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.