Here’s how grocers can successfully promote products

It’s no secret that grocers today are facing truly daunting challenges: the aggressive expansion of discounters like ALDI and Lidl, the growth of online grocery in a sector that was later than many to adopt multichannel strategies, and the looming threat of Amazon, according to Cheryl Sullivan, chief marketing and strategy officer at Austin, Texas-based Revionics.

At a moment when every single hard-fought margin dollar is critical, it was stunning to learn in a May 2018 Revionics-commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting that 52 percent of the weekly or monthly promotions that retailers offer go to customers who would happily have paid full price – a sign of failed strategies and a primary culprit of stagnant or declining revenues, low basket rings and lost margins that grocers can ill afford, according to Sullivan. Particularly in the world of increasing costs and razor-thin margins where grocers operate, this is a shocking – and fortunately preventable – source of margin leakage.

In the same study, which surveyed shoppers in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Brazil, 31 percent of U.S. respondents said that they planned to increase their online grocery purchases. So how can grocers connect with their increasingly digital-focused shoppers without missing the mark, or worse, alienating the shoppers they work so hard to engage?

To read the five steps to promotional success, click here.