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How non-CPG firm engage consumers

MM: Let’s expand this a bit. I’d like you to take us through how different kinds of companies think develop and apply consumer insights and analytics. Specifically, the differences between consumer packaged-goods firms where you have really a strong brand leadership-brand managers who pretty much own the P&L for a particular product-and then a standard marketing operation with a Vice President of Marketing, another one for Sales, and maybe another one for ecommerce or online. How do non-CPG firm engage consumers, using customer insights and analytics?

As you said, oftentimes in packaged goods, our direct client within the organization is not P&L-responsible. So there is a good deal of internal sell-in. Oftentimes, we are partnered with our clients that are household marketing groups. They’re owners of the database and the relationship. But not necessarily anything specifically related to the brand.

Those are often our strongest client relationships because they are true partnerships: We are in this thing together. We’re by their side helping them to prove ROI that their programs, strategies and approaches in fact drive sales.

I think — again — that’s probably where Targetbase excels. As we talk a little bit later about engagement, and I’ll come back to this idea… But that’s where we really excel because of our analytics background. It’s in proving out quantitatively the impact that marketing and relationship efforts et cetera have on actual bottom-line sales.

So from a CPG standpoint, it’s very much a close partnership. Because we’re in this thing together in terms of selling it internally.

Now, the non-CPG — or those that are more directly responsible from a P&L standpoint… those relationships, in terms of how they use analytics… Certainly there’s less of a selling aspect. We’re not so busy trying to convince the client — or the client’s client — that what we’re doing is effective. But from a business operations standpoint, at least the clients that we’ve worked with and had tremendous success with, are huge proponents of not only consumer-level analytics, but — in particular — business intelligence .

For example, with a client like American Honda, you’ve got the need to not only drive consumer relationships and drive content, et cetera, but also from an insight and intelligence standpoint, to provide to them and their executive team that these programs are effective.

For lack of a better word, and I’m not a big fan of the term, but “Dashboards” or “reporting solutions.” BI Solutions. This lets them see the — in some cases — weekly or daily impact that their marketing dollars are having.

I think generally speaking, Targetbase’s clients work with us in large part because of our analytics focus. I’m not aware of any that don’t lean heavily on our analytics services.

There is a little bit of a different flavor to it. I’d also add a slightly different distinction, too. You mentioned the difference between this CPG and non. One other important distinction is the access or lack thereof to POS data.

In the case of CPG clients, most often, they don’t have direct access to retailer data. If they don’t have retail stores themselves — like a P&G or a Clorox or a General Mills, then how do you measure the impact that your programs are having on sales — if you don’t have sales data?

There again, I think is a recent area where Targetbase has really pioneered some truly innovative approaches — to quantitatively understand the impact of your relationship marketing efforts and your direct marketing efforts on sales. That’s opposed to, say, a direct e-commerce site, where you can show on the site itself, interaction with a particular piece of content that drives sales. How do you do that when you don’t have e-commerce?