Home and garden marketing: 3 examples of spring competitions

Home and garden marketing: 3 examples of spring competitions

Marketing in the home and garden sector is booming since the pandemic, with the French investing in their living spaces. According to a study by the Fédération Française du Bricolage, spending on home improvements has risen by 6.2% in 2020. The gardening market is expected to grow by 16% in 2021.

This growth has been accompanied by increased competition, with :

  • The arrival of new players,
  • The rise of digital commerce
  • The ehigher expectations of consumers, more and more of whom are taking up DIY without necessarily being experts.

Faced with these challenges, it’s essential for brands to adapt to trends and offer solutions tailored to the audience’s expectations. In this article, we share advice and examples of how to capture attention and boost sales through competitions during spring.

Marketing challenges in the home and garden sector

The home and garden sector has a number of characteristics:

  • a wide range of products, from home furnishings and decorations to garden equipment;
  • its seasonality, with demand influenced by trends and the weather;
  • more complex logistics, for stock management, for product delivery and assembly/returns, etc.

Because of these particularities, the marketing challenges faced by retailers are different from those faced by other sectors.

1. Marketing based on trends and product innovation

The home and garden sector is influenced by trends, in terms of design, materials or technology (think of connected home tools). Brands must innovate to meet consumers’ changing needs. They are looking to improve their quality of life and personalise their space.

2. A seasonal sector requiring effective demand management

Demand for products related to gardening, home maintenance and decoration peaks according to the season. Garden equipment and plants are popular in spring and summer. Heating and home decoration products can experience a sales surge in winter.

The major vertical brands need to optimise their campaigns around the seasons. What’s more, they are banking on an ultra-wide catalogue in order to be attractive and profitable throughout the year.

3. The omnichannel challenge and the digitalisation of the shopping experience

The home and garden sector has undergone a digital transition, with an increasing number of consumers researching and purchasing products online. An omnichannel trend is a challenge for brands, who need to offer a consistent experience online and in-store.

Castorama has incorporated digital technology into its sales strategy, offering customers the option of reserving items online and collecting them in-store. The chain uses digital solutions to advise customers, with video tutorials and advice. As for Leroy Merlin, its application allows users looking for a product in the catalogue to consult stocks in real time in the nearest shop or to check delivery availability.

4. A personalised offering and a focus on sustainability

Consumers are sensitive to product quality, origin and environmental impact. The home and garden sector is affected by the sustainability trend, and is being called on to offer eco-responsible products and sustainable renovation solutions.

5. Customer loyalty and brand experience

The home and garden sector relies on building customer loyalty, as these products are purchased on a recurring basis (home improvement, renovation, maintenance). Building customer loyalty involves reward programs, personalised advice and high-quality after-sales service.

One example is Leroy Merlin, whose ‘Leroy Merlin Club’ loyalty program offers discounts, tailor-made advice and access to free delivery services to the brand’s best customers. Leroy Merlin also offers DIY workshops to build loyalty among shoppers and encourage them to return to the store.

Why organise a spring competition?

Spring is a strategic time for brands in the home and garden sector, as it marks the start of the gardening and landscaping season. It’s a time when consumers start to take an interest in renovation projects and home maintenance (after the winter and the famous spring cleaning).

This is important for brands that don’t communicate on other spring highlights (like Easter) and need to boost their communications at this time of year.

Home and garden retailers can capitalise on the arrival of spring by organising a competition. This strategy will enable them to achieve commercial objectives, including visibility, an increase in their conversion rate and customer retention.

1. Boost awareness with a spring competition

Spring is the time to raise the profile of your home furnishings brand, as consumers are focused on improving their environment and DIY projects.

For DIY chains, the challenge is to remain ‘top of mind’ during this time of year and to position as the essential brand for getting spring projects off the ground. The competition is the ideal format for widening the audience (using fun mechanisms and the promise of attractive rewards) while promoting their seasonal offers.

Example: Showroomprivé’s ‘Garden Party’ campaign, based on a one-armed Bandit instant win, highlighted seasonal products to celebrate the arrival of spring. This fun in-app feature gave visibility to the brand and its partner brands, and encouraged sales.

Showroomprivé - one-armed bandit garden party

2. Attract shoppers to the shop and generate more conversions

Spring is a time when consumers, motivated by the warm weather, want to take action. Spring campaigns can encourage customers to visit shops to buy gardening, DIY or outdoor decoration products.

Competitions are effective here, as they enable retailers to share incentives to buy (in the form of exclusive, time-limited discount vouchers). Gamification acts as a drive-to-store lever. By organising events directly in-store (such as DIY workshops, demonstrations, prize draws), companies attract customers to their point of sale and encourage them to make purchases.

Example: Aushopping chose Outrun to raise the profile of its shopping centres. The scheme, which focused on customer engagement and recruiting new leads, encouraged web-to-store traffic at this time of year. The campaign achieved an conversion rate: all visitors to the game filled in the form and played, underlining the appeal of the operation.

Aushopping - spring competition

3. Increase your retention rate

The issue of loyalty is crucial for brands, which need to encourage their customers to return to the shop and buy from the brand. To do this, they rely on a high-quality after-sales service or offer an innovative loyalty program, giving access to attractive benefits (discounts, etc.) as well as personalised services.

The competition can be reserved for the company’s VIP customers. But it also serves as a data collection tool. By refining its customer knowledge, the brand can then share recommendations, targeted resources and advice, depending on the project.

Example: The main aim of Lidl’s ‘Les rendez-vous jardin’ campaign was to increase the visibility and awareness of the chain’s garden catalogue. It aimed to generate leads and collect opt-ins so that they could be ‘fed’ via marketing campaigns throughout the year.

Lidl - tape taupe spring competition

Conclusion

Spring is a crucial time for your home improvement or DIY store. By organising a competition on this theme, you can more easily highlight your seasonal offers, attract shoppers to your shops and win their loyalty with recommendations and personalised content. Find out more about our fun ways to boost your communications during this key sales period!

In 30 minutes, we show you how to launch your own high-performance interactive marketing campaign

Corum L’Épargne: sports marketing and gamification to boost brand awareness

Corum L’Épargne: sports marketing and gamification to boost brand awareness

CORUM L’Épargne is just one of the brands that have embraced gamification as a communications tool.This French company, which offers transparents and accessibl savings solutions, has chosen Playable Marketing coupled with sports sponsorship to raise its profile and effectively address its audience.

In this article, we’ll look at the relevance of gamification in meeting marketing challenges of the banking sector in general, and CORUM l’Épargne in particular. Through examples of playable campaigns she has run alongside Adictiz, Lucie Odoux, Head of Sports Sponsorship, shares with us the best practices she has learned from them.

Why has Corum l’Épargne chosen gamification to optimise its marketing campaigns?

The banking sector is facing a number of challenges: creating a closer relationship with a younger audience, improving the customer experience, increasing user loyalty, adapting to new digital communication and usage channels, and so on.

To meet all these challenges, and in particular to strengthen its reputation, CORUM l’Épargne has decided to implement a gamification strategy. As the company has been heavily involved in sport sinces 2018 (supporting 21 athletes in a wide variety of disciplines), gaming is part of its brand DNA. But above all, playable marketing enabled it to achieve several of its commercial objectives.

Boosting awareness marketing through gamification

Above all, gaming is an excellent way to satnd out from the crowd and reach a wider audience.

As Lucie Odoux, Head of Sports Sponsorship, explains in her testimonial:

Gamification allows us to address a new audience, or at least our audience, but in a different, more playful way. It allows players to spend more time with the brand, without really realising it.

By offering fun marketing games, CORUM l’Épargne’s primary objective is to develop its brand awareness. The idea is to multiply the points of contact with its audience via interactive and engaging experiences, in order to work on the presence of mind.

The games enable the company to collect new contacts (via opt-in forms for subscribing to its mailing list and sharing opt-in forms)). New contacts that the company would not necessarily have been able to reach with more traditional communications, such as members of GenZ for example.

Generally speaking, playable marketing is an excellent way of modernising your brand image and humanising your branding. Interactive formats are highly effective in engaging audiences around unifying values and creating a strong emotional bond that traditional communications (static advertising, etc.) are unable to generate.

Raising awareness of the need for better financial management

In a sector as complex and sensitive as banking and savings, play-based marketing can also be a way of raising awareness and educating customers. This is especially true when you’re targeting a fairly young audience, for whom it’s important to share good practice in a fun way.

With these marketing games, CORUM l’Épargne is making its saving message much more accessible. It is also demonstrating transparency, a strong value for the company, by helping its users to understand where they are investing their money.

Improving customer relations and building audience loyalty

Finally, gamification helps to strengthen the bond with its audience: a major challenge for a 100% digital player like CORUM L’Épargne. Gamification makes it possible to extend the time that users spend with the brand: qualitative time that creates a stronger customer relationship, based on positive emotions such as surpassing oneself, creativity, etc.

It’s also a lever for maintaining contact that has been established with prospects and new customers by collecting opt-in data. But also by collecting customer data (via a participation form or by analysing interactions within the game) so that they can be reactivated later with personalised, and therefore more powerful, content.

2 examples of successful gamification campaigns

To achieve these objectives, CORUM L’Épargne has set up two gamification campaigns:

A customizer to boost your marketing profile

The company was involved in sailing, with a boat taking part in various races such as the Vendée Globe and the Route of Rhum, and decided to use this as a lever to raise its profile. With the boat due to undergo major modifications before its next participation in a race, CORUM L’Épargne took the opportunity to involve its audience in the project to decorate the hull and sail.

The Customizer mechanism was ideal for inviting users to suggest ideas for decorations (with elements chosen by the brand beforehand). The players were then able to submit various proposals for the artistic decoration of the boat.

The campaign worjed very well with the CORUM L’Épargne audience, as it allowed them to take an activa part in a mjor project for the brand and let their creativity shine through. The Customizer enabled the company to achieve an excellent opt-in rate (via subscription to its newsletter) and thus raise its profile with its target audience.

Customizer Corum

A game mini-site to optimise your sports marketing

CORUM L’Épargne has also used Playable Marketing to engage its audience and reaffirm its commitment to sport. As a reminder, the company supports 21 athletes in a wide vartiety of disciplines, from fencing and climbing to judo and Formula 2 racing.

As sport is a powerful lever for reaching a wide audience, but also for engaging its public and uniting them around strong values, the company has combined its sports marketing to its gamification strategy. To this end, it has launched a site with six mini sports games allowing users to discover six of the athletes supported by the brand.

This immersive experience enabled CORUM to bring participants into the sporting world of its athletes, while maximising the time spent with brand.

corum l'épargne gamification sport

3 tips for boosting marketing awareness through gamification

Drawing on her experience of gamified marketing, Lucie Odoux shares 3 tips on how to optimise your campaigns and turn them into powerful levers for building brand awareness.

  • Choosing the right entertainment format, depending on tis strategic objective and target audience. They key is to offer an interactive experience that is aligned with the brand’s universe (in this case, sport) and the results you want to achieve. To boost its brand awareness, CORUM relied on popular sports games, but also on initiatives that anebled its audience toget involved in a major renovation project.

  • Track the right KPIs to assess the effectiveness of your campaign and improve what needs to be improved. CORUM L’Épargne wanted to raise its profile, so it monitored its brand image with a sufficiently large panel. The company also monitored its number of subscribers on social networks and its opt-in rate (two key metrics for assessing its ability to reach a new audience).

  • Equip yourself with an effective gamification marketing tool. CORUM chose Adicitiz to give it access to a wide variety of games that are both highly adaptable and easy to customise ot its challenges. It also enlisted the support of the Adictiz teams to create high-quality, innovative experiences and work on the media coverage of its campaigns to reach the right targets.

Conclusion

Gamification is a highly effective way of boosting brand awareness in marketing. Expand your audience and strengthen your brand image with our fun, interactive advertising tools!

 

In 30 minutes, we show you how to launch your own high-performance interactive marketing campaign