When consulting your consumer profiles, you can’t help but notice the two or three digit number that is the index (or, plural, indices). The index is a measurement of the target’s likelihood to be or behave or think a certain way, as compared to the average person or household. Continue Reading »

The best marketing solutions begin with a clear picture of where you want to be in the end.  Start with the end product or deliverable you have in mind.  The end product could be a road-map to accomplish “X” or an integrated tool that empowers you to do “Y”….or a target audience made up only of “Z”.  Rough out what you want to get, what you want it to do and what it might look like.   And assume throughout this creative process that resources will not be an obstacle.   After this step, determine which specific resources, including data, are needed to make it a reality.   There will be adjustments along the way, no doubt, but the end product should be the result of “marketing-driven data” at its very best.

There are many potential layers of measurement across targets, markets, offers, tactics, sales channels, spends–and these can be measured in combination and in context so that learning is actionable.   To get to the cause/effect on the execution side, we need to know response performance for elements in combination.

Quick example: Continue Reading »

The internet/other technology platforms are giving consumers more control over how they and others will position/interact with your brand.  Companies can, however, gain more control over how consumers position them by taking a closer look at “brand delivery”, or the genuine delivery/over-delivery of the brand’s promise to the consumer. Reevaluating “brand delivery” is a worthwhile exercise that can lead to an increase in customer satisfaction and greater advertising success.  In other words, “brand delivery” is more important to advertising success than advertising is to brand success.

The relationship between marketing and data isn’t always clear cut, so we wanted to share our approach by way of illustration.

Let’s say a database report shows that a subset of customers is very price-sensitive because they historically spend less when there are no “price off” specials.

• One way of using this data is to act directly on the findings in order to isolate and try to “lift” this group.
• However, approaching this data from a broader marketing perspective, Continue Reading »