Product Transparency Matters

As a strategic marketing leader, I oversaw the brand, creative development, inbound marketing, and digital funnel initiatives. I played a crucial role in product launches, product marketing, public relations, and event marketing. I was responsible for developing and executing comprehensive marketing strategies and leading creative direction for all marketing initiatives — website, email, print, social, landing pages, digital advertising, and sales enablement. I was also responsible for crafting investor communications and articulating business strategy.

The consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry has undergone significant changes in recent years as consumers have become more health conscious and concerned about the ingredients in their products. However, many manufacturers and retailers lacked access to the health and wellness attribute data and insights necessary to meet this growing consumer demand. As a result, a significant gap formed in the market, which led to slow growth, increased customer churn, and greater competition from new CPG companies.

Recognizing this critical blind spot, Label Insight built a best-in-class product attribute metadata platform that enabled manufacturers and retailers to unlock these health and wellness insights behind the label. This propelled the company's first phase of growth, but they soon reached market saturation. To find new growth opportunities, Label Insight expanded into adjacent use cases (category management, ecommerce, trend forecasting) where their attribute data combined with sales and other consumer insights could unlock new growth for manufacturers and retailers.

Despite its initial success, Label Insight faced a significant challenge in attracting the attention of key audiences and decision-makers within vast CPG ecosystems. In this case study, we will explore how we helped Label Insight overcome this challenge and successfully position it as a thought leader and key solution provider, then implement a differentiated brand positioning strategy and leverage various lead generation tactics to drive its next phase of growth.

Label Insight faced several key obstacles in driving awareness and adoption in the highly competitive CPG industry. The market is highly complex and siloed, with a crowded and noisy landscape that made it difficult for Label Insight to stand out. Additionally, strong competition from established providers with long-standing relationships and contracts presented a challenge. Label Insight also struggled with the absence of a well-tuned lead generation funnel, which made it difficult to identify, track, and qualify leads. Finally, limited tools and resources to demonstrate value and drive the closing process resulted in difficulty in converting leads into paying customers in an efficient and predictable manner.

The Critical Challenges:

• Complex and siloed customer ecosystem

• Strong competition from established providers

• Crowded and noisy marketplace

• Incomplete lead generation funnel strategy

• Limited resources to demonstrate value and drive the closing process

To drive growth, I focused on evolving the strategies in each segment of the buyer journey/funnel:

• Positioning Strategy (Awareness): We evolved the brand’s story to position Label Insight as the go-to source for validated product attribute metadata through a consumer product transparency narrative.

• Nurture Strategy (Lead Generation): We built an inbound lead generation funnel that utilized gated content pieces, targeted email campaigns, paid search, SEO, and social media to attract and nurture high-quality leads. We created customized content and messaging resonating with each influencer and buyer persona within CPG enterprises and leveraged direct and account-based marketing strategies to reach them.

• Sales Enablement (Conversion): We established a suite of sales collateral, case studies, white papers, product sheets, and presentation decks to support the sales team in addressing customer friction and closing deals. These tools were designed to demonstrate value and drive the qualification and closing process efficiently and predictably.

Brand Awareness

• Brand Positioning: Our brand storytelling campaign showcased the importance of product transparency and positioned Label Insight as a subject matter expert and thought leader in the space.

  • Consumer Advocacy on the need for “Better Product Transparency.”

  • Subject Matter Expertise on “Health & Wellness” Product Attribution

  • Thought Leadership on the Future/Evolution of Shopping Experiences

• Illustrative Storytelling: We used creative content such as videos, infographics, and animations to bring to life the shopping experiences of the future powered by Label Insight's data and insight platform.

• Conference Sponsorship & Speaking Events: We sponsored key industry conferences (GroceryShop, GS1 Connect, Digital Food & Beverage, CPG Summit), launched the P2P TransparencyIQ conference, and our subject matter experts attended industry conferences to speak about data products and insights.

• Strategic Partnerships: We partnered with industry leaders and the research community to leverage our data in their work, providing free attribution and back-linking to strengthen our authority. Partnerships: USDA Open Data Partnership for Public Health, 1WorldSync, Nielsen, IRI.

• Public & Industry Relations: We leveraged our consumer research and data insights to issue press releases on key health and wellness trends pitched to media outlets to drive coverage.

Lead Generation

• Product Marketing Content: Establish pillar content by audience segments, products, features, value proposition, capabilities, testimonials, and brand results.

• Consumer Research: We partnered with the Food Marketing Institute to generate four health and wellness and consumer insight reports to enrich our brand and content strategies and drive media and public relations—studies: Shopper Trends Study, Food Revolution Study, Transparency ROI Study, and Ingredient Confusion Study.

• Paid Search: Deployed a paid search strategy to target intent-based keywords.

• Print Advertising: Rise Magazine, Shopper Marketing) We leveraged Linkedin to target “Category Manager” titles with thought leadership content and our white paper.

• Video & Webinars: We established webinars that provided consumer trend insights and demonstrations of how Label Insight solutions could help deliver niche-specific insights for customers. Then leveraged these campaign engagements to drive follow-up drip email campaigns.

• Email Campaigns: We deployed both an outreach campaign and a drip campaign to nurture leads that signed up for our white paper.

• Organic & Paid Search: We deployed an organic search strategy for a top of the funnel and a paid search strategy targeting “intent” keywords in the middle funnel.

• Social Marketing: We leveraged Linkedin to target “Category Manager” titles with thought leadership content and our white paper.

• Achieved 500% growth ($3m ARR to $15m ARR) over two years.

• Generated ~$4 million in qualified pipeline.

• Garnered $3 million in media coverage from a dozen outlets.

• Increased brand lift by 8.4%, twice the industry average.

• Established Label Insight as a trusted source of product attribute data and insights.