BRAND SECRETS AND STRATEGIES

PODCAST #202

Hello and thank you for joining us today. This is the Brand Secrets and Strategies Podcast #202

Welcome to the Brand Secrets and Strategies podcast where the focus is on empowering brands and raising the bar.

I’m your host Dan Lohman. This weekly show is dedicated to getting your brand on the shelf and keeping it there.

Get ready to learn actionable insights and strategic solutions to grow your brand and save you valuable time and money.

LETS ROLL UP OUR SLEEVES AND GET STARTED!

Welcome. You’ve probably heard me say that retail is broken and wondered exactly what I meant by that. Sadly retail is more focused on what's best for the retailer than what's best for the consumer. Trade promotions are you huge profit center for both retailers and distributors. It's affectively a drug that they're addicted to so educating them on better way to grow stainable sales will take some time.

When retail first started it was about supplying the goods and services that customers wanted and were willing to buy - period. It's really that simple. However, around about the 70s retailer started focusing more on their bottom line instead of the consumers they serve. This is where I trade marketing affectively became a profit center.

Retailers and distributors quickly learned that they could sell add space in their weekly circular similar to the way newspapers collected ad revenue. In addition, they also realized that they could sell shelf and display space in their stores. The focus changed from giving the shoppers what they wanted to trying to squeeze as much margin as possible out of the small sliver of space that your brand occupies on their shelves.

Another reason I say that retail is broken is because of the myth that price is the only thing that motivates consumers to buy your products. The current strategy today implies the customers will not buy your products if you don't promote them heavily and often. Nothing could be further from the truth, especially with better for you natural products.

The reality is, customers want a fair value for the products they purchase. Customers are willing to spend a premium on products that provide exceptional value. This is the theory I was able to prove in the 2016 category management handbook where are I proved that natural organic products are responsible for all the sustainable growth across every category and that in their absence every category would be flat or declining.

I also believe that retailers are more focused on trying to sell us the stuff on their shelves than selling us what we want to buy. I'll save that conversation for a different podcast.

Overtime, in my opinion, most retailers lost sight of why they opened their stores to begin with. I think it's time that we help them reimagine and appreciate what matters most - the customer that your brand attracts.

Simply put, it's all about buying and selling things.

With all the online threats and the hyper competitive retail landscape it's imperative that retailers remain relevant. Relevant meaning that customers have a reason to continually shop their stores. Savvy retailers will focus more on how to keep the customer coming back and inviting their friends than on the drug they call trade marketing.

Educating retailers on the enhanced value of your customers shopping basket is the way we fix retail. This is how we help retailers remain relevant and this is how we help them develop a sustainable competitive edge in their market. This all begins with a shopper - your shopper.

Before I go any further I want to thank you for listening. The show is about you and it's for you. I always include one easy to download quick to digest strategy that you can instantly adopt and make your own - one that you can use the grow sustainable sales and compete more effectively with. Remember the goal here as to get your products onto store shelves and into the hands of more shoppers, including online.

Even well before the pandemic, I was getting a lot of questions about trade marketing. Specifically, how to help maximize your trade promotion ROI, reduce wasted trade spending, encourage more customers to find and buy your products, and help level the playing field with big brands. To help better address your needs, I decided to niche down and focus on the strategies that I developed to push around some of the biggest and most iconic brands on the planet. Some of strategies I developed increased distribution, maximized merchandising effectiveness, provided lucrative incremental promotional opportunities, and established me a category leader. This matters because every slight trade promotion improvement means more runway for sales growth, higher brand valuations, better terms when negotiating with investors, fuel for more innovation, greater support for mission based causes, and more. This is a topic I’ve spoken on at several industry events. It’s also the topic I focus on with the free weekly webinar series I launched after Expo was cancelled. Go back and check out the webinar recordings.

The Trade Management Essentials To Grow And Scale Your Brand is my most downloaded. You can get it instantly by going to https://retailsolved.com/guide15.

Because brands are hurting due to the pandemic, I am also making my PROVEN STRATEGIES TO MAXIMIZE TRADE MARKETING ROI course available for free. I just finished updating it and I added a lot more brand-building content. It is a $297 value that you can get by going to https://retailsolved.com/trademarketingroi. Use the code: TradeEssentials at check out. It’s just my way of giving back.

If you like the podcast please share it with a friend and help me raise the bar in natural - we rise by helping each other. And don’t forget to go back and listen to prior episodes where I may solve your most pressing bottleneck, you know the thing that keeps you up at night.

Now back to our story.

The term “market basket “(or shopping basket) is perhaps one of the most important terms in retail. The market basket includes all of the items Shoppers purchase on each shopping trip. The reason this matters so much is that health conscious natural organic shoppers spend more than regular shoppers.  For example, a shopper purchasing organic bread is most likely also purchase a variety of other organic products including organic spread, organic produce, organic yogurt, etc.  This equates to sustainable category growth and more profit for the retailer.

Retailers and brands continually strive to understand consumer buying habits including the average list of items found in customer’s shopping baskets during each visit. This allows retailers to customize product assortment, in-store merchandising, marketing strategies, promotions, and pricing to better meet consumer needs.  This customization improves the shopper’s experience and increases shopper loyalty.

That's all begins with your ideal consumer and how well you know them on an intimate basis. Most brands rely on focus groups which tends to lump shoppers and a generic buckets. This is exactly why I created my free turkey sales story strategies course. This is the healthy foundation that every brand needs to be built on. For those brands that have the discipline to go through it and leverage it's insights you will gain a significant comparable advantage. This is also the Achilles' heel of most every brand.

The point is, the better you know your idea customer the more affective you will be at meeting their needs. For example, I joke about how mainstream solution providers tend to think of the LOHAS consumer as someone who eats a couple salads and goes for a walk. In our world, the LOHAS consumer is also focused on reducing their carbon footprint, buying a local, supporting independent farmers in retailers, regenerative organic, and much much more. Your consumer spends more at check out as a result. Therefore your shopper is more valuable to the retailer compared to other brands.

Increasing market basket growth

How does this work? Retailers work hard to capture every sale that runs through the register.  This gives them greater insight into consumer shopping preferences so they can better meet consumer needs and have a competitive advantage against other retailers in their market.This is information you need to provide to retailers. I have a lot of creative strategies to help you get shopper data that I share in other content.

Say for example your monthly shopping budget is $400.  That means that you have $400 a month to purchase all the items on your shopping list.  The goal of every retailer is to get you to fulfill your shopping list in their store and not shop their competition.

Today’s consumers are savvier than ever before. They shop at a variety of retailers, cherry-picking them for the best deals. This is due largely to advertised promotions, apps, pricing, selection and service. Convenience is a huge factor for most shoppers.  They make lists and typically pre-plan their shopping trips based on published sales and deals.

Retailers can’t be experts in every category and every item they sell. This is where brands have an opportunity to differentiate themselves from their competition. Savvy retailers will reward brands who partner with them to help them drive sustainable growth. This creates a great opportunity for brands to help guide retailers providing them with strategies and solutions to maximize customer satisfaction, consumer loyalty, sales, and profits.  This is how you stand out in a crowded category! This is how you become a category leader. A category leader is any brand willing and able to help guide their retail partner to drive sustainable sales by leveraging the unique strength of your shopper.

11 important strategies to increase market basket size

Stock the right product assortment

Sell top items in the market as well as niche items to attract new customers and appeal to existing customers. As I mentioned before, a lot of retail or spend most of the time trying to sell stuff that's on the shelf rather than asking us what we want to buy.

Work to understand everything you can about the retailer, what other priorities, what are they want to be known for in their market, who are other customers and how do they align with your product, and much more. Then help your retail partner identify the items that your shoppers, their shoppers, want to buy and recommend them to the retailer. This will give them a comparable advantage in your market as they adjust their product assortment to better cater to the needs of their shoppers.

Provide superior customer service

Exceed customer expectations by highlighting the key reasons customers should shop your store exclusively and how they can get all the things on their shopping list. This is one of the course strengths of natural retailers. Use every opportunity to educate retailers about key category trends and how your consumers shop the category. This is what retailers really want.

Build incremental displays that increase excitement, attract attention, and increase product awareness.

Incremental merchandising is a great way to build excitement product awareness and drive sales. Share strategies and ideas that you pick up add different retailers including in different categories. Leverage those creatively to make it easier for shoppers to find and buy your products. I was focused on the shop or journey - what can you do to improve it and make shopping more convenient and easier. That includes making it easy for customers to to pay for their products and get back to their day.

Offer competitive everyday pricing

Competitively price popular items. Make up your margin on specialty or unique items not available at the competition.

For example, identify the most popular products in every category and comparably priced them so that Shoppers perceive you to have a good prices. When you think about the sharper journey, think about their perception as the shop the store. Imagine if you had an opportunity to have and intimate conversation with every customer, what would he tell you. Leverage those insights to help your retail partner to improve the shop or journey.

Take a leadership role in trending categories

Develop a reputation for being innovative. Focus on the no like trust aspect as you develop a solid relationship with the retailer

Become an invaluable resource to your retail partner.

Use promotional strategies that drive excitement

Get understand the retailers objectives and goals in the pricing and promotion strategy. Develop creative strategies the amplify your results.

Add variety to improve your promotional strategies

Leverage promotions with strong national brands to drive their loyal customers to shop your store

This will increase your exposure to more potential shoppers

Call promoting your products was complementary Brands are great way to introduce your products to new shoppers. This is also a great strategy to maximize your promotional lift - the increase sales from a promotion. Sometimes increment lift Will be many times higher when you promote complementary items together

Build a lasting relationship with your customers

Develop an online community outside of traditional retail for your court customers. This is where you have the greatest opportunity to nurture them and convert them from occasional customers into loyal evangelist. This is something to talk about on a lot of different episodes.

Becoming social media savvy can help with this. Be certain that you talk to them as you were a friend and not at them the way big brands do

Adopt solid business building strategies through true category management

These are the industry best-practice strategies used by the big brands

Category management was founded to eliminate the wasted spending and inefficiencies in selling your products at retail. Big brands rely heavily on category management but unfortunately they tend to use cookie cutters strategies and push button category management - automated tools that crank out canned top line reports. This is their Achilles' heel. Learning the best strategies and applying your creativity is the focus of all my content.

Adopt a loyalty program that encourages repeat business

Customer engagement is key.  Get to know your customers and work hard to meet their needs

Sharper loyalty is not something it is embossed or a plastic card. It is something that is earned. Giving shoppers what they want and exceeding their expectations is the best and most effective way to convert occasional customers in a while evangelist

Get involved in your community

Shoppers appreciate brands and retailers that give back – especially when it impacts their local community

Shoppers appreciate mission-based brands. They want to feel good about the products they purchase. Shoppers also want to support important initiatives like eliminating food deserts - things they could not do on their own. As a result, they will support the brands that do good on their behalf

Think about the customer journey and all the items the customers put in their shopping basket. Think about how valuable your customers are to the retailer. Make it easy for them to find and buy your products and then educate retailers and help them understand and appreciate the incremental value that you can provide to them as a trusted and respected resource.

As a pro tip, look at the shop or journey beginning at the checkout stand and work backwards. Understand how customers shop, which items a buy and in what order. Develop a promotion strategy that aligns with the customer journey. This is how you maximize your market basket size to grow sales and profits.

Thank you for listening. You can get this weeks free downloads and the show notes on the podcast page by going to https://retailsolved.com/session202. Thank you for listening and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.

Thanks again for joining us today. Make sure to stop over at brandsecretsandstrategies.com for the show notes along with more great brand building articles and resources. Check out my free course Turnkey Sales Story Strategies, your roadmap to success. You can find that on my website or at TurnkeySalesStoryStrategies.com/growsales. Please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, and recommend it to your friends and colleagues.

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Until next time, this is Dan Lohman with Brand Secrets and Strategies where the focus is on empowering brands and raising the bar.