Shopper Marketing Archives - Page 2 of 10

5 Essential Shopper Marketing Skills

October 2, 2014 by Toby Desforges Leave a Comment

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.

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

September 18, 2014 by Toby Desforges Leave a Comment

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

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

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?

It’s an exclusive offer that drives traffic to New World alone;
It’s a reason for shoppers to return to New World, and;
(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.

Its time for digital marketing & shopper marketing to align

April 23, 2014 by Toby Desforges 1 Comment

It must be frustrating to be a brand manager just now. On the one hand the competition are spending heavily on digital marketing and on the other shareholders are screaming for better ROI. Sometimes it seems that advertising agencies just can’t help – they have a digital marketing team and the have a shopper marketing team, but neither seem to talk to each other and both seem to compete with the traditional creative team.

Many companies have given up on agencies altogether, choosing to bring the disciplines in house. This creates even greater frustration – the digital marketing team sits in brand marketing, so fights with sales over e-commerce. The shopper marketing team is in sales so has weak connections with the brand team. Both teams struggle to find and retain talent and both are stretched by increasing demands from the business.

This is unnecessary but it requires companies to see the opportunities in integrating shopper, digital and consumer marketing.

Shopper marketing is digital marketing

Shopper marketing is the process of creating and implementing a marketing mix which changes purchase behavior in order to increase the consumption of a brand. Today, the processes we go through as shoppers, and the touch points that influence our behavior are both physical and virtual. I can no longer count the papers and presentations I’ve seen that explain the interplay between traditional media, online sources and in-store activities and how they influence us, in concert, through our paths to purchase. It therefore seems unconscionable that when marketing to shoppers, digital channels and media wouldn’t be part of the marketing mix that would be used. This is especially true as the opportunity to convert purchases online grows around the world. So shopper marketing must in part be digital.

Digital marketing is shopper marketing

Initially, digital marketing defined itself as the use of digital channels and tools to influence consumer’s perception of a brand. This view of the world however has become rapidly defunct. Today (hopefully) fewer brands measure digital performance in terms of likes or follows and many are seeking a more measurable return in incremental profits. At the same time it’s become harder to distinguish ‘consumers’ from ‘shoppers’ online. So today’s digital marketing is far more focused on driving consumption by acquiring and retaining brand users. For me, it’s just as difficult to imagine that this can be achieved without marketing to shoppers, as it is to imagine marketing to shoppers without digital.

No need for silos

It seems to me that many in the industry and in its advertising agencies are missing a monumentally important point: Marketing is changing. Marketing used to have a singular focus on the consumer because, in a simpler world, if consumers wanted something and you could make it available; sales happened.

We don’t live in this simple world anymore. If we want to be successful, it’s not enough to market just to consumers, we have to market to shoppers and retail customers too. This means we need new skills and it means we need to think differently. It doesn’t mean however that we need new silos, we just need better Marketing functions.

Total Marketing

Marketing must become a far more integrated process, dedicated not only to generating desire but also to maximizing every opportunity to purchase a brand and equally to motivating retailers to support the brand. In our book, “The Shopper Marketing Revolution” Mike Anthony and I explain how marketing can re-invent itself to become a more holistic process that embraces the best of current thinking and technology.

We’ve found that this more holistic approach helps business leverage the power of digital marketing and harness the ROI potential of shopper marketing effectively. We’ve also found that it enables brands to have much more coherent conversations with their agency and retail partners. But most of all, we’ve found that the Total Marketing approach creates real alignment throughout the business.

If you’d like to read more about this revolutionary change, you can click here to download a free chapter.

Who’s leading your shopper marketing strategy?

April 15, 2014 by Toby Desforges

Earlier this week, Boots wrote to me to garner my reviews on some purchases a made recently (see my blog on online shopper’s needs). I get excited about this sort of thing because it shows just how engaged some retailers are getting in leveraging their relationship with their shoppers. But as a consultant to CPG manufacturers it leaves me asking “who’s leading your shopper marketing strategy?”

In this case Boots is not just gathering information about the products I’ve bought, but they’re also learning about me. This will help them target products at ‘shoppers like me’ and potential target me with products that ‘shoppers like me’ bought. If done effectively, Boots will be able to secure both greater basket spend AND the opportunity to drive margin directly and indirectly. Direct margin gains will be made by targeting higher margin products at shoppers; indirect margin gains will be made by selling target shoppers to manufacturers. The net outcome is that Boots can increasingly lead their vendors’ shopper marketing strategy.

Should retailers lead your shopper marketing strategy?

When retailers get leadership over how a category, and the brands within it, are marketed to their shoppers, they gain leverage on brands. There’s nothing new in this. Ever since the dawn of category management in the late eighties, retailers have secured a position of relative power over their manufacturing partners.

They can use this power to secure higher shares of a manufacturers sales and drive greater margins as a result. This creates a problem for brands. Boots in this case will have their own strategy which they’ll seek support for, but other retailers, for instance Superdrug to use a UK-based example, will have differing and naturally competitive strategies. This means that brands need to adapt their strategies to fit the retailers’ needs, rather than those of their consumers. This is problematic because retailers have a very different view of the shopper than manufacturers do.

A retailer’s view of the shopper

Retailers have a warped view of their shoppers because they can only see what shoppers do in their outlets. This is at the exclusion of what shoppers do in other outlets and of the consumer behavior that shoppers support. Shoppers only buy products to support a consumer need.

Take the Toni and Guy product I bought in the picture above. I don’t use this product – my wife does. I’m not the target consumer for this product – my wife is. Unilever (who make the product) knows this. Further they know that encouraging more consumers like my wife to use their product is the key to un-tapping growth from this particular segment. They know that in most cases, my wife will buy this for herself and that when men like me buy Toni and Guy products, we are usually doing so on instruction, not on impulse.

Boots does not know this. Oddly when they ask about usage of the product (as they do when gathering reviews) they ask how often product is used, not who uses it. They do know about me, and they know I buy a product which I like and which gets used regularly and they know I’ve bought the product in their online store. Follow this to its logical conclusion and they’ll create a segment of shoppers who they assume are also consumers. Then, they’ll try and sell the opportunity to market to this segment back to Unilever and their competitors.

This warped view of the shopper could lead to miss-marketing and waste.

A manufacturer’s view of the shopper

It seems ironic that a manufacturer should have a clearer view of shoppers’ behavior than a retailer, but in fact this is the case. The best marketers should have clearly defined consumer segments which they wish to target. They should then overlay equally well-understood shopper segments onto this consumer segmentation to define target shoppers. Against these target shoppers marketers can prioritize the channels and marketing activities which are most likely to reap the outcomes they want for their brands. The result? Unilever should be able to educate Boots and not vice versa.

Marketers should lead in shopper marketing strategy

The success or failure of a brand does not depend on its performance in your best customer. It depends on the volume of consumers who use the brand frequently and in the right volumes. Shoppers are the key to this because whether they buy for themselves or others, they make the product available to those all-important consumers. Allowing a trade partner, no matter how influential to lead shopper marketing strategy is therefore a huge risk.

Too few marketers take on full accountability for the way their products are marketed in retail and this ought to change.

Taking accountability for shopper marketing strategy demands that the Marketing function develops insights into both consumer and shopper behavior; that Marketing takes and active role in prioritizing retail channels and in providing strategic support for the Sales function to leverage relationships with trade customers more effectively. This is an organizational challenge for those companies who place Shopper Marketing within the sales function but it’s a necessary challenge if such companies wish to grow in the future.

Contact me if you want to discuss how you might lead your shopper marketing strategy in the future.

Why I am an online shopper, why my mother isn’t and what you can learn from this

April 3, 2014 by Toby Desforges 6 Comments

I’ve just spent a long weekend in the UK. Not a big thing if you live in the US or Europe but a big stretch if you live in Asia! In advance of my trip my wife and I decided to take advantage of lower delivery fees to stock up on a few items that seem to cost twice as much in Singapore than elsewhere. After an hour of frenetic shopping we’d bought shoes and sports gear for the kids, tea bags and dishwasher tablets for friends in Thailand and (naturally) a horse riding helmet. In all we hit 6 websites including Amazon, Sainsbury, Boots, Sports Direct and two or three lesser known traders.

Upon my arrival on Saturday my mom expressed her amazement that so much stuff was waiting for me and indeed that a “very nice man” from Sainsbury had turned up to deliver tea bags. “Why,” she asked, “didn’t you get me to buy all this?” My mother’s bemusement at my behavior and the debate it provoked helps to illustrate how we have totally different needs as shoppers and what this might mean for the future of online and offline retail.

An online shopper’s needs

Let’s start with me. I guess that I’m a fairly typical online shopper – connected and brand aware but time poor. When I’m shopping, I’m looking to buy quickly and easily without compromising limited personal time. Like most shoppers I’m also anxious to ensure I get value from the stores I use.

Buying online suits me. I can shop at a pace that suits me, I don’t have to complete a purchase in one time segment; as long as I can meet a desired delivery slot, I can add to my order or change the products I buy when I choose. I can use ‘dead time’ to shop; adding to my shopping list when I’m stuck in traffic or between meetings. I don’t have to be ‘somewhere’ to buy because I can use my smartphone. And, I’m happy to exchange the time it would take to shop in the real world for the extra dollars I might pay for delivery services.

In all online shopping works for me because it meets my needs as a shopper.

An offline shopper’s needs

Now let’s think about my mom. She’s also connected and brand aware. Sure she belongs to a different generation, lives in a different environment and so on but if you look at many of the consumer brands we use, we have very similar preferences.

Where we differ hugely is in the way we shop. For my mother, shopping is a more leisurely activity. It’s an opportunity to leave the home and engage with other people. She’s happy to exchange her time for service and interaction. She enjoys exploring stores and her store choice reflects her preference for a pleasant shopping environment. As she ages, she believes that all these aspects of shopping will be become more important to her, not less.

Visiting real stores works better for her because they meet her needs as a shopper.

Different shoppers, different needs

If we were to look at a few of the brands we both use you might be lead to believe that as consumers my mom and I are relatively similar. But as shoppers it’s crystal clear that we have very different needs. This serves to show that brands do not have one type of shopper, but many. These shoppers have different needs, which drive different behaviors. My mom and I shop in different spaces, value different things when we are shopping, so applying the same marketing techniques to encourage us to buy is unlikely to work.

Too much of what I read about shopper marketing ignores this fundamental truth and too little of the activity I see recognises the opportunities. Successful shopper marketing ought to segment shoppers in ways that describe not just the consumption needs they serve but also their shopping behaviors. Marketers should prioritize which shopper segments are most important to their brands and learn how to influence each group of shoppers effectively, whether they are in the real world or online.

For some this will mean a major re-think and many will find the idea of marketing to multiple segments a stretch. However, those brands which embrace the challenge are likely to retain loyal consumers long into the future.

If you want to learn more about how to rise to the challenge, you might consider reading “The Shopper Marketing Revolution,” which gives marketers a step-by-step guide to bringing shopper thinking into the way they work.

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