You’ve got a great brand. Consumers love it. Or they would. IF… If they had it in their hands at the right time: just at the point of consumption. Trouble is, it isn’t available to consume. Why? Because for some reason, a shopper didn’t buy it. Why not? Why not indeed! The most powerful question in all of marketing. Why not? Discover the shopper barriers – the reasons why a shopper didn’t buy your brand, and you have the keys to overcoming that barrier and triggering a purchase. Shopper barriers – possibly the most powerful concept in all of marketing! And a key concept we will be exploring and applying in our upcoming Disruptive Shopper Activation Masterclass
The Shopper Activation Wheel™ – how to consistently create better shopper activation and communication
Identify shopper barriers & triggers is one of the most powerful steps in the engage Shopper Activation Wheel™ – the process we’ve developed to help teams create consistently more powerful shopper communication and shopper activation: in-store activities (and online stores too) that really move the business forward. Time and again, this step unlocks new breakthrough strategies for our clients.
Before we get to shopper barriers
But before you go off asking a whole bunch of shoppers why they don’t buy your brand – there are a few precursive steps. We need to understand the consumption opportunity we are targeting. We need to understand the target shopper too. And we need to understand what it is that they do right now, and what we want them to do in the future.
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Because different shoppers have different barriers. One shopper might not buy your brand because they don’t think it is worth paying extra for. Another might not buy it because they don’t know it exists. Another because they always buy another brand by habit, so never even consider it. So given that different shoppers have different barriers, we’d better make sure that we know which shopper we are targeting.
We also need to understand the shopper mission we are targeting. Why? Because the same shopper could have a different barrier on a different mission. If I’m looking to buy a beverage to drink on the way home from work, perhaps the store I go to doesn’t have the right pack size. Or maybe I love the brand but I associate it with mealtimes, not my daily commute. Same shopper. Different mission. Potentially different barriers.
And if we don’t get the barrier right, how can we have a hope to overcome that barrier? How can we come up with the right communication, the right marketing mix, to get the shopper to buy our product if we don’t first now specifically, on that shopping trip, in that store, on that mission, why they don’t currently buy? Without shopper barriers, we’re guessing.
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Understanding shopper barriers
It’s such a simple idea, yet it gets missed so often in shopper research. Time and again we work with clients who have spent a load of money understanding what shoppers do and why they do what they do, without asking why they don’t do what we want them to do.
But once we know which shoppers we are targeting, and what stops them buying, suddenly everything becomes a lot easier. Suddenly it is a lot clearer what we need to do. Suddenly choosing which tactics we should focus on becomes far more straightforward. We can focus our efforts on elements that will overcome those barriers and reduce our focus on other things.
Join Our Disruptive Shopper Activation Masterclass – Click Here For Details And Booking
For a personal care product, perhaps the shopper isn’t clear how to use the product. Explaining usage through communication is going to be key.
Another shopper feels that the product is too expensive compared to private label. Explaining the benefits that your brand brings, perhaps that might help?
If a shopper associates your brand with on-the-go consumption, and you want to drive in-home meal occasions, then perhaps activation in the ready meals section of the store, or with core meal ingredients, might be the way to go.
You get the idea, I’m sure. Once you have clarity on the barrier, there is a simple process to identify the best trigger to overcome it.
The real power of understanding shopper barriers.
And the real power of this? It helps us get away from the temptation to use price discounts and deals as our main tactic. Stores are full of discounts and deals, but when we complete a barriers & triggers analysis, a lot of the time price isn’t the barrier. There are countless other barriers, and price doesn’t necessarily help with those. Understanding shopper barriers helps reduce our reliance on price and promotions, and that saves you a fortune (to spend on better shopper marketing in the future!)
Join Our Disruptive Shopper Activation Masterclass – Click Here For Details And Booking
Understanding shopper barriers is a critical step to creating more powerful and effective shopper communication and shopper activation. If you’d like to learn more about how to understand shopper barriers, or how to apply this thinking to the way you develop activities, join us at our Masterclass next month. If you can’t make that, check out our training programs or get in touch now.
