Marketers for brands spend so long discussing advertising. Digital media, radio, print, broadcast, cable, cinema, social media, direct mail – blah, blah, blah!
Ok, not blah, blah, blah. All of them have a crucial contribution to the growth of your shelf strip. But, honestly how often do you see the teams responsible for branding spending significant time and money on marketing, but spending little time thinking or discussing the shelves? I’ll tell you that way too often!
Are you aware of the reasons that making the shelf is so vital? No matter if your customer is a light switcher or a loyal heavy-user and your brand is included in their shopping cart or it’s an impulse purchase, or they’ve known your brand throughout their life or are just discovering it on the shelves there are three reasons why you should get your shelf strategy right.
Reach
There isn’t a single media outlet that can give you this much reach at once. Of course, the amount will differ by retailer and category, store location and so on, but regardless of the criteria the reach you achieve on the shelves far is the reach of any other media outlet.
If you can qualify the media by ensuring it has an appropriate and targeted positioning, there’s no rival for the shelf. In addition, you’re already on the shelf edge strips! Take a break from the integration of your products and flow charts — it’s the time to talk about your shelves!
The Decision Mindset
How else can you gain directly into the decision-making mentality? In the realm of advertising it is necessary to spend much time discussing specific and pertinent positioning. But there is nothing as important to the purchase point.
In the store, they’re set and ready to decide. It’s true that there’s a lot to do ahead of this to ensure that you’re the one they choose to decide to buy; however, all your effort to get to this point might be a mistake. Your competitor’s strategy for the shelf is to kick your back and poof! You lose.
This is also true that personalised door hangers for purchases made on impulse. There’s always a need to make a purchase even if the buyer isn’t thinking about it at the time they enter or pass across the street. This is your opportunity. Every other thing you do is assuming the person who reads your message and acts in the future. What percentage of the information that you receive every day do you really retain?
The Last Chance
This is your final chance to establish a relationship to build trust with them, be honest, share your story and be convincing. Let’s suppose they’ve seen your advertisement or social media page or even your PR mention on local news. Great!
A person can be engaged with your company on Facebook throughout the day, and, yes, there’s an abundance of value to shares. However, when they don’t vote using a dollar it’s not worth anything. Whatever your business’s model is, consumers’ purchases are your brand’s reward to deliver the things that matter to them.
If the shelves aren’t making this pact between the consumer and brand what will it do? When we discuss the shelf, it could mean three things that include permanent shelf wobbler as well as secondary shelf placement and temporary shelf positioning.
Based on your product type of product, your level of investment, life stage as well as the effectiveness of your sales organisation and other variables your brand may be able to use at least one of these types of placements.
Each plays a crucial and distinct function and we’ll go over that in a different article. The most important thing to remember is that on the shelves of your retail channel of choice the product you sell is on the shelf, waiting for a buyer. The question is: are you prepared?
What Do You Need To Do In Order To Get It Right?
Location And Place
The customer is in the ideal mindset, eager to connect with the perfect brand, but do you have the best position to be the preferred choice? Your location can attract people to try your product class. It could entice consideration when placed next to similar products. However, it makes your product front of mind whenever the consumer is making a purchase.
So what is your primary location optimal? Do you fit into the set of categories? If your primary position is actually a secondary one for this category, does the consumer be able to locate you? Does your primary location have the same across the retailers?
Have you considered leveraging door hangers? Most, if certainly not all products have only one store, however some items (impulse products such as single-serve drinks and snacks being among the most fortunate) offer multiple options to be permanently placed in the retail store.
There are also locations for distribution that are temporary. They are essential in disrupting the consumer and providing new ways to interact with the consumer. They are costly and difficult to implement but, they will yield the most amazing return when done correctly.
Packaging
The most effective media tool, the package has been viewed for a long time as the most valuable asset for brands. Numerous have written about packaging design as well as graphics and the benefits and drawbacks. In this case however, the packaging is required to do two things: First to make itself visible.
If your customers don’t notice your company and the chances are you’ll lose. The second step is to provide the most crucial facts to convince them that they are making the right choice. Have you compared your product against your competition to make sure that the customer will be aware? Do you know your customers’ choice-making process?
Are you addressing their needs and creating an emotional chord? The packaging has to perform lots of work. And, while numerous people spend hours trying to make it perfect initially, however, few go back to the product later on to check if they’re satisfying the requirements of the consumer. Becoming aware of competition and staying in touch with the customer will allow you to remain relevant on the market.
Price
There is also the issue of cost. This is not an opinion on value. I’ll assume that your consumer assessment of positioning, research and benchmarking have settled the question of value. Price is the game you play in the store with your competitors and the retailer being the other players.
Prices can be cut and diced to pieces in a variety of ways. From the base price to the advertised price, trade investment to marketing strategies for shoppers and coupons to sample There is much greater to the price of just a dollar sign.
Utilising this small number of numbers to influence not just the customer, but also retailers or competitors could have a massive impact on your shelf. Make sure you know what your value proposition is in line with the prices of different retailers and competition. You don’t want to be in the position of losing just because you didn’t comprehend the trade strategies of your competition.
Easy, right? However, finding the perfect shelf talker is a challenge. Even my biggest clients – which include Fortune 500 companies – still need a lot to complete to make it perfect. But, not putting aside the shelves for things that you have greater power on (such for advertising) isn’t a valid excuse. In the end, it will cost you more severely than you imagine. You don’t want to be the only one on the shelf, do you?
