CPG manufacturers have sprung for some of the most eye-catching ads on the web – such as the animated cosmetics bottle that “splashed” Maybelline foundation across the screen of selected visitors to Iwon.com's home page this spring. But as a rule, CPG marketers’ use of the web is lagging behind consumers' adoption of it, according to a new report from Cambridge, MA-based Forrester Research Inc. While 44% of consumers use the web for grocery-related tasks like meal planning and household budget stretching, 87% of brand–sponsored web sites lack at least one of the three things consumers look for most: promotions, samples or product information.
Manufacturers are missing an opportunity to interact more with customers, says Forrester, because more than 20% of the grocery shoppers polled go online to look for recipes every week, and about 18% go online to search for – and enter – sweepstakes every week. Forrester also found that consumers who seek and get product information online spend 21% more than online shoppers who only read content or seek promotions. Beauty products attracted the highest level of online research, manufacturer brand site visits and ad interactions, followed by vitamins and pet food. Commodity products are little researched online, with fewer than 6% of shoppers looking for information on sodas, alcoholic beverages or frozen foods online.
While nearly two-thirds of consumers visit a brand site hoping to find a promotion, about one-third of brand sites don’t offer them. And while only 3% of consumers visit a brand site for lifestyle information, 68% of the sites still feature it prominently. “CPG marketers should stop thinking about the Internet as a separate medium and instead use it to extend the impact of every offline campaign,” says Forrester analyst Jim Nail.
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