Clean Store Challenges Facing Shopper Marketers

A shopper marketer’s goal is to influence the decision-making process of consumers while they are in-store. While not all may not be familiar with the roles and responsibilities of a shopper marketer, all are familiar with their tactics.

One of the goals of a shopper marketer is to disrupt the aisle to grab consumers’ attention, connect with them, and get them to buy from their brand. Disrupting the aisle comes in many forms including product comparisons, special promotions, partnerships, flashy packaging,  and more through methods such as signs, shelf and floor talkers, stickers, coupons, and more. 

Clean Store Challenges

Clean store policies are limiting these means. Retailers are seeking a more sleek, less cluttered shopper experience. They don’t want a million signs from different brands telling different stories or offering different promotions. They want a streamlined customer experience with a consolidated source of information. 

Most see these types of policies as a challenge for shopper marketers to communicate important information to consumers. At Lumavate, we see this as an opportunity to innovate the way in which brands interact with their customers in-aisle and beyond. With the physical landscape limited by clean store policies, shopper marketers need to embrace the digital landscape in order to stand out in aisle and drive revenue for their brands. 

Leverage Brand Engagement

Brand engagement in retail has typically revolved around signage and displays. Of course, there is also packaging. So, since clean store policies limit signage and displays, marketers can tap into the digital landscape to expand on the brand engagement derived from packaging. Simply slap a QR code on the packaging for customers to scan. These can lead them to brand communities that display seasonal recipes or uses for the product, co-branded experiences to promote partnerships, or opt-ins for repurchase reminders. 

Let’s take this a step further. Lumavate has empowered brands to create digital in-aisle concierge experiences to help consumers find the right product, but the opportunities are limitless when adding digital elements to your marketing strategy. You can create a purchasing calculator to help the shopper know exactly how much product to buy for themselves/their families. You can even do a product bingo or scavenger hunt: customers can get certain rewards or discounts for scanning a certain amount of items in your brand family. 

Get Social

Social media presents a great opportunity to communicate messages that would normally be displayed on shelf-talkers and floor-talkers. These shelf- and floor-talker messages are usually about store-specific promotions. For example, a brand might be doing a buy-one-get-one-free deal at Store A but not at Store B. We can leverage consumers’ associations with stores on social media to target this type of messaging. Put simply, if a customer follows Store A on Instagram, they can be targeted with that BOGO deal. Instead of relying on ignored shelf-talkers and walked-over floor-talkers, it's time to tap into the power of social media.

Reward Brand Loyalty

Rewards appssimilarly give us another avenue to circumvent clean store policy limitations. There is always the option to offer coupons or cashback on apps, like Ibotta or Shopkick. You can use store-specific apps, like the Target app. 

Harness the Power of  Zero-party Data

Capturing zero-party datais more important than ever. With our new perspective of looking at clean store policies as opportunities rather than challenges, collecting zero-party data is perhaps the biggest opportunity granted by this digital shift. There are several ways to capture this data that work seamlessly with the brand engagement tactics we previously discussed. Perhaps customers need to enter their email to enter the brand community, or they give their mobile numbers to opt-in to repurchase reminders. Whatever your strategy, it is imperative to get ahead of the death of third-party cookies and start prioritizing this objective.

Want to add digital experiences to your repertoire of shopper marketing tactics, but don’t know where to start? Check out our templates curated specifically for shopper marketers. Clean stores are pushing us to expand the boundaries of how customers engage with our brands.