Shopper Marketing Excellence

Marketing effectively at the point of sales (POS) has become a strategic priority for many business organizations mainly because traditional marketing and communication means have dramatically decreased their efficiency. The battle for selling more, is won (or lost) every day at thousands / millions of shelve spaces. Arriving to a Shopper Marketing Excellence state is something more complicated than just improving those trade marketing activities that for years have served sales organizations to improve their relation with their channels and/or to "simply push” key products (as with new launches / relaunches, short dated perishables, channels carry up, …).

Managing the experiences at the point of sales (POS), and giving to them an integrated cohesion with the brand and the product (including packaging, promotions and creative output) is the essence of this interesting and somehow new approach. That is why it is essential to understand how to effectively manage all the category levers, aligning the manufacturer strategies to the ones of the retailers / distribution channels, understanding the shoppers' purchasing drivers and their potential at every Point of Sales (POS), while finally, setting up an ideal assortment of products, POP materials / communications and sales incentives for every typology of POS. All these, without forgetting that the customer may arrive to the POS with its own pre-conceptions regarding your brand/product and that indeed, sales are never for sure, but until the customer has paid.

At Advisium Group, we help companies to launch holistic initiatives of shopper marketing, which include:

1. Setting-up a SHOPPER MARKETING STRATEGY, which considers the shoppers’ purchasing values, the sales channels’ / retailers’ own objectives and the company’s internal capabilities.

• Designing a shopper marketing strategy based on the opportunities, needs and possibilities for the business to set-up shopper marketing actions considering every Key Account and every product category relevant to the target shopper segments (top-down approach)
• Defining for every product, its target shopper segments and channels with specific goals for: visibility, customer growth/loyalty and influence on shopping attitudes / habits… (bottom-up approach)
• Building efficient workflows which help all the business areas to accelerate the value offers time-to-market and that offer specific answers to every shopper segment - coordinating marketing, KAMs, RAMs, field force, trademarketing, logistics, R&D… (optimizing the shopper offer funnel)
• Setting up specific goals and plans to develop internal competences to excel in-store marketing and merchandising capabilities to effectively connect in-store activity with the rest of the brand's marketing / communication actions (ensuring maximum consistency)

2. Defining target SHOPPER CLUSTERS with an ideal VALUE PROPOSITIONS for each one. Using cluster analysis to help defining offers that target better the shopper attitudes towards specific products and categories within a specific POS.

• Analyzing shopper segments attitudes, values and purchasing trends at every POS towards the category, brands and product portfolio
• Analyzing tasks and operations performed at the POS in each cluster (i.e. sales, promotions, …)
• Reviewing the strategic fit of every product for every shopper segment in every POS typology
• Developing POS-Shopper cluster models
• Defining optimal assortment for each POS-Shopper cluster and differentiated solutions in consensus with significant stakeholders, key accounts and channels (solutions include formats, brands, key messages, links to the category strategy at the POS, …)
• Delivering guidelines for product assortment, merchandising, price and promotion policies per cluster

3. Planning and running INSTORE SHOPPER MARKETING ACTIONS, where the real impact of Shopper Marketing comes to reality. Every little detail counts to profit from a continuous flow of potential buyers.

• Launching very focused communication artworks with short, simple and relevant messages; improving visibility, motivating visits and purchase acts, always building consistently on the corporate image of the brand
• Setting-up promotions and optimal assortments which help to profit from traffic generated by competitors to push our products sales
• Assigning a detailed activities plan per KAM / trademarketers / field force
• Performing measurement, analysis, scorecard development and launch of actions to improve shopper marketing activities efficiency

4. Developing SHOPPER INSIGHTS INTELLIGENCE, by collecting and understanding shopper insights.

• Running adhoc interviews, surveys, focus groups, ethnographic research to understand shoppers' psychology: attitudes, preconceptions before shopping experience, point of purchase decision triggers, behaviors and perceptions about the POS and the category, post-shopping attitudes and reflections
• Performing customers' ticket analysis and identificating buying patterns
• Competitors’ shopper marketing actions, clusters characterization, assortment
• Building and analyzing a database with information of the impact of company’s promotions and shopper actions at the POS results
• Keeping track of online buzz / WOM (i.e. Twitter, blogs, forums)
• Filtering fieldmarketers, merchandisers points of view / observations / claims / recommendations
• Carrying out innovative shopper behaviour research methods (i.e. ethnography, heat mapping, cameras, shopper labs, …)

If you would like to understand more about our Shopper Marketing expertise and capabilities, you may want to read the following presentation: Shopper Marketing Excellence: Marketing effectively at the POS.

The real goal should be that the business is ready to profit from every sales occasion and each opportunity to satisfy its clients. In Advisium Group, we can help your business to be the one that is ready to be the next big winner.