Driving FMCG Retail Trade Marketing Maturity: A Best Practices Approach

A fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company launched a best-practices initiative to refine and improve its trade marketing capabilities.

The goal was to establish a proprietary maturity matrix to strengthen execution across key retail marketing activities with an emphasis on collaboration with third-party retailers.

The project aimed to identify the best ways to carry out key activities such as retail market analysis, channel marketing planning, trade show execution, POS strategies, in-store promotions, retailer training, and relationship management.

To support this, the company worked with expert networks to gain insights from experienced senior professionals in trade marketing.

ENs, approached with the help of ENC, helped the client to engage with these experts:

1. Senior trade and retail marketing executives from relevant clothing and tech companies specializing in third-party retail channels
2. Experienced compliance consultants with expertise in proven methodologies to help to align retail execution with strategic objectives
3. Managers from several successful merchandising firms offering insights into outsourced promotional execution, retail store audits, and retailer engagement.

Structured expert interviews identified the best approaches to mystery shopping, sampling strategies, POS performance analysis, and compliance monitoring. These insights allowed the company to develop a comprehensive maturity matrix and actionable best-practice frameworks.

Results achieved:

1. Effective performance verification models to ensure in-store promotional consistency and adherence
2. Enhanced retailer collaboration, which significantly improved promotional impact and quality of execution
3. Proprietary strategic roadmap to guide long-term growth in trade marketing capabilities
4. Practical compliance auditing tools to improve efficiency and maximize ROI.

The initiative laid a solid foundation for ongoing optimization in trade marketing.