How to Grow your CPG Brand through Digital: Q&A with Avantika Saxena

How are consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands growing through digital marketing tactics?

I had the opportunity to speak to Avantika Saxena, Director of Growth Marketing at Fresh Prep. As Canada’s top-rated meal kit, Fresh Prep has transformed the way Canadians shop for food by marketing to a very specific and large audience of Canadian shoppers. The brand has grown rapidly and become one of the go-to home delivery brands despite numerous competitors and a changing market.

Avantika discusses growing the brand through a diverse set of channels, nurturing existing channels to further promote product adoption, and hoping brands can identify strategic partners within the market. Read her insights below:

How have you grown Fresh Prep through identifying and investing in new channels?

Identifying new acquisition channels is becoming more relevant than ever as a result of the fast-evolving digital landscape. It is a critical function of growth marketing to assess and test new channels to help drive growth. We allocate a fraction of resources - budget and bandwidth - to exploring and testing new channels. This practice helps us measure the impact of new and emerging channels.
We aim for a balance between delivering current growth targets and investing in future proofing our marketing technology stack. We don’t want to miss out on building a next gen marketing engine for our organization. Fresh Prep has experimented and scaled up various new channels this year: from affiliates to influencers, Pinterest to ROKT, Reddit to TikTok and even non-traditional media like OOH Programmatic Ads.

How should brands be nurturing existing channels to promote growth?

Great question! Nurturing existing channels is as important (probably even more important) than finding new ones. These are your cash cows in a BCG matrix, and give you economies of scale. Unlike new channels, existing channels come with lots of experience that you have gained over years. You have mastered these algorithms, you know almost all their levers, inputs, and understand which levers to use at that particular time. You can get the most out of them.
However, as these channels are constantly changing, it is important to stay at the top of updates. Also each channel has a point of diminishing return and it is important to know what that point is, so you can maximize ROAS in that particular channel.

What has been the largest learning moment of your career?

This one is difficult as each day I am learning something new about prospects and customers . However, I think the most important learning is to understand that any data presented in aggregate form is just the tip of the iceberg. There is much more than just learning that version A performs better than version B. There are always layers to it, and you have to investigate deeper to understand it completely.

Where can brands begin identifying potential partners?

Partnership is essential for business growth in any industry as it is one of the best ways to get more coverage. At the same time, it is also important to make sure that you understand your brand's values and core message - because this will guide you in choosing the right partnerships.
There are various types of partners. The first set I consider natural partners, the ones that come to your mind right away. Partners such as review aggregator platforms to industry specific bloggers.
But partnerships that are more creative can give you an edge. For example, look at this TikTok video where an influencer whose primary audience is tech buyers, talks about Fresh Prep and how someone can automate their food for the week - taking grocery shopping, meal planning and prepping off your to-do list - by subscribing to Fresh Prep’s meal plans.

How is Fresh Prep preparing for 2023?

For marketers, 2023 will be very different from 2022, and we have to pivot accordingly - what worked well in 2022 may not work in 2023 as industry is evolving at a much faster rate these days.
Our top priority for 2023 is to continue building Fresh Prep’s brand reputation as the most loved meal kit in Western Canada. We focus on sustainability, convenience and quality; these themes will stay consistent throughout all our branding efforts, across website and social, to packaging design and even our menus.
Secondly, with data privacy getting more important for users, we will craft our marketing campaigns to leverage our first party data more than ever. We will focus on different targeting options to create cohesive and more personalized customer experiences, from the very first touch until the last one. Also, we will be doing more “scrollytelling,” to tell the consumer our story as they scroll our landing pages.

Thank you, Avantika! To learn more about Fresh Prep, please visit https://www.freshprep.ca/.

Written by Emma Whiten, Former Editor of Marketing News Canada