CPG Marketing Agency for Food, Beverage and Consumer Brands

A CPG marketing agency has to sell a product in places it cannot fully see: a grocery shelf, a retailer app, a convenience store cooler and your own website. Most of the money changes hands offline, yet more and more of the decision starts online. At 95 Solutions we run the digital side of that for food, beverage, snack, pantry and household brands: paid social, search and Shopping ads, SEO, email and the direct-to-consumer store, with reporting that tries honestly to connect online spend to sales that happen somewhere else.

We are open about our background. Our in-house experience is ecommerce, fashion and SaaS, including running marketing for a US apparel brand since 2016, and we co-build software for Shopify and WooCommerce stores. We do not claim a roster of grocery brands. We also do not do the retail sales side: broker relationships, slotting, trade promotion planning, in-store demos and Amazon Ads are outside our services. We run the digital channels well and coordinate with whoever owns those pieces.

If your products are mostly sold online and shipped to the customer, our ecommerce marketing page is the closer match. Beauty and personal care brands should see our beauty marketing page, which covers cosmetics claims.

Services for CPG and Food and Beverage Brands

As a CPG digital marketing agency, we take on the channels below one at a time or as one plan. Each links to the full service page.

The CPG Buying Journey: Shelf, Feed, Search and Subscription

Consumer packaged goods are bought often, cheaply and mostly out of habit. That makes the first trial the hardest and most valuable sale, and it makes being easy to find again almost as important. Each stage needs different channels.

Discovery in the feed

New food and drink brands are found in social feeds, recipe content and short video far more often than in search, because few people search for a brand they have never heard of. Creator taste tests, recipe videos, Pinterest boards and Meta and TikTok ads do the work here. Ads geo-targeted to regions where your retail partners carry the product turn that awareness into a store visit.

Category and occasion search

Problem and occasion searches ("high protein snacks", "non-alcoholic drinks for parties", "gluten-free pasta brands") are where SEO and search ads catch people already shopping the category. Recipe and use-case pages, comparison content and Shopping ads for your DTC store answer those searches with your product.

Where to buy

Once someone wants the product, the next search is your brand name plus "near me" or a retailer name. Your store locator is a conversion page, and it should be fast, accurate and crawlable. Tools such as Destini and PriceSpider power many CPG store locators and "buy now" buttons that pass shoppers to retailer sites, and their clicks are an event we track.

Trial, subscription and repeat

For brands that sell direct, variety packs, sample boxes and subscribe-and-save offers lower the risk of a first order. After that, email and SMS flows timed to consumption bring buyers back, and some of those buyers will also start picking you up in store.

Food Labeling Claims, Alcohol Ad Rules and Measuring In-Store Sales

Food and beverage marketing carries more rules than most consumer categories, and measurement is harder because the sale often happens off-platform. We are not lawyers, so labeling, claims and alcohol advertising questions should be confirmed with your own regulatory counsel or compliance team.

Food claims on labels and in ads

The FDA governs food labels, and many common claims have defined meanings. Nutrient content claims such as "low sodium" or "high fiber" must meet specific criteria, "gluten-free" means the food contains less than 20 parts per million of gluten, and health claims that link a food to reduced disease risk need FDA authorization. The FTC governs advertising and requires claims to be truthful and substantiated. The FDA has no formal definition of "natural", which is exactly why it attracts complaints, so we avoid leaning on it. Our ads, product pages and creator briefs use the same claims as your approved label.

Alcohol, CBD and other restricted products

In the US, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) oversees alcohol labeling and advertising, and the industry codes from groups such as the Distilled Spirits Council and the Beer Institute set further standards. Meta requires alcohol ads to follow local law and age limits, which means 21 and over in the US, and Google Ads allows alcohol ads in the US under its alcohol policy with restrictions, including never targeting minors. Hemp and CBD products face tight and changing restrictions on both platforms, so we confirm eligibility before planning paid media for them.

Marketing food to children

Brands that market to kids should know the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) guidelines, and any site or app directed at children under 13 that collects personal information falls under the FTC’s COPPA rule. In practice we market family products to parents, not to children.

Measuring sales you cannot see

Online ads lift retail sales that never show up as a click. We use several methods together rather than trusting any single one:

• Store locator and retailer clicks as conversion events, so ad platforms optimize toward shoppers who look for a store.
• Geo holdout tests: spend in some regions, hold back in comparable ones, and compare retail sales between them using your retailer portals or syndicated data from providers such as SPINS, Circana or NielsenIQ.
• Platform lift studies such as Meta Conversion Lift, where your spend qualifies.
• Branded search trend in Search Console and Google Trends, as an early sign that awareness is growing.
• DTC orders tracked with GA4, the Meta Conversions API and Shopify customer events, deduplicated and checked against real orders.

Our First 90 Days With a CPG Brand

1. Distribution and margin map (days 1 to 14). We list where the product is sold, which retailers and regions matter most, what sales data you can access and what a DTC order really earns after shipping, which is often the deciding factor for heavy or chilled products. We also note which products need trial most.
2. Tracking and measurement design (days 7 to 30). DTC tracking repaired, store locator and buy-button clicks set as events, UTM tagging on every retailer link and a geo test designed so we can read retail lift later. Claims across ads and pages are checked against the label.
3. Content and creator pipeline (days 15 to 40). We audit product photography and video, plan recipe and use-case content, and brief a first round of creators with usage rights. For new retail doors, we plan launch creative ahead of the shelf date.
4. Paid launch (days 30 to 60). Meta and TikTok prospecting focused on trial, geo-targeted to regions with distribution, Google Shopping and search for the DTC store, and branded search to protect your name. Budget is split so retail and DTC can be read apart.
5. Retention flows (days 30 to 60). Klaviyo or your email tool gets welcome, subscription, reorder and winback flows, plus a launch alert list that tells fans when you arrive at a new retailer.
6. Read, reallocate and plan (days 60 to 90). We read the geo test, compare velocity in tested and held-out regions, and move budget to the channels and regions that pay back. Mustafa reviews the quarter with you and sets the next one.

CPG Marketing Metrics: Velocity, Trial and Repeat

There is no single number that captures CPG performance, so we report a small set that together tell the story:

• Retail velocity in tested regions: units per store per week where we advertise compared with where we do not.
• DTC new customer acquisition cost: what a first online order costs, kept apart from returning customers.
• Contribution margin per DTC order: after product cost, shipping, packaging and fees, which decides whether DTC is a profit center or a sampling channel.
• Repeat rate and subscription retention: how many buyers order again and how long subscribers stay.
• Store locator searches and retailer clicks: a direct signal of intent to buy in store.
• Branded search demand: the trend in people searching for your name.

We do not quote category benchmarks. Your own baseline is set in month one, and every report shows movement against it.

CPG Marketing Pricing

Paid search, Shopping and YouTube are usually the base of a CPG plan, so we price this work on our Google Ads and PPC model: a flat monthly fee by ad spend band, a percentage of spend above the top band, and a minimum term of 3 months. Meta Ads, email, SEO and Shopify work are added from their own plans. Ad spend, creator fees and product samples are paid by you directly. What drives cost is the number of channels, the number of products and regions, and how much creative and measurement work the plan needs.

For a combined retail and DTC plan, request a custom quote and we will scope it around your distribution and budget.

Food and Beverage Marketing Agency Work: Launches, Sampling and Seasons

Retail launches

A new retail listing is the moment digital spend matters most, because early velocity often decides whether a product stays on shelf. We plan geo-targeted ads, creator posts and email announcements to start when product actually lands in stores, not when the deal is signed, and we coordinate with your sales team on reset dates.

Sampling that leads to a second purchase

Free samples are expensive if nobody buys afterward. Online sample and trial-pack offers should capture an email address, follow up with recipes or usage ideas, and point to the nearest store or a first-order offer. We track how many sample requests become paying customers.

Seasonality and occasions

Food and drink demand follows the calendar: grilling season, holidays, game days, back to school and January resolutions. We plan creative and budget around the occasions your product fits and keep evergreen recipe and use-case content running between them.

Shipping economics for DTC

Beverages are heavy, frozen and chilled products need cold chain, and single units rarely ship profitably. Minimum order bundles, variety packs and subscriptions usually make DTC work. Sometimes the honest answer is that DTC should serve as a sampling and data channel while retail carries the volume.

DTC, Retail or Amazon: Where CPG Digital Spend Should Go

For most growing brands the right answer is a mix. We help you decide what each channel is for, and we stop spending money on DTC acquisition when its job is really sampling for retail.

Mistakes Consumer Brands Make With Digital Marketing

• Judging retail-support ads on DTC ROAS. Ads that drive shoppers to stores look weak in an ad manager that only sees online orders.
• Advertising where the product is not sold. National targeting for a regional brand wastes most of the budget.
• Claims that do not match the label. A creator calling a snack "healthy" or "keto" can create a claim your label does not support.
• A broken or slow store locator. Outdated retailer lists send motivated buyers to stores that do not stock you.
• Single-unit DTC offers. Shipping eats the margin, and the customer pays more than in store.
• No plan for the second purchase. Trial without follow-up is an expensive sample.

Choosing a CPG Digital Marketing Agency: What to Ask

The best marketing agency for a DTC CPG brand is not always the right one for a retail-first brand. Ask these questions before you sign:

• How will you measure sales I cannot see in the ad account? Look for geo tests, store locator events and retailer data, not only platform ROAS.
• What do you need from my sales team? Distribution lists, launch dates and retailer data access should be part of onboarding.
• How do you keep claims in line with my label? There should be a process, not a promise.
• What is outside your scope? A straight answer here, like ours on trade, slotting and Amazon, saves months of confusion.
• Who will run my account day to day? At 95 Solutions strategy is led by Mustafa on every account.

Who Our CPG Marketing Fits and Who It Does Not

A good fit

• Emerging and growing food, beverage, snack, pantry and household brands with a DTC store, retail distribution or both
• Brands that want digital spend tied to trial, store visits and repeat, not only clicks
• Teams that can share distribution and sales data so we can measure retail impact
• Brands selling in the US, UK, Canada, Australia or the UAE

Probably not a fit

• Brands that need trade promotion, broker management or in-store demo programs as the main service
• Brands whose sales are almost entirely on Amazon
• Products that rely on health claims the label cannot support

To see where your digital plan stands, request a free CPG marketing audit. We reply within one business day, book a short call to understand your distribution and margins, and send a written scope that shows which channels we would start with and how we would measure retail impact. You can compare other sectors we cover on our industries page.