How CPG brands grow their social media audience

A jar of pasta sauce, a box of crayons, a bag of dog food: consumer packaged goods get bought often and mostly on autopilot, in a store aisle or on a retailer’s app. The retailer rings up the sale and keeps the customer record.

Social is one place where the brand can own the relationship. A parent tags a crayon brand in a toddler’s latest mural, a pet owner asks whether a recipe suits an older dog, and someone posts the chili they made with your beans. That direct line is the heart of CPG social media, and for many brands it is one of very few they have.

People are open to it: in Emplifi’s Social Pulse survey of nearly 1,000 US social media users, 58% said they follow brand accounts for entertainment. That attention matters more to a CPG brand than to most, because the purchase happens somewhere else.

Growth looks different, too: a CPG brand rarely wins one big decision, and grows instead by staying in the routine, from the recipe someone saves to the review sitting next to the product on the retailer page.

This guide is written for social media, brand and digital marketing leaders at consumer packaged goods brands, and for the consumer affairs teams who answer the questions. It builds on our guide to social media strategy for CPG brands with six strategies, channels, AI, measurement and a 30/60/90-day plan, including a fast track for teams with a launch or seasonal moment coming up.

Why social is different for CPG brands

Four things set consumer packaged goods brands apart on social, and each one changes how a growth program works.

1. The retailer owns the sale. The purchase data and the loyalty program usually belong to the store. Emplifi’s Digital Authenticity research found that for purchases under $20 or £20, research most commonly starts on marketplaces and company websites, so a brand’s reviews and customer content need to be on those pages when people arrive.

2. Purchases are small, frequent and habitual. A can of beans rarely gets a week of research. People buy the same brands on repeat until something gives them a reason to switch, so growth comes from being part of the weeknight recipe or the rainy-afternoon craft.

3. The questions are about what goes in the product. Ingredients, allergens, where to find a flavor, what to do about a damaged pack: CPG questions arrive at volume, and some touch health and safety. The same Digital Authenticity research found 84% of consumers say quick response time is critical to authentic customer service, and an allergen question needs an answer that is both quick and right.

4. Portfolios run many brands, markets and agencies at once. A single CPG group can run dozens of brands, each with accounts in several markets and a local agency, often with a small team: in Emplifi’s State of Social Media Marketing report, 36% of social teams across industries have fewer than four people. In alcohol, food and health categories, each of those accounts also works within claims rules and, in some cases, age limits.

Where CPG social programs often get stuck

Most of the stuck points below come from how the work is organized between brand teams, consumer affairs and agencies, which makes them fixable.

The calendar runs from promotion to promotion. Coupons and retailer deals deserve their slot, and they work: Emplifi’s Social Pulse research found 60% of consumers have made a social purchase because of a discount or promotion. Between those moments, many feeds go quiet, and followers have little reason to stay.

Reviews stay on the brand’s own site. Many brands collect reviews on their website and stop there. The shopper reading a retailer’s product page never sees them, so a new flavor sits next to a rival with hundreds of reviews and a handful of its own.

Consumer affairs and social work in separate systems. A question about an allergen arrives in a TikTok comment, while the approved answer lives in the consumer affairs knowledge base. In Social Pulse, 55% of frequent social media users said they most often turn to Facebook for customer service issues and 47% to Instagram, so the questions land on social whether the workflow is ready or not.

Reporting stops at reach. Because the retailer holds the sales data, social reports often end at impressions and follower counts, which leaves commercial leaders asking what social did for the brand on the shelf.

Six CPG social media strategies for audience growth

Each strategy below works on its own, and together they cover the path from first follow to repeat purchase. Pick the one closest to your biggest gap and start there.

1. Create content that earns a place in everyday routines

People keep following a brand they buy every week when the feed is useful or fun between purchases. For a food brand that means recipes and shortcuts, and for a craft brand something to make on a Saturday morning. The product belongs in the post because it is part of the idea, and visual, everyday categories start with an advantage on Instagram.

Seasonal and cultural moments give a habitual product a fresh reason to show up, from a cold-weather chili to recipes for Ramadan evenings. Plan them market by market, because a moment that fills feeds in one country barely registers in another.

Bush’s says it asked a witch to cast a good-weather spell on Chili Magic, so Halloween is “just chilly enough for chili,” and points followers to limited-edition cans.

Entertainment travels furthest. In Emplifi’s quarterly FMCG Food benchmarks, the top food brand on Instagram by interactions was Grillo’s Pickles, with almost 5 million interactions from 179 posts, and its most-engaged post of the quarter was a Reel. Humor works across categories: in Emplifi’s Social Pulse research, 28% of social media users said a post that used humor has driven them to buy.

Grillo’s Pickles tells “the tale of the pickle king” in a Reel with a one-line caption and no recipe in sight.

A few habits keep everyday content in the routine:

• Build around use. Recipes, pairings and hacks put the product inside a moment people already have.
• Give each brand a recurring format. A weekly recipe or a running character gives followers a reason to come back.
• Plan the calendar by market. Map the holidays and seasons that matter in each country, and leave room for moments nobody can predict.
• Make it worth saving. Carousels with the ingredients and steps, and Reels that show the result in the first second, are the posts people keep and send.

2. Let fan content and reviews travel to the shelf

CPG proof does its best work on pages the brand doesn’t own. A shopper choosing between two salsas on a grocery app reads the reviews on that page, and reviews collected on a brand’s own website rarely reach it unless they are syndicated there.

Syndication carries reviews to every retailer that stocks the product, so coverage follows it wherever it is sold. Because the retailer keeps the customer record, most CPG brands gather reviews through sampling programs, on-pack prompts and retailers’ own review programs, and add post-purchase email only where they sell direct. Start with new launches, which arrive with no reviews, and the best sellers at your largest retailers. Emplifi Ratings and Reviews syndicates reviews to hundreds of retail partners.

Retailers have their own reasons to want that content: GNC, the health and wellness retailer, shows reviews from vendor websites on its own product pages and has collected more than 145,000 syndicated reviews alongside more than 130,000 native ones. “We’ve onboarded quite a few vendors via syndication and it’s wonderful that I only have to make the connection with the vendor and the Emplifi team handle the rest,” says Alison Schmitz, Product Manager, Ecommerce at GNC.

Our guide to how retail brands grow their social media audience covers the retailer’s side of this exchange. For the brand, credible proof matters most on a shelf full of similar products.

Fan photos and videos belong in the same flow: once the fan has given permission, a tagged photo of a kid’s craft or a dog at dinner works on product pages, in retailer content and in paid social. In Emplifi’s quarterly FMCG Food benchmarks, brands using Emplifi UGC recorded an average 11.49x conversion rate uplift on UGC, a figure from the Worldwide Brands UGC benchmark, which covers every category.

Freshpet puts a five-star review from “Adam F, real pet parent” on a feed post, stars and quote included, above a photo of a dog at its bowl.

Reply to critical reviews on retailer pages as well as your own, because the next shopper reads the answer along with the complaint.

3. Answer consumer questions at volume, in public and in DMs

Every CPG brand gets the same questions on repeat. Is it gluten-free, does it contain nuts, where can I find the new flavor? An answer given in public helps the next person who wonders, and some answers protect a consumer from harm.

Consistency matters because switching is easy when the alternative sits on the same shelf, and in Emplifi’s Social Pulse research, 46% of consumers said they leave a brand after two bad experiences.

At B&G Foods, the consumer affairs team uses Emplifi Agent to handle phone, email, social and mail for more than 50 brands, with UPCs, best-by dates and availability by location on screen for every agent. When an acquisition brought a 50% increase in contact volume, agents answered the new brand’s questions from the same system.

Bush Brothers & Company, the family-owned maker of Bush’s Beans, handled about 30,000 calls, letters and emails a year on recipes, ingredients, product issues and where to find a product. Moving that work into Emplifi Agent took turnaround from three to four days to same-day responses, without adding staff.

Four steps keep social and consumer affairs giving the same answers:

• Tag every question by type. Ingredients and allergens, where to buy, how to use and product problems each go to the right owner.
• Answer from one approved source. Ingredient and allergen replies come only from the consumer affairs knowledge base, checked against the current label, so a comment and a phone call get the same answer. Every approved answer has an owner and a review date.
• Answer in public, resolve in private. Reply in the thread on where to buy and how to use, and move anything personal or health-related to a DM handled by a person, along with lot codes and addresses.
• Escalate safety signals at once. Mentions of illness, an allergic reaction, a foreign object or a damaged seal go straight to quality and consumer affairs, with the post attached.

When a recall happens, pin one approved statement on every affected account, use the same wording on every channel and point replies back to it, with consumer affairs owning the statement and its updates. Pause scheduled posts for that brand until the statement is live.

Turn the questions consumer affairs answers most into short videos, so the answer to “how should I store this?” reaches people who never ask.

Freshpet teams up with veterinarian Dr. Terrell to work through common pet nutrition questions on camera, under the title “Fur-real or fiction?”

4. Launch with creators and fans, and check every claim first

Launches are where CPG brands need reach most, whether it is a new flavor or a format nobody has tried yet. Creators who already cook or care for pets the way your buyers do can explain a new product to their audience in a voice it trusts.

Instagram Collabs make that reach direct: in Emplifi’s analysis of Instagram collab posts, more than 73% of brands published collaborative posts, and accepted collaborations, where the creator publishes and invites the brand as co-author, delivered the strongest engagement uplift. Brands with the most user-generated content tagging them also saw stronger collab results, so the fans already posting about you are a good place to look for creators.

Creator @thebeautybeau shows the Crayola Color Wonder Magic Light Brush in a Collab with @crayola, and her caption opens with #ad.

Claims need a gate before anything is filmed, because food, nutrition, health and sustainability claims are regulated in most markets, and a creator improvising “this is so healthy” on camera can turn an approved product into an unapproved claim. Alcohol brands carry extra checks on the age of creators and their audiences, and on the responsible drinking messages that travel with the content.

Disclosure has its own rules. In the US, creators and brands follow the FTC’s Endorsement Guides, and in the UK, the ASA and CAP guide for influencers sets out how to make clear that ads are ads.

Run every creator through the same order before anyone shoots anything:

• Category fit. They already cook, craft, clean or feed pets the way your buyers do.
• Audience age and market. Their audience matches the market you are launching in, and for alcohol, it is of legal drinking age.
• Claims check. Every product claim in the brief comes from your approved claims list, and the creator knows which claims to leave out.
• Disclosure. A clear paid partnership label or #ad on every sponsored post, on every platform.
• Rights and tracking. Usage rights for retailer pages and paid media, plus a tracking link or code for each creator.

Fans count as launch partners too, so send early product to people who already post about you, invite them to tag the brand and label any review that came from a free sample. Their first photos and reviews are what a launch needs on retailer pages in its first weeks.

5. Turn listening into content and product signals the same week

Social listening tells a CPG brand what its sales data often can’t: the flavor people wish existed, the unexpected way they use a product, the ingredient worry spreading through a parenting group, the pack that leaks. Its value depends on how quickly someone acts on it, so agree in advance who receives each kind of signal.

Some signals become content within days: a pairing fans keep mentioning becomes next week’s recipe, and a hack that is spreading gets the brand’s own version. In the same Social Pulse research, 21% of social media users said content that felt topical and current has driven them to buy.

Other signals belong with the product team. Freshpet uses social listening to join wellness conversations on TikTok and Instagram even when the brand isn’t tagged, and shares recurring themes about recipes, ingredients, feeding guidance and quality with its marketing, digital product and quality teams. “Emplifi helps us move beyond narratives, so everyday parent conversations can inform smarter business decisions for us,” says Lisa Diehl, Senior Director of Consumer Care at Freshpet.

Launch posts are some of the richest sources a brand has, because the comments fill up with where-to-buy questions and votes for what should stay.

Bush’s announces Apple Pie, Dill Pickle and Rocket Pop beans as summer-only flavors, with “Now at Walmart” on the image, and the comments ask where to find a flavor and which one should stay.

Risk signals need the same speed: a run of posts about a strange taste or a broken seal is often the first sign of a quality issue, and it belongs with quality and consumer affairs that day, alongside a holding reply in the thread.

6. Give every brand, market and agency the same playbook

In a CPG portfolio, each brand has its own voice and each market its own agency and calendar. Without shared tools and rules, the global team can’t see what’s working or compare one launch with another. The consumer affairs setup at B&G Foods in strategy 3 applies the same idea to questions, with one knowledge base behind every brand.

Jägermeister’s local markets once ran social through their own agencies and tools, which left the global team with no central access and no consistent data. Today its accounts across markets are managed in Emplifi, with shared scheduling, reporting and KPIs.

“We’re able to maintain visibility from HQ while giving each market the autonomy to operate in the way that works best for them,” says Kat Geborys, Global Head of Digital Marketing at Jägermeister. Shared rules are what make that autonomy safe, from a common approval workflow to the same definitions in every report.

Agree who owns what before the next launch. The central team usually owns the brand voice and approved claims list, the publishing calendar and approvals, the creator rules, the rights and review library, crisis and recall statements, and reporting. Markets, brands and agencies bring what headquarters can’t see: local recipes and seasonal moments, retailer and availability details, creator relationships in the market, and replies in the local language.

Crayola UK, the brand’s market account, tells followers “You asked, we listened” as Globbles arrive in the UK.

For reporting, start by brand and market, then roll everything up into one view with the same definitions everywhere. Put each launch’s follower growth beside its retailer review score and its top consumer questions, so an allergen question that spikes after a reformulation shows up next to the campaign for that product.

Channels and formats: where to put your effort

Each platform plays a different role in consumer packaged goods social media. The table maps each channel to its main job, the formats that perform well and a common pitfall.

Instagram is where most CPG brands earn their engagement, and Facebook is where much of their audience still sits. Emplifi’s quarterly FMCG Food benchmarks show both sides: the median food brand’s Instagram post earned 33 interactions against nine on Facebook, with Carousels (41) and Reels (36) well ahead of single images (26). Yet the same brands have almost twice as many Facebook fans as Instagram followers.

That makes Facebook the home for community, consumer questions and paid reach. Reach there is affordable, too: in the same benchmarks, food brands’ cost per thousand impressions ended September at $1.03, under half the worldwide figure of $2.25 for all industries.

TikTok is where trends start and new audiences find a brand, so it rewards personality and speed over polish. Freshpet’s consumer care team made TikTok and Instagram central to its approach, because that is where pet health and food conversations happen in real time.

X suits brands with a quick, conversational voice, as long as someone is ready to reply while the moment is still live.

YouTube and Pinterest are where people look up a recipe or a craft weeks after they first see it, so check the most-viewed videos and pins whenever a recipe, formulation or pack changes.

Retailer sites and marketplaces are where a launch is most exposed, because a new product arrives there with no reviews while established rivals show hundreds. Syndicated reviews from sampling are how it catches up.

Private messaging is where product issues end up. Saved replies cover the routine questions, and a clear handoff to consumer affairs covers anything involving health or safety.

Matching content to the purchase decision

Even a habitual purchase moves through stages, and each one needs something different from social.

Discovery is a big reason people follow brands at all: in the Social Pulse survey, 57% said they follow brand accounts to learn about new products. At the shelf, social works best on people already in buying mode, and 35% of the same respondents said a post drove them to buy when they were already shopping for the product.

Buying again depends on how the brand behaves: Emplifi’s Digital Authenticity research found 52% would stop buying from a brand after an inauthentic experience, and in a habitual category that means every future shop.

AI in CPG social media: where it earns its place

Consumers rank industries differently when it comes to trusting AI.

That trust has limits: the same survey of nearly 900 US consumers found 40% stopped engaging with a brand after a negative AI interaction, and most want to know when they are dealing with AI. For a CPG team, that points AI toward volume and pattern-finding, with people handling health and safety.

Freshpet routes routine questions to Scout, its FAQ bot on freshpet.com, while live agents handle feeding guidance, product concerns and health questions. “Trust is everything for Freshpet, especially when conversations involve health or nutrition,” says Lisa Diehl.

Where AI works well in a CPG social program:

• Triage at volume. Sorting comments and DMs by question type, so each reaches the right owner first.
• Spotting trends early. Flagging a spike in mentions of a flavor, a pairing or a complaint before it shows up in sales data.
• Summarizing reviews. Turning hundreds of reviews into themes such as “too salty” or “kids love it” for shoppers and the product team.
• First drafts from approved answers. Suggested replies drawn from the consumer affairs knowledge base, checked before sending.

Some calls stay with a person, and a useful test is whether a wrong answer could harm someone or put the brand outside its approved claims:

• Allergen, ingredient and nutrition questions where health is involved
• Reports of illness, injury, a foreign object or tampering
• Recall and safety communication
• Health, nutrition and sustainability claims
• Upset consumers taking a complaint public

Settle the disclosure line before AI-drafted replies start going out. A short line works: “We use AI to help us reply faster. A person on our consumer care team checks anything about allergies or product safety.” Label AI-generated food and product imagery just as plainly, so nobody mistakes a rendering for the real thing.

Fanta ends the caption of this Halloween Reel with “This content was generated using artificial intelligence.”

On Emplifi, Fuel AI, the agentic intelligence layer built into Emplifi Fuel, handles this work. It sorts and routes incoming questions, flags trend and risk spikes, summarizes reviews and drafts replies, while approval steps your team sets keep a person in charge of anything that touches health, safety or a product claim.

How to measure what matters

Commercial leaders want to see how social supports the brand where it is sold, so a fuller report starts with followers and connects them to proof at the shelf and to consumer care.

Q3 2026 FMCG Food benchmarks are published for Worldwide, North America, Latin America, the Middle East, and Australia and New Zealand, alongside category editions for confectionery, dairy, baby food and FMCG corporate accounts. Alcohol and beverage brands can use the Worldwide editions for their categories.

Crayola’s results below show the speed side of this report.

What Crayola did

The challenge. Crayola’s fans run from toddlers to trendsetters, across families, classrooms and creators, and they talk to the brand on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and X at once. The team’s previous tool lacked TikTok support and relied on slow, manual processes, especially during campaign surges and viral moments. “Our old workflow meant it could take days to process what was going viral,” says Brittany Mehalick, Social Media Engagement and Trends Manager at Crayola.

What they did. The team moved engagement into Emplifi Community, which made TikTok a monitored, manageable part of the daily flow. Bulk labeling and automated routing cleaned up the workflow, and templates kept the tone consistent. When Crayola brought back eight retired crayon colors, each color answered fans in its own voice, playful in tone and tightly run behind the scenes.

Emplifi Listening also surfaced a pattern in conversations about air-dry clay: customers were pairing it with specific paints, and that insight moved upstream into product strategy.

Crayola’s Halloween Reel pairs its Air-Dry Clay with Acrylic Paint and spells out the combination in the caption.

“We’re listening with purpose using Emplifi. And that’s showing up in how we connect, how we plan, and how we build loyalty over time,” says Mehalick.

The result. Viral content is processed 80% faster, monitored TikTok engagement rose 100%, and the team detects and responds to emerging trends 90% faster. Global teams now receive region-specific sentiment snapshots, and reporting that used to drain time takes a few clicks.

Your 30/60/90-day plan

If a launch or seasonal moment is close: start here

When a new product or a big seasonal window is weeks away, do these four things first.

• Write saved answers for the questions the launch will bring, from where to buy and how to use to ingredients and allergens, approved by consumer affairs and checked against the current label.
• Brief two or three creators who already use the category, with the approved claims list and disclosure rules in the brief.
• Send early product to fans who post about you, so reviews and photos exist on retailer pages in the first weeks.
• Agree the escalation path for safety reports with quality and consumer affairs before launch day.

First 30 days: map what you have

Start by finding the proof, the questions and the accounts you already have.

• List every account across brands and markets, with its owner, agency and the metrics it reports.
• Rank your top 30 products by sales, then count reviews and average rating for each at your three largest retailers.
• Pull the 20 questions consumer affairs answers most, with volumes, and check how social answers the same ones today.
• Set up listening on your brands, your category and your most-discussed pairings.

Days 31–60: build the engine

The second month builds out what the fast track started.

• Extend review collection beyond the launch: sampling, on-pack prompts and retailer review programs for the products with the weakest coverage, plus post-purchase email where you sell direct, all syndicated to your largest retail partners.
• Extend the launch answers into saved replies for the top 20 questions, each with an owner and a review date, and turn the five most common into short videos.
• Turn the creator briefs into your first Collab, run through the screening order above, with a tracking link in place.
• Build the escalation path you agreed for launch into one queue for comments, DMs and reviews, with routing by question type.

Days 61–90: show the results

The third month turns the work into a report a commercial leader will read.

• Send the first monthly report by brand and market, rolled up into one view with shared definitions.
• Report review coverage and rating changes at your top retailers next to follower growth and engagement.
• Send the product and quality teams their first monthly digest of requests and complaint themes from listening.
• Benchmark engagement against the FMCG Food, Alcohol or Beverages figures for your category and region, and set next quarter’s targets with the category team.

Be worth following between shopping trips

For most CPG brands the shelf belongs to someone else, which makes the feed one of the few places the brand can talk directly to the people who buy it. The brands that grow there keep a small, regular place in people’s days, whether that is a recipe on a Tuesday or a careful answer about an allergen.

Much of that comes down to who owns what: route each question to the person with the approved answer, and let reviews follow the product to its retailers. Start with the launch fast track if a new flavor is weeks away, or with the first 30 days if it isn’t.

On Emplifi, these pieces connect. Emplifi Ratings and Reviews syndicates reviews to hundreds of retail partners and Emplifi UGC clears rights on fan photos, while Emplifi Community and Emplifi Care bring comments and DMs into one queue that hands health and safety cases to consumer affairs in Emplifi Agent. Emplifi Influencers vets creators and tracks the clicks and codes they drive, Emplifi Publisher routes posts through brand, regional and legal approvals, and Emplifi Listening flags trend and risk spikes.

Tonight someone will stand in an aisle with two jars in hand, and the recipe they saved from your feed last week can settle it.

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