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5 Essential Shopper Marketing Skills

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Five Essential Shopper Marketing Skills
Five Essential Shopper Marketing Skills

Are you building a shopper marketing team and struggling to define what you’re looking for? Perhaps you’re looking for a role in shopper marketing and you’re not sure if you’ve got what it takes? In a relatively new discipline, finding skilled and experienced ‘shopper marketers’ can be tough. So what are the essential shopper marketing skills that make a great ‘shopper marketer’ and where do you look for them?

Shopper marketing is marketing

The first principle to grasp is that shopper marketing is a business process which seeks to change shopping behavior in order to drive consumption of a brand. Like other forms of marketing, the process identifies a target segment, sets objectives for behavioral change and defines a marketing mix to deliver these. Like other forms of marketing, it is multi-disciplinary drawing on a broad understanding of the business issues facing a brand and; like any marketer, potential ‘shopper marketers’ need a number of fundamental skills to be successful.

Essential shopper marketing skill 1: The ability to create insight

If you read my blog last week, you’ll have seen that shopper insights can be commercial game changers so the ability to find insights in data is a ‘must have’. Shopper marketers need to have a keen sense of where business growth opportunities might exist and be able to develop hypotheses about these. They need to have the patience to sort through a variety of data sets to find evidence to validate these hypotheses whilst demonstrating their creativity in finding proxies and alternatives when no direct data can be found. Once they’ve found proof that an opportunity exists great shopper marketers can evaluate these opportunities, showing how their realization contributes to the company’s objectives as well as those of its customers.

Essential shopper marketing skill 2: The ability to segment

Shoppers are real people, just like you and me. Since we are almost certainly different, so are shoppers. The ability to segment people who buy a brand in a meaningful and measurable way helps shopper teams target effectively. The same skills help define relevant retail environments in which invest. Great shopper marketers demonstrate an ability to seek out relevant differentiators upon which to base their segmentation and an ability to balance complexity and practicality so that the whole business can act on their conclusions.

Essential shopper marketing skill 3: The ability to prioritize

Marketing is both complex and expensive and since all companies work within limited resources (though some more so than others!), the ability to define what not focus on is always valuable. This is perhaps more true in the field of shopper marketing as the level of complexity can be exponentially greater as one considers finer segmentations of shoppers and channels (imagine having to create specific campaigns for every shopper segment in every channel and for every brand). Knowing how to define the fastest path to growth and excluding the difficult and the low-value ensures effort, energy and investment flows to the places they are needed.

Essential shopper marketing skill 4: The ability to plan

I mentioned that shopper marketing is multi-disciplinary: Successful campaigns depend on the actions of practically every part of the business. Shopper marketers who can demonstrate their understanding of who is required to do what, when in order to achieve specific and measurable objectives are a valuable commodity.  What marks a great shopper marketer out though is a sensitivity for the needs of external parties and retailers in particular to ensure things get executed.

Essential shopper marketing skill 5: The ability to communicate

Shopper marketing as a function rarely sits at the heart of the business – we’ve found shopper teams in marketing teams, digital teams, as sub-sets of trade marketing teams (bizarrely) and in sales teams. Many of the guys and girls we work with manage multiple stakeholders and the best are true chameleons – finding common ground with finance experts, sales reps, digital teams and retail buyers alike. Wherever the team sits, the ability of its managers to ‘sell’ the value of their objectives and secure agreement to action against plans is key.

Shopper marketers are marketers

By now many of you should be asking what the difference between a marketer and a shopper marketer is and the true answer is ‘very little’. The same skills that make a marketer successful are the ones that will make a shopper marketer shine. Sure shopper teams need to understand the differences between consumer behavior and shopper behavior. Of course they need be more aware of the trade than their consumer or digital peers. But point to any truly successful marketer and ask yourself if they don’t these traits too.

If you’re thinking about where to find the next member of your shopper team or you’re thinking about making the move for yourself, these essential skills are the ones you should be building on and if you need help, feel free to get in touch.

5 game-changing shopper insights

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Searching for Shopper Insights?
Searching for Shopper Insights?

Every marketer I know is seeking insights, but shopper insights seem to be particularly elusive. Many struggle to define what shopper insights are, where they might find them and what they might do once they have found one. This week, I thought I’d share five of the most impactful shopper insights we’ve found over the years, how we found them and what they delivered for the brands we were working for.

What are shopper insights?

Shopper insights are those little nuggets of information that help marketers see new opportunities to change purchase behavior and increase the consumption of their brands. They’re so elusive because you can’t ‘buy’ shopper insights, they have to be found. For many this is really frustrating, research programs are bought with express purpose of delivering insights but, when the presentation finally arrives, all you get is information. Turning information into insight is a process that involves both art and science, but its generally a process that starts after the researchers leave the room.

Game-changing shopper insights number 1: The consumer isn’t buying

Often marketers assume that their consumer is the buyer of their brand but for one global male grooming brand, we found that 40% of sales were made to women. This meant that a large proportion of the category’s sales were made to people who have no personal experience of using the products. Finding this information was actually easy – an exit poll asked the gender of the shoppers and also asked for whom the purchase was being made. The hard part was persuading the team that a large proportion of female shoppers were not influenced by what their men told them to buy, but by what they saw in the store.

A similar finding played a role in the Old Spice “The Man your Man Could Smell Like” campaign some years back,

where it was recognized that encouraging women to buy the brand for their partners might be more effective than leaving the decision to men alone. The outcome in both cases was a more targeted marketing approach that drove share by switching shoppers to the brand.

Game-changing shopper insights number 2: There isn’t one target shopper, there’s many

For a global coffee brand wishing to expand its distribution, we found the key factors that prevented shoppers from buying differed from person to person. Using a shopper study, we found that lapsed brand shoppers and non-buyers could be segmented based on their attitude to the brand, the price point and the availability of products in a local store. The biggest potential segments were those who felt the brand wasn’t for them or that it did meet taste expectations. When the flavor profiles and brand communication were re-configured, market share grew by 15%.

Game-changing shopper insights number 3: The biggest channel isn’t the most important

Whilst working for a global baby food brand we found that mothers switched brand only once. We mapped channel missions across a wide range of outlets and found an interesting insight: On the day shoppers switched brands, they were 70% more likely to visit a pharmacist than their regular supermarket or hypermarket. The sales created by this single visit made this small channel one of the most important for the brand. This created the potential to build a new relationship with a much lower cost channel than the major key accounts the brand had been investing in.

Game-changing shopper insights number 4: Shoppers don’t notice off-shelf activity

For one major dairy producer, we were asked to consider if promotions were working. Having observed shoppers walking straight past promotional ends we decided to test empirically how many had seen a promotion in store – the finding? Less that 7% had! For a brand pumping heavy investment into ends and price off deals this was an uncomfortable insight, but one that lead the team to re-focus investment onto more profitable activity on the home shelf.

Game-changing shopper insights number 5: The brand is more important to shoppers than you think

Ever wondered if retailers care about your brand? Whilst working with a team in Singapore we found that not only was one key retailer failing to convert nearly half of purchase intenders into buyers because shopper’s couldn’t find they brand they wanted, but worse, half of these shoppers left their entire basket behind in-store. Overall the retailer was loosing 14 million dollars in sales every year. This insight lead to an extensive program of re-merchandising and supply chain re-engineering and put our client in a leadership position for three years.

Searching for shopper insights?

In all these cases our clients had done extensive research before we got involved and had failed to gain insight from the data they had bought. Why? They expected to find it in a report. In my experience you’ll rarely find insights this way. Its far better to develop a set of hypotheses about what might grow your business and then look to the data to see how well it supports those hypotheses.

If you’re searching for shopper insights right now, or have recently something you’d like to share, contact me!

The “Little” Shopper Program That’s “This Big”

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Whilst taking a break from blogging, I’ve had the chance to focus on seeking out smart shopper programs to share. I came across one such program on a recent visit New Zealand, where I was speaking as the guest of Hypermedia and Geometry. During my trip I got the chance to meet up with the team at leading New Zealand’s seafood processor, Sealord. Sealord’s marketing director Sarah Sandoval and Geometry’s Louise Cunningham and Lina Montero Soto took me through a live shopper program they were running in conjunction with the New World chain of supermarkets.

A ‘little’ big idea

Sealord Little Boat Shopper Program Poster
Sealord Little Boat Shopper Program Poster

As with all great shopper programs this one began with a big idea: New World has secured a huge buzz from a collectable campaign called “Little Shop”. “Little Shop” rewards shoppers with miniature versions of the products they can buy in New World stores and these have become incredible popular with Kiwi kids. As Sealord and Geometry pondered how they could leverage this campaign, someone suggested a “little boat” might be just the vehicle needed to deliver “little” cans of Tuna to the “little store”.

From this a campaign was born – “Win Your Own Sealord Little Boat”. The little boats are scaled down replicas of two ships in the Sealord fleet and they’ve captured kid’s imagination across New Zealand. So enamored with the idea are New World that they’ve allowed Sealord to decorate some of their normally “clear aisles” with eye-catching point of sales materials.

Why “little boat” is such a smart shopper program

Successful shopper programs deliver on three levels; first they drive a change in shopper behavior that creates increased consumption; second, they profitably meet the company’s objectives and finally they meet the retailer’s objectives profitably too. ‘Little boat’ delivers on all three:

Changing shopper behavior

What’s interesting about this shopper program is that it spans a wide range of products within Sealord’s portfolio. Not only does it encourage shoppers to trade up from competitors to Sealord’s premium canned fish products but also it encourages them to buy high value chilled products like smoked salmon and indeed fresh fish at the seafood counter.

More that encouraging shoppers to buy though, the program also enables shoppers to buy. In many other categories we’ve seen that mums often find it hard to buy a healthy option for fear that children might reject it. In this case the volume of excitement amongst children for the competition may reduce their barriers to eating fish and may help mums to introduce more fish into the home.

As a result, this “little” shopper program may have a very profound impact on the diets of some families in New Zealand.

Delivering Sealord’s objectives profitably

Little Boat shopper program in-store
Little Boat shopper program in-store

It seems unlikely that this shopper program will fail to deliver incremental sales and the team should be bullish about the likely bounce in market share they’ll enjoy. Oftentimes however, well-oiled and well-engineered integrated campaigns deliver the bounce but not the RoI. Associated trade spend and media costs often eat up incremental profits. In this case, the support that has be secured at retail did not have to be bought because of the program’s fit with New World’s own strategy.

Further the social buzz that the campaign has created delivered major improvements in awareness without massive media investments. Whilst I have no idea what the financials are, I’m guessing that the RoI on this program will be both measurable and significant.

Delivering New World’s objectives profitably

The “little store” campaign that New World is running is undoubtedly targeted at drawing in more shoppers buying for young families. I’m certain the retailer is aiming to ensure that shoppers not only return to New World’s stores but also spend more whilst there. “Little boat” delivers these on all these levels. Why?

  1. It’s an exclusive offer that drives traffic to New World alone;
  2. It’s a reason for shoppers to return to New World, and;
  3. (Best of all) It encourages shoppers to buy premium products.

All considered, New World should be seeing a considerable upside in some important grocery categories, enjoying a solid halo effect from social chatter and acquiring market share from competitors. With low to no investment cost from New World to run the campaign, I would hope they are delighted!

Is this a perfect shopper program?

Like all retail campaigns there are some issues in execution but considering that New World generally rejects all but its own in-store communication, I think this is to be expected. For me I’d give it a solid 9 out of 10 and I think a huge amount of credit is due to the teams at Sealord and Geometry for delivering on so many levels.

I’ll be looking to share more cases over the coming months, so please feel free to connect if you have a shopper program you’d like me to share.

Tesco’s new CEO

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Dave Lewis - Unilever Executive

 Image from: Unilever

So Tesco has appointed a new CEO. Dave Lewis of Unilever is to head the company from October 1st and he inherits a business in a poor state. In my view he faces four key challenges:

Caught between pillar and post

Tesco’s positioning has suffered in the last few years. Caught between hard discounters like Lidl and Aldi and players like Waitrose who trade on quality, Tesco has struggled to stand for something. It’s neither cheap enough to compete on the one hand, nor is it good enough to cut the mustard on the other. Worse, the retailer’s fixation on price as a differentiator has led it away from some of the elements that made Tesco so compelling to shoppers a decade ago.

In fairness to the outgoing CEO, Phil Clarke, the company was already some way down this track before he took over from Terry Leahy but Clarke has failed to see the writing on the wall: Price is simply not a strong enough platform upon which to build a retail brand.

Tesco’s new CEO will have to draw on his significant experience to re-position this brand. This will be a global challenge for him; it’s clear that shoppers in the US, Japan and China never ‘got’ Tesco as a brand. Without a strongly differentiated position in growth markets like Turkey, Thailand and Malaysia, Tesco will struggle to bounce back.

Global retailer?

Tesco is the world’s second largest retailer (according to Deloitte) but it operates on a limited geographic footprint of only 12 countries. As compared to Walmart and Carrefour who operate in 27 and 34 countries, Tesco is positively parochial. Tesco has had mixed results in its gambles abroad and it’s likely that shareholders will demand better performance from the retailer’s overseas operations in the near future.

Tesco’s new CEO will be expected to have a clear strategy for existing holdings outside the UK. He’ll have to make tough calls whilst fending off disgruntled shareholders who would re-trench the business and realizing opportunities in a world where retail is increasingly global.

Right store format?

There was a time in the mid-noughties when it felt like Tesco was taking over the world (remember this 2006 spoof video?).

Stores were opened at (to some) an alarming rate. Early expansion was driven by large hypermarket style propositions in commercial locations. But shopping habits are changing rapidly. In Asia and Europe observers note that shoppers are increasingly choosing to shop closer to home in smaller outlets or to buy online. The big box of yesteryear looks increasingly outdated and as a result like-for-like sales are falling.

Tesco’s new CEO faces a significant problem here, with large amount of his balance-sheet tied up in property of questionable long-term value he may find that he has insufficient liquidity to revitalize his store portfolio. This presents leaner small-store competitors and online retailers with a major opportunity to snipe at Tesco’s market shares in the medium-term which will compound Lewis’ problems.

The online challenge

The last major challenge facing Tesco’s new CEO is the pace at which shoppers are moving online. Whilst the share of grocery sales made online is still relatively small, it’s easy to see that the tide is turning away from physical stores. Here at least Tesco has a significant global opportunity to plug some of its geographical gaps by introducing pure-play online offers in markets in which they are not yet represented.

At the same time however, Tesco has to manage the stress on existing operations as shoppers leave physical stores. This is a major struggle for all bricks and mortar retailers, regardless of whether or not they can persuade their customers to remain loyal to the brand online. As sales leave the store, stores themselves become less economically productive and asset portfolios deliver lower returns. Larger retailers like Tesco are significantly more vulnerable to this than smaller ones as the spectacular failure of companies like Borders show. Dave Lewis will need to be very light on his feet to avoid a similar fate.

What Tesco’s new CEO will ask of you

For brand owners who depend on Tesco for a significant share of turnover, there may be tough times ahead. There’s no doubt that Mr. Lewis will be busy building a grand plan even as he wraps up his time at Unilever. Tesco’s grand plans in the past have always depended on the ‘support’ of vendors and it’s unlikely that the next plan will ignore this component.

Ironically, if Tesco is a big part of your business, you may need them as much as they need you. Smart players should be critically assessing how Tesco’s portfolio nationally and internationally might deliver for their brands and they should be ready to come to the table quickly with inventive solutions that might address some or all of Tesco’s challenges.

Remember, Tesco’s new CEO led Unilever’s customer development division so he knows a thing or two about how sales teams work and he’ll set the bar high. If you’re grappling with next steps, contact me to discuss how you might respond to Tesco’s changes at the top.

Shopper research methodologies – The best of the rest

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Rest of the Best
Rest of the Best

A couple of weeks back, I listed my favorite five shopper research methodologies. Needless to say a number of research methodologies didn’t make my list and of course a lot of readers offered additional suggestions. So this week I want to think about my pick of the shopper research methodologies that I didn’t include.

Focus groups

Being in Asia, where some marketers often struggle to access more technically sophisticated shopper research methodologies, I often come across the use of focus groups to understand shopping behavior. Focus groups do provide valuable insights into what people perceive they do when they shop and perhaps more critically why they do it. This qualitative understanding of motivation is tremendously useful in configuring programs. Focus groups also create valuable directional insights into where more focused research might be conducted. For me though focus groups are best used in the configuration of research hypotheses. In this case directional insight can be converted into potentially more focused and indeed quantifiable outcomes.

In-store observation

One correspondent was amazed that I hadn’t included in-store observation in my initial article. I guess my omission is a little surprising following the step-change in understanding of shopper behavior that pioneers like Paco Underhill spearheaded in the nineties. Of course there is a huge amount to be gained from all the modes of observation that now exist today. Observing actual behavior has an inherent advantage over learning about claimed behavior and it can create a very clear narrative around what people actually do. The data collected through observation allows shopper marketers to pinpoint potential issues in-store for further exploration using say eye-tracking work or virtual simulation. A caveat though is that observational work should not be the start-point of any research unless you first fully understand the target consumers and shoppers and the channels you need to prioritize.

Neuro-science and bio-metric based approaches

Thanks to my ex-colleague Sean Raw for asking about neuro-science and particularly combining it with other approaches like eye-tracking. The cool thing about these methods is they allow us to image shopper’s subconscious engagement with their environment. As yet portable brain-scanning tech is only available in limited markets but bio-scanning technology is rapidly becoming more accessible. Highly portable units are now available commercially which, like lie detectors, allow us to measure a subject’s response to environmental stimuli. Whilst neuro-science purists might discount bio-metric approaches, they are telling us a lot about shopper behavior. A pioneer in this area is Ken Hughes in Ireland who often delights audiences with demonstrations of the lack of engagement shoppers have with grocery environments. Combining brain scanning or bio-metric scanning with eye tracking and in-depth interviews can bring fabulous richness to shopper research programs, especially when they are used to really get to grips with understanding a specific target shopper’s behavior in a priority space (note also that these methods work fantastically in both offline and online environments).

Combining shopper research methodologies

The truth behind shopper research is that no one methodology is perfect and each methodology plays a quite specific role. As a result, we never suggest an approach which depends purely on one method alone. We are therefore always wary to advise marketers as to which shopper research methodology they should use without first determining the hypotheses they actually want to test. I know that this sounds like I’m teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, but in the last six months I’ve seen more than 20 pieces of shopper research that were conducted without this key stage.

With so many marketers entering the market for shopper research at the moment, its easy to be swayed by agencies proposing sexy new methodologies, if you need help navigating this feel free to reach out to me for advice.