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Reach Your Digital Shelf Potential

The past couple of years amid a global pandemic have transformed consumer behavior in ways few experts could have anticipated, most notably the speed with which digital commerce accelerated.
Consumer-packaged-goods brands underwent strenuous efforts to transition existing in-store tactics for growth to drive profitability online.

One of the things that hit brands incredibly hard was realizing just how fast everything moves online and the complexity in managing, updating, and optimizing product content across multiple retailers and channels. Manually checking and updating product pages was no longer going to help brands keep up with the fast-evolving marketplace.

The 'findability' of your product is critical to conversion. If shoppers can't find your product, the switch to your competitor is just one click away. Consumers have become more demanding about the content experiences they expect a brand to deliver at each individual touchpoint of their buying journey.

It's not enough to have an image and title against a price online. Consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands have to be highly strategic about the role product content management plays in their digital shelf growth strategy. These brands must also know how to continuously monitor, measure, and optimize performance at the speed and scale required to build a competitive advantage.

Learn more about the importance of product content management, including why it’s critical to your ecommerce success. Also, explore how combining a reliable digital shelf analytics (DSA) platform with a robust product information management (PIM) system is a winning formula for securing a long-term leadership position on the digital shelf.

What is a PIM? What is a DSA? Your Quick Overview

"The goal of PIM is information organization and accuracy. It provides the source of data your brand needs to sell across the digital ecosystem." 
— Salsify

Ecommerce has taken centre-stage in the ongoing consumer packaged goods (CPG) growth discussion. Leaders have started to examine their current workflows and tech stack to keep up with the speed of change. Brands must reduce manual labour and complicated processes with urgency.

As shopper journeys have become more varied, so have sales channels, promotional purchasing formats, and buyer content preferences. And these changes will only continue to expand.

To keep up with these shifts, brands need a clear strategy for keeping up. Part of this includes having the right systems in place, such as product information management (PIM) and digital shelf analytics (DSA).

But what are these systems — and what value do they bring to brands? Learn how these systems can help your team avoid time-consuming processes like manually updating spreadsheets and chasing the latest version of product content.

PIM and DSA can help you focus on creating engaging content experiences, ensuring content accuracy across online retailers, and building a winning commerce strategy.

PIM and DSA systems empower consumer CPG frontline teams to disseminate content at speed and scale across all digital commerce channels. Learn how they can help you build the perfect product page, supporting product content excellence.

Enhanced content is an untapped opportunity for CPG brands, as it helps them stand out on the digital shelf — an increasingly important goal in recent years. Enhanced content helps brands create engaging product experiences, which help drive conversion and sales.

It allows shoppers to connect with your brand beyond static product text and images. This below-the-fold retailer real estate offers brands an opportunity to highlight their values alongside product features. Enhanced content helps deepen the relationship between brands and shoppers, driving brand loyalty and, ultimately, repeat sales.

What Is Enhanced Content?

Enhanced content, also called A+ content and rich media, allows brand manufacturers to create engaging product pages using a wide range of multimedia elements. From editorial image galleries and instructional DIY videos to comparison charts highlighting the differences between best-selling products, enhanced content goes beyond giving buyers “just the facts” when learning about products.

Enhanced content features include:

There are an estimated 2.5 million sellers on Amazon alone, and U.S. grocery is predicted to reach 12.9% of ecommerce spending in 2022, according to eMarketer. These points illustrate why it's critical for CPG brands to review their ecommerce strategies for standing out on the digital shelf. Product discovery is critical, and ecommerce search engine optimization (SEO) can help you meet shoppers at the top of the search results.

Ecommerce SEO leverages relevant keywords to help buyers find (and buy) your products, further fuelling your competitive advantage.

Ecommerce SEO Strategy Checklist

A DSA system can show you brand- and product-related keywords across all of your priority retailers and top competitors. It allows you to check benchmarks against relevant periods.

This insight could be helpful, for example, if it becomes apparent that your core SKUs are losing their page-one position against your competitor across several top retailers. Armed with this insight, you could then review your keyword lists and content held in your PIM and further cross-reference this insight against your competitors' pricing and promotion strategy.

This data could help you answer important questions: Are they doing any paid activity? Have they changed keywords recently? Are paid promotions influencing their "organic" search? During this analysis, you could notice that you're actually missing a critical keyword opportunity on your product page and decide to test long-tail keywords.

It's at this point where your PIM takes centre stage: Based on your data, you update the existing product pages and syndicate the content instantly across all relevant retailers. An automatic alert then goes out to all team members, informing them that the updates have been made. A future notification will even alert you to check your DSA to see the impact these changes have made.

If product content is the key to higher-ranking product pages and converting shoppers into buyers, how can CPG brands best measure its impact? Learn more about the most important ecommerce key performance indicators (KPIs) that could help you measure and mark digital shelf success.

As shoppers continue to evolve, content management will continue to increase in importance for digital shelf success. Taking steps to implement tools like PIM and DSA to support product content excellence could help your brand reach your digital shelf potential.

With the support of PIM and DSI, your brand could maximize its ecommerce sales with optimized content, go beyond the basics with enhanced content and ecommerce SEO, and measure the impact of your work.
These tools are an essential part of an effective digital shelf strategy and serve as a dynamic duo for lasting success.