Member Perspective: 5 Rules of Thumb for Data-Driven Omnicommerce Marketing

At one point or another, every marketer has felt the burden of increasing expectations, of having to do more with less. However, shopper marketers have long been at a disadvantage because the metrics that help them prove their worth have historically been less robust than in other marketing disciplines. As P2PI’s recently updated Industry Playbook reinforced, shopper programs typically show poorly in marketing mix models, in-store tactics can be difficult to measure, programs can be measured on “soft” KPIs like the impact on vendor relationship, and so on. In the past few years, however, the landscape has changed dramatically. In all aspects of shopper marketing (audience discovery, tactical planning, and program measurement, to name a few) tools, techniques, and best practices now exist to help improve performance. Planning and measurement are daily occurrences. To focus efforts appropriately consider these rules of thumb for effective, data-driven shopper marketing. Have clear objectives: Shopper programs can have all kinds of objectives, including driving sales, trial, increasing buy rate, stealing share, etc. Make sure everyone agrees on the primary objective at the outset and determine a KPI that is both measurable and ties directly to your objective. It’s OK to have secondary objectives – for example retailers care about category growth, larger baskets and the like, so those can be useful metrics to have at hand – but program success should be gauged on your primary KPI. Be realistic about what you can achieve: Be closely tied to clear objectives, be honest with yourself and organization about what is possible on your budget. It’s probably not feasible, for example, to fully fund both an awareness goal and a short-term sales goal. Determine which retailers present the greatest opportunity: All retailers are not created equal. When determining which retailers should make it into your plan, make sure you are thinking about where your target audience shops, where your category is growing or shrinking, previous shopper performance, and whether your brand is getting its fair share in that retailer today. All are important factors in determining budget splits. Look for a partner that includes all these factors in its algorithm. Use performance data to build your tactical plans: As the Industry Playbook demonstrated, performance can vary widely based on retailer, product category, marketing tactics, seasonality, and of course, your brand. When determining the appropriate tactical mix at each retailer, it is important to use benchmarks specific to your retailer and product category to ensure you are maximizing ROI. Employ a holistic measurement approach: Shopper is one of the most poorly measured marketing disciplines. If it’s measured at all, typically vendors are reporting on their own results, which means you have no line of sight to the performance of other tactics, and vendor measurement approaches likely differ so much you can’t compare them. Look for an approach that helps you understand how the overall program is performing, not just bits and pieces. Shopper marketing is often one of the last bastions of “Mad Men”-style gut instinct marketing, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Data does exist to help improve shopper marketing performance. Following these rules of thumb will put you on a path to data-driven omnicommerce marketing and ultimately, improved ROI. About the Author As the senior vice president of analytics at commerce agency, Arc Worldwide, Janis leads the team responsible for developing measurement solutions across digital and offline touchpoints. Janis has more than 20 years of experience in marketing analytics, digital marketing strategy, and ecommerce management, and has developed measurement strategies for clients such as General Mills, Unilever, United Health Group and Pella Windows.

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