Effective Brand Management – Are Empty Shelves Impacting Your Bottom Line?

With the continuous growth of competition in the CPG industry, effective brand management has become even more important. With the knowledge that retailer behaviour can impact your bottom line, the trend seems to be that brands are attempting to take far more control when it comes to their merchandise on the store floor. Managing your brand has never been more important.

Don’t just take our word for it; check out this recent article from Business Wire: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20141104006475/en/Displaydata-Research-85-U.S.-Shoppers-Research-Online#.VI8OW-8tCM9.

Reporting on a Displaydata consumer survey, the articles notes that, although 83% of consumers report that most of their shopping takes place in bricks and mortar locations, they do report several disconnects between the online and offline experience. These include different prices being offered online versus in-store, issues with stock and availability and poorly trained staff. These issues are contributing to the competition felt by bricks and mortar locations on behalf of online retailers.

Consumers tend to use various methods for information, and according to the article, omni-channel marketing seems to be gaining ground. Unfamiliar with this growing trend? Check out last week’s post!

Effective brand management means being aware of exactly what is going on in-store. If customers are not happy, can’t find your product, or are getting frustrated by poor service, they may just turn to the computer to solve the problem.

Storesupport can help you ensure that your brand is being managed correctly, all the time, and help you fix any problems if it isn’t! Call us today at 1-877-421-5081.

How Canadian Merchandising Companies Can Solve Your Customer Experience Woes

Customer experience is a complex entity, summed up by the total interaction a client has with your brand. This can include any form of marketing (print/media advertising) and customer service in-store and online. A focus on customer experience needs to play a major role in any company’s (both retailers and brands) plan for success.

Don’t just take our word for it. A recent Business Insider article looked at one of the most profitable companies worldwide, examining why it continues to make a profit year in and year out. The conclusion: a long term focus on customer experience has led to a strong brand reputation and exceptional customer loyalty, and this has equaled major annual profits.

The articles states: “building the desired customer experience requires tools such as (but not limited to) research, operations, brand management, marketing and employee engagement.” You cannot exchange one for the other – you need to maintain a high level with each aspect of the equation.

How can merchandising companies help you raise the bar for customer experience? In various ways. 

Brands: Think about brand management. What approach do you take to ensuring your brand is perceived well? If you are too focused on short term, the long term will suffer. And how can you determine what this perception is? Merchandising companies can help you best understand the customer experience through tools such as mystery shopping (to better gauge the level of a retailer’s employee engagement and knowledge) or quality assurance audits.

Retailers: Employees play a big part in this production. When a customer enters your store, they should feel as though their business is appreciated. We are not suggesting you speak to each person individually, but if a customer has questions about a product or can’t find a product, your employees should be there to offer assistance. In peak seasons, the level of customer experience can be impacted negatively by this, and so merchandising companies can help you maintain high levels of customer satisfaction by providing highly-trained, experienced people support to fill in the gaps.

When you look towards the future of your company, it should be with a long term lens – and the best way to achieve the goals you establish in the process is with an ironclad customer experience policy and by taking advantage of the services of a well-reputed and experienced merchandising company.

For more information about how merchandising companies can assist you with a powerful, long term customer experience plan, please contact Storesupport today by calling 1-877-421-5081.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-amazon-is-one-of-the-most-successful-companies-in-the-world-2012-12

The Days of Clips Boards Are Over! How Technology is Improving Brand Management

Staying Informed about your brand at retail is integral if you want to succeed. Effective brand management means keeping on top of product placement, restocking, and product movement. If you find yourself struggling to maintain control over your product, this can be a big problem – so how can you solve it? By leveraging merchandising technology and working with a merchandising company that employs this in their suite of merchandising services is key. 

According to a recent study done by The Parker Avery Institute, only 57% of retailers have a well-formed merchandising strategy, and these are the ones who experience 3% or better sales growth from year to year. Those that don’t have a well-defined brand management/merchandising strategy don’t see these results. Clearly there is something to be said for planning ahead.

What are the benefits that exist when you leverage merchandising technology as part of your brand management strategy?

1.       Speed. What if you sent out a planogram but are unsure whether or not it was executed properly? What if you see that your product is not moving well compared to last month? Knowing the answers to these issues – in real time - is crucial for effective brand management. Merchandising companies that leverage merchandising technology can send out a rep and send you information, before and after pictures, and stock updates right from a mobile device.

2.       Accuracy. Using merchandising technology that uses a store’s ‘store data’ system to report on your brand means that no manual inputs are necessary – ensuring accuracy. The days of clip-boards are over, so relying on them instead of merchandising technology will put you at the bottom of the retail hierarchy!

3.       Competitiveness. Being aware of how the competition is performing is also a crucial part of effective brand management. Merchandising companies use merchandising technology to do this by comparing pricing (which again can be sent to you immediately), checking display execution, and gauging customer satisfaction. Get a leg up on the competition through effective brand management and merchandising technology.

4.       On Demand Access. By syncing store data to a web portal, you can have on demand access to reports and data mined by merchandising companies. Relying on updates from the store (if they will even provide them) can be costly and time consuming, so taking advantage of the services offered by merchandising companies that leverage merchandising technology for on demand access is a really smart idea.

Most of the big brand names leverage merchandising technology to ensure that they maintain control over their own brands. This doesn’t mean though that this kind of brand management has to be expensive. It is actually a smart way to achieve cost savings that allow you to stay in control and always be aware of what is taking place with your brand.

If you are having trouble controlling your product in-store, or if you just want to ramp up that marketing campaign, a merchandising company that leverages merchandising technology as a part of their merchandising services is the way to go. An effective brand management strategy should include technology which will ultimately make your life a lot easier.

For more information about leveraging merchandising technology for effective brand management, or any other merchandising services you may need, please contact Storesupport at 1-877-421-5081 or visit www.storesupport.ca.

The Key to Brand Loyalty is Effective Brand Management and Customer Retention Strategies Where Aging Consumers Are Concerned

Customer retention occurs when businesses conduct themselves in a way that results in repeat business, thereby retaining their customers. 

Customer retention strategies should be executed from the moment that a customer becomes a customer, and should extend throughout the lifetime of the relationship. Retaining your customers long-term will largely rely on your ability to service them. Customer retention strategies and maintaining a standard of excellence through great service will not only improve your ability to retain your customers, but will also result in positive word of mouth which will lead to additional new business.  

The most successful brands put the value of their customer before profits through investing in providing a superior service and striving to not meet but exceed their customers’ expectations. This model leads to brand loyalty that can last a lifetime. There have been studies released that have substantiated the direct correlation between customer retention and a company's overall profitability. While customer retention involves investment, the long-term payoff is immense. One study showed that engaged customers generate 1.7 times the revenue than normal customers do.

Brands need to have different customer retention strategies for different demographics. Older consumers represent the most loyal demographic. Brands must adopt customer retention strategies aimed at targeting these consumers and making their needs a priority. Small considerations like package sizes, legible labels with larger text, and packaging that’s easy to open are some examples of ways that a brand can go above and beyond the call of duty to retain customers in this demographic.

Older consumers are habit driven. They like to visit the same retailers again and again and tend to be very brand loyal. They are also more apt to spend more time at retail locations. The older demographic responds to service. In-store demonstrations and product testing are important if a brand plans to lure a customer in this demographic away from the brands they are currently loyal to.

Retaining these customers is less challenging because they have a tendency to fall into a habit. The fastest way to lose a customer in the older demographic is to allow your products to become unavailable to them. When retailers don’t restock a brand’s product on the shelf, it forces the consumer to try a different brand if they don’t want to endure the inconvenience of going to another retailer to look for the product. If the customer likes the new product that they try, in many cases the original brand will lose the loyalty of a customer in an older demographic.

Brands need to ensure that their products are consistently available across all retailers where their products are available, and counting on retailers to ensure this is a risky proposition. This is one area that brands should invest in and make a part of their customer retention strategies.

Customer retention strategies result in brand loyalty, and in the consumer packaged goods industry brand loyalty is the reason that some brands become a household name. The most successful brands at retail are only successful because of their ability to retain customers.

For more information about customer retention strategies, or if you would like more information about Storesupport’s services for brands, please contact us by calling 1 (877) 421-5081 or visit www.storesupport.ca.