Our last blog talked about the need to streamline the KPIs your business measures to cut out the overwhelming noise of data and make communicating insights across your business less complicated. So, what is the best KPI to measure and communicate to help keep things simple and maximise impact?

Nail the right KPI

At Nepa, we believe it is essential to measure Willingness To Pay (WTP) over alternative KPIs to gain attention from senior internal audiences – and achieve business growth. Whatever brands, the media or most market research consultants say, there is no “one size fits all” KPI. One measurement system will never answer every question that you have about your brand’s performance. For example, in certain industries, WTP is not the most effective measurement as it can be too abstract for respondents. In these cases, we have an analysis process to identify which KPIs to use to drive sales volume and pricing power. WTP, however, provides key information and talks the language of the C-suite because it is clearly tied into your brand’s financial performance.

A KPI focused on growth

Using an equity KPI allows you to understand how your business’ activities connect to financial performance, a connection which is essential for making business decisions that drive growth. The Willingness to Pay KPI evaluates consumers’ willingness to pay a higher price for a product or service versus the competition. It quantifies brand and business into one holistic measure. By using this approach, sales are related to market share, guiding and validating all brand building efforts directly to business growth. It is often beneficial to complement the WTP KPI with a more sales-oriented KPI, such as market share, to also measure short term financial effects of communication.

A KPI that gets insights teams heard

Moreover, using a financial measure will help to gain engagement internally, particularly with the C-suite. Our previous blog discussed the importance of using a single KPI to increase C-suite engagement, but their attention will be captured even further if the single KPI you use is linked to the financial performance and growth of the business. Using a financial KPI ensures you’re talking the language of senior management and positions the insights team as an essential component of important business conversations about the future of the organisation. When insights teams are increasingly fighting for opportunities to drive real change in the business, you can’t afford to ignore this fast track to influencing senior figures in the business.

KPIs that don’t always paint the full picture

Alternative top line measures such as Net Promoter Scores and awareness metrics provide valuable information, but they don’t show how increasing recommendations or conversations about your brand directly link to the financial performance of the business. This means they’re less relevant to senior directors who want to see that vital connection between marketing activities and revenue. Net Promoter Scores, for example, provide businesses with a simple score from 0-10 of how likely a customer is to recommend a product or service. The ability to track how enthusiastic customers are overtime is useful – it can help identify areas in which services or products can be improved. However, used as a single stand-alone metric, this score has little value. It doesn’t explain how an increase or decrease in number of recommendations will directly impact business growth.

Likewise, brand awareness scores mean very little when taken on their own. The data might show that very few people are talking about your brand, either because you have low brand awareness, or because your company sells a product like washing-up gloves, which are not a common topic of conversation among consumers online. To put brand awareness metrics into industry context, share of voice metrics are key. These measure the proportion of a conversation that your company is dominating, compared to your competitors. This should be a KPI that your insights team considers tracking, but it’s not the KPI that will deliver the most meaning to the broader business on its own.

It’s easy to feel under pressure to report on every metric available to you. But business impact does not result from flooding your organisation with data. While it’s important for the insights team to measure a variety of metrics to gain a holistic view of the business, the C-suite will benefit from only hearing the most important information to support informed business decisions. By cutting straight to Willingness to Pay – a KPI linked to brand equity and hence financial performance – the C-suite will receive an important reminder of the value the insights team brings.

By Robert Beatus, Head of R&D Nepa

Want to know more? Contact us today and our brand experts will help you! 

A simple Google search for ‘brand measurement’ will provide you with countless websites explaining the ’10 critical brand measurement KPIs you should be measuring’ or the ’12 metrics you need to measure brand awareness’. Each company website or platform you visit will explain the importance of using data and data-driven strategies, emphasising that measuring and evaluating data will lead to better decisions and fresh ideas. As insights professionals, we don’t need to be told twice about the importance of data, but does the quantity of metrics measured really matter? Does a higher number of KPIs really lead to better decisions?

Today’s world is overflowing with data and measurement systems providing metrics on everything from potential for consumer recommendations to brand equity. But is the noise of numbers that these competing systems provide worth it? Most companies we meet struggle with choosing the right KPI’s to measure their brand, often they don’t realise that simplifying the metrics will provide a better picture.

So, what are the benefits of using a single metric to measure brand development?

Cut out the noise

When it comes to data, less is often more. It’s not about the quantity of information collected, it’s about collecting good quality, meaningful data that key business decisions can be based on. So, do all your brand development metrics bring value to your business, or are they just numbers, sat in a deck full of pretty charts that will never be looked at again? Figuring out the metrics that matter most can be hard, but nailing down your core measurement systems will provide clarity for the business and a direction for progression in the future.

Cut the costs

What’s more, measuring too many operational KPIs costs the business more than the value of gathered data. Insight teams across every sector face challenges proving the value they bring to the business and face pressure to show the ROI of their activities. By using fewer KPIs insights teams can invest their time in showing the value of the data and insights they generate. Cutting the number of KPIs will reduce operational costs, meaning budgets can be reallocated across the business to drive action based on findings.

READ ALSO: Brand research: What is it & why is it important?

Cut through

Much has been said on the dos and don’ts of communicating with the C-Suite. Their busy schedules and lack of ‘head space’ mean communication needs to be succinct and concise to get your message heard. But it’s hard to communicate in this way if you’re trying to explain 15 different metrics, how they work and what the data shows. By using one core metric for this audience, you will have a clearer message that CEOs can engage with and a reduced number of slides in your Power Point that colleagues will thank you for.

Cut to the chase

It’s easier to take actions based on one clear metric, than it is to take actions based on the findings of 15. Reducing the number of metrics measured will help to streamline your communications and help audiences across the business engage with your message. If data and next steps are easy to understand the business will be united to work together to achieve common goals.

So, how do you go about cutting your brand development KPIs and what metrics should you be measuring? Our essential KPI measurement system, Willingness To Pay (WTP), is a strong KPI for measuring long term brand building, by financially quantifying “brand equity”.  For the benefit of the insights team, the WTP score can be combined with other measurement systems linked to sales volume to measure the short term impact of marketing and communications. Using alternative measurements will help you to understand how to build your brand equity and why your brand equity is changing. But these metrics don’t need to be used as KPIs, or communicated to the C-suite. Read our next blog to find out more about why your business should use a single KPI linked to brand equity.

By Robert Beatus, Head of R&D Nepa

Want to know more? Contact us today and our brand experts will help you! 

Sure, you want consumers to recognise your brand when they encounter it, but increasing brand awareness means so much more. Having great brand awareness means consumers not only know your brand, but also have real feelings for it.

Of course, you can plaster your brand across town and all over the internet to gain consumers attention, however, this might come at a very high cost. Instead, we suggest other ways to increase brand awareness that will have a much better impact, and at significantly lower cost.

4 ways to increase brand awareness

1. Know your audience

The first step to building a relationship with consumers is to know who they are. If you are a new company, you might have to use your competitors to analyse your intended target audiences. If you are an already established business, conducting a survey is a great way to understand what your consumers think, when they see or interact with your brand.

READ ALSO: Brand tracking is key to increase brand awareness

2. Be where your consumers are

This might seem like a no-brainer, but with the many available media channels today, finding the ones that have the greatest impact on your business might be tricky. Which social media platforms are best suited for your brand? Should you use PR and newspapers, or stick with online magazines? What industry outlets are relevant to your audience? Are there events, conferences or social gatherings where you can reach your consumers? These questions need an answer, unless you choose to shoot in the dark and simply hope for the best. Another option is to try to stay relevant everywhere, a fool-proof way to waste all your resources without getting much traction.

3. Make referrals easy

The best results come when you are not the one doing the marketing. There are several ways to make it easy and exciting for your consumers to refer you to their friends and associates.

a) Give rewards for referrals. Dropbox is a great example, where they give their customers 500 Mb of extra storage space for each referral, up to a maximum of 16 Gb. This gained a lot of attention, especially as they were starting out and didn’t have much of a marketing budget. What perks can you give to consumers for referring you to their peers?

b) Host online contests. Hosting competitions on social media where contestants post a pic or a video, and have other users vote who should win, is a sure way to get a lot of attention. Competitors are likely to share their post to their social network in order to gain more votes and win the prize.

c) Offer Freemium content. Having a free version of your service, including a watermark or credit line, and then having the option to upgrade to a paid version is a great way to increase brand awareness. Many will opt for the free version, at least to start with, and then promote it to others, both intentionally and unintentionally. This way you either get free marketing or payment for your service, or in most cases both at the same time.

READ ALSO: Benefits of Path to Purchase Analysis

4. Partner up!

Going at it alone can be easy, but the truth is you are a lot more effective when working together with others. Partner up with local businesses to host events or create educational opportunities around your joint venture. Or contact some of the heavy-hitters in your industry, and find ways to complement their offerings. That way, they will appreciate your existence and promote you to their consumers.

Using some, or all of these solutions, will most probably help you increase brand awareness. Most of the solutions are also very cost effective, meaning you increase ROI when properly using them. Don’t put your hopes in doing the same thing you have always done, because the market is always shifting. Every business, even the really big ones, need to focus on current trends to ensure consumers are continuously aware of their brand, or fade out of existence.

Do you want to know more about how you can increase brand awareness? Contact us today and our brand experts will help you!

The path to purchase in today’s omnichannel world is difficult to navigate and can be a nightmare for companies wanting to understand how their consumers interact with their products or services. What touchpoints did the consumer encounter before a purchase and which of these had the greatest impact? The answers to these questions are essential for optimising your marketing spend, ensuring that both you and the consumer benefit from every touchpoint.

Have you ever wondered why you ended up buying from one company instead of another? It may be small things like a slogan, or the layout of a store. Or maybe it was the interactions you had with the staff in a digital or physical environment. It is hard to remember every step of the way, so trying to understand the impact from the outside is not an easy feat. With the path to purchase model, this has at least been made easier, and the benefits are truly amazing.

1. Understand the touchpoints that drive sales

This is at the heart of the path to purchase model, as you really want to understand what steps customers made in their journey before deciding to commit to your brand. By looking at several thousand different customer journeys, patterns start to emerge. This allows you to understand what touchpoints make consumers continue to pursue your brand or simply slip away.

READ ALSO:  Get to know your customers with brand health tracking

2. Measure both online and offline touchpoints

Only focusing on one channel, whether it be online or offline, means you are probably missing one or several crucial parts of the customer journey. This is why our path to purchase solution focuses on the whole picture. This is done through device-tracking, diaries, triggered surveys and spontaneous feedback. Giving you one unified view, so that you can analyse and compare your true omnichannel conversion effectiveness.

3. Gain insights into consumer motivation

Through the many sources of information that the path to purchase model uses, you see precisely what motivates different customer groups. This then allows you to better optimise your touchpoints for various consumer segments, ultimately increasing conversion.

READ ALSO: What is brand tracking and why is it important?

4. Find the sweet spot using synergies

A consumer is never converted through only one touchpoint, but through a combination. Therefore, understanding what synergies various touchpoints have, and combining them for optimal performance is one of the key benefits of our Path To Purchase Analytics Solution.

We will provide deep and profound insights into how your customers actually became customers. With this information at hand, our sensemakers will help you to adjust your various touchpoints to orchestrate a conversion concerto, attracting more consumers to your brand.

Want to know more about path to purchase? Contact our P2P-experts and we’ll tell you all about it!

Brand research is essential if you want to find out your brand’s health and get a better understanding of how your customers perceive it. By conducting continuous brand research you will gain a competitive advantage and can adjust the positioning of your brand to attract more customers.

What is brand research?

Brand research measures how consumers perceive your brand. You will get to know your brand’s reputation, visibility in the marketplace and get a clear picture of how strong your brand is compared to your competitors. In other words, you gain valuable insights on your brand health and what you can do to make it even stronger.

With brand research you will get answers to questions like:

• How is my brand performing?
• What differentiates my brand from the competition?
• What are the weaknesses and strengths of my brand?
• How is my brand meeting customer needs?

READ ALSO: What is brand tracking and why is it important?

Why is brand research important?

Too often marketers rely on their gut feeling when making strategic decisions for their brand. But would you want a pilot flying you into your destination at night and land the plane based purely on his or her gut feeling? No, did not think so. Having a gut feeling based on solid data is one thing, but flying blind is totally different. That is why pilots use radar and GPS data to land us safely. With brand research you get needed data to not only land your brand right but also a platform to lean on, when applying your gut feeling.

Brand research gives you the tools you need to develop a strong brand value. A strong brand has several business advantages:

• You attract more customers
• Consumers are willing to pay more
• Higher ROI from marketing activities
• Possibility to launch other products/services around your brand

Different methods of brand research

There are several different methods of conducting brand research. The most common data collection methods includes:

Online surveys

Online surveys are maybe the most straightforward way to collect data. It is simple, fast and allows you to find out what your customers think of your brand and products. When using online surveys you can test how your image resonates with your target audience. Using scales in the survey you will find out what the average score is for your brand among different demographic segments.

Interviews

When you want a deeper understanding of how your consumers perceive your brand, personal interviews are the way to go. By sampling a subset and asking them to describe and share opinions on different topics you will find out more than from online surveys, but at the cost of not being able to ask as many consumers. Interviews are a great way to explore topics, ideas and feelings.

Focus groups

Focus groups will give you qualitative insights of a brand in a similar way as personal interviews. The difference is that you ask a subset of your consumers to participate in a forum where a moderator leads the discussions. When using a focus group you can have participants representing all genders, age groups and interests.

READ ALSO: Power up your Marketing Mix with brand expertise and data science

Continuous leads the way

To get the best results from your brand research you have to do it continuously. Otherwise you will miss out on a lot of movements and always feel that you are trying to catch up. By constantly analysing the market you can react in real-time. The investment you make into continuous brand research allows you to focus on strengthening your brand instead of trying to protect it.

Markets change, consumers change, competitors change – change is a constant. That is why we recommend to all our clients that they continuously measure their brands so that these changes become an opportunity and not a liability. We base this on our experience in working with leading brands from around the world. Independent of products, services, markets and consumer segments they all have one thing in common – they know how to drive their growth using continuous brand research.

Your next step to a strong brand

If you want to know more about brand research and how your company can benefit from these insights, please do not hesitate to contact our brand experts. Let us help you maximise your sales by understanding what attracts customers!

What do you get when you combine continuous brand measurements and advanced modelling with true brand experts? The short answer is, a state of the art marketing mix model from a company that wants to see you succeed.

Whether you already know about our proven track record or found us from a Google Search, you can now relax and let us help you with your Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM). From our extensive experience and deep brand insights, we know how to suss out what makes specifically your brand tick, and what does not. Our experience gives our customers that needed edge on their competitive markets to win, both in the short and long run. This is what makes us different.

Brand perspective in MMMs is a game-changer

When we say “Brand perspective in MMMs” we back it up with success stories from our customers. Based on 15 years experience of analysing continuous brand tracking for both local and global brands, we typically use this type of data to incorporate the long-term effects of marketing in our models. Missing this perspective means a risk to make significantly wrong priorities. This is just a simple fact that has been proven over and over again, as marketing effects can take a long time to reach maximum impact.

Capturing both direct sales and brand effect from marketing

Read also: What is brand tracking and why is it important?

Nepa’s Modelling Process – The road to victory

The secret sauce of any successful modelling process is to have quality data. To ensure this, we manually curate all data before modelling. “We” in this case are our highly trained and experienced data scientists that work with data mining, statistical analysis, and build high quality prediction systems. You know, those people you want on your team when you play Trivial Pursuit.

Example of sales explained by each contributing factor (real estate industry)

After our data scientists ensure the quality of your data is up to par, they model your Ad Stock and its impact on advertising decay. The decay rate of each media is then automatically optimized and manually curated, both for its direct and its brand effects. Yes, we know that this sounds complicated and it is. But, we are not done here. To create a successful model, we also have to estimate season and trend components of sales by using time series analysis in combination with industry data. As a final touch, we use a Shapley value estimation on top of a multiplicative regression model to determine the impact of your media investments on sales and your brand over time. Both the direct sales effects and the longer term effects are quantified in a monetary ROI.

Read also: Brand research: What is it & why is it important?

The process is complicated, which is why you need experts such as our data scientists to do the math and make the complicated simple to use in your day-to-day marketing activities.

Marketing Mix deliverables that make sense

Key questions asked repeatedly: “How does communication affect sales compared to brand?”, “How efficient are different media in driving short term vs. long term sales?” and “What is the optimal investment level and Marketing Mix?”

Example of media mix simulation and optimisation

Our Marketing Mix Modelling answers all of these questions in easy to read tools and reports, and links it to monetary effects. Every stakeholder in your company can take part of the data, both for short term actions and long term planning, as well as balancing between the two.

Our goal is for you to wake up Monday morning and know exactly how and where to talk to your customers, and maximize sales.

Contact one of our brand experts today to implement Nepa’s Marketing Mix Modelling.