Marketing Your Product on an Increasingly Cramped Retail Shelf: Your Biggest Challenge and Your Best Friend

Imagine you are walking down this aisle looking for one particular answer to your need, in the form of one product.  What words come to mind?  The words that come to my mind are: "cluttered", "overwhelming", "confusing", and "lost".  Coincidentally, these are the same words that come to mind when I look at my taxes, the freeway system in Los Angeles, and my hair in the morning.

Your product, which you have invested thousands, tens of thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars into, not to mention your blood, sweat, tears, 2nd mortgage, and kid’s college education, might end up on the shelf in a situation like this. 

Here’s some developments in the retail world in the last decade to chew on.  The number of SKU’s ("Stock Keeping Units", or simply put–"products") out there has increased tremendously.  This is partly because the increase in private label offerings by major retailers.  But, it is also because companies are trying to refine their product offerings to appeal more to specific market segments.  Shoppers, consumers in general, are demanding more specific offerings that meet their specific needs.  One national retailer shelves more than twenty different models of kitchen mixers.  A national home improvement retailer offers 318 different refrigerator models.  A national electronics retailers sells 164 digital camera models.  You get the picture. 

What does this mean for someone browsing the shelves where your product is placed?  It means that it has become more difficult to evaluate and compare product features and purchasing paralysis is more common.  To make matters more challenging, your product has got to sell well in the first few weeks it’s on the shelves of a national retailer, or they are going to be compelled to replace it with something else that might.  Is the word "overwhelming" creeping back into your mind again?

Don’t let it.  Here are some things to consider that can help you beat out your competitors who are throwing in the towel or are too risk-averse to try something beyond the same old formula.  As you may remember from a few blog posts ago, in which I posted an interview with Barbara Carey, packaging is essential to get your product’s perceived value as high as possible.  Also, if you read this post about Joshua Bell and the importance of context in communicating value, you have got to smack people in the face (not literally) and provide the message that your product is great through context.

• Product Packaging:  Your packaging must provide a positive emotional experience.  This is a very large component of the purchasing experience.  A nationally acclaimed study presented at the 2001 Radiological Society of North America national meeting, by Dr. Dean Shibata, demonstrated that when images were taken of subjects brains as they made purchasing decisions, the frontal lobes of the brain always demonstrated high activity, which was indicative of a substantial degree of emotional processing.  How can you make your packaging provide an emotionally positive experience?  Make it easy to understand what your product does and the pain it relieves your customer of–at the most basic level.  Don’t clutter your packaging with a description of every feature and description you can conceive of.  Your product might make someone’s teeth whiter AND provide greater fuel efficiency for their car, but which one is the reason why your specific target market is going to buy your product?  Remember, they are already overwhelmed.  They are seeking an easy choice and buying experience.  You might not get every single customer that walks through that section, but you will surely get the one with the pain point that is looking for the specific relief that your packaging is screaming out.

• Marketing Strategy:  I simply have to refer to the post on Seth Godin’s presentation in my previous post.  In fact, that provided a good deal of the inspiration for this post.  Customers feel good when they feel engaged.  They feel they have been reached in a personal manner by someone offering them something that meets their specific need.  You can help accomplish this before your customer even walks into the store.  Your website, your message, your mission, your brochures, your blog, your press releases, your trade show presence, and more, can all be geared towards getting close to the customer and letting them know that you aren’t a huge, faceless corporation throwing a product at them.  You are a company made up of people that understand their specific needs and have come to their rescue with an amazing product that will help them feel that they need to make a special trip to their nearest retail outlet where it is sold, pick it off the shelf, and walk straight to the counter without even considering anything else.  Or, better yet, make a purchase directly from you off of your website.

The increasing complexity of the retailing experience is challenging companies big and tiny.  Your advantage, lies in the fact that you can push the above strategies to the next level much more quickly, easily, and authentically, than the big guys.  That retail aisle up above could be your ticket to your customer’s favor.  Have at it…