We are in the midst of a new era of marketing consumer goods to the masses – gone are the days when the same message can be copy, pasted, and plastered across various media with the hopes of reaching the largest audience possible. Now, it’s all about engagement and keeping your target customer interested, informed, and excited about your brand. 

Successful companies know that consumer behavior and attitude can be analyzed and used as an important way to drive success in the retail, food, and beverage industries. Reaching the individual, rather than a large, anonymous crowd of people, has become part of new marketing initiatives in the 21^st century. Some of the biggest and best companies in the world are making personalized marketing their top or No. 2 priority for 2016 and beyond.

So, how has marketing changed over the years, and what can brands do to keep up with rapidly evolving consumer desire? Quick response is key, and technology has played a significant role in our ability to market goods. Packaging, too, has become part of the equation, and brands like FASTechnology Group are spearheading the integration of new digital innovations with physical product packaging. Flexible packaging itself is one of these breakthroughs with new scientific developments emerging seemingly every day, allowing brands to get an upper hand in their approach to marketing consumer products.

In our all-new webinar, Christine Walsh, Director of Marketing and Business Development: Retail/CPG at FASTechnology Group, explains how organizations like hers are using product packaging as an integral part of her clients’ marketing practices. Its visual appearance and placement in stores is crucial to reaching the right audience, which is an aspect of personalized marketing that has become top of mind for today’s leading brands.

Now, she explains, we can deliver messages to a select group or individual using the structural components of a product’s package – barcodes and QR codes can be custom printed right on the outside of the container, connecting consumers with the digital world that can be customized to include a good’s origin information and other educational content. This allows businesses to meet consumer demand for transparency and education, as well as give their own companies an upper hand in tracing their products, consumer behavior, and the effectiveness of their personalized marketing tactics.

In the webinar, Walsh goes into detail about the evolution of marketing and what the future brings for today’s CPG companies. In the old days, businesses used mass marketing to appeal to an entire market with one basic strategy. This involved the utilization of mass distribution and media, resulting in undifferentiated tactics that worked, but only for a short while. As technology advanced, businesses adopted targeted marketing practices, allowing them to identify their target market, then after detailed research, develop specific campaigns for each group. Using data and logic, Walsh says, retailers and manufacturers alike developed plans for the placement of products in stores – and elsewhere – as mart of their marketing techniques.

This is one component of modern marketing that signifies the importance of product packaging and its ability to reach its designated niche audience and stand out on shelves. As personalized marketing has become the latest approach for successful brands, delivering individualized messages and offerings to current and prospective customers via one-to-one marketing can be achieved using packaging as the link between the physical and digital worlds.

In this complimentary, on-demand webinar, Walsh elaborates further on the rise of personalized marketing, along with the following points: 

• How we can use new ways of marketing consumer goods to reach more clients

• Purchasing drivers, including food origin, sustainability, company values, etc.

• How data and technology help brands support consumer decisions

• What big brands like Mars, Walmart, and Hershey’s are doing to include product packaging as part of their 2016 marketing strategies

• And more!