Industry Updates - Mason Interactive

Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) brands are continuously evolving to meet the changing needs and preferences of consumers. The pandemic made consumers focus more on products that align with their lifestyle choices and sustainability efforts. The shift towards convenience and extensive product selection is changing how CPG brands engage with customers in the digital era.

To stay ahead in this competitive landscape, brands need to be aware of the latest trends.

Embracing Sustainability

Sustainability has become a central focus for CPG brands, driven by consumer demand for environmentally conscious products. Sustainable packaging is gaining momentum, with a report by Research and Markets projecting a 5.6% annual growth rate for eco-friendly packaging materials through 2026.

Furthermore, a survey conducted by Accenture stated that 83% of consumers in North America and Europe believe it’s important for brands to design environmentally friendly and sustainable products. Seed is a company that offers a line of probiotic supplements and products. They offer recyclable and biodegradable shipping boxes constructed from ecological paper made from algae. Seed also offers refillable containers for travel purposes. Brands need to adopt environmentally conscious practices to meet consumer expectations and drive business growth.

Seed’s eco-friendly packaging with a free travel vial.

Health and Wellness

With an increasing emphasis on personal well-being after the pandemic, health-conscious consumers are seeking CPG products that align with their healthy lifestyle choices. Statistics show significant growth in sales of functional foods and beverages, with a projected annual growth rate of 7.9% through 2026.

Moreover, there has been a surge in plant-based and vegan alternatives, as consumers become more conscious of their dietary choices. According to a recent Nielsen survey, 73% of global consumers say they would change their consumption habits to reduce their environmental impact. CPG brands are capitalizing on these trends by introducing innovative and nutritious products that cater to evolving consumer preferences.

Digital Transformation

Online shopping has opened up new avenues for CPG brands to reach consumers directly, bypassing traditional retail channels. During the pandemic, online grocery sales in the United States reached $9.3 billion in January 2021. COVID-19 acted as a catalyst to shift consumer needs to online channels.

A report by Deloitte reveals that 36% of consumers are interested in personalized products or services, with 48% willing to wait longer and pay more for customized goods. CPG brands must prioritize their digital strategies and ensure a seamless and personalized e-commerce experience to stay competitive.

In this fast-paced CPG industry, staying informed about the latest trends is crucial for brand success. The health and wellness revolution, the e-commerce boom, and the growing demand for personalization are reshaping the landscape. Brands that embrace these trends and leverage data-driven insights will be well-positioned to meet evolving consumer expectations and drive growth in the dynamic CPG market.

Contact us to schedule a free consultation with our digital experts, and take the first step on your journey.

It’s been a few months since ChatGPT entered the national consciousness, and I wanted to take a few words to describe how it – and AI in general – is affecting Search Engine Marketing. I’m going to start with what I know to be true, proceed to what I believe to be true, move on to informed speculation, and then draw some conclusions.

Executive Summary

Increasing Automation is a fact of life; anyone who resists it should get ready to enjoy their retirement; the front door to the internet is wide open; our clients are well-positioned to take advantage of these opportunities.

Bing is trying for piece of Google’s lunch, by integrating Chat GPT into their platform, and Google is rolling out their own version soon.

As an illustration, here are four searches for the same thing, on Google, YouTube, Bing, and Chat GPT. Google, YouTube, and Bing are three versions of the same dish, while Chat GPT’s is totally unique.

A Search for “best book to learn guitar” on Google

A Search for “best book to learn guitar” on YouTube

A Search for “best book to learn guitar” on Bing

A Search for “best book to learn guitar” on Chat GPT

To us, this comes down to platform diversification. We don’t get to decide where our customers are, the customers get to decide. We have to be in front of them, regardless of whether they are on Bing, Google TikTok, or Chat GPT.

Things I know to be true

MSN was the king, Google came on seemingly overnight, and hasn’t let go.

I know that when I started in this business, clients advertised on MSN (Bing), Yahoo!, 7 Search, Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, Lycos, and more.

MSN was by far the highest-trafficked of those. According to Pew Research, in May of 2002, MSN had 43 million unique visitors, Yahoo! had 38 million unique visitors, and Google recorded 36 million unique visitors.

I know that Google came on overnight. I was sitting with a client around 2001/2002, he was having a hard time finding what he was looking for on Yahoo, so I said “try Google.” He responded with something like “Guggle? Giggle? What’s that?” I can’t imagine anyone saying that in 2003.

Today, in 2023, Google has 93.37% of the search pie, Bing has 2.81% and Yahoo! has 1.13%.

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is one of the world’s most valuable companies, with revenues of $283bn in 2022 and a market capitalization of $1.3trn.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) now powers Chatbots to access the internet via typed conversations, and receive colloquial, “chatty” responses as a reply. Chatgpt, made by the startup Openai, leads the field. Just two months after its launch, Chatgpt was being used by more than 100m people, making it the “fastest-growing consumer application in history”, according to ubs.

So to recap, Search Engine Marketing is somewhere between 20 and 25 years old, it’s a huge business, and Google owns most of it.

Things I believe to be true

I believe that MSN, Yahoo!, Reddit, Twitter, TikTok, and the like, are hungry for a piece of Google’s $283 billion in revenue.

I believe that technology and automation are increasing at an exponential rate, and that they are here to stay.

I believe that anyone who does not use Chat GPT (or the like) should get ready to enjoy their retirement. The Legend of John Henry comes to mind.

Recapping: Google is the defacto front door to the internet; but history suggests that it might not be much longer; automation should be leveraged to our client’s benefit.

Things I can prognosticate

Because my job is to grow my clients’ businesses, it behooves me to forecast how these new tools will affect them.

Let’s talk about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) first. Clients have asked me “why should I pay you when I can just have Chat GPT write my articles?”

A few things:

We already use Chat GPT to research and get some ideas started.

I don’t want a client that thinks the only – or even main – part of SEO is to churn out keyword-rich articles.

Google can (today) detect AI-generated articles, so a human hand is (yet) needed to oversee this content.

Content is only part of SEO, and things that make that job easier should be celebrated. This creates savings for clients and frees up valuable resources on the agency side to focus more on strategy.

Search Engine Marketing, specifically Pay-Per-Click advertising, is more complicated, because it will create new ways to advertise. As above, we already use Chat GPT for research – although its keyword research is nowhere near as good as Google’s own tools – and ad copy creation assistance.

Here are my educated guesses about how this will develop:

New models will emerge charging advertisers to influence the chatbot’s answers. For example:

Pay MSN a fee, and when you search its Chat-GPT’s-interface for your product, you show up in the answer with links to your website.

Expect to see product listings/images surrounding these chat replies.

People will lose confidence in these Chat features if they fear their objectivity has been compromised by advertisers… if they can tell.

Clients will need to be on more platforms if/when users migrate to Chat Enabled Search Engines. Clients do not always have an appetite to try new platforms, but it is our job to convince them.

So I can make a reasonable guess that this new technology will be good for me and my clients because A) its usage will separate the good agencies from the bad B) It frees us up to have more strategic, intelligent conversations, because it saves us time C) it creates new and exciting ways to promote brands.

Summary

Google is the defacto front door of the internet, but there is nothing saying that it has to be forever.

Bing is starting the Chatbot Search Wars because there’s so much money to be made there by wresting even a small %’s of Google’s business away, but I think it’s more likely that Google will implement its own version of Chat GPT.

AI is already assisting our work flow by making it smoother and faster, and it will create opportunities for clients to try new platforms.

There’s nothing like connecting with like minded people, discovering new brands, and learning about unique success stories IRL. In a post-pandemic world, the days of congregating in musky hotel lounges are kind of over. We came across GROW a few years back, and sponsored one of their in-person events in 2021. It’s safe to say that their events have come a long way.

Fast forward to 2023, their small but mighty team has set the stage for the future of retail conferences. The curated – and highly vetted – experience is created with the new era of founders and marketers in mind.

I recently attended their Spring conference in Los Angeles. Here are my top five takeaways for e-commerce brands looking to stay ahead of the game in 2023.

Storytelling Is The Future Of Marketing

Whether your brand is big or small, you’re competing for the same eyeballs as Nike or Sephora.

Consumers are overwhelmed with content, and brands that develop engaging ways for their customers to identify with their story or products are much more likely to stand out. Storytelling humanizes the brand and allows people to relate to it on a deeper level. By creating a compelling narrative, a brand can differentiate itself from competitors, build trust and loyalty with customers, and ultimately increase sales.

Jake Karls, co-founder of Mid-Day Squares highlighted that “storytelling is the vehicle to grab the consumer’s attention today”. Brands need people to opt in, and ultimately want to be a part of the conversation.

If I show you a picture of a chocolate bar that’s vegan, gluten free – you’re going to scroll by it because it doesn’t matter to you. It doesn’t have meaning. If I tell you a story about how our machine broke down, and it caused this whole domino effect of problems, you’re involved – you’re part of that story. That makes you feel like you’re buying a product that you actually care about, and that you are a fan of.

Jake Karls – Mid-Day Squares

Double Down on CRO

There’s more to conversion rate optimization than making minor adjustments to your product detail pages. As more and more businesses invest in CRO, those that don’t risk falling behind.

From leveraging post purchase surveys, to compiling reviews and making sense of social listening reports, applying customer insight or feedback is one of the countless ways that brands can drive meaningful impact to better meet customer needs, stay competitive and maintain market share.

Through CRO testing, brands can gain insights into how their customers behave on the website, what they like, and what they don’t like. This information can be used to inform other marketing efforts, such as content marketing and social media.

Content Marketing (In Context)

Content has and continues to evolve, and it’s no secret that brands are finding it hard to keep up. Brands need to take a strategic approach to creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Need a little motivation? Compile a list of all of your content, and categorize it by product. Then walk through your website as if you were a customer, and pay attention to where people might get stuck.

The meaning of content in context can vary depending on the brand and the audience it’s trying to reach, and making updates by adding (or removing) content accordingly can help brands to attract, engage, and retain customers.

Building Meaningful Partnerships

Pay-per-post is out. Sliding through a content creator or public figure’s DMs is in. The space between brands and “influencers” has become increasingly gray, and brands need to develop authentic relationships that last.

For canned-water company Liquid Death, a viral campaign with Tony Hawk is just as valuable as a gifting opportunity with a YouTube personality who speaks to a niche market. In either case, their most successful partnerships are born when there’s a mutual understanding of creative control, and the expectation is rooted in freedom of expression and trust.

By working with the right ambassadors and influencers, brands can reach new audiences, generate high-quality content, and build trust and loyalty with customers.

Growth at all cost is over

Finally, efficiency was a recurring theme that can’t be overlooked. Brands can, and should, be leaning more into profitability by reducing expenses, increasing efficiency, focusing on high-margin products and services, pricing strategically, and increasing customer retention.

By focusing on retaining existing customers, who are often more profitable than new customers, brands have the opportunity to emerge stronger on the other side. This can involve improving customer experience, offering loyalty rewards, and developing targeted campaigns. One panel highlighted that looking at lifetime value (LTV) based on sales channel or product can offer insight into where to invest in your expansion plan. Think: segmented and aggregated.

In conclusion, there has never been a more exciting time to be in digital, and brands have a unique opportunity to engage customers in a way that hasn’t been adopted industry wide. The rules and status quo are out the window, and those that are looking to stay ahead of the game in 2023 should focus on storytelling, post-purchase insights for CRO, building meaningful partnerships, and evaluating existing infrastructure to lean more into efficiency.

See you at GROW NY on July 11th 😉

What is Google Analytics 4?

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google’s web analytics platform. It replaces Google’s previous Universal Analytics (UA) tracking code and offers many new features that are designed to help you better understand user behavior on your website. In this article we’re going to discuss the differences between both versions, how measurement looks a bit different this time around, and some resources for how and when to migrate.

What are the main differences between UA and GA4?

In contrast to Universal Analytics which relied solely on pageviews for understanding how visitors interacted with websites, GA4 uses what Google refers to as “Events” – user interactions such as clicking a link or watching a video that are tracked individually rather than collectively under one pageview metric. This helps marketers understand each individual user journey through the site in much more granular detail.

Measuring Users: GA4 vs. UA

GA4 is a significant shift from UA, with its architecture based on events rather than pageviews or sessions, as well as its introduction of AI-driven insights and predictive models designed to give users deeper insight into their data and enable actionable decision making.

UA: Session-Based

Universal Analytics uses a session-based data model to track user activity on a website. A ‘session’ is defined as a group of user interactions with your website that take place within a given time frame. Universal Analytics collects information about the activities users have performed in that session, such as page views, time spent on the site, and any goals or conversions that were completed.While this data is important, it can essentially leave marketers with half of a story. We don’t know if a certain page is successful by just looking at the total number of times someone saw it. Cue the event-based model:

GA4: Event-Based

GA4, however, switched to an event-based data model to measure users and their interactions with websites. An ‘event’ is defined as any action taken by a user while they are interacting with a web page such as clicking on a link, scrolling, or submitting a form. Each event is tracked and logged in order to provide detailed insights into how users interact with websites and what kinds of actions they take while browsing them. For example, GA4 can detect when certain buttons or links are clicked more frequently than others on pages, or if there are areas of content that visitors tend to spend more time on than others. This data can then be used to inform decisions around website design and content creation for enhanced engagement and improved user experience.

Key differences between Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4

Measuring Content Success (or Failure): Is Bounce Rate Still a Thing?

What Happened to Bounce Rate?

Since the transition to Google Analytics 4, one of the most notable changes had been the removal of bounce rate as a metric. But alas! Google heard the critics loud and clear, and as of July 2022, they reintroduced bounce rate – however, it’s not exactly how we remember it from UA.

Bounce Rate Definitions: GA4 vs. UA

At its core, bounce rate is defined as “the percentage of sessions in which users view only one page and then leave your site”. In other words, it is used to measure how effective a page was at capturing user attention. Bounce rate was (is?) a widely accepted metric in Universal Analytics, that businesses and marketers have grown to utilize as a staple for measuring success and failure.

GA4 moved on from the traditional ‘bounce rate’ to create a new metric entirely: engagement rate. Engagement Rate can be interpreted as the inverse of bounce rate – indicating how likely visitors are to continue engaging with your site for longer periods of time. GA4 defines engagement rate as the ratio, represented as a percentage, of your engaged sessions to your total sessions

Google considers a session to be ‘engaged’ if it meets any one of these three criteria: if the visit lasts more than 10 seconds, if it results in a conversion event, or if there are at least two pageviews or screen views. In other words, an engaged session is when a visitor has spent meaningful time engaging with your website’s content. Though engagement rate gives us an indication as to how users interact with our pages once they arrive, bounce rate will tell us why they’re leaving so quickly – this could be due to slow loading speeds, confusing navigation structures, or irrelevant content beside what they were expecting.

By monitoring both metrics together and analyzing user behavior, you’ll have a much clearer picture as to what changes need to be made on your website in order for users to spend more time actively engaging with your content. Making small tweaks such as increasing loading speeds, improving navigation, optimizing content with specific user intent, can have immediate impacts on both engagement rates and overall user satisfaction.

Important Dates & Info About Migrating to GA4

Universal Analytics will officially sunset on July 1, 2023, meaning: no more data will be collected in UA after that date. For the following six months, users will still have access to the historical data that had been recorded on UA before its discontinuation. However, after those six months have passed, all of the data from UA will be permanently inaccessible and this will signify the end of an era for Google Analytics. Following this milestone, GA4 will become the new default platform for analytics services.

Migrating is a somewhat straightforward process, but to ensure all data is accounted for, and important conversion metrics are in place, we suggest making this transition sooner than later.

If you need help reach out to us at hello@masoninteractive.com, or take a look at some of the resources we’ve listed below.

[GA4] Introducing the next generation of Analytics, Google Analytics 4

Comparing metrics: Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics

Should You Switch To GA4 Now? What You Need To Know

An In-Depth Guide to Google Analytics 4

Yesterday we wrote about the challenges and solutions we’er seeing in real time. Today I want to share something that’s part of our internal mantra.

Communicating Bad News.

I have never been fired fired for missing a client’s goals.

I have been fired by many clients for not telling them that we were going to miss a goal.

I’ve been fired by many more clients, for not suggesting ways to hit the goals we’re forecasting to miss.

Meaning, If you’re going to miss you goals by 30%, and we have clearly articulated this bad news, and we’ve clearly articulated fall-back positions, including but not limited to…

Forecasting for a client “well, we’re behind on revenue, but we can get there. It’s going to cost X dollars., and ROAS will suffer, but we can do it.”
Saying to a client, “well, we can preserve ROAS/CAC/CPL, but we’re going to have to reduce our topline goals by Y%, and here are the six places we recommend actioning to really chase these pockets of efficiency”

…then the client will generally appreciate that advice, and trust us more in the future. Nothing solidifies a relationship like going through bad times with transparency and sincerely.

Some more tactical – but still good! – ideas could be:
- Reducing targets
- Offering a deeper discount
- Starting the sale earlier
- Send more emails – for real, send more emails. Don’t be precious about it.

So that’s my advice…

…to anyone starting out in this industry. Your managers are looking at your client retention, and the best way to retain clients is to be transparent and honest. Clearly, loudly, emphatically communicate bad news, as long as it’s A) backed up by day and B) you provide solutions.

If you’re not already a Mason client, book a consultation with our team and we’ll work on a tailored approach for your brand, together.

Holiday is here. We’ve frozen PTO, we have twice a day check-ins with most clients, and most of those, seven days a week.

Challenges

We have tons of data showing that “holiday” is actually a 2.5 month event, from mid-Oct., through the end of December. We’ve counseled our clients to start their sales earlier, and we track each client’s actual daily revenue against their target daily revenue.

Meaning, if you want to make $1,000,000 in November, you need to make $33,333 a day. If you’re actually making an average of, say, $25,000 a day, that’s a delta of $8,333 a day. That seems like it might be small enough hill to climb, if you’ve got a 35% off sale starting Saturday the 19th

But if you want to make $1,000,000 in November, and you’re actually making an average of, $10,000 a day, that’s a delta of $23,333 a day. That is a big hill to climb.

Solutions

Be Proactive – We’re recommending that partners supply creative with an increased discount (20% vs 25%) in the event that we need to swap in order to be more aggressive in market
Be Flexible – Base and stretch goals are going to be key to winning your Holiday push
Be Nimble – ROAS floors are a great way to strike while the iron is hot. Confirm ROAS bands with your team to speed up decision making in the moment

Results

We do have clients who exceeding their goals. In that same hypothetical example, imagine client who is making an average of $40,000 a day MTD – they’re ahead of their goals by 7K a day. It’s the 15th of the month – that means that they’re $105K over their target.

I’d much rather be in a place where we’re ahead of targets on Thanksgiving, than behind. Even if that means starting a sale ealier.

If you’re not already a Mason client, book a consultation with our team and we’ll work on a tailored approach for your brand, together.