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CPG

NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Marketing Trends, Marketing Strategy, Retail Trends, CPG, Food for thought

How Wine Industry is Shifting to Connect with Customers

Wine companies invest significant resources in conducting studies to learn what customers look for when shopping for their ideal wine.

However, it’s becoming more and more evident that many wine consumers don’t actually know what they want in a bottle of wine. Consequently, these efforts usually bring wine brands with little useful insight and only wasted money.

According to Gregory Carpenter and Ashlee Humphreys at Harvard Business Review, there is a more effective approach to gearing your brand towards consumers – educating and engaging with them. If most customers don’t know enough about wine to know what they want to buy, wine brands need to take the initiative and proactively inform them.

So, how can wine companies successfully engage with their customers?

Wine glasses

Influence Customers’ Tastes

Many businesses aim to meet customers’ needs through their products. However, in the wine industry, many customers don’t know enough about wine to have predictable preferences. So, how can wine companies know what to produce to satisfy consumers’ desires?

Wine companies can use their expertise in the industry to give shoppers what they want before they even realize they want it. Brands can put a personal touch on their products by producing wines that they want to bring to market, rather than reacting to consumers’ preferences.

The most effective approach to success for winemakers is to influence the tastes of their customers. By coming up with innovative labels, branding and marketing planning, and products, wine brands can attract customers and drive sales for their products.

Develop Relationships with Industry Influencers

Certain critics and influencers have strong product views that can affect buyers’ decision-making processes. So, what’s the best way to capitalize on critics’ positions of power in the market? Impress them with a truly superior brand experience.

Creating a smart and innovative atmosphere where critics and social media influencers can experience and taste your brand’s wines will increase brand awareness and demand for your products. At the same time, it will enable you to develop long-lasting, profitable business relationships with influential figures.

As a result of the growing relationships with wine-industry critics, wine companies can use those reviews and ratings to better market their products and drive sales for their brand.

influencer marketing

Build Brand Loyalty with Shared Customer Experiences

Consumers seek advice by reading reviews and ratings. If wine companies want to wow shoppers, they need to focus on displaying these factors that can sway customers’ decision-making process.

The trick is creating a brand experience that is truly superior to the competition. As Carpenter and Humphreys explain, “Consumers become fans and pay premium prices, despite the availability of literally thousands of excellent alternatives.” When your customers believe that they are purchasing the best of the best, they will be willing to pay more.

The in-store display can be an excellent way to promote your products. Having a vibrant yet elegant display stating positive reviews and comments by influencers and customers will help accelerate your product sales by swaying the purchase decisions of customers. Sometimes too much information is better than lack of one, especially not many customers have expert knowledge when it comes to selecting a bottle of wine.

And they will keep coming back for the same brand and products in the future, hence, growing brand loyalty.

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Wine brands are discovering new ways to reach their customers. Instead of wasting money and resources surveying shoppers to learn about their wine preferences, they are focusing on influencing consumers with innovative products and creative packaging, and through influencer marketing.

Recommendations and strong reviews by influencers are an essential part of the decision-making process for modern-day consumers. By understanding the thought processes of shoppers, wine brands can help navigate them to make the right decision. As a result, it will create a fan base of customers who will remain loyal to your brand and increase your brand’s footprint in the market.

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NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Marketing Trends, Digital Marketing, Retail Trends, CPG, Online shopping, E-Commerce

Three CPG Market Trends to Watch Out for in 2019 and Beyond

The consumer packaged goods market is constantly evolving. While the use of technology remains an integral part of customer outreach, it’s most effective when partnered with physical marketing tactics.

This is creating new challenges for brand marketers when it comes to driving the customer in-store through an online platform and personalizing their experience through brick-and-mortar methods to improve conversion rates. The better their in-store experience, the more loyal they’ll grow to your brand.

According to Deloitte in their 2019 Consumer Products Outlook report, “The continued growth of direct-to-consumer brands, the reemergence of pop-up stores, and online retailers developing a brick-and-mortar presence are all accelerated by the deployment of disruptive technologies, creating more avenues for brands to have a dialogue with consumers.”

So, what can brand marketers do to drive sales and maximize profits in coming years?

Open Pop-Up Stores

Pop-up stores are trending in 2019. In pop-up stores, customers can directly engage with your brand without you having to invest in the overhead costs of a conventional retail store.

The temporary nature of pop-up stores creates a fun experience that gets customers excited to shop. With every single item “available for a limited time only” by default, pop-ups evoke a sense of urgency to shoppers to make more purchases.

Pop-up stores are especially beneficial during peak sales times, such as the holidays. They present a great opportunity to utilize physical marketing materials like creative signage and POS displays to drive customers into your store and increase demand.

mall-shop-high-conversion

Establish Both Online and Brick-and-Mortar Presences

In 2019, a number of exclusively online brands are developing brick-and-mortar stores. There’s no denying that the majority of customers prefer to “experience” products before making purchases, and the best way to capitalize on that is to open physical stores.

Deloitte’s report explains, “From an e-retailer’s point of view, the benefits of having a presence in physical stores can include:

  • Minimizing costs associated with product marketing, delivery, and returns.
  • Being able to access shopping data.
  • Centralizing procurement of niche/regional products and merchandising.”

Traditional stores are also important because directly engaging with customers is the most effective way to learn what they prefer in a retail shopping experience.

Then, you can personalize the experience and tailor it to them. It’s just not possible to give customers that same level of brand connection through e-commerce alone.

smart packaging

Focus on Smart Brand Packaging

Modern-day shoppers are growing increasingly conscious of what’s inside the items they purchase. As a result, smart packaging is a significant new trend that is beginning to dominate the consumer packaged goods industry.

Smart packaging involves creating labels that detail the contents and related health benefits of a product. Specialty items such as those that are organic, gluten-free, and fair-trade are attractive to modern consumers. So, packaging that conveniently and clearly shows these features can drive higher sales.

This is a potential avenue to target consumers’ lifestyle preferences, which in turn creates more chances to build brand loyalty. Essentially, if the customers trust your product, the more likely they are to keep buying it.

By coupling the opening of physical retail stores with the right kind of physical marketing assets, your brand can reach new consumer audiences while simultaneously maintaining the loyalty of your current ones.

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New trends are dominating the market in 2019 and forecasted to continue driving the retail industry into the next level. Pop-up stores are providing a fun, temporary environment that drives demand generation among shoppers. Online brands are opening up physical stores to give customers the full “experience.” And the revolution of smart packaging is changing the way brands communicate product value to audiences.

By understanding these emerging market trends, brands can thrive on new opportunities by directly engaging with consumers through various touchpoints in their retail journey.

And by working with a trusted partner who can help you take advantage of these new opportunities in market trends, your brand can compete on the quality and effectiveness of delivering value to your customers.

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NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Marketing ROI, Marketing Trends, Digital Marketing, Marketing Strategy, CPG, Online shopping, E-Commerce

How Omnichannel Grocers Can Keep Up with the Digital Age of Shopping

While most consumers still prefer to do their grocery shopping in person, the presence of online grocery shopping is becoming more prevalent and is predicted to triple over the next ten years. This is creating new challenges and opportunities for both brand marketers and the consumer packaged goods industry.

Consumers don’t fully recognize the convenience of online grocery shopping yet, but omnichannel grocers can capitalize on the e-commerce market by customizing the online experience to their customers and incentivizing them to order online more than once.

According to Stephen Caine and Michelle Paratore at Bain & Company, “Only 42% of first-time users say online grocery shopping saves time, but it gets easier the more they try it.”  If grocers can keep customers coming back to online ordering, the likelihood of the customers using the same method and consistent brand products increase in the future.

So, what exactly do grocers need to do to prepare for the rising digital age of shopping?

online grocery shopping

Create a Convenient Online User Experience

Customers still consider shopping at a physical grocery store to be more convenient than attempting to navigate online grocery shopping. Grocers need to bridge the gap by breaking down the online experience to make it easy and convenient for the consumer to find what they need while also saving them money by suggesting cheaper, similar products.

The key is also personalizing the journey for online shoppers. Grocers can design tools that can touch and influence online shoppers’ decision-making process, such as making product recommendations based on the customer’s previously-purchased items and their shopping patterns.

Another tactic is to minimize the amount of effort required by the consumers by providing them with a visual “shelf” that contains their frequent and repeat orders. By doing so, grocers can make online shopping quicker, easier, and therefore more desirable for its customers.

Incentivize Customers to Shop Online with Your Brand

According to Caine and Paratore, “75% of online grocery shoppers say they are still using the first online grocer they tried.” Most people have a trusted local grocery store where they always shop. So, if local grocers create an online shopping platform that effectively reels in their loyal, regular customers, the likelihood that they will transition their grocery shopping with the same grocer online is almost guaranteed (the home-store bias).

Grocers can offer rewards to incentivize consumers to continue ordering online. Promotions such as coupons for relevant products, special sales, and spending rewards can serve to both personalize the customer’s experience, and to entice them to make repeat orders with your brand by making checkout quick and easy.

This is also a great opportunity for cross-channel engagement via things like direct mail marketing. Sending customers postcards with URLs or QR codes to unlock the rewards that they can redeem for personalized online coupons is a powerful way to build brand loyalty.

mobile grocery shopping

Offer Cutting-Edge Online Features that Fit the Consumer’s Lifestyle

Many consumers still use physical grocery lists to keep track of their shopping needs. Grocers can target this routine practice by designing an online feature that enables shoppers to log their frequently-purchased items and search for them quickly and easily.

Grocers can take it one step further and even create tools to relate to the customer’s lifestyle preferences. For example, for particularly health-conscious shoppers, grocers can offer recommendations for products and recipes that best fit their healthy lifestyle online and offline.

It’s all about personalizing the experience for each shopper, so they feel seen, understood, and valued by your brand. “Retailers who can deliver frictionless omnichannel experiences by investing in digital experiences and tools that save time for consumers shopping online or in stores will emerge as winners in this rapidly changing grocery landscape,” explain Caine and Paratore.

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While not occurring rapidly, consumers are beginning to transition into the digital age of grocery shopping. Many still find it more convenient to shop at a physical grocery store, but with the emergence of digital generations – such as Millennials and Generation Z – is expected to take the CPG and retail industry into the next chapter of the digital grocery shopping era.

Practical and data-based online tools are an essential part of the online experience that “do the work” for customers to shorten the buying cycle. Based on the customer’s shopping pattern, grocers can provide recommendations for items, store favorite item information for a timely reminder, offer coupons and special discounts specific toward their frequented items to help them accomplish their routine shopping practices.

By understanding how to transition into the digital age of grocery shopping, omnichannel grocers can capitalize on the growth of the online shopping world and boost the effectiveness and efficiency of their physical marketing activities as well. And by working with a trusted partner who can help you take advantage of this up-and-coming shopping platform, your brand can compete and win on the quality and convenience of your online user experience.

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For more than three decades we’ve partnered with Fortune 500 companies to deliver marketing operations solutions. Led by a strategic account management team, we’ll help you develop, procure, fulfill and distribute printed collateral, signage, point-of-purchase displays, direct mail, branded merchandise and much more.

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NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Marketing Trends, Marketing Strategy, CPG

The Omnichannel Future of CPG

How CPG brands can prepare for changing customer expectations.

Digital disruption has already begun to come to food retailers, and smart brands are adapting to these new realities.

That’s according to Julia Russell at SmartBrief, who states that today’s consumers, many of them digital natives, want on-demand, omnichannel access to their food that mirrors the level of responsiveness they’ve come to expect from other industries. Many of them prefer to look up a product online, then go find and purchase it in the store. Similarly, many of today’s consumers prefer to check out a product in person in the store, then buy it online at their convenience.

As Bobby Marhamat puts it, “Consumers want to be able to have access to merchants and information on their terms. It’s a matter of being available where the consumer wants to access that information and/or purchase from that merchant.”

But while many CPG brands count omnichannel transformation among their top priorities, there are important steps they must take to have a truly effective approach looking to the future.

A Uniform Foundation

One of the most important things a CPG brand can do to prepare for omnichannel success is ensure their customer experience is uniform across all channels.

Your brand’s mobile, online, and in-store experience should be set up the same way, so consumers can shop exactly how they’re used to, regardless of channel. This establishes a consistent brand experience and builds brand familiarity.

people looking up-crowd

Determine Your Brand Target

Brands should take the time to conceptualize their target buyer, and let that determine whether to pursue a mobile or online experience first. Further, ensuring that each channel is deeply embedded with the same experiences brands cultivate on their shelves is critical.

Russell says, “This is essential for allowing the brand to track their customers all the way throughout their buying experience.” As she explains, brands that let their customers make purchases via the channel they naturally prefer have a much higher occurrence of brand loyalty.

What’s more, brands that have a strong, uniform omnichannel strategy can allow their customers to purchase online, as well as in-store, and they can track those shoppers, analyze their behaviors, and market to them more effectively.

Partner With a Trusted Expert

CPG logistics are complex, and that complexity is increased tenfold when pursuing an omnichannel strategy.

But with complexity comes a multitude of opportunities to optimize, trim costs, and eliminate waste. A trusted partner with experience facilitating CPG marketing efforts can find those opportunities, and work with you to continue to improve critical flows, save you time, costs, and give you the ability to be responsive and ready for whatever your customers demand.

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Why NVISION?

For more than three decades we’ve partnered with Fortune 500 companies to deliver marketing operations solutions. Led by a strategic account management team, we’ll help you develop, procure, fulfill and distribute printed collateral, signage, point-of-purchase displays, direct mail, branded merchandise and much more.

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