5 Horrible Mistakes Grocery Retailers are Making with Mobile

A strong mobile strategy has become a must for grocery retailers. The country’s largest grocers have already made a commitment to mobile, including heavy investments into apps, and the rest are feeling more pressure than ever to include the channel in their marketing mix.

Even though it’s become a “must-do”, the challenges around mobile can sometimes seem insurmountable for grocers. There are huge benefits to being in the mobile space, but how do retailers know they’re making the right call on when, where and how to spend their mobile dollars? What is the right way and is there a wrong way? Here are five common mistakes retailers make when engaging mobile consumers and how to remedy them.

1 – Making Your App the Only Part of a Mobile Strategy

Investing in your own app is undoubtedly a great start to engaging your shoppers where they spend all their time — their phone. A high-quality app can be a great way to promote your stores and the products therein, however, just releasing an app is not enough.

Many retailer apps, even if very useful with great user ratings, only engage a small number of shoppers. Retailers who have developed an app often cite their primary pain points as not getting significant downloads to justify the investment and not being able to keep users engaged after the initial download occurs.

The best ways to remedy this? 1) Include your app in as many marketing executions as possible and 2) Diversify your mobile investment into other grocery-relevant mobile apps with larger audiences, such as grocery list apps, productivity apps, recipe apps and lifestyle apps.

By including your app as a part of other executions (including weekly promotions, holiday events, co-op campaigns, etc), you will continually increase downloads and overall app usage. And, in addition to your own mobile platform, incorporating other apps into the mix will help you reach a mobile-savvy audience outside of your current purview.  

Looking for an easy entrance into grocery-specific mobile apps? AdAdapted has assembled a proprietary network of 25 apps consisting of over 70 million downloads, making it an easy and impactful entry point for CPG retailers to begin tackling the mobile grocery-relevant app space.

2 – Not Leveraging Trade Dollars for Mobile

Weekly promotions are still an effective driver of in-store traffic, but if you’re only presenting these deals via print, you’re missing out.

Consumers now spend more time on mobile than any other form of media (print or desktop). Finding an advertising partner that can help you leverage trade dollars to engage shoppers on mobile will not only increase successes with your app (downloads, usage, e-comm), but will also increase visitation as well as basket size.

Bonus: CPGs are actively seeking out new ways to reach and engage mobile consumers and your partner brands will appreciate you adding this channel to your offerings.

3 – Forgetting to Promote Private Label via Mobile

Private label products are a big part of success for your stores and you have likely invested a pretty penny in creating these affordable and competitive brands. Mobile is a great channel to promote your brands to on-the-go consumers as they decide what brands buy.

Want to make sure your private label brands make it into the basket? Try implementing an add-to-list strategy that puts your private label products onto shopper’s digital grocery lists, not only building awareness but also helping you gain a better understanding of consumer purchase intent, encouraging trial and increasing sales.

4 – Neglecting the Mobile Consumers’ User Experience (UX)

Just being on mobile isn’t enough anymore. You have to provide a great mobile experience.

For example, you might have a digital circular on your website. Maybe it’s clickable? Shoppable? Or even available for download? But what do mobile audiences see? If it was originally designed for print or desktop, it is most likely not going to be the best experience for mobile devices.

Take the time to create a mobile experience that is helpful, productive, and specifically built for mobile. One example of a streamlined mobile interface is AdAdapted’s Weekly Deals experience which allows consumers to engage in circular content in a mobile-friendly way while also presenting the consumer with a simple add-to-list button allowing them to add retailer promoted products directly to their favorite grocery list app.

5 – Believing In-Store Promotions Can Only Be Physical

When thinking about how to engage shoppers in-store, most retailers have always relied upon physical displays, shelf positioning of products and price grabbing visual signage.

While these tactics can be useful, they ignore that fact that 80% of shoppers are looking at their phones while navigating your aisles.

As mobile becomes the go-to reference for shoppers, physical displays are no longer the only way to engage shoppers in-store. Retailers can now harness the power of mobile to engage consumers as they shop, remind them to pick up the rotisserie chicken, introduce store-specific deals and more.

Consumers are using mobile apps to guide them on their grocery shopping trips. Checking items off the list in their favorite mobile grocery-list app is the way of the 21st century, so what better a place to find them and send them details about your latest in-store promotion.