October 11, 2017 - Shopkick

Mobile apps have ushered in a new wave of advertising. In addition to building brand awareness through traditional methods, such as television or print, brands are focusing on more genuine connections with consumers in way that makes sense for them. Mobile apps offer that opportunity. Print and television ads are simply unable to travel with consumers as they go about their day-to-day tasks. Innovative retail mobile apps, then, have become a second driving force behind many modern brands gaining market share at brick and mortar locations through increased brand awareness.

It’s far too easy for product label branding to get lost on crowded shelves | Image courtesy Pixabay user kc0uvb

Marketing was traditionally, as a rule, one-sided. Brands reached out to customers without a way for customers to directly respond. The internet made marketing a two-way street, allowing for interaction and communication. Mobile advertising via retail and shopping smartphone apps has personalized this process even further and made the engagement between consumers and brands more immediate.

Let’s explore how CPG brands, in particular, can take advantage of this consumer-focused technology. By leveraging third-party apps with their own established, loyal users, it is possible for your brand to successfully target and achieve product awareness goals—and in a way that naturally increases market share.

Why CPG Brands Must Use Mobile to Drive Brand Awareness

Since the development of the internet, it has become much easier for consumers to reach out to and interact with brands. This creates a closer, more personal relationship, something that your brand can leverage to gain loyal customers as well as grab the attention of new consumers—provided you capitalize on what third-party retail mobile apps have to offer.

Rather than advertise at consumers, you must engage them. In that sense, mobile is the perfect platform as it demonstrates your brand is:

Innovative: Innovation is a big draw for today’s consumers. In one study, 39% of individuals reported that when companies don’t have a mobile presence, they not only view those companies as “outdated” but also as “undesirable.”
Interactive: About 44% of consumers want brand communication to be a two-way street. Digital advertising gives consumers an opportunity for a back and forth dialog with their favored brands. CPG companies should offer consumers avenues to contact them both through basic website marketing and through the rapidly growing mobile retail app marketplace.
Consumer-focused: Consumers are sick of being advertised to. This is evident in the numbers as 38% of consumers want brands to focus on their buyers more, rather than putting all the effort into spreading the brand’s message.

Mobile marketing allows your brand to craft an organic personality. It humanizes your brand by allowing it to dynamically respond to consumers, target your marketing to a specific audience, and reach out at the right times and in the right places. Of course, it’s not as simple as creating an app for your brand; developing a mobile advertising platform is a major challenge that very few companies are ready to undertake.

The Most Significant Challenge for Brands Creating a Mobile Advertising Platform

The biggest hurdle with any mobile advertising platform is adoption; there’s a significant amount of competition for new apps. If you look at the numbers, you’ll see there are 2.8 million apps available through Google Play and another 2.2 million apps available through the App Store. Those numbers can make it next to impossible for any one brand to stand out among the competition. However, adoption is the key component to gaining brand awareness via mobile advertising. Unless your app is used, it cannot drive awareness.

Unlike television and print marketing campaigns, mobile advertising is dependent on the permissive use of your target audience. That means that consumers must seek out the apps related to your product and add them to their device. When you note the average consumer has 21 apps on their phone, but only regularly uses one or two of them, you quickly realize why adoption can prove challenging. However, there is a solution—and one that is friendly for CPG brands marketing budgets.

Innovative Retail Mobile Apps: The Solution to Adoption Challenges

When focused on gaining the attention of your desired market in a highly competitive app store, you are competing against an infinite number of brands for the attention of a finite audience. The ideal solution to this problem is often to eschew creating a standalone app and, instead, leverage a partnership with a company that already has an established following of your potential consumers.

While brands may have the people power necessary to create mobile advertising programs in-house, or a platform to work with, newly created apps do not come with a built-in audience. However, by partnering with an established app, your brand can gain a competitive edge in gaining brand awareness and growing market share via your mobile advertising strategies.

Specifically, innovative third-party retail mobile apps that focus on rewards programs offer:

Ready-made audiences: Third-party apps draw more users than brand or retail-specific apps across many audience segments and markets thanks to their ability to align with multiple brands and retailers. CPG brands that align with a third-party app, then, are given the opportunity to introduce their products to a receptive, ready-made audience.
Flexible rewards programs: Digital rewards programs can be particularly useful for CPG brands as they allow users to collect and gain rewards for buying specific products regardless of the retailer. This eliminates the need for CPG companies to be dependent on a specific retail chain.
Consistent profit margins: By offering rewards instead of discounts to motivate purchase, discounted prices from coupon codes don’t cut into the already tight profit margins of many CPG brands.

Retail mobile advertising is a proven marketing strategy for CPG brands that want to gain the recognition, and business, of a growing, tech-savvy audience. However, the best approach to this strategy, retail shopping apps, is a saturated market. To ensure success—and to optimize your marketing budget—your brand must align with a program that offers an existing, loyal audience.

Consumers trust the apps they give valuable smartphone space to—and your brand can leverage the credibility of the most popular shopping apps. By partnering with platforms specifically designed to appeal to consumers, and right in the moment when they’re ready to make a purchase, your brand can naturally increase not only product awareness, but market share.

Shopkick offers an innovative rewards-based shopping app for CPG brands and retailers. To become a Shopkick partner, or for more information, contact us today.

My kids were in that mood. You know, the one where if causing trouble was an Olympic sport, they’d be setting all time records. We were at the grocery store and they were careening down the aisles, knocking cereal off shelves in their wake—and sneaking giant bags of M&Ms into the cart when I wasn’t looking. I finally managed to wrangle my little wrecking crew up to the checkout line only to have further chaos ensue when the cashier asked if I wanted to use my rewards card.

Lighten your wallet (in a good way) by switching to a smartphone app for shopping rewards | Image courtesy Unsplash user Clem Onojeghuo

Of course I wanted to use my frequent shopper card—if only I could track it down inside my giant handbag. I used to have a card for every store I frequented. Rewards were, and still are, a vital piece to my budget puzzle. The problem is, they seem next to impossible to organize (kind of like my kiddos).

While fumbling through coupons, credit cards, lipstick, hand sanitizer (and the collection of Matchbox cars my son must have added to the stash), I lost my hold on the purse, spilling the entire contents of my purse into a heap right there in the checkout line. My kids, eyes wide, watched silently as a blue truck rolled under the magazine rack. And that’s when I just had to laugh. Sitting proudly on top of the mess was the rewards card I been trying to hunt down.

I look back on that day now as my superhero origin story. My spilled purse was the lighting bolt I needed to go from a mild mannered mom into a super shopper. I had to take action, to simplify my multiple rewards program cards into a manageable shopping strategy. What I discovered that day was my own form of superhuman power. Now, regardless of which store I duck into for my weekly groceries, my kids’ school supplies, or my husband’s allergy meds, all of my rewards are in one easily accessible place—my smartphone—and yours should be too.

It’s no myth—it’s a free app. Here’s how you can also ditch multiple reward program cards for an easy (and fun) to use smartphone app.

Step #1: Ditch Rewards Program Cards You Never Use

I want you to start the process of freeing yourself from a jumble of rewards program cards by first opening up your purse or wallet. Go ahead and do it right now.

What do you see? If there are loyalty cards you don’t remember signing up for—let alone using in the past month—cluttering up your bag, then you have room for improvement, just like I did.

A valuable rewards program is one you remember to use. It’s one that’s easy to access when you visit your favorite stores and purchase your family’s trusted brands. More than that, though, it should encourage you to explore new products, new retailers, and new restaurants—and allow you to get paid for your adventurous shopping spirit. So, ditch the cards you don’t use. Make way for something new!

Step #2: Decide Which Rewards Program Features Are a Must Have

Take out your smartphone and open up the notepad, we’re going to make a list! Brainstorm the features that would make an all-in-one reward program app valuable for you. Here’s my own list to get you started:

Free: A rewards program should be absolutely free of cost. Paying money when you’re trying to save money is something I would think long and hard about.
Easy to use: Budgets are tough to stretch, but schedules can be even more inflexible. The less I have to do to use my rewards program, the more I love it.
Works at your favorite stores: The best rewards programs are ones you can use at popular retail outlets like Target, Walmart, Whole Foods, and even the local grocery store around the corner—basically, the places you’re already going.
Fun: Remember when shopping and fun used to be synonymous? With the right rewards program, finding deals can go from a necessity to a creative challenge, kind of like a scavenger hunt.
All-in-one: One app should be all you need to start saving money like a superhero saves the planet!

Step #3: Download Your Shiny New Rewards Program App

Your smartphone is still out, right? Because it’s time to shop—the app store, that is.

There are a few different types of loyalty card apps to choose from, including apps that pay you for surveys, apps that give you coupons or discounts, and apps that reward points for the shopping you do anyway.

Feeling bogged down before you even hit the aisles? With a shopping rewards app, all you carry is your phone (and you do that anyway) | Image courtesy Unsplash user RawPixel

My personal app pick is Shopkick; it’s replaced nearly all of my old reward program cards. With Shopkick’s help, I accumulate and track rewards, then get paid for the shopping I already do when I trade in my points, called kicks, for gift cards to retailers like Target and Amazon—or the occasional mid-shopping spree treat at Starbucks (I think my supermom kryptonite is their Iced Caramel Macchiato).

Shopkick is always adding new gift card options to their lineup of stellar brands and retailers. Plus, it’s fun! It’s kind of like treasure hunting for gift cards for their users, affectionately known as Shopkickers. If shopping was starting to feel like a stressful day at work, Shopkick can make it feel like you’re at a game night with friends.

My Shopkick app is so much easier to find than that old stray rewards program card. Is it a universal truth that the one you need is always at the bottom of your bag, or what? I not only spilled out the contents of my purse that fateful day, I spilled out my shopping stress—and replaced it with Shopkick, my all-in-one shopping sidekick.

Ditch your collection of outdated rewards program cards and get your savings all in one place. Download Shopkick’s free app and join a community of loyal Shopkickers who’ve already discovered the rewards of shopping with a free, all-in-one smartphone app.

If you love social media as much as you love to save, join us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for daily shopping inspiration.

Day: October 11, 2017

How Innovative Retail Mobile Apps Can Drive CPG Brand Awareness