Formulating effective sales and marketing strategies

A thorough understanding of your retail performance, and how it compares to your competitors' performance, is vital for formulating an effective sales and marketing strategy. At the very least, you need to be able to answer the following questions:

• What is the size of your category and how is it changing?
• What are your strengths and weaknesses within individual retail chains?
• How are your brands performing in relation to your competitors'? How does this differ by retail chain?
• What are the key causal factors affecting your performance?
• What are the overall trends in the marketplace in terms of segments, pack size and flavours?
• How can you use this information to exploit market opportunities and counter threats?

In the supermarket sector, Nielsen tracks not only what is happening, but also why. For example, you may find that your brand is losing share, and there may be a number of reasons for this:

• Your pricing strategy is not working
• Your promotional strategy is not effective
• Your advertising exposure is insufficient
• Your distribution is declining
• Your product is losing facings or the quality of its shelf position has declined
• You are being outflanked by one or a combination of the above by your competition.

By analysing the consumer behaviour which is contributing to that share loss, you can build a fully integrated picture of what is happening to your brand, why it is happening and what you can do about it. Are you losing buyers? Where are they switching to? What are their demographic characteristics? What turns them on, and how do you get them back?

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