What you can expect when reading: A little self-promotion, various digital insights and a clear idea for the online/offline point of sale activation of the future.
The development of the sales promotion activities over the past 30 years.
Anyone who has dealt with sales promotions of fast-moving consumer goods in the past 10, 20 – or like us already 30 – years has experienced a clear evolution. While promotions in the 90s were still dominated by the transport of brand values, today they are primarily efficiency-driven. What all times have in common, however, is that a lot of money was and is spent to make one’s own products visible at the physical point of sale.
Looking into my past, I can think of three beautiful examples from my own work over the past three decades.
90s
For me personally, it all started almost 30 years ago with a very simple scrub cloth in the shape of a hand, which was intended as an incentive from pH5 Eucerin for pharmacists. Simple, but good and successful at the time – which is hard to imagine today.
00s
At the beginning of the 2000s, the really big 6-digit prizes started. At that time, we developed the promotion campaign for Coca-Cola „Win the experience of a lifetime!“, which was played 360 degrees across all media.
10s
In the following 10 years, the topic of couponing, discounts & co. became more and more frequent. Towards the end of the decade, this was topped by campaigns in which products were given away in their entirety to generate trial. A good example of this was our „Activia satisfaction guarantee“ campaign for Danone. By digitally sending in the receipt, the purchase price was 100% refunded.
And what about the 20s? How do you think they will look retrospectively?
The pandemic is accelerating the change in shopping behaviour.
It was already apparent last year that shoppers are increasingly shifting their grocery shopping to digital channels.
Source: Afterpay Insights, cw 34-35/2020
As can be seen clearly in the figures from August 2020 (i.e. well after the first Corona wave), the pandemic also has long-term effects on shopping behaviour. The long-term aspect of this change in behaviour becomes clearer when one looks more closely at the reasons:
Source: Afterpay Insights, cw 34-35/2020
Clearly in first place is personal safety when shopping, which is of course due to the Corona virus. But this aspect is closely followed by convenience. It is simply convenient for shoppers to shop online. That’s why we should – or rather must – ask ourselves whether we don’t have to react to this much more strongly and quickly.
Let’s not kid ourselves, it will certainly take far more than a year before this virus is truly defeated. I don’t want to paint the black here, that would be out of place and contradicts my attitude. Nevertheless, I am convinced that the virus will be with us for quite a while and that the trend towards more online purchases will continue, and not only because of this.
We must therefore ask ourselves what consequences this will have for sales and marketing. And how we can react to it without falling into actionism?
New point of sale. New competition!
We will have to ask ourselves whether these changes in the behaviour of shoppers will also increase competition in the online shops – such as Rewe.de, Real.de, amazon.de, flaschenpost.de & Co. At the moment, these online shops haven’t anything to do with brand perception or even a shopping experience.
As an example, I have picked out the online shop of the pure player Flaschenpost.de:
Source: flaschenpost.de
No one will buy these products because of the great presentation. The product details page is free of any emotionality and the information content of the copy (if it is read at all) is, let’s say, poor – sorry to the authors, but that’s just the way it is.
But I also realise that this is not without reason. Because the online shop of Flaschenpost.de is not yet a relevant sales channel for companies from the beverage industry. So at best, it is populated with an excerpt from a delivered press article.
The packaging also hardly helps with the add-to-cart.
Packaging has unfortunately largely lost its purpose in the online shop – because I can’t hold it in my hand like I can at the physical point of sale. Here we have to ask ourselves whether packaging does not have to be adapted to these (digital sales) conditions.
That means: Selling a product is becoming a pure coincidence or is generally a planned buy in the current online shops of the retailers.
Whats next? What should be done to gain more visibility and relevance with partner retailers?
More visibility with technology that sells.
Consumer electronics, white goods and other have been showing us the way for quite some time. Amazon, as a technology and innovation leader, has also been using the topic of content on its website for a long time. They improve not only their add-to-cart rates for enriched products, but also earn additional money with it. Rich content syndication, in other words, has been turned into a business model there. And many brands – surprisingly also FMCGs – invest considerable money here.
But what about the other online shops? Don’t the Flaschenpost, Rewe and real,- play a role here at all? Not even when you consider that in these stores the content can even be used in a more brand-appropriate way than on Amazon?
And here, too, it is really easy to present your brand profitably. Because in every online shop, no matter how plainly designed, we can play out unique brand content with technical support. This helps to establish a brand in the hearts of the buyers and to sell products. The advantages are clear:
- The add-to-cart rate of products supported with emotional content is increased by up to 25%. (According to a study by a provider of rich content syndication).
- One’s own brands/products gain more visibility compared to others – especially compared to me-too or noname products.
- Finally, a customer journey without media disruptions is possible: From the display campaign / social media activation directly to the retailer’s online shop. Efficiency included, in other words.
This is the solution for you.
Whether with or without a product information management (PIM) / digital asset management (DAM) solution, it makes sense to develop appropriate sales promotions for all distribution channels. And the bottom line is that it is very easy to distribute it in the channels of your retail partners.
A nice „side effect“ of this solution: it can also be used in parallel at the physical point of sale – via QR code or, even better, NFC tag. So the investment is always well used.
Perfect support for sales meetings.
Sales and key account management will appreciate the fact that they now have even more arguments at hand to optimally present products in listing or promotion discussions with retailers. The bottom line is that the (online) shop of the retailer that presents its customers with the best convenience paired with the best offer and shopping experience will win. Just like at the point of sale – just like in „real“ life.