Retailers and manufacturers must get to grips with measurement of promotion success beyond pure sales data, says Danielle Pinnington, managing director at Shoppercentric.
With more brands taking part in large, expensive promotion and sponsorship deals – the World Cup and Olympics for example – efforts to understand the effectiveness of a promotional campaign can no longer be limited to simply reviewing sales spikes. Output must be analysed and justified.
Major event promotions provide brands with the opportunity to stand out from the in-store crowd, so giving shoppers an extra reason to at least consider the brand when making a choice.
Whether the marketing then drives the shopper to make an actual purchase will very much depend on what mechanic they are using, e.g. a promotion, giveaway or a competition, and whether they are a brand or type of product that suits this kind of link up.
In any case, careful consideration at the planning stage needs to be given to driving awareness of the marketing among category shoppers, the desired impact on purchase decision (triggering a purchase versus reinforcing a planned purchase) and the potential impact on attitudes towards the brand (brand equity).
Unless it’s a highly relevant product, simply going to market with a ‘quick hit’ of promotional activity around a major event is not going to make a significant difference to the bottom line.
It needs to be well thought out, planned and executed with the shopper front of mind. By reviewing shopper feedback, retailers and brands can work to change shopper behaviour and build messages that will support both the short- and long-term development of the brand.
It can also add greater depth of understanding such as why sales spikes in one channel were so much higher than in another – despite using the same activation materials. Future campaigns can then be shaped accordingly to best suit the shopper and retailer/brand.
It’s time retailers and manufacturers looked beyond pure sales data to justify promotional spend.
Budgets are still restricted and demonstrating value is more of a priority than ever before.
By considering the shopper in promotional activity they will both have a better understanding of what the shopper responds to best and how to deliver it to them.
In doing so they will gain long-term custom and loyalty – what more can they ask for?
Use of various analytics around promotions effectiveness is very handy to analyze effectively the effectivenss of the promotion. While the sales data says the obvious, various analytics if deployed could throw the hidden relationships that are actually making the promotion effective.