The Honey Pot looks beyond foot traffic to bring in shoppers

In a retail landscape where brands are increasingly competing for attention, crafting an effective marketing plan is just not enough. To maximize reach, retailers need high-intent shoppers. But how do they get there?

For The Honey Pot Company, a menstrual care brand whose products are sold in thousands of retail locations across the country, understanding what moves a consumer from awareness to action has become just as important as the final purchase.

ICYMI, at Retail Brew’s Intent by Design event, Jazmyn Williams, VP of brand at The Honey Pot Company, discussed how brands can cut through the noise, the evolving path to purchase, and building consumer trust in an uncertain economy.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

From a retail perspective, The Honey Pot has chosen a distribution-heavy strategy rather than opening branded stores. Why was that?

We’re a disruptor in a very established category that has a lot of legacy players, and so we want to make sure that we show up where our humans are shopping—and that is in store, and more and more online. Instead of putting a ton of capital and expenses into opening up stores, we know that we are best suited to be on the shelves right where people are looking for better-for-you feminine care, and that includes both period care, body care, vaginal wellness washes, wipes, etc. And so, instead of having a brick and mortar, we partner really well with our retailers to make sure that we can deliver the best products to humans when they need them.

Menstrual care is also traditionally a very habit-driven category. How do you get someone to reconsider a product they’ve been buying for years?

Most humans are using feminine care that was passed [down] to them from their mother or maybe their big sister, and there’s a legacy to that. There aren’t a lot of opportunities that trigger you to think, “Should I be using this or are there other options out there?” Breaking that [habit] can be a little bit challenging for us. What we look for are those inflection points in life where there tends to be an exploration of new products. Sometimes it’s leaving home for the first time, and you have your own money, and you can make your own decisions. Other times, it can be a health incident. We see a lot of people come to The Honey Pot through their own wellness journeys, needing to change and then starting to explore different products and the ingredients in those products. Another big point of entry into our brand is through matrices, or the act of becoming a mother, and especially if you’re a birthing human, because all of a sudden you’re looking for the best for your baby and also yourself, and so it causes you to rethink.

Price is a huge factor today for consumers who are already dealing with an uncertain economy. How do you convince consumers that they should be spending that money on your product?

When you have broader availability, that allows for pricing to be more competitive, and so availability is huge. Another [factor] is we invest heavily in trade promotions with our retailers that offer that to their guests, and so being able to purchase multiple packs of Honey Pot tampons or multiple washes at a discount or to get a gift card that then helps with other purchases is important to us.

Outside of our retail partnerships, we invest in digital couponing and reward programs, so that those bargain hunters can get our products for either a rebate or some sort of digital reward. We also look at packaging to understand how we can drive more value for our community with a larger pack size or multi packs or duo packs. Innovation is not just for the sake of creating a new product, but it could be repackaging a product to provide more convenience to our community. And then, finally, we have a social impact arm that donates hundreds of thousands of products each quarter, and that’s really important to us, too, so that the communities that can benefit from our products can also have access to them.