Boosting Sell-Through and Velocity: The Power of Consumer Brand Suppliers Partnering with Retailers

Boosting Sell-Through and Velocity: The Power of Consumer Brand Suppliers Partnering with Retailers

The retail landscape has become increasingly competitive as e-commerce grows, and brands are looking for ways to stay ahead. One proven strategy is for consumer brand suppliers to partner with retailers to boost sell-through and velocity. This blog post will explore the importance of such partnerships and how they can lead to mutually beneficial outcomes for both parties involved.

Building Strong Relationships

A strong relationship between consumer brand suppliers and retailers is vital for mutual success. Working together, they can identify growth opportunities, streamline processes, and enhance performance. In addition, this collaboration can lead to increased sales, improved product placement, and better inventory management.

Win-Win Strategies

When consumer brand suppliers and retailers collaborate, they can develop strategies that benefit both parties. These can include:

  1. Promotional Planning: By working together, suppliers and retailers can identify the most effective promotional activities to drive sales. This may include in-store promotions, online marketing campaigns, or joint events. Combining their efforts and resources can create powerful promotional strategies that drive customer interest and sales.
  2. Inventory Management: Efficient inventory management is crucial for maintaining optimal stock levels and minimizing waste. Collaboration lets suppliers and retailers share data and insights on customer preferences, seasonal trends, and inventory levels. This enables better forecasting and decision-making, ensuring the right products are in stock at the right time.
  3. Product Innovation: Retailers can provide valuable insights into customer preferences and market trends, which can help suppliers develop new products that cater to the evolving demands of consumers. Suppliers and retailers can better meet customer expectations and drive sales by aligning product offerings.
  4. Data Sharing: Data-driven decision-making is essential for business success. By sharing sales data, customer feedback, and other relevant information, suppliers, and retailers can make informed decisions that will drive sales and improve customer satisfaction.

Benefits of Increased Sell-Through and Velocity

Partnering with retailers offers a range of benefits for consumer brand suppliers. These include:

  1. Improved Sales Performance: Collaborative efforts can lead to increased sell-through rates, as well-orchestrated promotions, effective product placement, and better inventory management help ensure products are visible and available to customers.
  2. Enhanced Brand Visibility: Working together with retailers can help suppliers increase brand awareness and visibility in the marketplace. This can result in increased customer loyalty and repeat purchases.
  3. Increased Market Share: Suppliers can effectively increase their market share by collaborating with retailers and implementing strategies that cater to the market’s needs.
  4. Reduced Costs: Streamlined processes, efficient inventory management, and optimized marketing efforts can save suppliers, and retailers cost.

Conclusion

In an increasingly competitive retail landscape, the collaboration between consumer brand suppliers and retailers is essential for boosting sell-through and velocity. By building strong partnerships and working together to develop win-win strategies, both parties can enjoy increased sales, improved customer satisfaction, and overall business growth.

Contact us to find out how we can grow revenue for your brand through increased sell-through and sales velocity.

Shopper Marketing Part 2:  What to achieve with shopper marketing

Shopper Marketing Part 2: What to achieve with shopper marketing

As we covered in “Shopper Marketing Part 1:”, Shopper Marketing is the process of ensuring consumers are correctly engaged at every stage throughout the path to purchase, from awareness to consideration to conversion. 

This article will explore what you can do to set up a shopper marketing strategy and what you can expect to achieve. 

How to create a Shopper Marketing strategy:

Brands that implement a shopper marketing strategy correctly possess a competitive edge because compiling a plan requires a deeper understanding of the consumer path-to-purchase from a holistic perspective rather than individual components. 

As a starting point for formulating your shopper marketing strategy, ask yourself these four essential questions:

  1. What does your brand represent, and does that resonate with your target audience?
  2. What is necessary for your target audience?
  3. What are your goals beyond making sales?
  4. What is your budget?

The answers to these questions should represent the heart and soul of your strategy, which can then wrap around each stage of your buyer’s journey:

  • Awareness Stage – Focus on brand recognition and storytelling to ensure you resonate with your target audience.
  • Consideration Stage – Deliver value and properly incentivize consumers to encourage them to purchase your products ahead of competitors’.
  • Conversion Stage – Delight with a positive customer experience and focus on building long-term relationships with your customers.
  • Retention Stage – Provide an easy way to connect and keep your customers coming back. 

Now that you’ve formulated your objectives for each stage of the buyer’s journey, it’s time to think about how you should execute it. For example, what marketing activities will you implement to ensure brand recognition? How do you want to incentivize customers? What channels will you use to communicate this to your target audience?

You can use the traditional marketing principle of the “4 P’s” to map out your plan for executing the shopper marketing strategy:

  • Price: discounts, bundled offers, price communication, and coupon
  • Place: eCommerce stores, bricks and mortar stores, visual merchandising, store layout
  • Product: Featured products, packaging, catalogs
  • Promotion: promotion communications, advertising channels, communicating brand and products to consumers

What can be achieved with a Shopper Marketing Strategy? 

By using a shopper marketing strategy as the lens for looking at the entire buyer journey as one, businesses can expect to:

  • Increase brand affinity by delivering more consistent marketing messages
  • Drive sales by looking at the entire path to purchase instead of individual stages
  • Improves long-term relationships with customers
  • Focuses on long-term gains rather than short-term objectives, which creates more consistency
  • Creates opportunity for data-driven decision-making by looking at the entire lifecycle and proper data attribution
  • A deeper understanding of customer segments and preferences by looking at their behaviors across a broader range of activities rather than in isolation
  • Provide more personalized customer experiences by tracking progress through the path to purchase.

Want to implement a shopper marketing strategy for your business? Please speak to us about how Brand to Basket delivers value at every customer journey stage.

Missed the first part of this series? Read more about Shopper Marketing in “Shopper Marketing Part 1: What is shopper marketing and how has it changed lately?”Shopper Marketing Part 1: What is shopper marketing, and how has it changed lately?

 

Shopper Marketing Part 1:  What is shopper marketing, and how has it changed lately?

Shopper Marketing Part 1: What is shopper marketing, and how has it changed lately?

What is Shopper Marketing?

‘Shopper marketing’ can be thought of as the intersection between consumer psychology, customer experience, and experiential marketing. These three elements combine to convert shoppers into buyers and build the brand’s equity within the retail environment while fostering long-term relationships with consumers.

Their customer’s path-to-purchase will establish each retailer’s shopper marketing strategy. For example, whether the purchase is being made for themself or someone else, the purchase research process, and which channels the customer prefers to make the purchase, such as in-store or online. 

Shopper marketing builds its strategy on top of the unique path-to-purchase to create synergies and consistency in the messages presented to consumers throughout their journey to purchase. 

A good case study for this is how many retailers have adopted emailing receipts instead of printing them. By doing so, it opts the customer into their email funnel. 

Think about this – if a customer goes into the electronics department of a store and purchases a student edition of Microsoft Office and then provides their email address for the receipt to be sent to them, the store can now attribute that email address to someone who is likely a student. Then when it comes time for the “back to school” campaigns to roll out, that person will likely receive an email with various deals and promotions for other tools or products they might need and can drive them in-store (since it knows where they’ve made previous purchases from) or online with coupon codes. 

What’s new about Shopper Marketing?

Shopper marketing tactics have been popular since the 80s, but forty years ago, they only took place in brick-and-mortar stores. With eCommerce and social media, shopper marketing has evolved to include these new sales channels. 

The growth of the online space has paved the way for communicating and incentivizing customers, which plays a role in shopper marketing. For example, the ability to run loyalty programs or coupon promotions at the click of a button while seamlessly measuring conversions.

On being highly measurable, data analytics and business intelligence have come a long way. Having access to these insights has given retailers greater clarity around their customer’s purchase trends and habits, which can make informed business decisions to provide the best possible shopping experience. 

What does the future hold for Shopper Marketing?

One pitfall of shopper marketing that many retailers fall for is the lack of personalization in their marketing communications. This is often because they’re often purchasing data from third-party vendors and applying it to their business, which is like trying to jam a square peg into a triangular hole – it just won’t fit. The future of shopper marketing is utilizing technology to customize the shopping experience better to suit personal preferences. In a hyper-competitive retail world, the winners will be the early adopters of technologies designed to influence purchase decisions.

If you want to stay ahead of the technological curve, speak to us today about how Brand to Basket drives revenue growth through personalized customer experiences.

Why Local Marketing Should Be A Priority In 2022

Why Local Marketing Should Be A Priority In 2022

Local marketing involves businesses with a physical storefront or those who sell their products via retail stores using digital marketing strategies to target new and existing customers in the vicinity to drive traffic in-store. It’s also commonly referred to as “neighborhood marketing.” 

Having the ability to target locally can be potent if executed well. This article will highlight some of the most prominent benefits of including local marketing in your strategy for 2022.

1. Cost-effective

Paid hyperlocal ad campaigns are a fantastic way to target your local audience. However, there’s also a lot of other creative and cost-effective ways to generate visibility in a local area. For example, local directories, community pages, message boards, local newspapers, or events are great ways to get your business name out there. 

2. Highly targeted

Given that most customers choose to shop within 10 miles of their home, the geographic area that businesses need to focus on can be limited to that radius. This helps keep budgets down and allows retailers to focus on very clearly defined personas.

3. Attract more customers

With leaps forward in geo-targeted and hyperlocal advertising, it’s easier than ever to attract a crowd and add ‘buzz’ to your business by combining buyer intent and the customer’s location. This is one of the best ways to convert online and foot traffic into new customers because once a customer is physically close to your business, there’s a much higher chance of coaxing them into making a purchase, especially if you have introductory promotions available.

4. Smooth-out lulls

Many businesses experience peaks and troughs throughout the day. For example, a cafe might experience lunchtime rush hour but could be much quieter in the afternoon. In addition, scheduling location-based marketing campaigns helps to smooth out the flow of customers throughout the day. For example, it’s common to see restaurants or bars offer “happy hour,” which usually runs during the quieter afternoon hours from 3 pm – 5 pm.

5. Improved brand affinity

Having your local community as your audience means you will have a clearer understanding of their needs, wants, interests, and trends. This increased understanding will enable you to create marketing messages and promotions that will appeal to your community more meaningfully.

6. SEO implications

Search engine optimization and your organic search ranking are affected by many factors, but one of the most important is the number of backlinks your site has. Backlinks are external websites that link to your website. If you list your business on local directories and social media platforms, this will contribute to the number of backlinks to your site. For example, you are listing your business on Yelp, Facebook, Google My Business, and other directories.

Conclusion

Local marketing has many benefits for bricks and mortar businesses, including helping you reach new audiences, boost your search rankings and online traffic, and help establish your business in your local community. 

To support your local marketing efforts, Mobeo drives online traffic in-store with our suite of solutions, which can be customized to fit your individual business needs.

Talk to us today about how we can help boost your digital footprint.

Everything You Need To Know About Local Retail Marketing

Everything You Need To Know About Local Retail Marketing

What is local retail marketing?

Local retail marketing involves utilizing the “4Ps” (product, price, place, and promotion) to attract customers in-store and drive sales. 

Local marketing is vital because it’s likely that the vast majority of retail customers live within 10 miles of where they shop, so getting brand exposure to these people is crucial. 

Here are a few tips and ideas to help boost your brand awareness in your local area:

1. Understand Your Community

To connect with your community, you need to understand their needs and wants. Focus on understanding things such as:

  • What activities are popular in the local area?
  • How do people here like to spend their free time?
  • What is the demographic and psychographic makeup of the community?

The answers to these questions will help you create the right messaging and marketing activities.

2. Invest in Local Search Ads

As Adweek points out, 45% of all searches on Google now include local intent (i.e., finding nearby businesses), and 84% of those local searches result in a purchase.

For more information on local search, read our blog about “Hyperlocal Marketing.” 

3. Talk to local journalists

Media coverage is a great way to build credibility, trust, and brand recognition. It gains a lot of visibility quickly and has the added benefit of helping build your website backlinks and improve your SEO. Thankfully, this process is pretty straightforward (albeit a bit time-consuming). 

4. Consider exploring the wild side with Guerilla Marketing

Guerrilla marketing is a strategy whereby a company uses surprise or unconventional interactions to promote a product or service. It’s a type of offline marketing that uses public places to get the word out about your business. If executed correctly, it can be a great way to boost your store’s visibility in a fun and creative manner. A bonus is that guerilla marketing is usually pretty cost-effective.

5. Participate in or sponsor local events

Local events are a great way to connect potential customers, the press and gain backlinks to your website. So, if something is happening in your neighborhood that you think might be relevant to your business, find ways to get involved.

6. Your team can be your greatest asset

A happy workforce is better for business. That’s why companies should strive to keep their employees engaged and motivated. The key is to hire the right people and provide ample training and competitive compensation. This leads to happier employees who feel connected to the business and will perform at higher levels, which means better retail experiences for consumers and increased sales.

7. Leverage social media

Social media is a powerful marketing tool for gaining visibility amongst your ideal audience while engaging existing customers. Have strong engagement on social media; you need to do the following:

  • Post content regularly, which creates value for the reader 
  • Consider running paid ads
  • Use social media to help communicate your brand essence
  • Include hashtags to make your content more searchable

4. Leverage video

When used correctly, video provides an excellent way to showcase your brand and products. Video content should be:

  • Relatable: Feature people who look like your target customers and make them as relevant to the audience as possible.
  • Have a clear call-to-action: Mention the CTA in your video, add a link in the description or embed the link directly into the content.
  • Please choose the proper format and platforms: Decide which platforms to publish your videos where your target audience is most likely to see them (e.g., Instagram, TikTok, Youtube…etc.). Ensure the video length and file format suit the channels you’re publishing to. 

5. Focus on email marketing

Email marketing can be a highly effective marketing activity if appropriately executed. To set yourself up for success, make sure you segment your audience customers from non-customers so you can send “first-time offers” or “win-back” campaigns. 

6. Run a referral campaign

Referral campaigns are a great way to stimulate word-of-mouth marketing. Again, you can determine what structure works best for your business, but essentially, the idea should be to provide an incentive for your happy customers to spread the word about your brand to their friends and family.

7. Loyalty program 

Slightly different from referral campaigns, loyalty programs reward existing customers for their continued patronage—for example, discounts on subsequent visits, free products, birthday discounts…etc. Up to 77% of shoppers participate in loyalty programs and help consumers choose where to spend their money, so having a program set up will keep your business competitive.

Conclusion

Without focusing on local marketing efforts and strategies, your business can miss out on customer growth and loyalty. Local marketing is ideal for any business because it focuses on targeted marketing campaigns in a specific area. These tactics can help create customer engagement and loyalty.

As consumer experts, Mobeo understands how important local retail business is for a community. Customers want to support their local stores. We help connect the two through digital ad localization, which results in increased traffic and sales.

Talk to us today about how we can help boost your digital footprint.

Hyperlocal Marketing: The Bite Size Guide For Busy Marketers Who Want To Say Ahead Of The Game

Hyperlocal Marketing: The Bite Size Guide For Busy Marketers Who Want To Say Ahead Of The Game

What is Hyperlocal Marketing?

As the name implies, hyperlocal marketing is a strategy focused on reaching customers in your local area who are already motivated to buy your products. This “local area” is usually a few blocks or streets around your business. 

The primary purpose of hyper-local marketing is to increase face-to-face traffic to physical stores by targeting users searching “near” on their mobile devices. It also helps to promote your brand in specific locations. This is achieved by strategically placing the suitable ads in front of the right people at the right time.

When prospective customer types “coffee shops near me,” it’s most likely that they are ready to make a purchase. Reports also show that 78% of hyperlocal mobile searches result in an offline purchase. 

According to Google, mobile queries for “near me” and “where to buy” grew by 200% between 2016 and 2019 alone. It shows that the majority of searchers expect Google to consider their location when serving search results.

Why use Hyperlocal Marketing?

Businesses are fast adopting hyperlocal marketing because of its powerful results, particularly those without massive marketing budgets. 

Here are some of the benefits:

  • It makes it easy to convert local customers into paying clients.
  • Highly targeted audience targeting so less wasted ad spend. For example, ads will only be shown to people in your area who are interested or looking for your products.
  • Customers who perform hyperlocal searches have a high purchase intent.
  • It’s easy to set up, run and measure performance.
  • Great for building relationships with customers because it helps people in your area know that they can depend on you when they need a product or service you offer, which will lead to more repeat customers. 
  • Hyperlocal ads work in real-time, which increases conversion rates because you can provide promotional offers to people nearby who are actively looking for your services.

How does Hyperlocal Marketing work?

Before you start, it’s essential to think about your objectives. For example, are you trying to get more foot traffic to your store? Build brand recognition? Acquire more customers?

Once you know what you’re trying to achieve, you can choose why platform to run your ads on:

  • Local Search Marketing (Google Ads and Google My Business)
  • Directories such as YelpYellow Pages and more.
  • Nextdoor Local Deals: Nextdoor enables businesses to connect with verified residents based on their neighborhood, whether a few blocks or multiple neighborhoods from the business location.
  • Social Media Ads (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter…etc).
  • SEO and localized content (SEO-optimized blogs or content mentioning the hyperlocal area, so your business ranks highest in Google search results)
  • In-app notifications: if you have your own mobile app, there may be an option to push notifications to users nearby or who have registered their address.

Steps To Launch:

Here are the steps to follow to launch your ads hyperlocal ads:

  1. Identify your audience: Choose your geographic location and radius. You can then use tools like Google Analytics to get to know your audience better, such as their age range, gender, and more.
  2. Choose your social media channels: You can choose where you want your customers to see your ads. For example, GoogleFacebookInstagram, or display advertising on other sites. 
  3. Draft the messaging and ad images: You’ll need to make it enticing for users to want to visit your store. You can do this by using an eye-catching image, having a high number of positive Google/Facebook reviews, or including a promotional offer.

Keep in mind a few triggers the ad platforms use to identify people to expose your ads to. The three triggers include:

  • User search queries where they mention keywords related to your products or brand
  • Their search history (which shows purchase intent)
  • Behavioral activity (places your prospects have recently visited)

Campaign Pre-launch Checklist:

Once you’ve completed the steps above, you’re ready for launch!

However, before you send your ads to live, it’s crucial to get the foundations set up first to make sure your ads perform optimally:

  • Optimize your Google My Business page
  • Make your contact information easily accessible on your website
  • Create localized content for your blog and social media
  • Add local schema markup to your website
  • Make sure you’re using the right keywords in your campaigns
  • Target nearby events

Conclusion

Hyperlocal marketing is a great way to drive traffic in-store or to a selected store location. As we’ve seen, this form of marketing can reduce your cost-per-lead (CPL) and increase your return on ad spend (ROAS).

Mobeo helps increase ROI in-store and online, with our ads receiving up to 300% higher engagement statistics versus typical digital campaigns, with a lot less effort and budget. So no matter if you’re attracting new customers or working on keeping the ones you have, Mobeo has a complete solution that can be customized to fit your needs and measurable along the way.

Talk to us today about how we can help boost your digital footprint.