Q&A: Nichole McLaughlin of Cliffedge Marketing
Nichole McLaughlin
Strategist
Cliffedge Marketing
Main job responsibilities: My role as a strategist is to help plan and optimize campaign strategy for our clients. This includes research, managing vendor communication, developing messaging, outlining budgets, analyzing results and providing insights. My goal is to aid our clients in continued growth, using data-driven insights to deliver valuable results.
How you help clients during uncertain economic times: Shoppers and clients alike are tightening their pocketbooks. This year, we've seen stellar performance with coupons and rebates as shoppers look for ways to lower their grocery bills. From a client perspective, self-serve platforms have been our bread and butter to deliver media with flexible pricing.
The other way we continue to win with shoppers is by having fun. Consumers love to see a brand's personality. When we can loosen our ties and bring our creativity to the forefront, the shopper has something to react to, engage with and remember. This ultimately translates to success for our clients.
New marketing tactic that you use: Digital sampling has brought a lot of benefits to our partners. A shopper activates an offer, goes to the store to purchase, then gets a full rebate to try the product for free. It drives shoppers into the store, and the digital experience provides a ton of data and shopper insights that we haven't had with other activations. We've even been able to leverage that traffic and data to strengthen client-retailer relationships.
Best career advice you’ve received: The problems that occur don't matter, but how you respond to them does. I can think of instances where we received some harsh feedback or something didn’t go according to plan. Some of our most useful resources or biggest moments of growth came from how we handled it. This ultimately strengthened our partnerships because they know we are able to adapt. That mindset has left me more open to recognizing opportunities, rather than getting stuck on what's gone wrong.
Memorable aha moment in your career: When we originally started using digital sampling it was just that – a solution for sampling. But what we really got out of it was valuable shopper data, and a unique workaround for sampling where securing retailer buy-in was traditionally a challenge.
There's a line in the movie "Apollo 13" where the Chief Flight Director says, "I don't care about what anything was DESIGNED to do, I care about what it CAN do." Now we're taking this approach with our vendor partners, evaluating them not just for what they are designed to deliver, but what their capabilities are and how we can reverse engineer those capabilities to deliver creative solutions for our clients.
What you're watching on TV right now: MasterChef – I'm a sucker for cooking competitions.
Fall travel plans: My husband and I are traveling back to Cancun for our 1-year wedding anniversary.