Business Tip 12
A One-Size Fits All Approach to Consumer Centric Marketing -
Part 1

Unfortunately, it doesn't exist. So - unless your plan is to target only one person, keep reading for some pointers on CCM that will help you flexibly address the needs of your consumers.

As a reader of CPG CatNet, you are no doubt aware of Consumer Centric Marketing (CCM) and its growing influence on the way all of us are doing business. In case you are new to the idea of CCM, the short version is that CCM is an ongoing process of developing insights into consumer habits and "needs," and using this information to better market products to key consumers.

While CCM certainly helps establish relationships with core consumers, the overarching goal of CCM (like most other things we do) is to generate incremental revenue at retail by expanding the consumer base through targeted product placement and merchandising activities.

CCM Tip #1 - Align Data and Systems for a Consumer Centric View

Why? - Your organization is probably spending a lot of time and money identifying consumer need states, attitudes, habits, etc. If this information is not making it into your data warehouse, you may be wasting precious resources. This information, whether from primary research, syndicated data, modeling tools or other sources, is the backbone of a CCM initiative.

How? - A good first step to CCM is segmenting your products based on both consumer centric attributes (like ethnic focus, health aspects, luxury vs. economy, etc.) and basic product information (like color, flavor, size, etc.). The combination of these attributes with sales data (like POS, or syndicated) helps uncover consumer trends at a granular level.

Take advantage of technology to help manage these attributes in a user-friendly environment. For example, the screenshot below shows XP3 Data Workshop’s Segmentation Tool - a workspace to create and maintain these attributes across multiple data sets.

CCM Tip #2 - Respond Flexibly at Retail

Why? - Because there is no one-size-fits-all approach, it is imperative to be able to respond at the point of impact with the flexibility to drill into attributes on-the-fly. Many enterprises are now looking at store-level data to identify and market to consumer trends, and the presentation of that data should reflect the fact that consumers vary across the many geographies that products are sold.

While there are certainly some macro-level trends that can be identified as part of the overall selling strategy, organizations that have the ability to drill into data-driven content on demand using consumer focused attributes have a tactical and strategic advantage versus the competition.

How? - After reading the tip above, it should be clear that a centrally defined set of characteristics about the products you are selling is the backbone for this type of work. Arming the average business user with tools to apply this data to real-world situations has the potential to move the needle in terms of performance at retail.

In practice, provide a consistent starting point for data-driven presentations (like a strategic selling deck) and the ability to drill into data on demand to uncover and respond to geography specific consumer insights. For example:

The data, products and accounts depicted in this example are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual data, products or accounts is purely coincidental.