Digital Shopper Marketing - the new influence

The world of retail is now multi-channel and customers now shop across a number of different devices, at times of day to suit them and in different ways to how they used to (convenience vs. cost, etc.).

 

The area of Shopper Marketing, which originally looked mainly at things such as the in-store path to purchase has now started to merge with the eCommerce / multi-channel retail and even online marketing. This has formed the relatively new discipline of Digital Shopper Marketing.

Here's my take on this:

1. Brands, by placing themselves between the channels of influence and the point of retail (e.g. the store), can affect the buying decisions of the customer
2. A lot of customers now use the Internet to inform their buying decisions (e.g.recommendation and comparison sites, social media, brand micro-sites, etc.)
3. The digital influence doesn't just happen at home and in-front of a static PC these days. Users search sites at work, they have laptops when on the move, they use tablets in bed and over half of the UK population now has a smartphone.

So how can brands disrupt a consumer and get the maximum affect? Well this depends a lot on what consumers you are targetting, their shopping preferences and the mix of marketing that is required.
For example, a particular segment (let's call them "shopper savvy mums") are more interested in ways to:

• Saving: Using vouchers to make the family budget stretch that little bit further
• Sharing: Commenting and gaining opion via Social Media
• Sampling: Trying new or improved products to optimise spend and overall family well-being

The secret for digital shopper marketing suppliers is to find out what works for their client's target audience. And I''ll leave you to find out how to do this for yoursleves.

EU Privacy Directive - my recommendations

In my earlier post, I covered my understanding of the EU Privacy Directive and what the current situation was with this legislation in the UK.

At the end of this post I raised the question of what you can do. So here's some recommended steps you can take to compliance:

•  If you have an ecommerce site, immediately update your transaction Terms and Conditions.
• Carry out an audit of all 1^st and 3^rd Party cookies and other tracking technologies used across the sites. Then assess whether they are still required
• Clearly and accurately communicate to visitors about your cookie policy and what tracking is used.
• Develop a solution that requests consent if it is not already obtained. This consent needs to be obtained before any other actions are carried out on the site.   Note: Consent can only be gained by positive action (e.g. the user doing something. The user NOT doing something is not consent.
• Also check with your SEO company to see if any solution proposed affects your rankings (e.g. is seen as a blocker, cloaking, etc.?)

I would also strongly recommend that you speak with your legal representative or in-house counsel to ensure that you know your legal responsibilities when the legislation comes into force on the 26th May 2012.