Marketing effectiveness case study
Building a simple, actionable, measurable brand model
The problem
What is the link between marketing, brand and sales?
A premium personal care brand wanted to quantify brand strength to understand which marketing efforts and strategic initiatives moved the needle, and to reveal the relationship between brand and sales.
Awareness was trending up while share of voice was dropping, product reviews had never been better while new customer acquisition was declining.
These mixed messages made it difficult to evaluate the relationship between a recent brand campaign and the brand itself, let alone the linkage to revenue.
The objective
Build a data-driven understanding of brand impact
Marketbridge set out to coalesce the company’s variety of brand data sources into a set of simple, actionable and clear brand metrics. With a time-series view of these metrics, we then reviewed the impact and temporal lag of marketing and PR efforts.
The solution
Create a holistic brand model to assess sales impact
Part 1: Build a Brand Factors Model
We gathered all data that might be either an indicator or a driver of brand strength by meeting with data owners and analysts across the company.
After normalizing the data and aligning time granularity (daily vs. monthly, etc.), we used Structural Equation Modeling, paired with our deep understanding of the business, to test hypotheses and generate a model of the unobserved factors that comprise the client’s holistic brand.
After multiple iterations and brainstorming sessions, we landed on a model with three factors, turning over a dozen sources into a simple 3-part view:
(A) Awareness
Are potential customers in the company’s target demographic aware of (a) the premium personal care category and (b) the brand itself?
(B) Affinity
Do those customers who have experienced the brand, whether as a buyer or a simple observer, view the brand and its products favorably?
(C) Salience
When potential customers are talking about the premium personal care industry, are they talking about our client’s brand or their competitors?
Part 2: Review Brand Factor History and Tie to Sales Trend
Armed with the three-factor brand model, we plotted the brand over multiple years and pointed to specific moments in company history, noting the effect on each factor.
PR struggles, competitor investments and marketing campaigns all had predictable impacts on Awareness, Affinity and Salience, though the impacts were far from uniform:
(A) Awareness
The company was in a growing category with lots of social “buzz.” As an incumbent, increases in category awareness translated into brand awareness, so we saw an ever-increasing Awareness factor.
(B) Affinity
Our Affinity factor moved up and down in line with PR moments (good and bad) and paid media spend. It was clear that a recent campaign had helped Affinity to rebound.
(C) Salience
The client’s Achilles heel was the Salience factor. Metrics like share of voice and search volume all pointed towards competitors continuing to build audience momentum at the company’s expense.
Business impact
Re-oriented media budget towards category salience
Critically, the company’s salience factor appeared closely intertwined with their sales trend. In a fast-changing industry like premium personal care, our brand factor model helped to reveal that staying top of mind translates directly into financial success for our client, but a recovery was necessary.
Armed with this learning, the company shifted much of its planned awareness media budget into deeper partnerships with targeted influencers and tastemakers to stay top of mind and best in buzz.