From Our Print Edition

Want to be a better partner to retailers? Read on… there may be a few surprises for you here.

How can CPG marketers be better partners to retailers? I interviewed several marketers from major retail chains and asked them: what their best CPG brand partners do well, what ticks them off and what myths they wanted to dispel. Here is what they came up with.

      1. We like half-baked ideas.

Don’t bring us a fully baked program and try to sell us on it. We realize that to build scale, you need to activate your strategic platforms at many retail chains, but it doesn’t mean the activation should look the same everywhere. Our most successful CPG partners share insights, high-level concepts, explain how their strategic efforts support our retail strategies and allow our marketing teams to shape the tactical plans and tailor messaging and incentives. The magic happens when we co-create, which feels like a true partnership rather than transactional selling.

      2. We like brands who ‘speak our language.’

And we don’t just mean using the correct noun to describe our shoppers, e.g. Target “guest” or Kroger “customers”, or knowing our internal abbreviations. “Language” of analytics and shopper data is what we really want our brand partners to speak. Knowing how we look at our business and analyze our shoppers’ behavior will set you apart. Best CPG vendors come prepared with our POS and shopper data supporting their selling stories. When they bring new data sources, they use them in a meaningful way. Our best partners know the key performance indicators that really matter to us and help us see how their data and ideas support them.

      3. We want to meet with smaller brands, too.

Smaller brands are a key source of growth and a breath of fresh air. We aren’t interested in seeing just the top 20 CPG vendors — we will find time to meet with smaller players. We are happy to help facilitate your sell-in process and coach you on how to grow with us. In fact, many successful companies begin their brand-building efforts with targeted retail-specific activations, not with expensive national media buys. Shopper Marketing for them is the main form of marketing because of its efficiencies and tangible linkage to distribution and sales.

      4. We think you waste too much money on generic campaigns.

Much of what we see in the CPG world seems to be just a chase for impressions. For example, we see brands come to us with suggestions to run a Facebook-promoted post campaign that drives shoppers to our stores. This kind of campaign will cost thousands of dollars and will surely deliver hundreds of thousands of impressions… none of which you can link to specific shopping trips or baskets. While we see value in generating awareness, we cringe at this sort of reckless spending because marketers learn little from these campaigns. Instead, invest in shopper-centric programs where you can trace buyer conversion, measure trial and repeat rate and shopper share of wallet. Many retailers can enable such a sophisticated approach. Ask us about our targeting and attribution capabilities so we can create mutual wins and improve marketing spending accountability.

      5. It’s not our job to secure your incremental merchandising.

We’ve heard many times that you would support our corporate retailer marketing programs if they came with guaranteed feature and display support. It’s prudent and logical to expect that, and you may have been able to do it in the past. But it’s not our job to negotiate merchandising support on your behalf. Our primary focus is driving more store visits, improving shopper experience and loyalty. Securing incremental merchandising is a collaborative effort that should involve your sales teams and our merchandising department. Which brings us to our next point…

      6. Don’t try to avoid our merchandising department.

Our merchandising department decides when and where your products are sold, negotiates your feature and display support, and can affect your profit margins and marketing ROI. Your sales team must be in lock-step with our merchandising team every step of the way. It’s imperative to align each category’s short- and long-term goals, KPIs, pricing and promo strategies with your shopper activations. Make sure to attend meetings with our merchandisers, and especially the strategic joint business plan (JBP) sessions.

These conversations align our companies’ high-level strategies and help you be practical with your marketing investments. For instance, you may choose to swap between trade investments and shopper marketing support, and avoid offering too many incentives so that you give your product away for free. This happens more often than we all care to admit.

      7. Know our process and lead times to avoid ‘surprises.’

We plan our marketing campaigns months out. And depending on the type of campaigns, approvals make take a long time. Sweepstakes promotions, for instance, require legal clearance, so don’t come to us in January asking for approval to run the campaign in February.

We can only include a certain number of messages and offers on our email newsletter or weekly circular, and our content calendar fills up fast. So, start early and come prepared with specific half-baked ideas that we can shape together and put on our content roadmap.

Don’t forget to ask for our style and content guidelines where logos, treatments, sizes, resolutions and other mandatories are laid out. For example, we must comply with ADA requirements.

Article Written by Olga Yurovski

Olga Yurovski is an industry veteran, blogger, shopper marketing consultant and software entrepreneur. She invented and now licenses Shopperations, a web-based planning software for CPG and retail marketers to enable budget transparency, accountability and stronger post-promotional analytics. Contact Olga at [email protected] or via her blog blog.shopperations.com.