Studying the Use of Mobile in Shopper Marketing

New York — With a goal of understanding how mobile is being used by shopper marketing practitioners, GfK in June released results of a survey conducted in partnership with the Path to Purchase Institute. GfK sent the survey to manufacturers, retailers and agencies hoping to get to a better understanding of the most popular current uses of mobile marketing as a means to connect with and influence shoppers on the path to purchase.The majority of responses (57%) came from consumer product marketers, many of whom hold a manager-level or higher marketing or shopper marketing position, while 34% came from agencies.“Smartphone adoption has increased so rapidly and the power of the smartphone is increasing dramatically,” says Sarah Gleason, senior vice president of market research firm GfK. “That puts the power in the shopper’s hands.” There is obvious excitement when it comes to the possibilities in the mobile space, but also some anxiety, Gleason notes. “Technology is moving so fast and many are trying to figure out how to stay ahead of the curve. I’m not sure anyone has an answer on that.”The survey found that mobile Web, email and mobile apps are the most used platforms, suggesting that those with greater familiarity have had the greatest level of adoption early on (see chart below). While Bluetooth is further down the grid, Gleason believes as a tool it will follow that same curve. The study also found only moderate use of SMS/MMS and push notifications. That, Gleason says, could be attributed to the overall concern about digital and mobile that still exists in terms of overwhelming the shopper with too much, as well as seeing a higher level of engagement when the control is in the shopper’s hands to engage and interact with any given message.The level of abandonment of platforms is relatively low, but these findings point to the fact that there are so many options being tested currently and the platforms continue to rapidly change. “Companies and their agencies are still very much in this mode of test-and-learn, experimentation and determining what results are going to stick and at what point platforms will mature enough and provide the scale to make them pay out and be more reliable,” Gleason says. “Then there will probably be more of a shakeout in terms of what people are using.”When asked which types of mobile advertising are being used in digital shopper marketing programs, respondents answered with the highest percentages in basic banner, social media, paid search, rich media display and video ads in video content on websites and in apps (see chart below). Other forms that have been adopted at a more moderate rate include text-based, native and video ads in audio content on websites and in apps, with text-based seeing the highest level of abandonment.When using these forms as a shopper marketing or marketing tool, one of the challenges, Gleason says, is being able to develop content and refresh it on a consistent basis. “In this world that keeps getting more tailored, optimized and targeted to the person, the messages have to change.” Findings also suggest that while usage rates for all forms of targeting are generally high, there still seems to be the hope of identifying a “silver bullet” in mobile advertising.Retailer-owned (73%) and third-party (69%) shopping apps were found to be far more popular than brand-owned apps, with 37% of respondents indicating they no longer use brand-owned apps. Third-party apps allow access to a broader audience, says Gleason. “That’s where this whole idea of addressable markets and scalability comes in; companies are still trying to reach a broad market on a customized basis, but don’t want to do it one-off at a time.”The more robust the CRM database, the more comfortable companies seem to be – and they in turn are further along the mobile learning curve because they know more about who they’re reaching and what they want, Gleason says. Many options are still in the test-and-learn stage, and new options continue to be piloted and therefore don’t have enough coverage or scale yet.The overwhelming number of options, availability of content, and reach and scale among others were also named as barriers to use and adoption. And in terms of the holy grail of metrics, Gleason says setting up front what your metrics are and ensuring that is what’s tracked out on the back end is the extent of any standard for now.She believes that company/agency partnerships will be important moving forward, as well as leveraging learnings with retail partners. “Be patient because we’re in the messy middle right now,” she warns. “People have to be willing to try it all on for size while figuring out what they’re trying to learn. Otherwise, it won’t do them any good.”Jason Young, CEO of mobile ad tech firm Crisp Media, which supplemented the study with a list of “Top 10 Things Shopper Marketers Should (and Shouldn’t) Do in Mobile in 2016” (see chart at right), says it’s still surprising to see the rift between the amount of time consumers are spending on their mobile devices and engaging with content against where marketing dollars are being deployed when compared with other mediums. “On one hand, we can say the users are there so marketers need to refocus their dollars,” he says. “But on the other hand, they can’t refocus their dollars if the infrastructure isn’t in place for them to deploy programs with clear measurements and currency that lets them understand the effectiveness of those programs.”Young believes for shopper marketing in particular, mobile is the “greatest mousetrap the market has ever seen in terms of targeting the right individual at the right time in the right location and activating them into the purchasing process.”

Studying the Use of Mobile in Shopper Marketing

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