The Customer Journey

Private Brands do not always sell themselves. During the current economic turbulence, as with all of the past several recessions, Private Brands receive a boost based on one factor - price. This is wonderful...but what should you do when things improve and an entire new cohort of shoppers begin to have to make brand choices in your store?

This is where the Customer Journey begins. Someone suddenly has to shop for themselves (with 3.6 million new births every year this means that 3.5 million new customers have to be educated on Private Brands every year) and they only know what they used to know about products, brands, cooking and meal prep - which in today's world is not much. Sure they can go to YouTube to see how to cook but who is going to guide them on the journey to buying more Private Brands?

You - and your team.

So, how do we do this? Let's start with the graphic at the beginning of this article. Thanks to Donald Miller, we have a pretty clear pathway that is decades old and is used in almost any form of story telling (if you have ever seen Star Wars, you see this path in action). This graphic is called The Hero's Journey. The steps are simple - and can always be applied to the Private Brand space.

Step #1: There is a Hero (The Consumer) - from your data (card data or research data) you can build a Persona that represents your typical consumer.

• Too often I see retailers who think they are the hero of the story - missing out on how to best show the consumer the right path as they are focused internally

Step #2: Who has a problem (need to save money, need to build trust, need to improve value, etc.) that can be solved by your Private Brands.

Step #3: They meet a Guide - you, your team, your store and your products.

Step #4: The Guide provides the Hero with a plan - this is where your marketing and merchandising comes in. From Wayfinding to Compare & Save to your Quality Guarantee to your recipe program and on and on, you are in charge of crafting, disseminating, communicating and helping your Consumer execute the plan.

• This has to be active - remember, you not only have 3.6 million potential new Heroes every year but you also have new people moving into your market or trying your store. They need to be made aware of the plan as well

Step #5: A Call to Action is provided - what is the trigger that will help your new Hero get onto the path you have laid out? You will need to use all of your marketing and merchandising tactics to help them find the benefits of your Private Brand program.

• If this is where you get stuck, we can talk. This is where the fun begins and Merchant Expertise begins to get created

Step #6: Paint a picture of what failure to follow the Private Brand Path can bring. David Nichol was great at this with President's Choice - his focus on The Brand Tax and educating everyone on how they were overpaying for branded products was a great way to show the failure to save.

Step #7: Paint a picture of what successfully embracing the Private Brand path can bring - value, ease, trust, savings, etc. You should know your customers best and can try different ways to build this.

• I firmly believe that by connecting Private Brand purchases with recipes, family fun and other branded purchases (National Brands are ~80% of sales - use them as a vehicle to drive Private Brand purchases) you will create more loyalty to your Private Brands more quickly

Donald Miller and the StoryBrand approach shared here misses out on one thing...

Turning your new found Heroes into Raving Fans who become your best sales team. Check out the image below for what a fleshed out Customer Journey Map looks like.

Remember - you are the guide and each individual customer is the hero. Are you ready to guide them to Private Brand excellence?

Do you want to build a more sustainable private brand business (and perhaps enhance your total merchandising approach to Private Brands) where you can outpace both the competition and who you were yesterday? Schedule a 30-minute session to explore the possibilities:

https://calendly.com/craigespelien/30-minute-meet_greet