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Opinion: shoppers must come first in marketing
Shopper marketing is on the rise. The store is now heralded as the marketing medium to give you the widest reach. The facts have been discussed for years; 70% of decisions are made in-store, 82% of people obtain information about offers in-store, consumers are less brand loyal than ever and a gondola end in Tesco reaches more housewives than an advertisement slot in the middle of Corrie.
By Martin Fawcett, creative director, Bezier Group
However it would now seem there is now further evidence to support the rise of shopper marketing with brands and retailers assigning bigger budgets to the medium. A study on shopper marketing conducted by Oxford Strategic Marketing revealed that “shopper marketing as a percentage of marketing investment
As stores become better recognised as a medium in their own right, so it becomes more important to approach messaging from a media neutral standpoint. Retail campaigns are not always planned strategically, by taking time to understand what is going to appeal to the shopper. Understanding shoppers and how they react is made more complex by the fact that most individuals can be different types of shoppers on different occasions. Think how you yourself behave differently when shopping for food, compared with shopping for electrical items or shopping for clothes.
Shopper Marketing Agencies are therefore crucial to this thought process to ensure retail marketing is, first, thinking about what message is most appropriate to the shopper. What help or information do they need? Will this be a fast purchase decision? Will they have seen other communication about the product or its competitors? Considering these questions plus, potentially, many more should lead to the question of how messages can be best displayed in-store. Should it be on a screen or a piece of printed material? Should the campaign be planned to be sited in multiple places in the store? Is it important for there to be communication in the approach to the store and the car park? Thinking 'shopper first' enables you to consider how best your message can reach them.
It is not only specialist agencies that need to consider the benefits of media neutrality. With continued fragmentation of above the line media, the explosion of social networking and of stores as a key part of our lives, there are more and more considerations to take when considering how best to create a whole campaign. The store, which was often an overlooked part of the mix, now needs to become a key element in the planning stage, ensuring that what is placed in store is a representation of a message suitable for those in shopping mode, not a complete replica of a TV ad with no thought as to how that message will really transcend in-store.
Tagged as: Martin Fawcett | Bezier
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