Molly McFarlandThis year, marketers are finding themselves adjusting to consumers’ transformed shopping and buying preferences as the demand for fast, convenient, and frictionless experiences continue to rise. In addition to changed shopping habits, brands are also looking for new ways to engage with consumers within the evolving parameters of privacy regulations.
In response, marketers are accelerating their strategies to target consumers most effectively amid a competitive landscape. But how do they ensure they’re successfully reaching consumers at a critical point of the customer journey, the purchasing-intent phase, while remaining compliant?
Contextual advertising, which allows brands to tie advertising messages to consumers’ preferences from first-party data instead of third-party identifiers, is proving to be a vital path forward. For example, investment in contextual digital and mobile advertising technologies such as shopping list marketing can enable marketers to reach consumers at the purchase planning stage — when they are building their grocery list or digital cart — and serve them with relevant and timely ads to further influence conversion.
With 93% of CPG marketers agreeing that their brands would benefit from reaching consumers at this key point of the buyer’s journey, shopping list marketing can serve as an integral part of their strategy to reach consumers more effectively throughout the customer journey in the following ways.
Introduce New Products
One of the biggest challenges of launching a new product is spreading the word. Marketers are not only competing with established brands, but they must also drive awareness and find a way to engage with their target audience. To achieve their product launch goals, marketers can use shopping list marketing to capitalize on shopper-intent and engage their target shoppers via contextual advertising. With this strategy, marketers can catch consumers in the right moments and places to drive engagement, finding shoppers who are in the planning stage of the shopper journey.
For example, when Hydrant introduced its electrolyte drink mix to shelves in 2021, its marketing team sought to build awareness around its expanded availability. The brand leveraged mobile grocery shopping lists to educate shoppers about Hydrant’s availability in stores and encourage them to add promoted products to mobile lists and online retailer carts. With shopping list marketing, Hydrant achieved a 96% incremental add-to-list rate and increased repeat purchasers by 35.6%.
Influence Consumer Behavior
The pre-shop phase, when shoppers are building out their shopping lists before they enter the store, is a pivotal stage of the customer journey for brands to make an impact. Consumers are interacting with product categories and deciding what products or brands to purchase. Marketers have a unique opportunity to capture a shopper’s attention at this moment of decision to make a big impact.
With shopping list marketing, brands are equipped with grocery list data, including conversion rates, purchase intent and more, to find and influence the consumers who will be most receptive to their message. Since list data is an accurate predictor of in-store sales, marketers can utilize this data to optimize media, identify in-market shoppers, and capitalize on category and product trends.
Target In-Store Shoppers
Shopping list marketing can also extend to in-store shoppers. Nearly half of consumers who own smartphones use them while they are shopping in-store. This behavior presents an opportunity for brands to continue staying top of mind while consumers are browsing the shelves. For instance, once consumers arrive at the grocery store, a reminder to pick up a product previously added to a mobile list will now be literally in the shopper’s hand and crossed off once they grab it off the shelf.
Execute a Shopping List Marketing Campaign Today
In today’s competitive and privacy-first landscape, it’s not enough to simply create awareness. Short attention spans coupled with an increasing amount of noise means brand’s messages are getting lost. Marketers must engage shoppers through consideration, intent, purchase and loyalty.
To deploy strategic and differentiated advertising that wins new shoppers, brands will need to better allocate their budget to influence, measure and create content that resonates and sells. Shopping list marketing allows marketers to target consumers at the right time while driving better ad performance overall.
