In a world oversaturated with advertisements, shopper marketing can help you stand out from the competition and leave a lasting impression on the consumers who buy your products. When used correctly, this retail marketing strategy puts the shopper first, creating enjoyable shopping experiences that nudge people towards your brand online and in-store.
Let’s look at what makes effective shopper marketing strategies so successful.
What is Shopper Marketing?
Shopper marketing aims to improve consumer perception of your brand across the path-to-purchase. It interrupts shoppers on “auto-pilot” during an everyday trip to the store or while scrolling through an app and pulls them into your brand with a compelling message that resonates with their needs, wants and values.
It is a strategic, data-driven process that strives to understand shoppers’ behavior along the path to purchase. Effective shopper marketing optimizes your brand strategy for today’s complex retail ecosystem. Ultimately, the goal is to produce more cost-effective marketing, improve ROI, and better resonate with shoppers.
Shopper Marketing strategies often include:
- A promotional incentive
- A clear call-to-action
- High impact visuals
- Web & mobile experiences
- Highly targeted paid media
- Use of store-level data to measure results
The Value of Shopper Marketing for Businesses
Drives higher ROI
Like other marketing strategies, shopper marketing aims to drive sales velocity and increase consumption of your products. The difference is that shopper marketing seeks to improve the efficiency of your marketing spend over time. With a data-driven approach, we can optimize your budget and improve margins accordingly.
Improves brand image
Increased competition in retail grocery has created a lot of noise, often overwhelming shoppers with advertising. As more people block online ads, unfollow sponsored accounts and lose trust in traditional marketing campaigns, effective shopper marketing can help customers come to you. It prioritizes the consumer experience over clicks and numbers – building trust with well-designed websites and instore promotions that convert browsers into buyers.
Fosters better alignment with sales teams
Shopper marketing works from the shopping cart back, considering the entire path-to-purchase experience for your customers. This comprehensive perspective on marketing often complements and enhances your sales strategies. Integrating sales and marketing is often called “smarketing” and can help you make better marketing decisions based on actual sales figures as well as better sales decisions based on detailed shopper insights.
Attracts support from retailers
Have you heard the expression, “a rising tide raises all boats?” It’s a way to think about your relationship with retailers – when you do well, they do well. Shopper marketing helps you understand how your marketing efforts perform at specific retailers and with specific audiences. Ultimately, this improves demand and drives consumption – a mutual benefit for you and your resellers.
Shopper Marketing Versus Other Marketing Strategies
Shopper marketing is marketing within the retail ecosystem. The reason it’s so vital for grocery brands is due to the complexity of today’s retail. We often compare it to the Wild West – a gold rush where retailers, competitor brands, and 3rd party providers all compete for their share of the action. Combine this with an explosion of consumer touchpoints and a decentralized path-to-purchase and you have a recipe for wasteful spending.
Many other marketing strategies focus on vanity metrics, such as views, likes, and impressions – chasing reach rather than relationships. Effective shopper marketing aligns your marketing and sales to achieve more productive business outcomes. It’s a data-driven process that helps you navigate today’s complex retail environment, identify best-fit opportunities, and optimize your efforts to improve your bottom line.
Partner With a Professional Shopper Marketing Agency
Cliffedge Marketing is a trusted creative marketing agency based in St Louis with over 20 years of industry experience. Our experienced team can help you build more impactful marketing campaigns that add value for your shoppers along the path to purchase.
