Why Recipes Are The Perfect Strategy for CPG Brands

In the rapidly expanding realm of digital grocery, recipes are so much more than opportunities for meal inspiration. Beyond helping shoppers determine what to make for dinner, digital recipes now provide consumers with a roadmap for their shopping trips⁠ and inversely, a direct path for CPG brands to secure a spot on consumers’ shopping lists. Recipes uniquely foster this relationship between the brand and consumer, but how can shopper marketers effectively harness the power of recipes to drive sales?

While digital recipes are now widely accessible and utilized by 9 out of 10 consumers, the benefits of incorporating a recipe strategy into omnichannel media planning remain enigmatic to some CPG brands.

It’s imperative that CPG companies understand why recipes are an effective tool for positioning their products as a solution to consumers’ needs. Whether you’re an ingredient or even non-food brand, like the perfect seasoning for a weeknight taco recipe or a heavy-duty paper towel for messy meals, there is value in advertising within digital recipes.

In this new age of digital grocery, context is king. And what better context for CPG brands than recipes?

From Strolling to Scrolling

In the last year, many grocery shoppers switched from strolling in-store aisles to scrolling on-site pages. In fact, 56% of consumers are ordering online more frequently than they were one year ago. With this fundamental shift in the grocery landscape, CPG marketers’ strategies behind “making the basket” must adapt as well.

Initial efforts in the grocery space shifted in-store shopper marketing dollars from end-cap displays and demos to targeted online display ads reliant on third-party data to track customers across the internet.

But, it's now clear that reliance on third-party cookies for targeting is a point of weakness for brands, as data privacy laws tighten. Furthermore, consumers have expressed fatigue with such display ads— presenting a need for a less intrusive and more endemic advertising solution… which just happens to be our bread and butter.

Cue Contextual Commerce

Digital recipes provide a contextual environment for CPG brands to target meal planners when they are planning their shop. According to our Annual Recipe Usage Report, 71% use digital recipes in order to find meal inspiration. But what exactly is the value of reaching consumers in a contextually relevant environment?

“By supplementing on-platform media strategies with contextual commerce tactics, shopper marketers can reach consumers lower in the funnel. They can ensure higher impressions from a wider range of content and, at the same time, drive shoppers who are searching for inspiration and products to their partner retailers,” shares Yuni Sameshima, CEO and Co-Founder of Chicory, in an article for the Forbes Technology Council. And engagement rates for contextual media speak for themselves: while the CTR for standard display units hovers around .08%, shoppable recipes experience CTRs around .59%.

By strategically leveraging recipes to establish your brand’s presence early in the consumer’s planning phase, your brand can effectively circumvent serving programmatic ads in irrelevant environments and instead present your product in a highly relevant, brand-safe manner. Consider a chicken brand. Instead of accidentally appearing alongside content related to the perils of the poultry industry, your product can appear on a delicious Baked Lemon Chicken recipe, where your target consumer can add your product directly to an online cart at their selected retailer. 

From Recipes to Routine with Shoppability

Brands can take ad real estate within recipes a step further by layering shoppability with contextual advertising — decreasing the number of clicks along the consumer journey from being served an ad to completing a transaction.

By adding products directly to baskets at online retailers, CPG brands increase their likelihood of being repurchased, as 85% of online grocery shoppers are likely to buy the same things weekly and 80% are likely to repeat previous grocery shopping orders. This indicates that if CPG brands manage to secure a spot in the digital cart, lifetime value will be high. 

84% of digital recipe users are the primary shopper and therefore the final decision makers for the grocery items purchased for their household. By reaching them at the moment of inspiration, your brand can make the list, the basket and contribute to a memorable meal. After all, recipes remain the #1 driver of new product trial year over year. One opportunity sparked by a recipe can create a loyal customer for life. 

Digital recipes provide an efficient way for shopper marketers to expand their initiatives beyond the retailer environment and effectively incorporate digital commerce. By transforming recipes into an extension of the retailer environment with shoppable technology, CPG brands now have an unmatched opportunity to contextually reach and market to consumers.

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If you’re ready to future-proof your brand’s marketing plan, give us a shout. Chicory’s contextual commerce approach combines contextual advertising with shoppable tech— driving sales for the world’s leading CPG brands and retailers.