This eBook will teach you:
– What is the next generation of marketing mix
– How you can quickly adjust your marketing mix in an ever-changing environment
– What to look for in a marketing mix technology partner
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How To Eat The Big Fish: 3 Trends Every Challenger Brand Needs To Know For 2022
Challenger brands might be the little fish in a big pond, but their key advantage comes from embracing risk and innovation to stand out from all the rest. This bold desire to resist conforming with the status quo set by other brand giants extends to how these brands approach their marketing planning and strategy.
In our article “Three Trends Challenger Brands Need To Know” co-written with ClickZ, we address the top three trends challenger brands can take advantage of now to drive more value for their 2022 marketing strategy.
Here’s a sneak peak of what should be top of mind for these bold innovators:
Trend #1: Media Effectiveness
Unlike the big fish–who can use its size and strength to survive–the little fish has to be more creative and precise with its survival strategy.
The same goes with the much leaner budgets challenger brands are working with compared to the category giants they’re up against. So what does it take to make very dollar count?
Yasso’s CMO Andy Judd explains striking the right balance starts with a triangulation approach:
“Our dollars are disproportionately smaller. We have to be really thoughtful about where we spend and the creative we use…Yasso invests heavily and ‘ahead of the curve’ on people.”
Judd and his team then guide their most strategic decision-making in a collaborative effort with Yasso’s internal experts, support from their media partners and the future-focused modeling capability offered by Keen’s predictive marketing solution.
“We run a much more high-touch ecosystem of analytics and creative than I would run for larger budgets and brands,” Judd explains, “Because every dollar is so important, there tends to be an even deeper belief that every dollar has to be working, when in reality, a little higher non-working spend, especially when it comes to analytics or creative mix, will net better results.”
To discover the other two trends that should be top of mind for today’s challenger brands, check out our article with ClickZ here.
4 Technology Trends That Will Redefine CPG Marketing In 2022
On October 27, I will have the privilege of moderating a roundtable for Keen Decision Systems at the ClickZ Data Summit: “Finding the Human Touch in a Digital World.”
As we set our sights on the horizon of 2022 I think it’s worth taking stock of some of the technology-enabled changes afoot for CPG companies, as they adapt and respond to digital transformation–accelerated by a global pandemic. There are many, but for today I’d like to focus on these four:
- CPGs Get Small
- Home Delivery Accelerates
- Marketing Planning Gets Smarter
- Merchandising Goes Automated
CPGs Get Small
If imitation is the highest form of flattery then the popular and profitable challenger brands should be quite flattered by recent attention from such CPG powerhouses as Unilever, P&G and others.
Search engine marketing company, Tinuiti, writes in its blog post, “The 7 Biggest CPG Industry Trends & Tactics For Brands”: “The consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry has evolved rapidly to meet consumer demands thanks to digital technology that has allowed brands to carve out markets by selling directly to customers, from online ordering and delivery to personalized meal kits and more.”
In some instances CPGs are trying to launch their own “small brands.” But the more popular route, it seems, is via acquisition. According to Kyle Byers, co-founder of Exploding Topics and GrowthBadger, “Since 2015, CPG Unilever has acquired dozens of companies — including many DTC brands. Like Dollar Shave Club (for $1 billion in 2016), Schmidt’s Naturals (for an undisclosed amount in 2017) and UK-based Graze (for £150M in 2019).”
Kellogg purchased RXBar, while Campbell Soup bought the organic soup brand Pacific Foods to target millennials, according to Forbes.
And another path is taking existing brands direct-to-consumers. Byers points out that “Last May, PepsiCo announced two new websites to do exactly that: PantryShop.com and Snacks.com. And their DTC sales nearly doubled in Q3.”
The growth in e-commerce capabilities catalyzed by the pandemic ushered in a slew of new DTCs, and as a result DTC online sales grew to an estimated $17.75 billion in the U.S. last year. Attractive for its margins, DTC also removes previous barriers between brands and their customers.
Home Delivery Accelerates
E-commerce also is raising consumer expectations for faster, easier home delivery, a trend that’s gained momentum as more consumers spend more time at home.
Amazon and Walmart, for example, have launched CPG marketplaces to capitalize on changes in consumer behavior. And even convenience stores have gotten in on the game, with GoPuff promising delivery in minutes for everything from toilet paper to soda, according to Byers.
Marketing Planning Gets Smarter
“Data has truly come of age in the CPG world,” Tinuiti reports. “Brands want intelligence and insights into market potential and opportunities that will enable them to grow sales exponentially. Only analytics and insights can do that. Expect to see a more data-driven 2022.”
The CMO Survey also suggests inevitability in the trend toward the use of predictive analytics saying, “Expectations for future AI and machine learning use are even higher and are predicted to increase ~20% in the next three years;” this despite lower-than-anticipated adoption in the past.
Keen clients tell us they’re adopting a triangulated approach to marketing planning, one that starts and ends with their internal team of experts who sit closest to the brand, the business and the customer. To prevent that proximity from leading to a myopic approach, brand leaders also rely on their media-buying agencies with their media insights.
And the third, but increasingly essential leg of the stool is predictive analytics like those offered by Keen. Keen’s platform ingests a brand’s existing sales, financial and marketing data to build forward-looking models so marketers can “war-game” the optimal allocation of dollars across all channels and weeks of their plans. Its Bayesian modeling approach (for you statistics fans) delivers reliable guidance even with sparse or poor quality data.
As Yasso Greek Frozen Yogurt CMO Andy Judd explains, “When every dollar is so important, there is an even deeper belief structure that every dollar has to be working; in reality, a little higher non-working investment in analytics often will net you better results.”
Merchandising Goes Automated
Mischelle Rebello, writing for Bizom, suggests, “CPG businesses allocate significant portions of their budgets and resources to merchandising.”
The lack of accessible technology has made tracking and monitoring merchandising at the outlet level a manual process, which as with all manual work is time-consuming and error-prone.
And of course, such processes fail to facilitate reliable intelligence or insights that brands can use for business intelligence and process improvement.
The development of intelligent retail lab (IRL) technology and sophisticated tracking mechanisms are enabling both brands and retailers like Walmart to harness the power of AI to monitor share of shelf more efficiently.
“Coupled with auto replenishment systems, brands can work out a sales strategy that will enable them to exceed their sales targets,” Rebello explains.
The focus of our conversations in October will be on engaging leaders from top brands like Nestle, Ericsson and Johnsonville to share their experiences, priorities and challenges in embracing this technology revolution and ensuring that greater access to data leads to stronger strategies and a more automated, iterative execution.
Reserve your spot now. Register for the ClickZ Summit today.
How Retail Marketers Can Navigate Online Boom With Threats From Delta And Inflation
The U.S. Commerce Department shocked analysts with its report that June retail sales rose 0.6 percent overall (excluding auto sales the uptick was 1.3 percent), according to global supply chain media platform Freightwaves.com; this on the heels of a 1.7 percent drop in May.
While the end of shutdowns spurred some of that growth, the real driver happened online. “Commercial real estate firm CBRE released a report on global e-commerce predicting that U.S. e-commerce sales will comprise more than 25 percent of total retail sales by 2025. And e-Marketer predicts e-commerce sales will grow 17.9 percent this year,” according to Freightwave.
Despite the strong comeback, storm clouds loom amid growing concerns about inflation and a resurgence of COVID cases from the Delta variant.
Uncertainty presents tough challenges for marketers, who need to ‘make forward-looking bets’ in the form of their marketing investment decisions. That’s difficult in normal times, but can feel overwhelming in the face of multiple, unpredictable and interdependent macro factors.
Here are several questions to consider to help prepare your marketing team and your plan for the known–and unknown–challenges ahead, based on learnings Keen has gained working with top consumer brands across retail, food and beverage, consumer goods and consumer health industries.
Are your team and resources aligned to pivot from annual marketing planning to quarterly or even monthly updates?
It was earlier this year that Procter & Gamble’s Chief Brand Officer Mark Pritchard declared the death of upfront deals for television advertising (annual, discounted contracts on TV ad buys). Far from a canary in the coal mine, this proclamation made official what consumer marketers have known for some time: Marketing may be budgeted once a year, but quarterly or even monthly updates are now critical to stay on track with goal achievement in today’s fragmented and rapidly changing media marketplace, especially since 2021’s economic shock.
The next question becomes what insights will you rely on to drive more frequent, time-sensitive updates and plan adjustments.
“If performance-management technology investments are not part of your answer to this question they should be,” says Keen CRO Enid Maran. “One of the advantages machine-learning software offers marketing planners is the ability to ingest recent performance data and apply it to future modeling. This technology-enabled approach promotes a culture of continuous improvement that includes plan, execute, measure and adapt.
“That’s the future state of marketing-performance management we’re seeing play out with increasing consistency across our client base.”
What needs, beyond technology, will be necessary to meet consumer expectations online?
According to “How E-Commerce Fits into Retail’s Post-Pandemic Future” published on Harvard Business Review.com, “To be successful in e-commerce, you need to think bigger than e-commerce. The core question retailers must ask themselves first is not, ‘What e-commerce investments do I need to make?’ but rather,
‘What consumer experience do I need to offer?’
“The consumer experience is rapidly evolving from one that’s built upon the transactional process of in-store shopping to one that’s rooted in deep, ongoing and enriching relationships.”
Building community online is increasingly nuanced and can be difficult to validate in terms that resonate with senior management. One Keen client who’s taken a creative and impactful approach to online engagement is Yasso Greek Frozen Yogurt.
As CMO Andy Judd explains, “We leveraged our influencers disproportionately following COVID to essentially serve as a proxy to taste Yasso’s products on consumers’ behalf when sampling became unavailable.
“In fact, we scaled our effort three different times during COVID because of the importance of a real, unbiased perspective on what the food was really like. We then used Keen’s platform to validate the strategy’s powerful impact on revenue throughout the pandemic.”
How can you increase your agility to pivot in response to the unexpected in 2022 and beyond?
Based on Keen’s work with consumer brands, agile marketing planning decisions rely on a triangulated approach, one that leverages:
- Your team’s expertise and know-how
- Your agency’s perspective and insights
- Predictive marketing analytics
Bob’s Discount Furniture, another Keen client, demonstrates how these three legs of their marketing stool could be used to prop up back-half sales following store shutdowns in the early months of the pandemic.
Using this triangulated approach, the company began to reopen stores in late May and ramped up its media spend in time for Memorial Day weekend, historically a seasonal peak for furniture sales. The result?
They posted one of their strongest weeks by mid-June, and by month-end had topped that as its marketing spend returned to pre-pandemic levels. (Get the full story below).
So as you get ready for 2022, and its known and unknown opportunities and risks, consider this final thought by legendary racing driver Mario Andretti:
“If you have everything under control, you’re not moving fast enough.”
4 Ways Finance Can Positively Influence Marketing Value Creation
If you’re a Finance leader, particularly in a B2C business, it comes as no surprise that CEOs are increasingly leaning on Finance to develop and implement strategy.
It’s difficult to fully embrace this strategic role without forging a collaboration with Marketing, which means it’s more essential than ever to find ways to partner with your marketing team when it comes to value creation.
Here are four specific changes a partnership with marketing can help promote to drive demonstrable value for the business.
1. Treat the marketing budget as an investment rather than an expense.
As a finance leader you’re familiar with the concept of portfolio management; marketers are essentially portfolio managers of portfolios that include emerging customers and markets, and goals such as retaining and/or profitably growing a set of customers and markets (VisionEdge Marketing)
Within this framework your financial acumen can help guide and challenge marketing to:
- Build plans that consider how best to allocate funds across each element of their portfolio.
- Clarify how investments are intended to contribute to the business
- Report relevant metrics to the portfolio’s investment performance.
2. Help marketing reimagine its mission as value creation, rather than simply sales enablement and brand stewardship.
This begins by working with your marketing team to understand how value is being gained (or lost) and to seek greater transparency into marketing’s operations.
From there. collaborate on a set of measurable marketing metrics that support the business’ financial objectives, including customer acquisition, and retention targets and costs.
Your support will ensure metrics reflect the health and value of the customer base (e.g., net present value, lifetime value, return on loyalty, cost per acquisition) and potentially earn a place on the balance sheet.
3. Shift performance measurement from historic to future focus.
Marketing ROIs may help justify past performance, but they do little to accurately guide future investment decisions. As you focus on value creation, the metrics market used should evolve too.
CFOs should begin to shift from focusing on how to optimize marginal revenue to asking “where should the next dollar of investment be made?” (VisionEdge Marketing)
4. Align on metrics that forecast future revenue and profitability rather than settling for past program ROIs.
Financially relevant, quantitative and predictive marketing performance metrics have long been the elusive holy grail for marketing. But AI and machine learning are making these resources accessible and affordable.
“For too long, marketers ability to drive performance has been hindered by their inability to measure it in a cohesive, relevant manner,” Keen’s CRO Enid Maran says. “Analytics tied to financial contributions that facilitate assessment across both online and offline channels, in a future-focused manner, have only become viable as AI and machine learning at last infiltrated marketing performance management.”
As your company’s finance leader it’s important to understand the state of marketing performance measurement and engage with your marketing team to make sound assessments about where “non-working” investment in performance management solutions will pay dividends, something marketing traditionally has been reluctant to commit to.
To learn more, download the free eBook, A Marketer’s Guide to Collaborating with Finance in an Era of Digital Transformation.