POS Marketing Reality - Your Perception or the Actual Marketing Data?

The subject of this blog is to focus on the importance of POS (Point-of-Sale) marketing data and the analytical tools that allow you to track and measure your POS Marketing investment based on real data, and not someone’s perception of what’s going on at-retail.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Let’s take a trip down memory lane — Mostly focusing on the days before POS marketing data and supporting marketing technology was generally available.

There are several brand name products which may call up certain emotions — Mostly nostalgia if you are of a particular age group, and the brand had a clear market dominance.

If the brand was very well-known, you may still have the ability to recognize its name or slogan.

Let’s try an experiment using some recognizable phrases: (see Note 1 for answers)

1. “When you’re out of ________ you’re out of beer!” - Fill in the blank.
2. “A little dab’ll do ya.” - Refers to what brand or product name?
3. “For all you do this ______ for you.” - Fill in the blank.
4. “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer ___ ______.” - Fill in the blanks.
5. “They’re GRRRRRRREAT!” - Refers to what brand or product name?
6. “________ . There is no substitute.” - Fill in the blank.
7. “_ _ _ _ _ _ _ . . . ________ makes the very best . . . _________.” - Fill in the blanks.

Brand Recognition

It has been said that a “brand” is perceived based on about 5% to 10% memory, and 90% to 95% advertising, promotion, and marketing.

Little of the perception of a brand, at the points-in-time suggested by the above phrases, was measured.  It’s only in the last few years that real marketing data has been collected about POS Marketing. And only very recently has that captured data been analyzed in order to determine the return-on-investment of promotional events.  

Many brand names, and even more product names, come and go only to be replaced with new names. I wonder if the brand names of Plymouth and Oldsmobile or Schlitz are widely remembered, or today’s brands will suffer the same fate. And does it matter?

I'm bringing the subject of “brand recognition” because it has become increasingly difficult for Consumer Package Goods, including beverage suppliers, to bring new products to market via traditional electronic and print media. The clutter of TV channels, print outlets, and the Internet has made it all but impossible to gain sufficient exposure to introduce, build and sustain brand recognition and perception - And “perception is reality.”

You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure!

Here are some obvious questions at this point:

• “What is a viable — and affordable — alternative to the spending on TV and Internet content?”
• “What type of marketing approach can we take that can actually track and measure?”  
• “How can we collect the data to allow us to track and then analyze the effectiveness (ROI) and costs of our marketing initiatives?”

Lucky for you, there are analytical tools available that will help you to correlate you POS Marketing investment to any incremental sales results. Once again, why is this of such importance? 

Here’s why. According to a brand new KPMG International survey as reported by Consumer Goods Technology, released July 28, 2014 (see Note 2):

“More than any previous year, the focus of executive attention has shifted from economic uncertainty to data, technology and the supply chain.” Additionally, “56% of consumer goods and retail business leaders cited data analytics as being important to their firm’s strategy, making it the highest-ranked strategic area in the survey.” Finally, “The survey results reveal that improving capabilities in the area of data analytics is the number one strategic priority for executives in the consumer space in 2014," comments Willy Kruh, global chair, Consumer Markets KPMG International.

OnTrak's Perspective

From our perspective, the fact that analytics is the “number one” priority for executives in the CPG space is exciting news. The reality, however, is that there are also some studies that suggest these same executives lament the lack of tools to actually accomplish the tracking, measuring and correlation of marketing initiatives to sales.

At the risk of being a broken record:

OnTrak has web-based marketing technology available right now that is specifically designed and developed to provide CPG and beverage distribution companies the following capabilities:

1. Configuring and ordering POS marketing materials
2. Tracking these orders through production and placement, with visual verification of the placement
3. Providing the analysis of what POS materials correlate to the largest sales increases
4. Determining the ROI achieved based on the costs of a particular POS campaign

If you are a CPG or beverage executive looking for these capabilities, then take a look at OnTrak Software.

Our name says it all — Our marketing technology will keep you OnTrak.

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Note 1: 1) Schlitz; 2) Brylcreem; 3) Bud’s; 4) Dos Equis; 5) Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes; 6) Porsche; 7) N E S T L E S, Nestles, chocolate

Note 2:  “Global Top of Mind Survey” - KPMG International; the survey was conducted by Oxford Economics on behalf of KPMG and The Consumer Goods Forum during April 2014.