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:
What does your brand represent, and does that resonate with your target audience?
What is necessary for your target audience?
What are your goals beyond making sales?
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 Mobeo delivers value at every customer journey stage.
The art of increasing the number of people who visit your store, whether physically or online, into paying customers is called “conversion rate optimization.”
Your conversion rate is calculated as the percentage of purchases compared to the total number of people who came into your store on a specific day.
There’s a few different tips and tricks for how to improve the conversion rate for your store:
Upselling and add-ons: Selling products in a package or complete solution rather than a single SKU. The profit margin generally comes from the second product sold because marketing expenses and fixed costs eat away the margin from the first product. Also, at the point of checkout, either the counter or at the website checkout, provide a range of commonly purchased items as impulse purchases. Another principle of retail merchandising is to place one main product with two companion products next to it, making it easier to upsell.
Staff Scheduling: The best way to schedule staff shifts is around the peaks in shopping behavior throughout the day. This helps ensure that customers receive the proper attention during these busier periods. Additionally, staff deployment to serve customers instead of tending to routines like stocking shelves or pricing is equally important. Finally, staff must be available to shoppers to encourage sales and improve conversion rates.
Staff Development & Training: Helpful sales associates who listen to customers and make recommendations can significantly boost conversions. Effectively training employees to help a shopper explore product options, ask about concerns and make helpful recommendations pays dividends. It’s always a great idea to create a collaborative environment by holding regular staff meetings to get everyone involved and on the same page. Incorporating weekly or monthly sales targets with incentives is a great way to boost morale and get staff excited. Employees are the most effective at upselling because they are on the ground, talking to customers, building trust, and making recommendations to the customer based on their needs.
Keep it moving: Reducing lengthy queues is vital because sometimes customers will avoid stores with long lines because they perceive the wait time will be too long. Unfortunately, long wait times often harm the customer experience. You can overcome this hurdle by placing registers at the back of the store or having multiple checkout counters so that there are numerous shorter lines instead of one long line. An alternative to this is ditching POS all together by going mobile.
Plan the layout: There’s proven consumer psychology at play when a customer steps into a store. These insights can be bolstered by clever retail merchandising to improve conversion rates. For example, your store’s first 5-15 feet is the “decompression zone,” whereby the customer soaks in the store environment and decides whether to continue their journey. Additionally, studies have shown that people tend to turn to whichever side they tend to drive on when they walk into a store. For example, people in the US, you’re more than 90% likely to turn right when you enter a store, whereas people in Australia, the UK, or New Zealand turn left. This means the direction that customers turn towards is your “power wall,” where you should display high-margin goods and ensure it’s well-stocked, clean, comprehensive, and easily navigated. You should also aim to remove excess merchandise from the store by having just one size of each product on the floor to keep it from looking cluttered.
As a note, if you’re starting conversion rate is truly abysmal (think 15% or lower), you should check your marketing. You may be mis-marketing your store, bringing in shoppers expecting something completely different than what you offer.
With these tips and tricks in mind, you should rethink your marketing and communications if your starting conversion rate is 15% or lower.
Mobeo provides a powerful way to utilize hyper-local ads to drive traffic in-store and pick your products off the shelves; talk to us today.
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.
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.
The way that franchise brands typically structure and manage national pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns is concerning. Their focus is often too narrow and they ignore the advertising needs of their local franchisees.
Corporate marketing teams that manage local franchisee digital marketing campaigns are more likely to design and optimize in a way that doesn’t drive meaningful results locally. In fact, most brands have failed miserably in their attempts to get it right.
The thing that franchise marketing teams repeatedly fail to realize is that local advertising campaigns are almost always more effective. Locally optimized campaigns help both the franchise brands and local franchisees achieve successful outcomes.
Search engines have been consistent in their evidence on how powerful localized digital campaigns can be. According to a 2019 study from Social Media Today, 46% of Google searches seek local information.
Think of a national brand with local outlets, agents, distributors, and partners. Customers shouldn’t have to go to the brand’s corporate site to find where they can buy their products.
Instead, traffic must be directed into the local network.
This article explores digital franchise marketing, its challenges, avoiding cannibalization, and the solution to achieve digital success for your franchise network.
The Right Way and The Wrong Way
Within franchise organizations, the following factors demonstrate how digital marketing problems typically emerge.
First, the only concern of franchisees is making money from their sites. Typically, franchise marketing teams have to balance two goals: driving traffic to local franchisees and generating sales via eCommerce or brand-owned sites.
Additionally, franchise brand marketers can only do so much to ensure brand consistency and compliance at the store level.
Most franchise organizations have Franchise Advisory Councils (FAC), Marketing Advisory Councils (MAC), or National Marketing Fund Councils (NMFC) that represent the franchisees.
Imagine that your franchise network has a national advertising fund that’s accumulated via franchisee contributions. It is likely to be controlled by a formal governance body. The advertising fund aims to build brand equity across the franchise system by using various marketing tactics, thus benefiting all franchisees equally.
But, digital marketing makes this tricky.
When national paid ad campaigns are funded by non-local budgets, this results in non-local optimization. KPIs – such as clicks, conversions, impressions – that determine optimization and spend are established based on aggregate data gathered from aggregate sources.
The advertising budget – and resultant performance – usually shift to more densely populated markets or strategies that perform well for most sites but may not work for local markets.
As a result, collecting meaningful data and optimizing all campaigns when national and regional campaigns are implemented is not always possible as campaigns are only optimized for performance nationally.
Consequently, campaign data represents a generalized audience with the most conversions occurring, without local idiosyncrasies. Brands will then often attempt to apply a strategy that represents only the results of some locations in larger markets to other, local markets without considering their unique challenges.
This approach is efficient, but it isn’t practical.
Also, a large portion of locations outside of a designated market area (DMA) will not be targeted correctly, which will result in poor marketing and wasting money. In particular, rural and small locations may struggle to generate a positive return on investment, depending on their industry and campaign design.
Many franchisees don’t receive leads or income from their local website or microsite, nor growth in foot traffic attributable to digital marketing. When corporate digital marketing managers are juggling hundreds or even thousands of campaigns, the quality of leads is inevitably impacted.
It is not true that all locations will be equally benefited by national advertising efforts – some franchisees will inevitably benefit more than others. This is a common experience across franchise organizations, and arguably the biggest franchise marketing problem brands face when executing local store marketing.
There is, however, an even bigger problem when franchisees don’t see regional and local campaigns or PPC campaigns tailored to their geography by corporate.
Franchise Marketing Goes Sour in a Big Way
So what happens next?
When franchisees aren’t seeing transparency in reporting or getting the results they want, their solution is to set up self-funded local campaigns.
Some will hire their local ad agency. Despite not being marketing experts, others will try this on their own. Can you blame them if they don’t get results from franchise-level marketing?
Even though their decision might be questionable, they’re business owners who have to worry about their success.
However, the problem is often exacerbated when franchisees act independently without coordinating their strategies with the brand’s corporate marketing efforts.
Imagine a franchisee implements a local advertising strategy that’s independent of the national strategy managed by the franchise. If that happens, digital campaigns from corporate and local agents will be competing for brand visibility.
Further down the food chain, franchisees in regional or local markets will also compete against one another. This is franchise digital marketing cannibalization to the extreme.
It’s crucial to avoid your brand fragmenting and scattering. Siloed data, brand non-compliance, identity divergence, cannibalization, and other issues will all result.
A Closer Look at Franchise PPC Cannibalization and Tips for Righting the Course
By not synchronizing their digital marketing efforts, franchisees and franchisors risk wasting both national advertising and local marketing budgets. In the end, it results in a poor return on advertising spend (ROAS) for everyone involved.
So how can franchises prevent PPC cannibalization between themselves and their franchisees?
The best digital marketing plan focuses on defining targeted goals, selecting the right keywords, using effective geo-targeting, and leveraging customer data.
For franchisee networks to sync with one another, they need to develop distinct yet collaborative strategies that provide clear direction and goals.
Engagement and profit should be the focus.
All franchisee and franchisor campaigns should work together and complement one another, not compete with one another.
You can avoid cannibalization by following these tips to make sure both franchisors and franchisees benefit from the franchise marketing campaign:
Keywords
● Franchisees should know what keywords to bid on and which to avoid.
● Franchisees should avoid competing with each other and the franchise by using negative keywords.
● Segment brand search terms between national and local campaigns.
● Make use of longer and more location-specific keywords for local searches.
Geo-targeting
● Examine the geo-targeting used by the franchisees and the franchise. This should help avoid overlaps and prevent PPC cannibalism.
● Combining zip codes with radius targeting is recommended for granular targeting within each franchise territory for a targeted approach.
● If you are targeting more rural areas, be careful to avoid limiting the number of matching searches too much. This can cause low traffic, low performance, and volatility, leading to budget and conversion targets not being met.
● Franchisors should avoid competing for local PPC keywords and terms by correctly geo-targeting national campaigns.
● Set up your local and national campaigns to overlap with geo-targeting. This ensures that you are maximizing your keyword usage. To prevent cannibalization, you may want to remove zip codes from your keyword list if your keyword strategy contains an overlap.
Better reporting is an added benefit to geo-targeting, as it allows you to see your performance both as a whole and in segments.
Franchise territory overlaps
● Collaboration between franchisee marketing regions is especially effective in areas where territories may overlap. One example would be promoting the same offer in multiple local campaigns.
● Ensure that concurrent campaigns aren’t competing for keywords while assigning the zip codes.
● Establishing regional/cooperative advertising budgets and campaigns could be beneficial. A store budget set up at each store is the most efficient way to ensure equal treatment and ensure the customer who clicks within a store campaign is likely to purchase from that particular store.
● To show ads to people in the territory of a franchise store, you can implement targeting.
● In overlapping territory, you might target people who are searching for a specific location online.
Location-specific ad content
● Writing locally relevant ad copy can encourage consumers to call or visit a specific local franchisee. According to Google, 4 out of 5 consumers want ad campaigns that are customized to their location.
● Ads should include language that is relevant to the region you are targeting.
Using this approach will eliminate customer confusion and ensure that competition does not arise.
In this scenario, specialized landing pages and call tracking numbers for local stores are essential.
The eCommerce pie should go to franchisees
Consider a franchise brand that uses local and/or national PPC advertising to drive traffic to an eCommerce site instead of local store landing pages. There are still ways to ensure that the store gets credited.
For example, the franchisee may receive a portion of the revenue generated through the local search terms by using a tracking system.
The Ideal Situation
In an ideal world, local store PPC would work along with national programs, gleaning insights from the data from one program to benefit the other. The corporate marketing department remains responsible for strategic guidance concerning keywords, targeting, brand creatives, and messaging.
Franchisees will then be able to invest more in local marketing budgets and tailor their campaigns to fit the preferences of their locations. Also, local and national ad fund contributions will be transparently reported, so they’ll know exactly how their advertising budget is used.
There is no better franchise system than this one in terms of digital marketing. In the right hands, local PPC campaigns can outperform national brand campaigns. Moreover, they might appear higher in the SERPs since Google’s algorithm prioritizes local search results.
A key takeaway is to ensure your national and local paid campaigns are appropriately structured and managed.
Provide a national budget for stores, but give local stores options for budgets.
If a local campaign cannot be funded, encourage franchisees to use the same marketing platform or agency. The result will be complementary campaigns contributing to more effective franchise marketing.
New technologies and the development of new communication channels have changed local marketing.
Today, instead of relying on inserts, small print ads, and banners to gain attention, we can use hyperlocal marketing techniques that target specific regions with pinpoint precision.
This type of marketing targets customers within a geographically limited area, usually a few blocks or streets, often targeting people who conduct ‘near me’ searches on their smartphones.
What are the Advantages of Hyperlocal Marketing
Reach the right audience
Advertisers who use hyperlocal advertising target consumers on mobile phones looking for products and services.
Typically, ads with strong calls-to-action (CTA) display the consumer’s phone number and current location. When the consumer clicks on the ad, the ad network receives their location details and sells the advertisement space to similar channels. This way, advertisers can reach more relevant audiences with more compelling campaigns.
Each advertiser can choose the channel mix that best fits their budget. The media mix may include conventional and local channels, small print ads, television, radio, newspapers, and pamphlets.
Connect with a larger audience
Hyperlocal ads can help small businesses reach as many people as possible within and around their business locations. Aside from reaching a large audience, hyperlocal marketing can also offer a tremendous return on investment.
Brands can sponsor local events or use local influencers to increase their exposure to people who can shop at their business on the same day. Hyperlocal digital marketing can also generate online reviews for the brand, boosting its local rankings.
Another great feature of this kind of marketing is that it drives word of mouth, which leads to increased brand recognition in the local area.
The Key to Hyperlocal Advertising is Search
Local businesses can easily target local consumers through Google, local directories, social media, and mobile marketing. As a result, consumers can engage with local brands in ways never before possible.
In the past, people looked up a business in the White Pages when they couldn’t find its phone number, or they would search through the Yellow Pages to locate a specific type of business.
Since search advertising has taken over, things have become very different in today’s digital world.
Search engines are crucial for local businesses that target a local audience but don’t have massive name recognition. With the help of search engines such as Bing Places and Google My Business, it’s easier than ever to find local businesses.
Google My Business allows local businesses to appear in two places on the first page of a Google search: Google Maps and organic Google search results.
Top Tips for a Successful Hyperlocal Marketing Campaign
To get the most out of your hyperlocal digital advertising, follow these best practices.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Targeting relevant keywords is a good way for businesses to build their local SEO. You can also list your brand on multiple directories, such as Tripadvisor and Bing Places.
According to Google, people search for most information within 1km of their location. Google’s answer to this is their Neighbourly app, which organizes data the way people search for it.
Create Localized Content
Localized content can give businesses an edge and entice new customers. By making the content relevant to the customer base, it feels more personal and is more likely to attract customers.
A way to create more personalized marketing campaigns is to use local stereotypes.
As an example, summers can be stressful due to the excessive heat. Brands can make the most of the summer heat by creating and launching a campaign that promotes healthy chilled foods.
Retargeting
Businesses can use SMS, paid ads, and email campaigns containing compelling promotional offers to remarket to customers who show interest in their products.
You can also define retargeting by demographics and psychographics, such as gender, age, interests, and hobbies.
Geo-fencing
Businesses can target their ads in real-time to only people in a particular area with this technology. You can target a region as narrow as 1,500 feet, and as long as you like.
Social Media Business Tools
Both Facebook and Twitter have created small business divisions. While their approaches to reaching a business’ target audience are different, both show how brands can use their platforms to create content strategies, build a community, engage users and drive sales.
Putting it all together
Once implemented, these local strategies can help local businesses reach more customers, resulting in substantially increased profits. As a result, many brands are looking to hyperlocal marketing as the future of their promotional activity.
Those who recognize the potential of hyperlocal marketing and become early adopters will be more likely to achieve and retain success.
