levels the playing field for smaller CPG brands with limited budgets. But there is still work to be done: To increase local engagement on your brand’s social media channels, you will need to develop a deep understanding of your audience, create locally relevant content, engage with the community and geotarget campaigns and ads.

1. Understand Your Local Audience

Conduct research on your local consumer audience to identify the key demographics for your CPG brand’s offerings and pinpoint their product preferences, buying habits, interests and other relevant factors. Research can also help you identify local market trends and gain insights on the community’s shared values and culture. Launching online polls and hosting virtual Q&A sessions are additional ways your brand can gather valuable feedback on things like new product ideas and local product preferences.

2. Create Locally Relevant Content

Armed with the insights gained above, create social content that resonates with your local audience. Look for opportunities to create and share content that spotlights local themes, events and traditions. Create or nurture partnerships with local businesses, personalities and suppliers by showcasing them in your posts. Incorporate local references when sharing your brand’s stories and news on social media; for example, use visuals featuring beloved — and easily recognizable — landmarks.

3. Engage With the Local Community

Seek out locally focused social media groups and pages, then join the conversation when topics come up that relate to your CPG brand — or when it just makes sense. Social monitoring tools can alert you to mentions or reviews of your brand or related topics in forums and post comments, so you can chime in with insightful, constructive or entertaining commentary. When local events or celebrations are on the calendar, join in on the fun by staging contests or giveaways that fit with the theme. Partnering with local influencers provides another powerful way to increase awareness of your brand while building trust and credibility within your market.

4. Run Geotargeted Campaigns and Ads

Social media advertising offers your small CPG brand an opportunity to connect with local consumers via highly targeted ads, even if you’re on a tight marketing budget. Use geotargeting to run localized social ad campaigns specifically tailored to area consumers with an emphasis on regional pride and the convenience of procuring your products nearby. Targeted social ads can also be used to promote area events connected to your brand such as in-store promotions, pop-ups or local sponsorships. To increase the visibility of your brand’s organic social posts, include location-based hashtags and geotags with your copy and images.

The Best Metrics for Measuring the Impacts of Your CPG Brand’s Social Media Engagement

Social media engagement can drive a range of measurable results for your CPG brand, from elevated brand awareness and added website traffic to increased sales, improved customer sentiment and heightened brand loyalty. While the overall ROI of increased social media engagement can be a challenge to quantify, a number of useful metrics can help you understand the impacts of your efforts — including engagement rate, conversion metrics, brand awareness indicators and customer sentiment. Here’s more on each of these leading social media engagement metrics for CPG brands:

Engagement Rate

To calculate the engagement rate of a post, ad or campaign, add its total number of likes, comments, shares and saves, then divide that sum by the total number of followers or impressions. Multiply by 100 to get a percentage. This metric can provide insights on your content’s relevance and resonance with the audience.

Track Conversion Metrics

Conversion metrics such as clicks, site visits and purchases/purchase rates can help you attribute desired consumer actions and outcomes directly to your social posts, ads and campaigns. Using UTM codes with your campaigns can help you identify specific traffic sources.

Assess Brand Awareness Indicators

Track growth in your CPG brand’s consumer visibility by monitoring increases in followers, shares and organic reach during and after a social engagement campaign.

Measure Customer Sentiment

By monitoring for and assessing social media mentions, comments and reviews, your brand can gauge customer sentiment about its offerings, then adjust and adapt its strategies based on the insights gained.

Amplify the Impacts of Your Social Efforts With Help From the Pros at Joybyte

Looking for a social media marketing agency that specializes in fostering CPG brand growth? At Joybyte, our team of social media strategy and management pros has worked with diverse CPG brands to deliver the kind of increased social engagement that boosts business every time. Book a call with us today to learn all the ways we can help your CPG brand make a big local splash with its social efforts.