BRAND SECRETS AND STRATEGIES

PODCAST #163

Hello and thank you for joining us today. This is the Brand Secrets and Strategies Podcast #163

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!

Do you want to know how to convert occasional customers into loyal shoppers? If you do, then you're in the right place.

As always, I want to thank you for listening. This show is about you and it's for you. In appreciation for your time, there's a free downloadable guide for you at the end of every podcast episode.

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 to grow sustainable sales and compete more effectively with. Remember that the goal here is to get your brand onto more store shelves and into the hands of more shoppers, and that includes online retailers.

On these shorter episodes, there's a YouTube component where I may share visuals to help illustrate what I'm talking about, so you will want to check out the videos as well. If you like the episode, share with a friend, subscribe, and leave a review. If you want to see more brand building content like this, subscribe and hit the like bell so you'll be the first to get new actionable insights as soon as they come out.

Today I want to talk about shopper loyalty. It's a term that I know you've heard several times. There are a lot of misconceptions about what shopper loyalty is and what it isn't and how you can leverage it to grow your brand. That's the focus of today's podcast.

The point is this, shopper loyalty needs to be earned. It's not something that can be embossed on a card or on a plastic card. I have dozens of shopper loyalty cards. I've got one for every airline I fly on, I've got one for every retailer in our market, and I've got one for a lot of other vendors in my market as well and across the country. The point is this, that's not shopper loyalty. Those are coupon cards.

So when you're talking to a retailer about a shopper loyalty program it should also include your brand and the value that your brand delivers at that store. Put a different way, your brand is instrumental in helping to bring awareness to the store and for driving traffic into the store. The retailer shopper loyalty program should complement and celebrate the brands they sell - in addition to those things the retailer wants to be known for.

Retailers need to own their shoppers, and the way that they own their shoppers is by giving their shoppers a reason to come in time and time and time again. Now the benefit to the retailer is that they can retain that shopper and leverage that shopper to grow their business sustainably, etc.

Now, what makes this really important is that you the brand have the opportunity to help that retailer grow sales in their store and grow shopper loyalty by making sure that they're giving their consumers what they want, your brand.

So, why does this matter? It matters because retailers generically want three things. Let's break this down. First of all, generically speaking, retailers don't make anything. What they sell is the real estate that your product takes up on their shelf, that small sliver of space your brand occupies on their shelves. What retailers really want is more traffic in their stores, a reasonable profit in the category, and a competitive advantage in their market. If you can help the retailer achieve that, then that retailer, if they're savvy, is going to help you achieve your goals, better distribution, incremental merchandising and promotional opportunities, etc. This is a strategy I talk about and teach throughout all of my podcast episodes, my mini-courses (several are free), my YouTube channel, and all my articles.

So let's talk about your customer. Who is your customer and how does your customer buy your product? Well, generically speaking, most brands don't really know who this is. A lot of brands think that their customer might be female, head of household, 2.3 kids, someone who eats snacks. That's not enough. This is exactly the reason I built my free turnkey sales store strategies course is to help you understand who that customer is.

So let me explain. How does your customer use your product when they take it home? How do they evangelize about your product? How does your customer share that product with their friends? What motivates your customer to buy your product over your competition? These are just a few of the things that you need to know and understand. For example, do they choose your product because your ingredients are cleaner? Do they choose your product because they trust your brand more than another brand? These are all things that you need to be able to understand and bake into your selling story.

More importantly, the better you know your customer, how they buy your product, how they use it when they take it home, who they share it with, Why they choose your product over the competitor's product, etc, and then the better you know your competitor's customer, the better you're going to be able to answer this key question.

The better you know your customer, the better you... The better you know your customer and the better you... The better you know your customer, how they use your product, why they choose your product over the competition at any price, etc, how they use your product when they take it home, etc., that's...

These insights are what retailers REALLY need!

A lot of brands go to a retailer and say, "Hey, I'm a nice guy. I've got a great product, an innovative brand, and cool T-shirts. Please put me on your shelf." Or they show the retailer a canned topline templated report that shows how their brands is ranked number one or two in the category.”

Honestly, sharing the same report to sell your organic baby food that another brand uses to sell their motor oil will not differentiate your brand from your competitors. They are usually just a waste of ink and paper. Savvy retailer already know how your brand is performing on their shelves. What they need are actionable insights they don’t have access to on their own.

What retailers REALLY want to understand is who your customer is, how can they leverage your brand to drive your customer into their store? And more importantly, when your customer's are in their store, what are the other things that they're buying in their store?

Shopper loyalty data is extremely expensive to buy and much of it overlooks the core natural shopper - your ideal customer. Much of the data tends to commoditize shoppers and products as a result, effectively lumping us all into generic buckets. Therefore it’s imperative that you strive to become and expert in all things your customer. Work to get to know them the same as you know your best friend. In a perfect world, you would have a one-on-one conversation with each customer as they pull your brand off the store shelf. While that’s not realistic, I talk about a lot of creative strategies to get to know your customers intimately on different podcast episodes. This is also a great way to build a thriving evangelistic community around your brand.

So when you're talking about what real customer loyalty is, it's not enough to say, here's how they buy my product. In other words, here's how my brands customers shop throughout the store and here is a list of the other items they purchase when they buy your brand.

So for example, we’ll use organic just because it's easy to understand, if a customer comes into the category and buys an organic product, that means that that customer is probably going to buy organic products in other categories. And so, as that customer checks out of the store, their market basket, the sum total of everything they purchase, is going to be much higher than the customer that doesn't buy organic.

When you get to know who your customer is, what are the other items in their shopping basket? What are the other items that they buy when they buy your brand? This is what you need to help your retail partners understand. And this is why I created my free turnkey sales store strategies course. Listen to podcast episode 129, SECRETS 129 Knowing Your Core Customer Is Critical To Your Success At Retail With Ethan Hirshberg From Ethan’s, where I talk about this strategy more in depth and how you can leverage this strategy to help retailers grow sustainable sales by leveraging the strength of your brand. You're going to want to check it out.

I appreciate you for listening. Remember, this show is about you and it's for you. If you have questions or things you want me to talk about on this podcast and on this YouTube channel, please let me know. I'd love to be able to help solve your most pressing bottleneck. Thank you again for listening.

Today’s free downloadable guide is my Strategic Solutions To Grow Your Brand. This is a great overview of the key things talked about in all of my podcasts. Its will help give you a solid foundation to build your brand on. This will help you grow and scale your brand sustainably. Don’t forget to check out my mini-courses, several are free, to take your brand to the next level and beyond. These teach the specific strategies I’ve used to push around some of the biggest most iconic brands on the planet. They worked for me and they can work for you.

I'll be certain to include today's show notes on the podcast webpage and in the show notes. You can get there by going to brandsecretsandstrategies.com/session163. 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.

Sign up today on my website so you don’t miss out on actionable insights and strategic solutions to grow your brand and save you valuable time and money.

I appreciate all the positive feedback. Keep your suggestions coming.

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