# Mapping the FMCG funnelfunnelThe customer journey from awareness to purchase, typically Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Decision, Action, with prospects narrowing at each stage.View full definition → from awareness to the second purchase
A shopper sees a TikTok ad for a new oat milk brand, picks it up during a Tuesday grocery run, likes it, and buys it again three weeks later. That sequence, awareness to trial to repeat, is worth more to an FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) company than almost any other metric in the marketing dashboard, because the gap between "tried it once" and "bought it twice" is where most new products in grocery actually die.
This lesson maps that funnelfunnelThe customer journey from awareness to purchase, typically Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Decision, Action, with prospects narrowing at each stage.View full definition → stage by stage, attaches real benchmark ranges from household and personal care categories, and shows which single marketers watch most closely to predict whether a brand will hold shelf space next year.
In subscription software or banking, the funnelfunnelThe customer journey from awareness to purchase, typically Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Decision, Action, with prospects narrowing at each stage.View full definition → often ends at "signed contract." In FMCG, the sale itself is cheap and frequent (a $4 shampoo, a $6 cereal box), so the funnelfunnelThe customer journey from awareness to purchase, typically Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Decision, Action, with prospects narrowing at each stage.View full definition → doesn't stop at first purchase. It has to survive many repurchase cycles.
The standard FMCG funnelfunnelThe customer journey from awareness to purchase, typically Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Decision, Action, with prospects narrowing at each stage.View full definition → has five stages:
1. Awareness: the shopper knows the brand exists.
2. Trial: the shopper buys it for the first time.
3. First purchase conversion: awareness turns into an actual basket addition.
4. Repeat purchase: the shopper buys it again within a defined window.
5. Loyalty (or habitual repurchase): the shopper buys it repeatedly and it becomes part of their regular basket.
Each stage has its own conversion rateconversion rateThe percentage of visitors or prospects who complete a desired action (purchase, sign-up, contact form), calculated as conversions divided by total opportunities.View full definition →, and each is measurable through different tools: brand trackingbrand trackingRegular measurement of brand health metrics (awareness, image, preference, and purchase intent) over time, so shifts can be detected and linked to marketing activity.View full definition → surveys for awareness, retail scanner and loyalty-card data for trial and repeat, and panel data (like Nielsen or Circana household panels) for long-term loyalty.
Awareness is usually measured two ways:
Unaided awareness is the harder, more valuable number. In mature CPG (consumer packaged goods) categories like laundry detergent, unaided awareness for a leading brand (Tide, Persil) can sit near 60 to 80% in the US and Europe, based on typical brand trackerbrand trackerRegular measurement of brand health metrics (awareness, image, preference, and purchase intent) over time, so shifts can be detected and linked to marketing activity.View full definition → outputs (estimate, varies by market and survey house). A new entrant often launches with unaided awareness under 5%.
The mistake many marketers make: pouring media budget into awareness long after the category ceiling is reached. If your target market already has 70% aided awareness, another $2 million in TV spend moves that number very little. The budget is often better spent one stage down, on trial.
Trial is the actual first purchase. The relevant metric is the awareness-to-trial conversion rate:
Awareness-to-trial rate = (number of people who tried the product) / (number of people aware of the brand)Benchmarks vary hugely by category, but as a rough estimate from CPG industry commentary: in personal care and packaged food, awareness-to-trial rates commonly fall in the 3% to 10% range for a new SKU (stock keeping unit) launch in a competitive category, and can be higher (10% to 20%) for a well-distributed line extension of an already-trusted brand.
Trial is heavily driven by distribution (is it actually on shelf where the aware shopper shops) and price promotion (a $1-off coupon or a two-for-one deal). This is why FMCG launch budgets split heavily between media (build awareness) and trade spend (secure shelf placement and promotional pricing to convert that awareness).
Worked example:
A brand spends $3 million on a launch campaign that reaches 10 million shoppers, of whom 40% become aware (4 million people). Of those aware, 6% try the product (240,000 buyers). At an average first-purchase price of $5, that's $1.2 million in trial-stage revenue against $3 million in launch spend. On its own, trial revenue rarely covers launch cost. The launch only pays back if enough of those 240,000 buyers repeat.
This is the number FMCG marketers obsess over. The repeat purchase rate measures what share of trial buyers buy the product again within a set window (commonly 12 weeks, or within one "repurchase cycle" for the category).
Repeat purchase rate = (triers who buy again) / (total triers)Industry rules of thumb, treated as estimates from CPG new-product-development literature and panel data providers like Circana: a repeat rate below roughly 30 to 35% in food and beverage is a warning sign the product may not sustain distribution. A repeat rate above 40 to 50% is generally considered healthy for a new packaged food or household product.
Why does repeat rate matter more than trial rate? Because trial can be bought (with coupons, sampling, influencer seeding), but repeat purchase reflects genuine product satisfaction: does it taste right, does it work, is the price worth it next time without a discount. Retailers watching category performance (via tools like Nielsen IQ or Circana retail measurement) use repeat rate, not trial volume, to decide whether to keep a new SKU on shelf after the initial listing period, often 12 to 18 months.
A useful public explainer on how new product trial and repeat is tracked in practice is this overview from Kantar on brand growth measurement, which describes how penetration and repeat combine to drive brand share (an accessible starting point even for non-technical readers).
The final stage isn't a single repurchase but a pattern. Marketers track share of category requirements (SCR), sometimes called share of wallet within category: of all the units a household buys in this category over a year, what percentage are your brand.
SCR = (units of your brand bought by household) / (total category units bought by household)A loyal household might buy your yogurt brand 70% of the time and switch to two other brands the remaining 30%. True 100% loyalty is rare in FMCG; most categories run on "polygamous loyalty," a concept popularized by marketing scientist Byron Sharp's How Brands Grow research, showing most buyers of any brand, even market leaders, also buy competitors regularly.
This matters for benchmark-setting: don't expect or design campaigns around 90% loyalty. A realistic ambition for a strong FMCG brand is growing SCR from something like 15% to 25% among its buyer base over several years, largely by increasing what Sharp's research calls "mental availability" (being top of mind at the moment of purchase) and physical availability (being easy to find and buy).
Knowledge check
1. Why does the FMCG marketing funnel extend well beyond the first purchase, unlike funnels in subscription software or banking?
2. A shopper is asked, 'Name the brands you know in this category' with no brand names shown to them. What is this measuring, and why is it considered a stronger signal than the alternative method?
3. A brand has high awareness and strong trial rates, but very few shoppers buy it a second time. Based on the funnel logic described, where is this brand's core problem located?
4. Select ALL correct answers about the tools used to measure different stages of the FMCG funnel.
Select all the correct answers.
5. Select ALL correct answers about the five-stage FMCG funnel described in the lesson.
Select all the correct answers.
Each funnelfunnelThe customer journey from awareness to purchase, typically Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Decision, Action, with prospects narrowing at each stage.View full definition → stage has a cost attached, and FMCG marketers track customer acquisition cost (CAC), here better described as trial acquisition cost, since "customer" in FMCG is fuzzier than in subscription businesses.
Trial acquisition cost = total launch marketing + trade spend / number of triers generatedUsing the earlier example: $3 million spent to generate 240,000 triers gives a trial acquisition costacquisition costCustomer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total sales and marketing spend divided by the number of new customers gained in a period. It measures how efficiently you grow.View full definition → of $12.50 per trier. Whether that's a good number depends entirely on downstream repeat rate and the product's margin per unit over the following two to three years, the FMCG equivalent of lifetime value (LTV), calculated here as expected repeat purchases times margin per unit times average repeat frequency per year.
This is the core logic linking funnel metricsfunnel metricsFunnel analysis tracks how users move through a sequence of steps toward a goal, revealing where they drop off and which stages need improvement.View full definition → to brand share: a low trial acquisition costacquisition costCustomer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total sales and marketing spend divided by the number of new customers gained in a period. It measures how efficiently you grow.View full definition → with a weak repeat rate produces a flash-in-the-pan launch. A slightly higher trial acquisition costacquisition costCustomer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total sales and marketing spend divided by the number of new customers gained in a period. It measures how efficiently you grow. with a strong repeat rate compounds into durable share, because each repeat purchase costs the company close to nothing in incremental marketing.
🎬 [VIDEO: "How Brands Grow: The Byron Sharp Marketing Framework Explained" - youtube.com - a walkthrough of penetration, loyalty, and mental/physical availability concepts underlying FMCG funnelfunnelThe customer journey from awareness to purchase, typically Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Decision, Action, with prospects narrowing at each stage.View full definition → benchmarks]