A Lopsided Marketing Strategy
At EO, a natural body care company with both an eCommerce and retail presence, we researched how people make decisions when making purchases at grocery and drug stores. What we discovered was surprising: Although brick-and-mortar foot traffic has declined by 57% in the last five years, the value of every visit has nearly tripled.
Why? People are now researching products online, rather than just perusing the shelves, to make decisions about both brand and product. Consumers are going into stores pre-sold. Additionally, according to Google, 84 percent of smartphone shoppers use their device in-store to do last-minute research before putting a product in their cart.
EO’s Everyone body care line had a common challenge: low brand awareness and a small marketing footprint — online and in-store. This put significant pressure on its shelf presence to simultaneously generate first-time awareness, educate consumers, and provide purchase incentives, which is a big ask. Promos were an effective method for driving first-time purchases, but were not a sustainable strategy for revenue growth or scale.
Invest in Relationships, Not Transactions
Back-to-School, a major revenue event in the CPG industry, provided the perfect opportunity to test out a new online-offline strategy for Everyone, a family-friendly brand. Instead of taking the typical, transactional marketing approach during Back-to-School — in-store price promotions and large displays — we decided to invest in relationships by helping customers make more informed decisions about safe ingredients and healthy habits.
Empower Consumers to Make Better Decisions
We developed and distributed digital (web, social, and email) educational content covering the dangers of ingredients in conventional body care products such as sulfates, parabens, and chemical fragrance; misleading claims on labels, and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) loopholes that companies exploit. The content also explained what to look for when shopping for healthier products, such as “plant-based,” “pure essential oils,” and “EWG-Verified.” (The Environmental Working Group, or EWG, is a highly respected non-profit organization that helps consumers identify what products are safe for them and the planet.)
To connect the content that we shared online as part of our content marketing strategy to the in-store experience, we redesigned the product labels and in-store displays to highlight the safe ingredients and make Everyone’s coveted EWG-verification more visible. The new labels helped consumers more readily identify the better, healthier product choices on the shelf.
Once the school year started, we continued to produce and share educational content on developing simple routines, such as hand washing or bathing, as an opportunity for parent/child bonding and building healthy, lifelong habits.
Extend Everyone’s Reach: From Households to Schools
To make it easier for parents and teachers to switch to safer products in schools and classrooms, we offered affordable bundles of hand soaps and sanitizers. A “buy one, get one free” price promotion incentivized parents to donate safe and healthy personal care products to their schools.
Join Forces with Impact-Focused Partners
As a certified B-Corporation, EO Products is committed to its community and the care of the planet. As part of our Back-to-School initiative, we elevated (through social media, emails, and PR) EO’s hand-washing program developed with Head Start to teach healthy habits to low income children.
EO employees joined the Breast Cancer Prevention Partners’ (BCPP) Lobby Day to support Senate Bill 574. BCPP is a public policy organization working to prevent cancer by eliminating exposure to toxic chemicals. Together we walked the steps of the capitol in Sacramento to support the bill which requires fragrance and flavor ingredient transparency in cosmetics. (It passed!)
↑12%
retail sales
↑48%
EWG landing page visits
1/5
online sales were bundles
Investing in Customers = Better for Your Bottom Line
By focusing on trust and being truly helpful in our marketing, we saw a big boost across all purchase channels – online and offline. During the campaign period:
- In-store sales grew ~12% from the previous year.
- Google searches for the Everyone brand at “a store near me” accelerated.
- Back-to-School products accounted for 20% of online sales during the campaign. (The Teacher + Classroom bundles were the top sellers of all Back-to-School products.)
- Traffic to EO’s “EWG-Verified Products” landing page increased 48 percent during the campaign.
