Shopping List Marketing: A New Way to Optimize Consumer Intent

Creating shopping lists has always been a core step in a consumer’s grocery shopping process. Just like how consumers have increasingly adopted the use of apps to track a variety of things from fitness to financial status, today’s consumers are also turning to digital tools such as grocery list building apps to make their lists, creating a big opportunity for consumer goods marketers.

According to Callan Consulting’s recent survey of consumer goods marketers, approximately 49% of consumers make digital shopping lists. Digital shopping lists are a growing way for consumers to plan their purchase journey, and therefore, a viable channel for CG marketers to reach today’s consumers to align with their preferences and shopping behaviors. This is the foundation of Shopping List Marketing.

What is Shopping List Marketing?

Shopping list marketing is an innovative technology that allows marketers to find and influence consumers when they are building their shopping list. With this tool, brand marketers can serve ads to consumers engaged in a specific product category, encouraging consumers to add promoted products directly to their digital lists or carts — often when they are planning their next shopping trip and have a heightened sense of purchase intent.

Empowered by digital and mobile advertising technologies, shopping list marketing helps organizations to be more targeted with their digital advertising, reducing waste and improving efficiencies. In fact, we found that 96% of CPG marketers believe getting on a consumer’s digital grocery list is critical to brand success. 

Why is Shopping List Marketing Key to Reaching Today’s Consumers?

In today’s landscape, CG marketers have reported various disruptions to shopping habits. Whether due to supply chain issues or changes in brand loyalty, CGs are facing constant volatility in terms of which products are seeing significant popularity increases versus decreases. 

Grocery list data offers the opportunity to confirm whether the shopping habits of mobile app users reflect sales data and answer questions about what’s happening in categories as a whole. CG marketers can leverage digital shopping lists to get a real-time read on consumer purchase intent. As list data is an accurate predictor of in-store sales, it can be used to optimize media, identify in-market shoppers and capitalize on category and product trends. As a result, marketers can be more targeted and efficient with their budgets and see significant results.

How Can CG Marketers Utilize Shopping List Marketing?

CG marketers can allocate budget to shopping list marketing to increase the likelihood of purchase, improving sales lift. For example, one large, worldwide beer brand is using shopping list marketing to drive commerce online and in-store. The brand knew that as more and more people shop online and plan their purchases before shopping, it needed consumers to be thinking about the brand ahead of time during the pre-shop phase.

With the goal of driving incremental, measurable sales, the brand used shopping list marketing to drive consumers to add products to their list and intercept searching shoppers while building their shopping lists. By tapping into this channel, the CG brand saw a significant increase in incremental sales lift and add-to-list rate. 

Find and Influence Consumers the Smart Way with Shopping List Marketing

The time is now for CG marketers to reach consumers in the critical stages throughout the sales funnel. This is especially important today since advertisers who have heavily invested in advertising that relies on iOS tracking data are showing concern about Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency feature. Shopping list marketing gives CG brands a path forward by providing first-party list building data so they can understand which consumers will be most receptive to a brand’s message and intercepting them in planning mode or in-store before they purchase — all without needing to rely on specific tracking information that may no longer be available. 

With shopping list marketing, consumer goods companies have a platform to advertise and capture the attention of consumers before they even step foot into the store. Those who delay implementing this new technology in today’s crowded environment will lose out on an opportunity to influence, measure and create intent with these key consumers.

Molly McFarland is founder and CRO of AdAdapted.