Brand manufacturers must seize the opportunity to manage consumer shopping experience. A focus on the consumer can drive improvements in brand trust, sales, and margins for your business. 

Michael Callahan, senior director of consumer experience at Groupe SEB, shared how his team has built a rabid fan base of consumers for its portfolio of brands, including KRUPS, Lagostina, and All-Clad during a recent webinar. Here are the five core truths that they used to devleop a winning strategy. 

1. Accept that the consumer’s in charge

Only customer-obsessed brands will survive in an age where consumers live online. Consumers expect to be front and center of your digital experience. To do this, your company needs to own every shopping touchpoint “Stop focusing on the retailers and focus on the consumer first," Callahan advised.  "Consumers have so many options, that if we’re not putting them at the forefront of everything we do, then we’re behind.”

2. Evolve with your customers’ demands

“When a consumer experiences something new for the first time and it delights them, like Amazon Prime, a new bar has been set and that becomes the new consumer expectation.” Callahan warned againt manufacturers, retailers, and brands designing a one-way conversation of "PUSH, PUSH, PUSH" without incorporating your shoppers input. 

3. Think in a digital-first mindset

“We spend so much time on what our packaging looks like, or making sure the copy is right on the print ad. That’s great, but how much time are you spending on making sure your digital content is right, that your SEO is optimized, that you’re looking at your ratings and reviews? Digital is our 24/7 billboard, our always-on marketing.”

4. Forget the funnel

“The funnel’s not around anymore. It’s called fragmented shopping now. There’s no digital strategy, just strategy in a digital world.” 

For example:

• 42% research online then buy online
• 51% research online then buy in-store
• 32% research online, visit the store, then buy online
• 16% visit store then buy online

Test and learn, and test AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN

“[The content and experience is] not going to be perfect, it’s not going to be 100% right, but you have to be in the mindset that your brand is in constant beta.”

5. Be a storyteller

“It’s really important we’re serving up the message of how we want our brands to come across and that we become storytellers. At the end of the day, we want to help make peoples’ lives better and you’re not going to make someone’s life better by saying, ‘This holds 12 cups and is stainless steel.’ People want to know: ‘How does it make a delicious cup of coffee? How can I brew that perfect cup of coffee on Saturday morning when the kids are getting ready for soccer and I’m trying to get a couple ‘me’ moments?’ That’s the narrative we’re taking to our brands.”

Listen to the full on-demand webinar A Brand’s Path to a Consumer Obsession.