Drive-to-store: what alternatives to printed advertising?

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In a context where climate and environmental issues are at the heart of consumers' concerns, printed advertising is finding it increasingly difficult to find its place. Indeed, 70% of French people consider paper leaflets to be wasteful and 42% systematically throw them away 1 . Added to this are regulations that increasingly limit the use of paper in advertising.

Since September 1 , 2022, the “Stop Pub” sticker introduced buy hong kong cell phone number list in 2004, allowing French people to no longer receive advertising material in their mailbox, has been gradually replaced by the “Oui Pub” label. This new system resulting from the 2021 Climate and Resilience Act further encourages companies to take the digital turn. Faced with such observations, what alternatives to advertising material do you have to meet your customers' expectations while complying with the legislation?

In this article we explain how to take advantage of your digital tools to continue to allow your customers to benefit from your promotional offers and boost your drive-to-store.



1. What traditional communication channels should be used?
2. What are the advantages of these communication channels?
3. How to maximize your performance with them?
Conclusion


Drive-to-store: what alternatives to printed advertising?

1. What are the traditional communication channels to use?
Your website
Your website is your first asset when you want to make the transition from paper to digital. You must consider it as your digital showcase. But you still have to use it wisely.



To boost your web-to-store through your website, there are a few good practices to know:



Highlight your promotions on your homepage (dedicated banner, countdown, etc.)
Create a page dedicated to promotions
Relay your points of sale promotions on the store locator.


Example of promotions relayed on the Leader Price Store Locator

Example of promotions relayed on the Leader Price Store Locator



Your emails
To relay your offers and highlight your products or services, the email campaign is one of your best assets. To maximize the impact of your mailings, we advise you:



Segment your databases in order to adapt your messages according to the target. Take care of your subject line in order to arouse the curiosity of your recipients
To personalize your content based on the data you have about your customers
A/B testing to find the right time and way to offer your offer
to use a clear call to action by setting a goal for each email
to ensure a good level of deliverability and accessibility (text/image ratio, Alt tag, responsive emails, etc.)


Your SMS
Do you want to relay your offers in a simple and instant way? SMS is the perfect lever. It strengthens proximity with your customers and is very useful when you want to communicate on the day of the launch of a promotion or before it ends. Of course, for the message to be relevant, the trick is to:



Customize the message (customer name, history, store name, etc.)
Highlight essential information
Direct your customers to your offers (tracked link to dedicated landing page)
Choosing the right time to send your message
Be GDPR friendly and collect your customers' consent via a form (opt-in)
Segment your base to be more relevant
Do not send too many SMS messages so as not to over-solicit your base


Your social networks
To extend the reach of your communications and bring visibility to your promotional offers, there is nothing like social networks. Indeed, it is a simple and free way to promote your products and services to your local communities. Moreover, here are the best practices to know:



Create a page for each of your points of sale
Customize your posts (local promotions, services available for each store, etc.)
Drive engagement on your posts by getting them shared
Enter relevant hashtags that are consistent with your activity
Include conversational messaging (WhatsApp, Messenger, etc.) in your marketing strategy to share your promotions


Your Google Business Profile listings
Your Google Business Profile (GBP) listings, like your website, represent your brand and products in local searches. It is also essential that each of your points of sale has its own GBP listing. To relay your promotions and differentiate yourself from your competitors, Google Posts are ideal. To improve your SEO and make yourself visible in Google searches, think about:



Provide as much information as possible on your files (name of the establishment, categories, telephone number, postal address, website, etc.)
Create a file for each of your establishments
Relay your promotions via Google Post




Drive-to-store: what alternatives to printed advertising?

2. What are the advantages of these communication channels?
These different traditional channels are essential in your marketing strategy. And this for several reasons:



They allow better targeting: by collecting data from your customers (interests, contact details, etc.), you send the right message to the right person at the right time.


In order to collect as much information as possible, you can set up:



A loyalty program with the creation of a customer account during the first purchase
A newsletter subscription form
A competition game


They make your messages more relevant: thanks to the information collected previously (order history, demographic data, etc.) you can now personalize your communications.


They allow precise monitoring of your actions: you can, simply and simultaneously, measure the performance of your campaigns in order to identify those which perform the least and implement the necessary adjustments.


They improve your ROI: thanks to a better knowledge of your customers, you offer them relevant promotions based on their needs. Since trust is already acquired, your customers will more easily make a purchase, generally with a larger average basket. In this way, you maximize the value of each customer while reducing your marketing efforts.




Drive-to-store: what alternatives to printed advertising?

3. How to maximize your performance with them?
Personalization
In order to maximize the impact of your communications around your promotions, we advise you to collaborate with your local teams since they have a field presence and often better knowledge of customers.



To do this, several tools are at your disposal:



An editorial calendar to share your information in a simple and clear way. It allows your stores to anticipate their local speaking engagements and your network to communicate in a synchronized manner.
Communication templates to allow your affiliates to personalize their content, which saves time and gives you better control over your brand image.


Tracking your performance
In order to maximize the impact of your marketing actions, your performance monitoring must be managed at several levels:



At the level of each communication channel in order to measure the performance of each medium in real time and to identify the high-performing channels
At the national, regional and local level in order to highlight certain particularities depending on the areas and to adapt your next promotional actions
In terms of usage, if you choose to lend a hand to the local in order to identify dropouts




4. Conclusion
In recent years, companies have tended to turn to digital when it allows them to highlight their promotional offers while communicating more responsibly. However, paper has not said its last word. Digital and printed advertising can be completely complementary. The French are still very attached to paper and a hybrid strategy combining print and digital seems to be an optimal solution. However, developing your marketing strategy in this direction requires organization and time to think about the plan to be put in place for your entire network. If you would like to be supported by experts in your approach, do not hesitate to call on the Digitaleo and Kamp'n teams, we will be happy to answer your questions!