“Puppies are not for Christmas, they are for life… “
An old adage, but one that springs to mind when I think about shopper marketing. Shopper marketers have many opportunities to create exciting campaigns; but it isn’t the big, dazzling ‘one-offs’ that best represent the relationship between a brand and a shopper. The shopper-brand relationship isn’t a steamy “one night stand” – it’s more akin to an old married couple who are comfortable with each other. Shopper marketers need to ensure that they are up to serving their target market week in, week out.
The shopper-brand relationship is one built up from many tiny interactions, and the most important part of that relationship? Shoppers don’t always want to be excited, thrilled, or even engaged. What they really want, is not to be let down. And unfortunately marketers, customer managers, and retailers conspire to let down shoppers on a weekly basis. We forget, as we plan our campaigns, that it is what happens, day in day out, on the home shelf that really matters. As shopper marketers, we must be prepared to manage the minutiae of every day shopping, as that is what serves our target market best.
Good execution is only great if it’s consistent
A while back I blogged about a lovely in-store execution by Schwartz – the herbs and spice people. I loved this execution because it seemed to me to go to the heart of what shopper marketing is: a smart marketing mix designed to change shopping behavior in a way that also drives incremental consumption. That was then. Recently I returned to the aisles of Sainsbury, that same retailer, and was confronted with this: badly managed, badly maintained, and just plain awful. How many shopper impressions did this create? I suspect that this creates more ‘standout’ on shelf than the original execution – creating plenty of awareness but perhaps not the engagement or brand impact that was designed. Not sure what had happened, but somebody (or many people) had taken their eye off the ball.
Shoppers hit the shelves every week, and that means that what we present to them every week is critical.
What can we do to improve the chances of our shoppers not being let down when they get there?
Availability rules
The most important thing to a shopper is to be able to buy what they want to buy, when they want to buy it. Every campaign, every shelf layout, every promotion, must have availability metrics and checks built into it. If there is a chance that your activity may have an adverse effect on availability, then this needs to be planned for, or the activity should be dropped.
Go to stores
I’ve said it many times, but there really is no excuse for not spending time in-stores and seeing what shoppers see. You can never spend too much time in stores.
Invest in compliance checking.
If the activity is worth doing, it’s worth making sure it is done properly. If you don’t know what it is that confronts shoppers then it’s impossible to understand what is going on. Technology is bringing down the costs of compliance tracking all the time – consider what efforts you can make to ensure that what you envisaged and what shoppers actually see are actually the same thing.
Partner with retailers
Spending time in every store, every week isn’t going to be practical, and extensive compliance tracking is still going to be beyond the reach of many brands. But the retailer has people in the store every day of every week – and this execution has just as much negative impact on the retailer as it does on the brand in terms of image and shopper satisfaction. Engaging with retailers to ensure that the shoppers you share are served well should be part of your agenda.
Cut back on promotions
Promotions are the enemy of availability. They make forecasting harder, and they often create secondary stock points at retail making it harder to ascertain the actual stock at any one point. On store visits we regularly see that the majority of out of stocks are on promoted items.
Maintain and sustain
If there is a permanent installation (as with Schwartz) then it needs funds and people to audit, maintain and sustain it. If that isn’t built into your budget, then the activity should be culled.
Clean up after yourself
For temporary installations, then there needs to be a plan to clean up. If you can’t afford to maintain a display properly, then take it down. Plan to put things back where they were. Tidy up. Don’t disappoint those shoppers you’ve just wooed.
Our goal as marketers is to build, sustain and maintain long relationships with our target shoppers and consumers. If we are to make that happen, we need to be consistent and deliver what we promise day in and day out. If we can’t do that, we really don’t deserve them in the first place, do we?
