GroupM: What Does Your Digital Shelf Look Like? - Heather Frahm - MediaBizBloggers

Research on shelf effects in brick and mortar stores has shown that a product's absolute and relative shelf position strongly affects consumer choices. But how much time is the average brand manager spending on their digital shelf? Go to Google, type in your brand – what does your shelf look like? Is your brand in the shopping feeds? Is it the SKU you would choose? Does it have the most recent artwork?

eRetail

Get even closer to the buy; go to walmart.com, do an on-site search for your brand or product – what is the consumer experience? I went to the site and searched "upset stomach." Looking at the results, P&G/Pepto-Bismol should be moderately happy…I think. They have the most prominent position, listed number one in the results. This leads me to assume they garner about 50 percent of the clicks. However, is that the best SKU for Pepto-Bismol products or is the SKU in the third position a better SKU for Pepto-Bismol? Is the artwork dated? Further, look at the third Pepto-Bismol listing, "not sold online." Why? We were so close; talk about a barrier. McNeil Consumer/Kaopectate cannot be happy with this digital shelf as they are sandwiched between Pepto-Bismol and they are "not sold online."

Look at this other example of the digital shelf. Johnson & Johnson/Acuvue must be happy with this shelf and the consumer experience with strong visibility and branding across the SERP.

The good news is there is a lot you can do to impact the multiple digital shelves that live on the Internet.

About Face..facings

1. Establish a framework that determines what shelf you should be on. This is the toughest part of the process. What are the key phrases that are an integral part of your brand equity? These are your priority digital shelves.

2. Spend the time to review your digital shelf. Review each segment of the purchase path: brand, product, category and lifestyle. Within each segment review the digital shelf – what was the customer experience when you clicked on the shelf?

3. Discover where consumers are going when they click and what the primary destinations are. We now have access to that data thanks to comScore and Compete.

4. Where are the majority of consumers going in each segment? If the majority of the consumers in a focus segment (based on brand strategy) or all segments are going to retail and/or Amazon, be deliberate about your retail presence and strategy. Consider whether folks are going to retail because that is what most of the listings represent, or if perhaps for that segment of the purchase path this is where consumers want to go at this time.

5. Check out your competitors' presence on the digital shelf.

So much to think about, strategize, deploy, measure and start over. If ecommerce is part of your business objectives, add the digital shelf to your business plan.

Heather Frahm is President and Managing Partner of Catalyst Online, a GroupM company. She can be reached at heather.frahm@catalystsearchmarketing.com.

Read all Heather's MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Musings from GroupM - MediaBizBloggers.

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