Why Food & Beverage Startups Should Invest More in a Promoter-led Exercise It's important that you have a physical touch point for consumers and make the presentation of the brand felt in real life too and target those specific geographies

When a customer walks into a grocery chain or a supermarket these days, he gets spoilt for choice when he is looking at the never-ending aisles of multiple brands in the same category. Regular shoppers see it as an advantage that they are getting to choose from so many brands but functional shoppers really want to get over the experience soon and pick up the first brand they see.

This perilous situation for consumers becomes a big opportunity for Food and

Beverage startups to try new ways of marketing their products- especially, a promoter led exercise.

Promoters not just help in grabbing the consumers attention but also getting a live feedback from potential customers or converting the opportunity into an instant purchase.

Here are five reasons why FnB start-ups should invest in store-led promotions

Brand Exposure

In the face of budget challenges, start-ups often lose out on ATL marketing and need a quirky touch to their marketing efforts to pass on their brand message to attract the attention of large groups. When promoters are seen in a store, they don't come across a regular store employee and the reason is that they embody your brand by wearing the brand's unique uniform and speaking in the approved script that directly aims at putting out the best attributes of the product in the front. Your product no longer is a physical object in the aisle but gets the voice of its own, thus giving differentiated brand exposure.

Valuable Feedback from Customers

When you ask customers to send feedback on the product by writing the postal address/email id on the product label, how many customers actually bother to do that? Face to face interaction with the customer enables transparency and the consumer gives an instant reaction on what he likes or dislikes about the product. If the feedback is negative, such channels of marketing help start-ups in modifying the ingredients or changing the price-point to ensure a better product. Often in such situations, consumers have an insight that you might have overlooked earlier.

Narrowing Down the Target Audience

Defining the target audience is the most complicated part of the business. Sometimes companies make products that are intended for a TG they defined and are eventually consumed by another set of TG. The fictitious TG in the business plan presentation might not exist in real life at all. The product trials in the store can give you important insights into the minds of potential customers. The feedback form filled by them get you the details which can help to tailor your promotional campaign to a certain kind of audience.

Helps in Humanizing your Brand

Brands now directly take the route of going online and are available on online grocery stores without having any physical presence at all. This takes away the privilege of customers to feel and touch your brand. It's important- especially in the digital age where products turn out to be different than how they are inline- for brands to be more human. Which means that if you want to stand out and win people's trust, you need to be more approachable, relatable and reachable. In other words, you need to humanise your brand.

It's a good mix of your 360-degree marketing plan

Driven by the knowledge one gets from the e-commerce platforms by tracking interest your product is generating from some specific locations, it's important that you have a physical touch point for consumers and make the presentation of the brand felt in real life too and target those specific geographies. It helps in widening the ubiquity of the brand. And especially in India, very many customers are not accustomed to buying things online; some people still go by physical presence. That's why, in the long aisles of a mall, your brand's stall and its promoters help in making the brand stand out and influence a purchasing decision for the customer.