Online Food Shopping is Changing the Face of Food Advertising

Food retail­ers are find­ing it hard­er and hard­er to adver­tise their prod­ucts as con­sumers turn away from print adver­tis­ing. It used to be that the “pinch and feel fac­tor” ruled and con­sumers insist­ed on being able to touch their fruits and veg before pur­chas­ing. Recent sta­tis­tics, how­ev­er, show that con­sumers seem more at ease with buy­ing food via the Inter­net and it is expect­ed that in Swe­den alone, the dig­i­tal food trade will grow 1,6 bil­lion sek dur­ing 2016.

More Con­sumers are Opt­ing-Out of Paper Spam

Through­out the Nordic region, con­sumers are tir­ing of the moun­tains of cat­a­logues, adver­tise­ments, free news­pa­pers, and fast food offers pil­ing up in let­ter­box­es and more than ever before, they are refus­ing junk mail and print­ed spam.

Each country’s postal ser­vice allows con­sumers to opt-out of receiv­ing mail that is not specif­i­cal­ly addressed to them. Let­ter­box stick­ers that say “No Junk Mail,” or “No Com­mer­cial Leaflets,” or “Addressed Mail Only” are becom­ing more and more pop­u­lar, and this has cre­at­ed a chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tion for food retail­ers who have relied on print­ed coupons and offers to attract customers.

Dig­i­tal – Espe­cial­ly Mobile – Is Increasing

As smart­phones become the dom­i­nant form of mobile com­mu­ni­ca­tion, it may no longer be fea­si­ble for a retail­er to hold off embrac­ing the dig­i­tal world. Con­sumers spend between 20 and 27 hours a week online and they are not just look­ing – they are buy­ing. Dig­i­tal­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed users – espe­cial­ly mobile users — are demand­ing expe­ri­ences wher­ev­er they go online and online food stores like Linas Matkasse and MatH­em have become extreme­ly popular.

In a study done by For­rester Con­sult­ing for Retail­MeNot, an online source for dig­i­tal coupons, it was dis­cov­ered that 60 per­cent of con­sumers relied on dig­i­tal coupons more than any oth­er dig­i­tal pro­mo­tion tool to make pur­chas­ing decisions.

Dig­i­tal Adver­tis­ing Chal­lenges for Food Brands and Food Retailers

While con­sumers don’t like paper leaflets, they do still want dis­counts and offers and they seem to be much more accept­ing of well-designed dig­i­tal “leaflets.” But there are chal­lenges, since dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing tech­niques need to be dif­fer­ent for food brands and online food retailers.

1. When some­one search­es for food, they are typ­i­cal­ly not look­ing for a brand or a par­tic­u­lar store, they are look­ing for the food item itself.
2. Food brands rely on retail­ers to move their prod­uct, so most don’t have eCom­merce store­fronts. They don’t have access to the ana­lyt­i­cal data that stores do about con­sumers’ online behaviours.
3. It is dif­fi­cult for a food brand to track return-on-invest­ment met­rics since when some­one buys food online, they buy from a retail­er, not a brand.

Cre­at­ing a Dig­i­tal Food Shop­ping Ad Experience

There are some unique and excit­ing ways that food brands and retail­ers are using to attract cus­tomers online.

• Recipe Web­sites. Con­sumers are using the Inter­net to find recipes more and more. A well-designed recipe web­site can intro­duce users in a very pos­i­tive way to your store and your brand. Con­ve­nient links to ingre­di­ents avail­able online can be includ­ed in the recipe. Using geolo­ca­tion ana­lyt­ic data, you could even direct the user to a near­by mar­ket to get the ingre­di­ent right away.
• Face­book. Your Face­book page can con­nect users to offers and oppor­tu­ni­ties to shop your brand or store.
• In-store “Phy­gi­tal”. The phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal (“phy­gi­tal”) can come togeth­er in the store, with kiosks and dig­i­tal sig­nage. Thou­sands of screens have been deployed in super­mar­kets and this “dig­i­tal sig­nage adver­tis­ing” can help the con­sumer with a buy­ing deci­sion right there in the moment.
• Loy­al­ty Card Perks and Coupons. Brand and store loy­al­ty is fos­tered when con­sumers know they can expect perks with their pur­chase. Food retail­ers are cre­at­ing web­sites where the user can load dig­i­tal coupons onto their loy­al­ty cards when they vis­it the store. Most dig­i­tal coupons are redeemed with­in a few days and a third of dig­i­tal coupons are redeemed right away. See my blog post on using loy­al­ty cards.
• In-store Redemp­tion of Coupons on Mobile Devices. Putting a bar code on your dig­i­tal coupon means your in-store scan­ners can read it right off the smart phone.

Online order­ing and the use of mobile devices will only increase and food retail­ers and brands would be well advised to cre­ate strate­gies for cap­tur­ing the inter­est of expe­ri­ence-hun­gry users.