Easter Advertising
March 3, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
This year Easter is the first week of April (dates below) and even if you don’t sell chocolate Easter eggs there are significant opportunities over the holiday period for all types of industries. Once regarded simply for the kids, Easter has become one of the most profitable holiday seasons of the year.
With spring in the air and many consumers possessing tax return money makes it an ideal time for you to kick-start your marketing campaign. As such we thought we’d put together a few Easter advertising ideas separated by various sectors.
Retailers
Given that Easter is of course a holiday period, many retailers run Easter Sales and to drive interest in the lead up is important. So running at least 10 days prior to the sale starting is essential, then upping the visibility over the Easter weekend to drive consumers in store. Ideally you’ll be running discounts off big ticket items and winter apparel.
Grocery & Supermarkets
With many people spending time with the family over Easter it’s important to gain market share in the lead up to the Easter Weekend. Ideally your Easter Advertising will feature creative with messaging to drive consumers in store like discounts off key staples items or loss leader activity encourage them to do their Easter “big shop” while in store.
Travel Companies
With most people spending time with their families over the Easter weekend, there are two opportunities here for travel companies. Firstly, with many people head home there is a significant benefit for companies such as airlines to go heavy up 3-4 weeks prior to Easter, then slow it down closer to the weekend. The 2nd opportunity is for people not heading home, but rather going away for the weekend. So vacation specials should be advertised 10-14 days from Easter weekend. See Grocery Buyers make Travel Decisions.
Ecommerce Sites
Many of the major ecommerce retailers run Easter weekend specials, from free shipping to coupon discounts so why let them have all the business? In the lead up to Easter why not run a campaign targeted at consumers with creative indicating your Easter specials. So no matter if you sell food, clothing or kitchen gadgets, Easter is a great time to boost sales.
Movie Releases
Many over the Easter weekend will be looking for things to do to fill out the weekend. So for the movie studios, running movie trailer campaigns for new release in the days prior and over the Easter weekend will help boost a movies weekend revenues.
Automotive Companies & Dealerships
Consumers in the market for a new auto will dedicate the weekend heading to dealerships and doing test drives. So running a campaign in the 5-7 days prior to Easter, then heavy up over the Easter weekend will no doubt result in leads being generated. Learn about our audience of automotive buying Grocery Buyers.
So as we head in Q2 and with only a few weeks to go till Easter now is the time to book your Easter Advertising Campaign. For more information, Download our Media Kit or Request a Proposal from our team.
2010 Easter Dates
Good Friday is 2nd April 2010
Holy Saturday 3rd April 2010
Easter Sunday 4th April 2010
Easter Monday 5th April 2010
Dynamic Ads
February 19, 2010 by Benjamin Christie · 2 Comments
Imagine being able to control and change the entire content, messaging or call to action of a display campaign in just a few minutes. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that fresh creative as part of a campaign significantly increases click through and engagement rates.
Dynamic ads are generally created in Flash or HTML and instead of the content being written into the files, the content is sourced from a server live or cached. The content could be fed into the ad by a RSS feed or there are some companies specializing in creating and developing dynamic ads.
Developing a creative execution paired together with consumer behaviour in the form of cookies could significantly increase sales. For example Amazon has been using dynamic ads for years, integrating products you’ve looked at into their ad units. Adding in both to behavioural data, geotargeting data could also be applied to the add.
Dynamic Ads sound great but what are some practical uses or examples?
- Supermarkets could publish today’s special together with a product photo
- ecommerce sites could publish today’s product of the day
- Airlines and hotels could publish a hot vacation deal or cheap flight of the day
- Your brands Twitter conversation (as above)
- Sponsors of sports games like Superbowl or Football World Cup could publish the score in real time
- TV stations could publish what’s on tonight’s line up
- News companies could publish the current headlines
- Restaurant chains could advertise todays specials
As you can see the ideas are endless and are really only limited by your imagination. The team at Gourmet Ads can help develop dynamic ad concepts to reality and deliver them to our audience of highly engaged grocery buyers.
For more information about Dynamic Ads or Gourmet Ads, Download our Media Kit or Request a Proposal from our team.
Q1 Media Planning
December 22, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Q1 is literally only days away and you’ve probably already started your digital media planning for Q1 already. But for those that haven’t started media planning what should be your strategy for the first quarter of 2010?
Maybe take a moment and read our 2010 Advertising Trends.
For grocery / supermarket and CPG companies the largest event to allocate advertising budgets towards in Q1 is the Super Bowl the first week of February. Campaigns we’ve already got booked start around the 10th of January and conclude on the 10th of February focusing on driving consumer intent in the lead up to the Super Bowl – see blog on Super Bowl Advertising. Most advertisers are including a combination of regular display units (728 x90, 300 x250 and 160 x 600 ) and high visibility ad units such as interstitials and floating ads to make an impact. Don’t forget the earlier you start media planning the better CPM rates that can be negotiated.
Surprisingly we’ve already seen a number of companies who’ve held off advertising during 2009, now planning campaigns in early Q1 2010. Some have seen their market share reduce during 2009 and their strategy is gain back market share with roadblock advertising and high impact advertising units. So the strategy is to get their message in front of grocery buyers and household decision makers to drive sales growth.
So no matter what your media planning strategy you’re undertaking for 2010, the team at Gourmet Ads can develop a bespoke media plan for your consideration. Start by downloading our Media Kit or Request a Proposal from us.
Grocery Store Loyalty Programs
October 24, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
Nearly every grocery store around the globe these days has its own loyalty program. Some like Costco even charge an annual membership to be part of their loyalty program, others are free. For grocery stores the ability to offer loyalty programs offer the ability to track consumer’s shopping habits and household characteristics. This is then linked to broader “market segments” based on age, race, income level, family size and neighborhood. The real benefit of grocery store loyalty programs is the ability to determine how profitable each market segment is to the store, and to treat customers in those segments accordingly.
Key to the growth of grocery store loyalty programs is to continue signups of new members, especially if, like Costco there is a membership fee to be paid or if your grocery store offers a credit card as well as a loyalty card. So it’s essential for grocery stores to continually be running campaigns to drive memberships. Advertising campaign ideas for Grocery Store Loyalty Programs include;
- Highlight benefits of your Loyalty Program
- Promote Loyalty Program only coupons
- Bonus points for Loyalty Program cards only
- Loyalty Program only discounts
- Ability to signup online and start earning points
- Interest free period for loyal program associated credit cards
For grocery store marketing managers and their advertising agencies, advertising for new members must be run in targeted environments. The Gourmet Ads network reaches millions of grocery buyers each month making us the logical choice for your media plans.
Here’s some information about the Gourmet Ads audience;
- They are the primary household grocery buyer
- They make more than 3 trips to the grocery store each month
- They spend anywhere from $200 to over $500 a month on groceries
- They search for food products online such as gourmet and organic
If you’re looking at running an advertising campaign to drive memberships in your Grocery Store Loyalty Program, please download a copy of our media kit. Alternatively use the contact us page to fill in your requirements and our team can help develop a media plan for your consideration.
Targeting Grocery Buyers
September 3, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
We recently wrote a blog called Online Drives CPG Sales which was inspired by a Comscore study which found that online advertising can be as effective as television advertising in lifting retail sales of CPG brands. The study indicated that online advertising lifted retail sales of CPG brands by an average of 9% compared to 8% for TV advertising. With more CPGs moving online with increased budgets I thought it might be good to talk about how Gourmet Ads targets Grocery buyers, as well as where they actually do their grocery buying.
First off, here’s a little about the Gourmet Audience in regards to the grocery buying;
- They are the primary household grocery buyer
- They make more than 3 trips to the grocery store each month
- They spend anywhere from $200 to over $500 a month on groceries
- They search for food products online such as gourmet and organic
What are they buying?
Across a range of products, our Grocery Buying audience are typically buying week to week the following food products; Baby Foods, Carbonated Soft Drinks, Carbonated Water, Cereals, Cheese, Crackers, Dairy products, Dried Pasta, Juice, Gourmet Frozen Meals, Pizzas Frozen and Packaged Meats. Apart from foods, also high on the list are baby products such as diapers, baby formula as well as pet related products such as pet food and cat litter.
Where do they shop?
Some of our Grocery Buying audience are shopping online, but the vast majority are heading to the grocery store and placing products in the shopping trolley. They are heading to Albertsons, Aldi, Bi-lo, Food Emporium, Food Lion, IGA, Kroger, Lowes Foods, Pathmark, Pick’n Save, Publix, Ralph’s and Safeway to name a few.
So what are the takeaways from this ?
There is no doubt that the Gourmet Ads audience spends on groceries multiple times a month across a range of products (food and non-food) and grocery/supermarkets. Add to this they are also very active online researching food products such as gourmet and organic.
So if you’re a grocery store / supermarket, then running campaigns with Gourmet Ads to drive our audience to your store makes sense. You can run campaigns such as discounts, this week’s specials and more. For those advertising food products, its about building brand awareness prior to the trip to the grocery store / supermarket. You could use discount coupons or promotions to influence our audience to buy your products.
If you’re tasked with marketing to Grocery Buyers, then download our media kit, or request a proposal for your next online campaign.
More Cooking at Home
August 15, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
The recession has certainly changed the behavior of consumers greatly when it comes to cooking at home. A recent study by Zagat survey confirms that since the economic downturn, 61 percent of those surveyed say they’re cooking dinner at home more than before. Not surprisingly, only 1 percent of the respondents said they’re cooking less. Although this study was specifically into the eating habits of New Yorkers, the increased trend of cooking at home is no doubt widespread across the nation as people cook to save money. There is no doubt that less people are eating out at restaurants in order to save money. With more cooking at home, I thought I’d look at who is benefiting from this trend as well as how companies with the most to reap can interact and engage with consumers online.
Supermarkets, Grocery Store and even Gourmet providores are seeing the benefits of people eating in. Many supermarkets are now printing recipes ideas as soon as you enter the supermarket in order to help consumers choose something for dinner. Companies that market core ingredients have the most to benefit, which is why nearly every supermarket has developed their own brand of private label products. One supermarket has even developed two of their own private label brands; one which is cheap and the other a little more gourmet proving consumers a real choice.
So supermarkets and grocery stores have a real opportunity to expand their consumer base during the economic downturn. One such strategy to increase market share would be to run a campaign with a CRM focus asking consumers for their contact details including email address. Then supermarkets and grocery stores could run a series of email campaigns sending weekly catalogs, discount vouchers or any other special offers. Alternatively they could send a weekly newsletter with ideas of what can be cooked this coming week with links to the shopping list making it super simple for consumers to go to the store and buy the ingredients.
The other major industries to see growth from the downturn in eating out, is both kitchen appliance manufacturers and companies that make and sell kitchen accessories or cookware. I recently was talking with a company that sells a $1000 kitchen appliance. They indicated that they are nearly selling double the about of individual units than they were last year. Another manufacturer who makes a kitchen appliance for around the $100 is also seeing product sales increase. This illustrates how people still have money, but are looking longer term than just months with them prepared to invest in new kitchen appliances in order to save money.
For any company selling kitchen appliances, the key to educating consumers on how to use their products is via recipes. One such strategy for online campaigns would be via a branded recipe widget which allows people to search for recipes which can be made with their products. People eat with their eyes, so making sure every recipes has a image is key to the success of any recipe based marketing program.
So if you’re tasked with increase consumers to your supermarket / grocery store or are tasked at selling more kitchen appliances, now is the time to develop an advertising campaign to take advantage of the trend of more cooking at home. Gourmet Ads can certainly help you develop either short term advertising campaigns or long multi month campaigns to hit your sales and revenue targets. For more information, download our media kit or request a proposal from us.
Mr Household Grocery Buyer
August 4, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
This month Nielsen Consumer Insight published an article called “Role Reversal – Mr. Mom Goes Shopping”. The article is about how the household has changed and traditional roles have shifted with men now taking on a greater percentage of the household shopping than in the past. Today, almost one-third of men are now the principal shoppers in the home.
For any companies which advertise and sell products in supermarkets, there are some interesting statistics to be learnt. First off the percentage of female vs male grocery buyers is 61% female and 39% male. This is strikingly similar to our own sex demographic breakdown for the Gourmet Ads network which is 62% female and 38% male, indicating how inline our audience is with industry research.
Even though men have increasingly becoming the principal shoppers in the home, women continue to outspend men per trip across all retail channels. The article comments that this is due to women conducting more “planned” shopping trips than men.
So you’re probably thinking that men are stacking their shopping baskets full of beer, BBQ product and men’s health products like shaving creams and deodorants. However this is far from the case. Across the board, men are buying for the entire household and here is just a snapshot of what they are typically buying;
- Canned Seafood (61%)
- Refrigerated Juices, Drinks (61%)
- Prepared Food-Ready-to Serve Stew (59%)
- Herbal Package Tea (57%)
- Prepared Food-Ready-to Serve Lasagna (55%)
- Health Bars & Sticks (54%)
- Non-Sliced Refrigerated Lunch Meat (53%)
- Refrigerated Yogurt and Shakes (52%)
- Dishwasher Rinsing Aids (52%)
I think there are three main takeaways from this research.
1. Online Media Buying
When buying online media, ensure that you are buying a network which reaches the main household grocery buyer and has a similar percentage of women to men as indicated in the article (like Gourmet Ads network). If you were buying a women’s only advertising network you could be missing the male grocery buyer which is at least 35% of the market.
2. Creative Design
Like the first point in regards to media buying, you need to ensure your online advertising creative isn’t just targeted to women only, but yet appeals to both sexes. Otherwise you’ll be missing out on clicks from potential grocery buyers who are men.
3. Packaging & Branding
Once again with both women and men most likely to buy your products, it’s essential for the branding and packaging to appeal to both sexes and not just typically women.
Source:
http://en-us.nielsen.com/main/insights/consumer_insight/July_2009/role_reversal_mr_mom
Food Advertising Ideas
August 1, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
A while ago we wrote a blog on Wine Advertising Ideas which was aimed at smaller wineries, wine companies and pretty much anyone who was tasked with marketing and advertising wines. To date the blog is in our top ten blogs of all time. So now its time for a blog on Food Advertising Ideas, and like the wine blog this one is aimed at small to medium sized food businesses as well as multinationals which are yet to start advertising online.
So if you’re in do food marketing or food advertising this blog will give you some food advertising ideas which lay as the foundation for any advertising campaigns you plan to run.
- Brand Advertising
Mostly undertaken by large food companies is brand advertising. This is where the message is simply the brand and is created to engage the user and provide brand awareness so your product stands out on the shelf. Some of the key messages when advertising food brands is why your product is different, the places you can buy it and price if appropriate. - Product Based Campaigns
Say you’ve got a number of products that you retail. Well choose 12 products that you want to start advertising and every month focus on running a campaign for a different product. Keep in mind seasonality of the products, ie there is no point promoting winter soups in the middle of summer. The key here is to develop new creative every month. Additionally and from a media buying perspective clients that book 12 months of media with Gourmet Ads can receive significantly discounted CPM rates opposed to spot buys. - Acquisition Campaign
Taking a very direct marketing approach, running an acquisition campaign every other month with large reach to your target audience is one way that you can acquire new emails. Considered by some as a CRM campaign, once you’ve acquired a reasonable amount of email contacts, you can start emailing them directly. - Campaigns Advertising Competitions
This could be the under lying strategy for your Acquisition Campaign, but competitions are an excellent method of building brand awareness and building your email database. The key here is to offer a “great prize” opposed to just a prize. Consumers want to win something great. We’ve recently run a competition to have a celebrity chef cook in your house for the night which has attracted literally thousands of entires and isn’t really related to the brand being advertised. - Recipe Widgets
No matter what your food product, consumers love learning how to use your product in everyday cooking. So a widget featuring your recipes which use your food products can be very engaging to an audience which is looking for recipes. These simple rich media units are typically 300 x 250 island ad units and we traffic them to sites within our network. We can track engagements, displays, click throughs etc just like a regular ad unit. – Learn more about Recipe Widgets here. - Retailer Advertising Campaign
Telling your consumers where they can buy your products is very important, it’s the reason why you’ve probably got a long list of them on your website called “Where to Buy”. Have you ever thought about a co-promotion with the retailer to drive sales in-store? Your advertising could drive people to a landing page which told people of the offer or allowed them to print a coupon to get the discount. What ever the offer is, both you and the retailer benefit which is why you could share the advertising costs with them allowing you reach a great number of consumers. - TVC Campaigns Online
Taking your television commercial and simply repurposing for online can be a great way to further expand the reach of your campaign. Either formatted into a 300 x 250 ad unit, standalone video player or interstitial page, your video can make an impact. - Online Food Companies (Ecommerce)
Although many food companies sell their products through supermarkets, grocery stores of gourmet retailers, there are a great deal of food companies that only sell online. So for online food companies when it’s all about generating a sale online, we can provide a raft of solutions to generate sales. From wide reaching media to highly targeted Behavioural targeting campaigns, we can target your advertising to you most likely customer.
So no matter what the focus for your food advertising campaign, Gourmet Ads can deliver. For more Food Advertising Ideas, download our media kit or Request a Proposal from us.
Recipes for 50%
July 21, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
An interesting report from JupiterResearch called “Targeting Online Food Lovers — Identifying Segments and Online Advertising Opportunities,” reveals that 50% of online users are looking for food and cooking information online. Let me say that again – 50% of online users are looking for food and cooking information online.
Monique Levy of JupiterResearch noted that food fans typically are looking for the specific information found on food sites, rather than the more general food information found on health and wellness sites. “Online food lovers use food destination sites and manufacturer sites the most, rather than branded product sites and health- and lifestyle-related Websites,” Ms. Levy said.
This research shows that it’s not just foodies which use the internet to research recipes, but in actual fact it’s the wider internet audience who uses the internet as a resource for food information. This in turn means that advertising in and around recipes can have a huge effect at the supermarket checkout. One thing that the report also indicated was that people are not looking for cheap foods online, rather they are seeking information on gourmet or organic products.
So where does the half of the internet looks for food, recipes and cooking information online? Well if you take a look at the sites within the Gourmet Ads network, they are typically;
1. Recipe Portals
2. Regional Recipe Sites – like Australian Recipes
3. Nich Food Sites – like New Orleans Cuisine
4. Food Blogs
5. Chef and Restaurant sites
Major food manufactures as well as food equipment companies understand that people search for recipes online. Which is why online savvy companies like Nestle and Kraft have developed and published a wide range of recipe and food content on their sites.
So with such a volume of consumers coming to food and recipes sites, it makes sense for food and food related companies to advertise online to reach these large audiences. Add to this the diverse range of people looking for recipes also means that products which are not food related will perform – check out a blog we wrote sometime ago called “Not only Food, Wine or Beer”.
If you’d like to advertise in or around recipes on the internet, download the Gourmet Ads Media Kit or Request a Proposal from us.
Article Source ; http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1004743
Getting Products in Supermarkets
June 13, 2009 by Benjamin Christie · Leave a Comment
For many food companies getting your products onto supermarket shelves can mean significant sales and revenue. But the barriers to entry are usually high, with companies having to go through the hoops to make it happen, then you’ve got the slot fees that supermarkets demand. It can be a tough and costly task.
Food companies eager to get listed with supermarkets are regularly asked “what is your marketing plan to drive sales once it’s on the shelves”. This is ok for large food companies, but for small to medium sized food companies who solely concentrate on producing a quality product, a marketing plan is something that challenges them.
This is where Gourmet Ads can help. We’ll develop a digital media plan which can be presented to supermarkets to support your product. Your campaign would run on our vast network of food websites and would involve creative indicating that your product is now available in a particular supermarket or grocery store. We can also geo target your ads so they appear at nearby supermarkets.
Things we can do to create brand awareness quickly are advertising techniques such as;
- Over the Page
- Site sponsorships
- Road blocking
- Interstitial ads
- Expanding ad units
Finally, supermarkets won’t just want to see activity that will get short term sales. They’ll want to see a path to long term sales. Remember if the product doesn’t perform after the initial launch the supermarket won’t hesitate dropping your product and replacing it with a competitors products. You have to have a plan to keep your products on the shelves and generating sales.
If you’d like Gourmet Ads to develop a digital marketing plan for your product to help get it listed in a supermarket, then Request a Proposal from our team. For more information, download our media kit.
