Marketers are spending a lot of money on social media marketing analytics and, while there are some insights to be gained, the best way to find out what’s really important to consumers is to simply ask them and watch them make purchase decisions.
There are those people who are trying to convince marketers that shoppers never leave home without their smartphone and always check for lower prices elsewhere. That is a canard. The fact is that over 90% of purchases are often impulse purchases spurred by shelf placement, product design and shelf talkers.
OK, I’m talking about CPG’s that people shop for everyday not high end electronics which often do result in a search to get a better price but it’s important to distinguish between the two.
Last year I had a client who makes gourmet chocolate who unfortunately spent a lot of money on inbound marketing software which improved his social media engagement but failed to move the meter on sales. We first spent some time looking at the placement oh their product in key retailers and found that it was pretty much hidden. Moving the product to eye level and selling individual pieces at the checkout resulted in an increase of ROI by over 4:1.
We then tested online ads vs. an FSI coupon drop. In the zip code where we dropped the FSI the product sold out in less than a week resulting in multiple reorders.
At my request, we did some qualitative research to test different sales message and learned that a message talking the health benefits was a winner and lowered the “guilt” barriers about eating chocolate for women.
While they still have a Facebook page and use Twitter and Instagram the budgets for both have been cut and the marketing budgets shifted to sell thru (getting premium placement can be costly but we raised the price of the product).
The worst thing any marketer can do is spend too much time in meetings and in the office trying to determine exactly consumers want to tell us when it’s right in front if us. Get out, use your eyes and think.
