Customer Understanding A Focus And Top Priority But Are We Doing It Right?
While both Mental and Physical Availability are key to unlocking growth, much of today’s content is focused on Mental Availability. However, there are a lot of cognitive biasis since the greatest proportion of decisions we make are automatic, subconscious and based on rules of thumb. This means that measuring perceptions alone won’t give you the right answer which calls for a combination with other data.
We need to reframe how we think about brand development. The main difference between big and small brands is the number of buyers, not the number of times they buy. We know that the majority of buyers for any brand, will be non-frequent buyers. Big brands have much higher penetration than small brands, but not much higher frequency. This means that the opportunity to grow lies in the non- and non-frequent buyers. In order to address the non-frequent buyers, we also need to know how many consumers- and how much money they represent in order to take the right actions. In order to understand e.g. sales you need to be able to identify which brand metrics best relates to it.
Data driven marketing needs to be used to support penetration increase for your brand to know what type of actions you need to take. This cannot be revealed by market research, sales etc alone in isolation, it needs to be combined and done in the right way.
Three reasons brand building requires insightful data integration
- The decisions we make are automatic, subconscious and subject to many different cognitive biases and rules of thumb. This means that measuring perceptions alone will not accurately predict decision making. To correct our predictions, we must combine perceptions with other data.
- The biggest growth opportunity for most brands comes from building penetration and encouraging infrequent buyers to buy again. Only by understanding the behaviour and mindset of potential buyers can you identify what actions will build sales most effectively.
- No one data source or analytic technique is going to unlock brand growth. Sales, search, social, attitudes, and economic variables all need to be combined in the right way to identify and unlock growth opportunities.
Looking at the right data for the right purpose at the right time have never been more important.