Why Online Shelf Space is Crucial For Brands Operating in FMCG

Today’s FMCG digital marketing is closely associated with conquering online shelf space. Indeed, it is crucial for modern brands to master top-shelf ecommerce. Let’s see how you can move all your products to a digital shelf and win even more clients in spite of the challenge.

What role does brand loyalty play for FMCG?

Is emotional engagement still an essential component in winning customers’ hearts?

According to a recent study conducted by Javornik and Mandelli (2012), people aren’t likely to stay with an FMCG brand if it fails to provide a unique value proposition.

Indeed, competition in the digital space is stiffer than ever, and brand loyalty is supposed to stem from a strong product. Therefore, investing in brand-based marketing may not be the best strategy to improve FMCG sales.

Leahy (2008) claims that brand loyalty shouldn’t be based entirely on emotional reasons but also on cognitive ones. Both of them define the measure of attachment that your clients feel towards your brand, so don’t neglect either of these aspects.

Furthermore, developing brand loyalty is important, but totally relying on it isn’t. You should take reputation management seriously so that your authority is based on trust. Additionally, it’s essential that you design an effective FMCG marketing strategy for your brand.

Online retail and ecommerce add another layer to building meaningful relationships with your customers since they don’t have to view all of the brands on the “shelf” before making a decision.

In the past, businesses invested $500 billion to get a more advantageous physical shelf space, but today, most purchases are made online. Your customers are browsing the web to explore different options, compare them, and make the most cost-effective decision. Even while shopping at a physical store, people often tend to consult their smartphones while choosing between different options.

Even though such radical changes might become a challenge for numerous businesses, placing your brand on a digital shelf provides excellent opportunities. Online space gets your products in front of a huge audience that needs only a few clicks to close the deal. Thus, it is crucial to increase brand awareness at the relevant stage of the sales funnel, for instance, when your prospect is considering a purchase.

How can FMCG brands separate themselves from competitors and stand out in the market?

Apart from the consistent and confident branding, enrich your FMCG marketing strategies with the following tips:

• Deliver the best products and services in your niche.
• Stand out with a unique sales proposition.
• Offer more varieties of your products than your competitors do.
• Clearly define and convey your brand voice.
• Impress your customers with remarkable product packaging.
• Show where your money goes — be transparent and engage in charity.
• Stay agile: Grow, change, and adapt to the ever-changing market.

You have to own the digital shelf space so that these tips could bring you the ultimate success.

Owning digital shelf space is key to success in online retail

The retail marketing mix is very much different from the traditional marketing mix. It includes two additional elements, so it has six Ps instead of four. Those are:

• Product
• Place
• Promotion
• Price
• Presentation
• Personnel.

This mix must serve the goals of the retailer’s target market and ensure great sales. What will be left on the table for retailers who don’t take advantage of the new approach?

Since online shopping is all about the customer’s choice, omnichannel sales strategies won’t be likely to work well. Developing a plan based on what channels work best and where your products fall is essential. Otherwise, the warm leads you’ve nurtured down the funnel might be lost to competitors at the very end, resulting in wasted marketing spend.

How retail media maximises brand exposure at the critical point

Let’s investigate a few cases where retail media ads put products in the limelight at various points in the buyer’s journey.

Retail media ensures a new kind of personalisation that is much more advanced than the past approaches. For instance, Kroger, a giant U.S. supermarket chain, applies the top-shelf ecommerce by offering loyalty cards.

Customers are targeted based on their unique preferences, from their favorite drinks to household items. Some brands send promotional emails with relevant offers directly to shoppers. These activities aim to retain customers at the loyalty stage of the sales funnel that comes after the purchase stage. The cards are so convenient that shoppers use them for 96% of transactions on the supermarket’s retailer media network.

At CitrusAd, we also help brands acquire more clients and encourage them to come back again. For instance, we helped Petco Health and Wellness Company to make the most out of retail media technology. We launched a series of sponsored products and showed ads across its mobile, e-commerce, and desktop platforms, mostly targeting customers at the consideration stage of the funnel. As a result, people were able to easily find the necessary products for their pets, and the Petco brands received from 300% to 400% ROI on ad spend.

CitrusAd’s retail media technology also helped Wakefern Food Corp., the biggest retailer-owned cooperative in the U.S. We provided native, in-app and online advertising so that the company’s brands could have better opportunities of selling their products on the omnichannel platform, enhancing the shopping experience for their clients.

With a high degree of personalisation, robust analytics, and state-of-the-art technology CitrusAd helps customers put online shelf space to good use.