You’re probably familiar with more traditional advertising tactics for getting customers to your store, but there are also dozens of opportunities for unique marketing strategies once a customer has stepped on to your property. This is called shopper marketing.
Shopper marketing is used to incent a purchase or change purchasing behavior. Or, in more user-friendly phrasing, it is how you get customers to buy what you want them to buy—sometimes even when they did not plan on it. Collectively, every piece of advertising material on your property equals shopper marketing. That includes digital signage, screens in fuel pumps, pump toppers, wobblers, shelf talkers, beauty shots in the store, promotional pricing on shelves, end caps and more.
So, how do you make the most out of the materials you probably already have? We’re glad you asked.
- You need a cohesive shopper marketing strategy.
Even if you don’t have a strategy for shopper marketing, you are still engaging in it. Although, without a cohesive strategy, you risk distracting the customer, leaving them unsure of where they should focus. When convenience stores are cluttered, customers are confused and more likely to have a bad experience.
Instead of a spray and pray method, create a cohesive shopper marketing strategy that allows you to tell your brand’s story and enhance the customer experience. Not only does this allow you to maximize profitability, but it also positions your brand in your community, highlights new products and services and reinforces your branding with the customer. And instead of accepting every piece of marketing material offered by your vendors or wholesale distributors, your strategy should be designed around your sales goals and incentives.
- Shopper marketing starts at the fuel pump.
The drive-off rate for convenience stores is around 75 percent. If you don’t tell your story with a clean, cohesive message to get customers inside your store, you’re losing the chance to even attempt to sell them something other than fuel. Your forecourt content gives you that opportunity.
Forecourt marketing should enhance the customer experience through short-form infotainment segments and informative community-based content interspersed with cohesive messaging about products and services in the store. Think carefully about what message you want to send customers while they’re captive on your property. Do you want to highlight new products? Do you want to remind them of a limited time offer (LTO)? How do you want to be perceived in the community? Remember, all advertising all the time is a great way to lose the attention of your customers.
- Look into ways to efficiently manage your shopper marketing.
Because shopper marketing encompasses so many different types of retail media options, it’s important to have a way to manage all of the digital signage and screens on your property. Used correctly, shopper marketing drives up market basket size and units per transaction, but this requires you to manage various types of screens cohesively and consistently. A well-executed strategy will leverage product affinity and customer demographics to highlight products that are likely to increase overall market basket size. That said, if you don’t have the time or resources to ensure your content is playing the right messages at the right time, you’ll likely see little benefit.
Shopper marketing experts like Shep can centralize your content and take the weight of management off your shoulders, ensuring customers are seeing a cohesive, targeted message. The goal is to create episodic transactions along the customer journey that increase your profits while also improving the customer experience.
To learn more about how Shep Digital Solutions can help you manage your media, click here.
