Talked to one rising star within the marketing field. Bernard is of the opinion, that not many companies realize their growth potential because they do not measure the effect of their activities.
He should know better. Bernard currently works for one of the world’s number one brands in their category and they take marketing dashboard seriously.
Consider the following actions:
1. They measure their brand presence in the market through carefully developed tools customized to suit their market and product category. They measure pavement of all brands communication in the trade, vis-à-vis the competition, they measure product availability on the shelves in terms of percentage availability.
2. They have a minimum base that is considered acceptable. They check out of stock (OOS) situation in terms of opportunity for more sales.
3. Further, they confirm availability of all shop keeping units (SKU’s), brands/sub-brands is listed per store’s class of trade. (Note: Class of trade of the store is important. It is a fact that the local green grocer who has done well over the years in your neighborhood may have graduated to a mini-supermarket unit BUT that does not mean they can buy all variants of your company’s stock!).
Importance of Trade Outlet Classifications
It behoves you the marketer to classify all your outlets into different classes and endeavor to measure their performance based on that classification. It is back to marketing 101 of classification that enforces measurement.
This top marketer then completes the first three steps by doing the following
3 Action Steps
This top marketer then completes the first three steps by doing the following:
1. They check trade performance indicators based on brands/packs availability, pricing display and compliance, placement (position) of stock display, if there is an on going promotion, they register the presence of the promotion packs and personnel.
2. For personnel they check appearance, aptitude and helpfulness of staffs.
3. Lastly, they register the point of purchase (POP) material. There is the regular POP, then the promotion POP and free standing units. All these are checked and showed against a target on weekly basis.
Tell me if your competition was to track that closely, that intensely what would the conclusion be vis-à-vis your brand/s over time? Why not track your trade brand performance and be in charge of your destiny and not at the mercy of competitors?
Article by:
frankm@ecentsmarketing.com