Scott Matthews
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Effective shopper marketing is becoming increasingly important to growth at the tills. Shoppers find themselves in the driver’s seat as the power shifts leaving manufacturers and marketers in the dust.
(Learn more on this in the Age of the Shopper, which can be taken as part of our Core Shopper Marketing course or as part of the larger Shopper Marketing Bundle program)
More marketers are realizing that in the same way that consumer marketing needs to be strategic, so does shopper marketing.
Mike Anthony and Toby Desforges, shopper marketing thought leaders and authors of bestselling book “The Shopper Marketing Revolution”, compiled a process that can be successfully applied to shopper marketing.
It’s a concise five-step methodology that has been distilled from more than 130 shopper marketing processes.
The power of this five-step process lies in the progressive prioritization it creates; it only focuses on the greatest consumer opportunities, key shoppers, prioritized channels, optimum marketing mix and customers that offer the highest return.
Their proven methodology, that delivers results, looks like this:
1 Consumer
To change shopper behavior, we have to understand which consumers to prioritize. By identifying your most important consumers , you can concentrate on the people that deliver positive growth for your brand. A starting point – or the low-hanging-fruit – is to determine who uses your product. Then consider how you can influence them to use more of it or increase their frequency of use.
Another consideration is to convert consumers; look for the opportunity to win over consumers and get them using your product.
2 Shopper
So you have your consumer. Next up is to look at who is going to serve that consumer demand. In other words, who is the shopper? Remember, shoppers are a conduit for putting the product in the consumer’s hands.
Identifying your shopper answers the “who”, but you still need to know what you want the shopper to “do”. Essentially, this means that you need to determine the shopper behaviour you want.
3 Channels
Our consumers and shoppers have been scrutinized. Now we we need to ask where they will be shopping. The current buzzword – omnichannel – certainly makes this aspect of the process a hot topic.
There are so many different places for people to shop – online, at home, in-store – with innumerable variations of each. This can get extremely complicated, as different places play different roles in that shopping process, which makes channel prioritization all the more important.
In the modern world, shoppers have an abundance of places to shop and and it is important to note that these shoppers act differently in different outlets. You need to identify which channels will best influence you shopper’s behaviour and prioritize those channels.
4 Marketing mix
Once the channel prioritization has taken place, decide how you would like to change the environment in those channels. This is where your marketing mix enters the fray.
The target is to get your shoppers to change their behaviour in a manner that positively impacts growth. To do this, create an integrated marketing mix in each priority channel. Draw on all of the tools you have at your disposal to encourage your target shoppers to do exactly what you want them to do.
5 Investment
Investment is the last of the five-step process. Here you need to consider the investment required. When we say investment, we are talking about time, money and resources. Remember that you cannot afford to invest everywhere, so prioritize your channels and marketing mix.
It is at this stage that the cost of your strategy becomes clear. This investment needs to be clearly justified by the value created by changes in consumer and shopper behaviour.
Although this is the last step of Mike and Toby’s process, they say it is critical to monitor and evaluate this process throughout to determine the effectiveness of your efforts.
If you would like to brush up on your shopper marketing skills, have a look at our courses, all based on shopper marketing experts’ Mike and Toby’s principles.
As an affiliate of Shopper Marketing Experts, Learning Evolution offers its course bundles, categorised into core principles, intermediate understanding and expert.
The full shopper marketing program is also available. Feel free to contact us on sales@learningevolution.com for more information.
