In my last post I made the case that shopper marketing really needs an injection of marketing skills, probably best sourced from the consumer marketing fraternity. My personal experience, together with data from a number of surveys, backs this up. Many shopper marketing teams have been formed in the last few years, so it shouldn’t be a surprise if there are significant skills gaps. The question therefore should be which marketing skills should be prioritized for injecting into shopper marketing teams.
Before this question can be answered, however, there needs to be some clarity on which ‘shopper marketing’ we are talking about, so let me be clear. There are many functions (and many agencies) with shopper marketing above the door, but the activities of the team may vary significantly. In this post I refer to the shopper marketing which requires active marketing to shoppers; not the re-badged trade marketing teams that still too often exist. I refer to shopper marketing where activity is based on shopper insight, a deeper understanding of shopper behavior and motivations, rather than activity based on which promotion will deliver the biggest short term sales boost. In short, for most organizations, the shopper marketing team of the future, not the past.
So which shopper marketing skills should you prioritize? The potential list is long, but here I have tried to pull out the most important skills gaps I see, and those which could best be sourced from consumer marketing teams.
Which marketing skills does shopper marketing most need?
The ability to develop insight – If marketing (as the Chartered Institute of Marketing would tell us) is “the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably”, then shopper marketing would be “the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying shopper requirements profitably”. And that process of understanding and anticipating needs begins with insight. Not, as some would have it, analysis. Analysis is brilliant, and shopper marketing teams often have plenty of that. What is required is an injection of insight. The ability to connect data points, to create hypotheses, to make insightful leaps yet keep them grounded in the real world, is sorely missed in many shopper marketing teams around the world.
Segmenting and targeting – Stalwart traditions of classical marketing, the processes of segmentation and targeting too often seem to have passed the shopper marketer by. Too much output refers to a generic ‘shopper’ or segmentation models are appropriated from consumer teams or from retailers. This may have some use, but neither necessarily considers the segmentation of the shopper which may be most beneficial to the brand. There are lots of potential segmentation models; the skill of the marketer lies in choosing the right one. Adopting a model which was developed for someone else’s benefit is not therefore the best starting point.
Creativity – Shopper marketing needs more creativity. But to be clear, I don’t mean that it needs to be more wild and wacky. Marketers (well, some) are renowned for their creativity, but the true power of marketing creativity isn’t its ability to be completely off-the-wall. It is the ability to deliver something relevant yet engaging within the limitations of the media. It’s all very well to create a brilliant movie which says everything about the brand: but doing that in thirty seconds during a cluttered TV spot? That is where true marketing brilliance lies. And the same is true for shopper marketing. Arguably more so, in that typical store environments are more cluttered, and media choices more constrained by retailers, than anything consumer creative face.
Strategic planning – It’s a tough one, but lifting oneself out of the mire of today’s execution to plan and prioritize what should be focused on is critical. Most people find it difficult, including many consumer marketers; but my experience would suggest that if anyone outside the C-Suite of most organizations can do it, it’ll be the marketers. Shopper marketers are stuck between the demands of the brands, demands of the trade, and the demands of the month-end numbers. Understanding that not everything can be done, and therefore deciding what to do, as well as what NOT to do, is a critical skill in this area.
Integrated activity planning – Whilst too many shopper marketers have focused on winning at the shelf, consumer marketers have long been working on integrated marketing mixes. As paths to purchase become visibly longer and more convoluted, the need for lots of different elements of activity to harmonize grows. Shopper marketers will need to understand how to build integrated plans, and campaigns over time, to reflect their new understanding of the full shopper journey.
Managing agencies – Be they research companies, or marketing services companies, a great marketer knows how to get the best out of them, and shopper marketing is no different. The situation is made more pressing by the fact that too many agencies in the space are also still early in the learning curve. Avoiding a ‘blind leading the blind’ situation with service partners requires discipline in terms of briefing, project management, setting and reviewing objectives.
The list of potential gaps in shopper marketing skills is significant for many organizations. Here I’ve focused on the most significant, and in particular, those that shopper marketing leaders could potentially fill by transferring skilled practitioners from consumer marketing teams. If you think I’ve missed a key marketing skill which shopper marketing teams sorely need, please do share in the comments section below.
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