A growing trend among businesses is the use of retail media to influence their customers. This is mainly because brand loyalty is hard to come by.
A Neilson study posits that only 8% of buyers are actually brand loyalists. That means that most purchases these days are decided upon at the point of sale, or at least very near to it. Enter the wielding of retail media tactics to capture those buyers.
What is Retail Media?
Once upon a sunny day, retail media was comprised of tools like discounts and promos in weekly adverts, couponing in local papers and the like, and utilizing placement and advertising inside shops and stores.
Then came along tools like loyalty programs. These, combined with the rise of online shopping, gave birth to all the online things. These include websites, blogs, social media platforms, email marketing, apps, banner ads, QR codes, and even check-in kiosks when you enter certain businesses.
Why You Should Care
However, the evolution of retail media didn’t stop there. Nowadays, (thanks to COVID-19 shutdowns), retail media’s potential is on the rise once again. Businesses and brands are now using retail media by placing sponsored (aka paid) ads on the websites and apps of different retailers as a way to broaden their reach to consumers.
While this doesn’t bode well for all sellers, for those, who master the art of creating great ads, it can mean a real boom to their business. This is largely due to the fact that many retail giants are boosting these sponsored ads above organic product placements.
In a nutshell, it means more eyeballs on a product ad for those willing to pay-to-play.
How to Use Retail Media to Your Advantage
The first step is to decide what your brand objectives are. You can’t hit a target if you don’t have one. Know what you want out of a retail media campaign so that you can objectively quantify its success. To really build brand equity, you need to be seen everywhere your customers might expect you to be seen, and that takes strategy.
Which brings us to the next step. Determine the best places for placements that fit your brand and audience. When people in your market start shopping online (especially during this pandemic/holiday season), it’s important that your business is found easily, where consumers expect to find you. You want to grab them at that point of sale, but you can’t do that if you’re buried in the search results, regardless of platform.
The next step is don’t sit on the fence and wait. Online shopping isn’t going anywhere. Retail media can help you outshine your competition if you get started now, but the competition is steadily growing. More brands are recognizing the power of retail media and factoring it into their budget. As the competition rises, so does the prices in sponsoring ads.
One of the coolest things about retail media today is you don’t only have room for experimentation with the products and services you offer, but you can also make lighting fast adjustments to your strategy to fit consumer behavior. That means if something doesn’t seem to be working, you can make even just a minor change and potentially see a phenomenal upward swing in your results.
Retail media, love it or hate it, it’s where we are at today. At StellaPop, we’re happy to help you to jump in and start making waves.
See Also:
The Year of Ambition: Marketing Resolutions for 2021
Data Privacy Compliance is a Step Your Business Can’t Skip
How Consumer Behavior is Changing the Business Landscape in 2020
