To Win, Avoid These 3 Traps

For past 12 weeks we have visited a number of Zip codes and used our AI shoppers to identify winning Weekly Ads on our two metrics:

• Breadth of promo appeal (% promos on front page selected by at least one shopper)
• Depth of customer interest (% customers selecting any promo on a retailer's front page)

We know print and digital weekly ads work, but we believe that retailer advertising could work harder. Here are the top 3 reasons retailers lose the week, all of which can be avoided with DecaSIM: Insight.

1. Focus on National Brands

National brands have a disproportionate effect on promotion strategies, they more distribution and more promotional dollars to spend.

Featuring lots of national brands on the front page will drive up the breadth of the depth of appeal score, the measure that is indicative of winning baskets.. In the majority of categories, a well-known brand tends to be purchased with higher frequency. It is hard to create excitement around a high frequency purchase.

2. Weak Customer Understanding

This is somewhat related to the first point. Every retailer stocks a number of items that are unique to that banner, be it own-label or a branded-product. These are items that their customers value and are potential basket winners. Not featuring these items will reduce the customer appeal score of your weekly advertising.

Since retailer advertising inventory is finite, there is less space to feature promotions that help a retailer stand-out in the promotional landscape.

3. Too Many Promos

This is a by-product of a retailer's category silos. While there is an 'architect' of merchandising, a.k.a the chief merchant, the front page is not planned holistically. Each category is given space on the front page and the end result is a large number of promos fighting for space that all target the same loyal shopper type.

'Busy' advertising is hard to decode, and people who comparing ads to select the store for their basket are more likely to be swayed by banners that produce advertising that is easier to consume.

At the root of these three reasons is the information-bias of loyalty programs. These inherently cause retailers to only design and feature promos that are appealing to their most loyal customers. With DecaSIM: Insight we can build and design your weekly advertising to maximise appeal. This drives customers and sales without fail. Download our whitepaper to find out how it worked for one of our customers.

Here is a video of the team discussing this further:

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