EUROPE BUSINESS
How to Avoid Wasting Millions on Inef ficient Shopper Marketing Campaigns A whopping £1.5bn is spent each year on shopper marketing – that is, marketing campaigns that focus on influencing consumers at the point of sale. But in 2017, inflation, the devalued sterling and ongoing price wars are all squeezing margins, making strategic shopper marketing more important than ever for brands wishing to drive value. Yet brands should beware. Shopper marketing isn’t as easy as it seems. Indeed, a lack of focus on ROI and a lack of cohesive strategy could be leading to huge inefficiencies. In my view, FMCG brands in the UK are likely wasting millions of pounds a year on inefficient shopper marketing campaigns. Here are some of the key obstacles that brands need to overcome: 1) Fragmentation. Widespread fragmentation has resulted in budgets often arriving from numerous sources while important decisions can be made by local teams without wider insight and collaboration. 2) Industry disunity. Harmonising the way projects are managed and spending is controlled has become more difficult as each retailer implements increasingly complex and wide-ranging campaigns differently. 3) Unclear rules and guidelines. Few formal guidelines about which retailers
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and activation elements will best deliver campaign objects have also further complicated requirements for additional marketing insight. 4) Decentralised data. Unclear requirements for thorough recordkeeping have resulted in a lack of central data repositories with important information often stored on different and sometimes incompatible systems. 5) Measurement. Measurement and ROI – an issue for much of the media and marketing landscape – has also posed challenges for a sector historically lacking the right tools and analytical systems. The good news is that, as with many disciplines, intelligence use of technology has sparked a revolution in shopper marketing practices. In overcoming the obstacles outlined above, savvy shopper marketers can make use of the following cutting-edge trends. 1) End-to-end automation. This is alleviating the dependence on subjective and varying teams – allowing companies to budget, plan, deliver and evaluate media throughout the entire shopper marketing campaign, crucially, on the same platform. 2) Targeted approaches. New solutions are now preloaded with a range of retailer information – such as rate cards, timelines and deadlines as well
as other specifications and promotional information. This exceptional granularity lets brands achieve extraordinary data-driven granularity while targeting shoppers by retailers, demographic, geolocation and media channels. 3) Trend forecasting. The growth of data-driven tools and advanced solutions means that the likely success of future campaigns can also be analysed in addition to evaluating previous campaign outcomes – enriching the campaign planning experience and offering valuable insight. Producing sales and impact reports clearly demonstrates ROI and further improves evaluation processes.