Shopper Marketing for your Food Brand: Fundamental Questions and Strategies
Food brands are constantly trying to get in front of consumers. This shopper-centric mentality helps shape consumer marketing in the form of various tactics, typically categorized as shopper marketing. Shopper Marketing is anything in or out of the store that relates to the shopper journey. Another way to put it, the path shoppers take to make a purchase. The overall shopper experience is always evolving; however, there are fundamental questions and strategies to follow. Following these will help your food brand build a smart and cost-effective marketing program to reach your consumers.
Ask yourself, what is the goal of the program?
Sure, every food brand wants to increase purchases, but are you launching a new product making the goal to invite trial, or does your food brand’s product already have high affinity in the marketplace and you just want an additional push to stay top-of-mind? For example, if Coke was selling a new flavor, say Marshmellow Coke (can someone please make this product line extension happen?!) their teams would use different tactics of marketing versus standard tactics used when selling the tried and true flagship Coke. New products need different tactics and creative designs in order to stand out.
Other goals for shopper marketing programs might be:
Remember that the shopper journey doesn’t begin in the grocery store
The journey of the shopper usually begins at home, in the car, at work, etc. Consumers may start by making a list of what they need at the store, cut coupons, go into their apps to find certain coupons (ex. Target Circle). Some of the best food brand shopper marketing tactics use proprietary algorithms to help identify shopper behavior, which makes my next point extremely important…
Targeting is crucial for success
It is critical to know your audience (typically found by using straight-up demographics). That way you can target their behavior, such as past purchases or online activity, and geotarget by either household or retailer locations. Take time to get to know your audience.
What are their behavior trends, and can you target them? Shopper marketing programs that identify behaviors and use IRI data to identify your ideal shoppers’ path to purchase is an excellent start to building a data-driven shopper marketing program with results.
For example, I’m an avid user of Target Circle. Before I do my grocery shopping, I like to look at offers, typically in the form of coupons, that I can add to my “cart.” I know Target delivers ads and offers to me based on my buying habits. Here in this picture, all of these items are ones that I have previously purchased, which means that these brands have spent marketing dollars targeting me.
Invite your customers to try your product at a discount
Inviting trial is another way to measure the success of a food brand’s shopper marketing program. There are a few different ways to encourage trial…
Couponing
Depending on your food brand’s goal of the marketing program, one way to increase purchases within shopper marketing is to add a coupon. Examples of inviting trial digitally include Load to Card retailer programs. Examples of in-store offers include: Instant Redeemable coupon stickers / On-pack giving a value off, or Tear Pads paired with in-store signage. These are all great, fundamental ways to increase purchases when the consumer is already in the grocery store.
Demos
With the changing landscape of COVID-19, in-store demos have taken a pause. However, demos are a great way to interact with the consumer instantly, allowing for trial immediately in the store and aide in potential purchases. Typically, great demo programs are coupled with a coupon to further entice a consumer to purchase.
Bonus Tip: If you plan to add couponing to invite trial, be sure to account for the costs of the coupon/redemption to your budget unless you have separate line items for redemption in your budgets.
Lastly, anytime you can get in front of consumers during the shopper journey is a good use of marketing dollars. Remember, shopper marketing tactics are different than, say, a brand awareness campaign that utilizes media such as TV or radio. Each has its own purpose in your food brand’s marketing toolbox, but shopper marketing programs are intended to reach the consumer while they are in that buying decision process.
Equally important is showing retailers you are willing to invest. Be sure to communicate your program with the category buyer. Remember, food brand shopper marketing programs don’t just increase purchases for your food brand’s benefit; there is a benefit to the retailer as well. It’s a win-win for both parties!
If you have any questions or would like to learn more about the fundamentals of a shopper marketing program for your food brand, please reach out to the NewPoint team. If you are interested in more food brand marketing topics, please visit our Food for Thought page or check out NewPoint’s Patrick Nycz’s book: Moving Your Brand Up the Food Chain.
To identify and isolate areas for improvement in shopper marketing program strategies and tactics to further your CPG brand growth against set KPIs:
Maximize the economic performance of your CPG brand shopper marketing investment
Increase velocity at retail and consumer brand affinity
This shopper marketing audit will detail and contrast your CPG brand shopper marketing and messaging versus that of industry standard competitive practices and will include, but not limited to:
Target market reach, integrated retail marketing support, promotional continuity & awareness, offers and incentives, and tactical execution timing
Go-to-market launch strategies, timing, and tactical execution
Deliverables
Marketing Communication Audit Report
The deliverable will be a white paper with NewPoint Marketing findings and recommendations related to marketing activities in one retail partnership or DMA/market as defined by the client.
Brant brings 20+ years of experience to NewPoint as chief brand communicator and marketing-plan contributor.
Brant’s specialty is bringing an outside, investigative perspective that can feel alternately “rigorous” or “exasperating” depending on your point of view. Yet, he never fails to uncover a business’s unique selling proposition—one which can serve as a brand foundation for marketing that is compelling, creative and “sticky.”
Throughout his career, Brant’s applied his skill set to a broad range of business applications along the food supply-and-service chain. His services have provided vital clarity for all types of operations, from the more conventional food and food equipment manufacturers to the adjacent enterprises that partner with them, such as the Purdue University College of Agriculture.
Stephanie Bossung
Food industry marketing expertise—from retail to food-service and food-service equipment— is a natural outcome of having deep knowledge in every facet of a business’ operation. With 10 years in branding and business development, preceded by 15 years in mass media and promotions, Stephanie is an FMI Emerge mentor, holds an executive-level expertise in sales, marketing, media, and production management.
This exceptionally diverse skill set adds value for NewPoint clients by providing a full complement of perspectives on food-industry brand management endeavors.
Wired for a hawkish attention to detail while also maintaining a high-resolution view of the big picture, Stephanie is uniquely able to provide astute branding direction and simultaneously apply the business principles necessary to squeeze more bang out of every marketing buck.
Patrick Nycz
A member of the Forbes Agency Council and quoted in the New York Times, USA Today and Adweek, Patrick Nycz is the author of Moving Your Brand Up the Food Chain: Marketing Strategies to Grow Local and Regional Food Brands. He is an FMI Emerge mentor, an American Advertising Federation’s Silver Medal Award winner, and the Founding President of NewPoint Marketing, a full-service food industry marketing firm focused on food industry brands On a mission to grow.
Patrick’s vision for NewPoint emerged from his team’s success using this proven model for food industry clients and is fueled by NewPoint-funded food buyers and food manufacturers research around tracking consumer, industry, and ongoing food trends.
Kristy Blair
Since starting her 20-year career in commercial graphic design at one of the foremost catalog retailers in the world, Kristy’s visual branding skills have organically narrowed into the food-industry niche.
In that time, she’s directed graphic identities for snack food and restaurant startups, print materials for multiple agricultural seed companies, display graphics and merchandiser signage for major food-equipment manufacturers and everything in between.
Today, as one of the key brand architects for NewPoint clients, she continues to lead our visual research & development team, always working to find the innovative median between the best practices worth honoring and the accepted rules worth breaking.