Marketing Strategy
Great marketing strategy is all about context - knowing the answer to where, when and how you should tell your story.
Finding the answers to these questions means understanding your customer's journey, when and where your brand can fit into their lifestyle, the best time and place to reach them and what messages are relevant when. In short, it takes a lot of research and data analysis.
Some methods I have us to help clients get to these answers include:
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Using syndicated media data
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Conducting qualitative and quantitative research
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Appending data from DMPthirdparty services to customer files
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Using services that (anonymously) track site visitor or customers across the web.
Case Study: Beech-Nut
Beech-Nut was in a category dominated by Gerber, who owned 76% of the market. Their size meant that Gerber had an outsize influence on shelf-space in stores, as well as promotional tools such as Catalina couponing. Worse still was their deep pockets. Constant couponing by Gerber and lead Beech-Nut to increase its couponing, and how 33% of all volume was sold on deal. The net
result of all of this was that Beech-Nut was losing market share at a precipitous rate.
The communication strategy we developed focused on using the way Beech-Nut was made to make it more of a premium brand. But how should we get the message out there and to whom?
Given the small budgets Beech-Nut had, we couldn't speak to everyone. Consumer research suggested that once mothers choose a baby food for their first child, they usually by the same brand for any subsequent children, So we chose to focus on them.
We also knew that the LTV of a customer was low. Beech-Nut had been using print and direct mail to reach customers, both expensive mediums. In order to decrease the cost of reaching our audience, we switched the way we used direct mail. Instead of sending them coupons, we drove people to a redesigned website to redeem other offers. Once on the website, mothers were incented to sign up for an email newsletter - a much more efficient way to communicate.
In 2003, mothers were just starting to go online to get advice on caring for their baby. To leverage this behavior and further increase efficiency, we partnered with babycenter.com, sponsoring their baby feeding section and providing additional content. Site visitors could sign up for brand's newsletter right on that site.
Print as a medium was not abandoned. Rather, the number of insertions was cut, and the placements we did were much more impactful, using a booklet insert on the page to "break" the magazine so readers went straight to the ad.
Results
The campaign succeeded in reversing Beech-Nut's share declines, taking from a 14% market share to a 17% market share. Along the way we doubled website traffic and grew email newsletter subscriptions by almost 200, 000, dramatically lowering the cost of engaging consumers. The brand also increased it's unaided brand awareness scores for the first time since 2001. Best of all, the brand was able to dramatically decrease the amount of couponing it was doing.
Some of the print, direct mail, web and email creative that was done for Beech-Nut