Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is an excerpt of a current article from the Compete Blog. Compete Inc. is a web analytics company that focuses on understanding how consumers use the internet.
By Debra Miller
As wallets get tighter and tighter, people are increasingly making their own meals instead of making restaurant reservations, and turning to the internet for cooking help. Last month, people conducted 18 million searches that included the word "recipe," more than a 50 percent increase in the number of searches from the year prior. Searches for "casserole" and "pasta," both easy and low cost meal options, rose by 56 percent.
Among the top visited cooking sites, four are owned by large consumer packaged goods companies. Why is this so notable? Sale of brand name products have taken a hit over the past year. More and more budget-conscious shoppers are turning to private label product in lieu of their pricier brand name counterparts. Consumer packaged goods companies need to find more creative ways to sell their brands, and what better way to accomplish this goal than to create recipes centering around their products. Betty Crocker, Kraft, Pillsbury and General Mills are banking on this theory and are aggressively targeting people searching for recipes.
Above is search referral data for the four recipe sites. On average, search referrals to the sites - comprised of paid and unpaid referrals - have doubled over the past year. At the same time, the percent of paid referrals - generated when a user clicks through on a paid search result - has increased exponentially. Non-branded food and recipe terms currently comprise a significant percent of their paid terms and, unsurprisingly, are among the top keywords driving traffic to the domains. This strategy has had a positive impact on site visitation.
Traffic to all four sites has steadily increased over the past year, peaking during the last two months of the year along with pumpkin pie, sweet potato, and gingerbread cookie consumption. So will this strategy compel shoppers to purchase Pillsbury crest rolls, Philadelphia cream cheese, Bisquick pancake mix and Progresso soups instead of the private brand? Perhaps, but if nothing else, at least these companies are helping people find a tasty recipe for a quality home cooked meal.
Discussion Questions: How are CPG food brands best capitalizing on cooking/recipe websites? What opportunities are they missing? How can retailers also tap into their popularity?