Product

From Paper to Screen: Getting Started with Digital Circulars

For retailers and grocers, the print circular has been a part of their advertising strategy for a long time. In large part, because it’s one piece of advertising that customers truly enjoy–they can see weekly specials, discounts, and promoted products to plan their shopping experience at their favorite stores. Yet the medium is shifting. Nowadays, stores are adapting by offering a digital circular as an extension, and in some cases a replacement, for their paper counterpart. And for good reason. The digital circular offers new ways to target customers, speed and flexibility, and personalization (check out a few of our favorite reasons to adopt a digital circular strategy from our last blog post). 

Even though it’s become clear that going digital is not a “would like to have” and more a necessity for keeping up, it’s never easy to adopt a new way of working. On a recent webinar about the evolution of the digital circular, Facebook Global Client Solutions Devon Whiteway spoke about her thoughts on getting started with digital circulars.


“One of the first steps that we typically recommend when considering the shift, is really just getting a meeting of the minds scheduled. [Get] everyone in one room–your engineering teams, your ad ops team, [anyone] who’s managing your digital feeds, and your media teams.”


Devin Whiteway, Global Client Solutions

3 Tips from the StitcherAds team to get started:

1. Start with the Basics – Have a Clear Strategy

The digital circular can serve multiple business objectives. Defining the primary goal dictates the relevant tactics to deploy, on what platform, and what KPI is best to measure the effectiveness of the execution. An aligned objective across all stakeholders will create focus and clarity further down the line.

2. Leverage All of your Data – Onboard, Structure, Enrich, and Activate

The circular is built upon the convergence of three types of data: retail information at the store level, consumer data, and product information and messaging. Compounding these three data requires data integration from all the relevant sources, but more importantly, data structuring in the specific format suitable for deployment on each social platform.

3. Define your Products and Prospects

Well-defined audience and product segments fuel an effective, Segmented and targeted activation but they also empower you to see what’s working – who is connecting with what message and who is buying what product.

We are excited to share many more tips with you. Stay tuned for StitcherAds’ next e-book, 8 Essentials for Effective Digital Circular Execution.


If you’re interested in getting started, whether you’re just at the beginning of digitizing your assets, or you have ads built but want to optimize your creative or improve performance, let’s chat. Request a demo.