The change in retail - Are you still scattering, or are you already focusing?
The Erwin Müller Group is completely discontinuing its weekly advertising leaflets in order to save costs (LZ of 29.4.2022). Other well-known companies, including large food discounters and DIY stores, are also reducing their flyers or thinking about discontinuing them. But what moves these companies to dispense with a marketing tool that was effective in the past and also indispensable for many?
Rising raw material prices cause cost pressure
Paper prices are rising rapidly and it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain paper. Print shops and associations are sounding the alarm. The paper crisis is not only triggered by Corona and the Ukraine war, but also by a structural change in the industry. Long-term supply contracts with fixed prices are a thing of the past; instead, there are now quarterly prices, and yet there is no guarantee that the price can be maintained over the agreed three months. Overall, prices for newsprint have risen by around 200 percent within a year. Costs that are passed on to the client. The result: the CPM skyrockets.
Supply bottlenecks of goods and supplies
Container ship congestion off the ports means missing parts for production and empty warehouses. We are all familiar with the consequences when there is a snag in the globally coordinated production chains. For marketing managers, who plan their campaigns and the advertising materials coordinated with them far in advance, it's a disaster! Especially when one of these advertising materials is a brochure that has been produced and booked in, but the corresponding goods are not in stock. Then it's often goodbye to the brochure and into the garbage can!
The solution? Stay flexible!
So if we can no longer guarantee that the promotional merchandise will be there on time, then our advertising measures have to be adaptable and flexible. So why not stockpile the offers and push them into the appropriate promotional material when needed? With a marketing management system in the background, this is extremely easy and time-saving, because the rule is: one for all! Offers with images, text and pricing only have to be created once - with one click they are transferred to the appropriate advertising material - digital or print - and automatically brought into the correct layout. The playout or booking of the advertising material is also automated via the system. In a nutshell: One offer, one click - umpteen advertising media!
One size fits all - not really!
For more flexibility, the individual sites can be granted the right to edit the offers again individually. The editing can refer to the individual content elements as well as to the selection of the offers themselves. For locations, this means that promotions can be tailored to their individual target group as well as to the merchandise available, or even take external influences such as the weather or regional holidays into account. As a result, marketing campaigns are more targeted, more effective and can be implemented more quickly. Want an example? A DIY chain's "Water Fun in the Garden" campaign is planned for the beginning of June. But that very week, rain is forecast in DIY store A's region. DIY store B will have super good weather, but due to the inner-city clientele, it can be assumed that sales of swimming pools will be rather lukewarm. Both DIY stores can select their promotional offers individually, schedule them appropriately and send them to the target group - be it as a digital brochure, customer mailing, advertising banner, social media ad, direct mail or even as an insert in the regional weekly newspaper.
So you don't have to do without inserts and flyers - you simply have many more options!
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