Data Is The New Gold: Why Data Is A Brands Best Friend

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know data is the new gold. So we won’t continue banging that drum. However, what many of you may not know is what data is the new data gold for brands. If you don’t know, fret not. Because we do. And we’re here to tell you all about it.

OK, let’s say you have a consumer browsing your eCommerce store. They fall in love with a product and decide to click their way over to Amazon because like many modern consumers, they’re just more loyal to buying off Bezos.

So, they get to Amazon, find your product, and add it to their basket. Naturally, a few other things take their fancy, and they pop these in their basket too, before happily proceeding to check-out. For brands, getting insight into what happens when the consumer leaves your website, you are reliant on Amazon to offer up such sales data. And, with the vast number of brands and suppliers on Amazon, getting such data could take weeks dependent on the size of your brand and the strength of your relationship with the eCommerce giant. But not any more! Where to Buy technology has solved this problem with product level data.

Product level data is an itemized breakdown of everything that consumer put in their basket and bought — not just your brand, but also your competitors and complimentary brands. So, what makes this data gold? Quite a few things, but primarily it’s because if you have this information on thousands if not hundreds of thousands of consumers, you can identify all sorts of patterns in their behavior that you wouldn’t otherwise have identified, and leverage these insights to optimize your campaigns, content or user-journey to better suit your digital consumer persona. It could be said that without product level data, your brand is flying blind.

There’s good news and bad news here. The bad news is that product level data can be difficult to obtain. Retailers don’t just hand it out wily-nilly. It’s a little too valuable for that! And if you do convince them to part with it, it’s often just a hot mess of figures you’d need a doctorate in data science to decipher.

The good news? It’s easy to obtain with the right help. Enter ChannelSight. Our ‘Where to Buy’ solution mines this data gold, polishing up all the most insightful nuggets and delivering them to you in easily accessible, highly comprehensive, and super user-friendly dashboards. Not only this, but our dedicated client performance team is always on hand to guide you through it and advise how best to use the data to succeed.

So, now you know what product level data is, why you need it, and how to get it, here are five ways to use it.

Calculable ROI

As all marketers know, measuring return on investment can be tough. Reach metrics became the go-to word because nobody wanted to tackle the dreaded ROI, but then marketers got tired of seeing improving KPIs but no link to sales. So we decided to try and solve this. Today, the top challenges include knowing what to measure, which of your digital touchpoints has the greatest value and influence to your users.

And our product level insights are the missing link in the ROI equation. No matter what digital content your ‘Where to Buy’ solution is powering, product level data gives you a crystal clear picture of exactly how it’s performing because it gives end to end visibility on the user journey from source all the way to the purchase event, or lack thereof, as the case may be.

This means you can calculate the sales impact of each piece of content across all your retail partners. Which means you can identify any leaks in the funnel, as well as test and optimize in real-time to improve ROI. Which means lots of lovely positive feedback loops quickly develop. Which means better and better ROI. Which may mean some sweet bonuses for your marketing department!

Identify Product Trends

Identifying product trends is hugely important to any brand. But identifying the transactional habits of an online user is often much, much crazier than your traditional in-store buyer. Product level data, however, gives you all the information you need here.

So, let’s say you’re a big brand with 100,000 SKUs across 100 markets. That’s a hell of a lot to stay on top of. But stay on top of it you must. For how else will you know which products are performing and which ones aren’t? How will you identify the ‘hero’ products you need to prioritize and double down your push on? Well, quite simply, without product level data, you won’t, because you just don’t have the visibility.

Identify Competitor Trends

We’re all over any excuse to quote ‘The Art of War’, and this is the perfect opportunity. In this context, we’ll go for: “Know thine enemy.” And product level data helps you get to know thine enemy pretty well. Let’s walk through an example of how…

So, you’ve a fab new Facebook campaign which is powered by our ‘Where to Buy’ technology, and is promoting your newest product. Our data shows this campaign is performing extremely well. Up to a point…

It’s generating thousands of clicks and delivering lots of plump and juicy leads to Amazon. And then? Puff! Gone. Those leads aren’t converting. What gives?! This is where product level data saves the day. For it shows that while those leads aren’t adding your product to their basket, they are adding a competitor product. You then dig around to find out why. And bam, you spot the problem!

Consumers have been landing on your product detail page full of purchase intent, only to be presented with a competitor’s Sponsored Product ad, and you lose the damn sale right at the point of conversion because their product is cheaper. The trick here is to ‘brand lock’ your product detail page with your own Sponsored Product ads for alternative and complementary products so competitors don’t steal your customers away at the final hurdle.

But you wouldn’t have figured this out without product level data. It’s key to identifying and plugging this and other types of leaks in the purchasing funnel, such as product detail pages that are lacking conversion power.

Identify Opportunities For Bundles

Product level data reveals consumer behavior you wouldn’t otherwise identify. Let’s take a really simple example. You notice that almost every time a consumer adds your anti-tangle shampoo to their basket, they add the anti-tangle conditioner and the special anti-tangle comb to their basket too.

The logical move here is to create a dedicated anti-tangle bundle, which you can promote however you choose. Product level data gives you the insights, it’s up to you how you use them. Although ChannelSight customers do have the added benefit of their very own dedicated brand performance team to help them identify these trends and advise on how best to leverage them.

Identify Opportunities For Brand Partnerships

So, remember that product level data gives you an itemized breakdown of everything in a consumer’s basket, both brand and non-brand items? Why should you care what non-brand items people are buying? To spot opportunities for brand partnerships of course!

Here’s an example. So, you sell TVs. And every year as Super Bowl approaches, you notice that lots of people buying your TV on Amazon are also buying chips and dips for that full home viewing experience. So how about you approach that snack brand to partner up for next year’s Super Bowl? If it means you’ll both sell more product overall, then it’s win-win. Just one real example of such a brand partnership is that between Xbox, Mountain Dew and Doritos. Quite the holy trinity for the gaming enthusiast.

The possibilities for brand partnerships are vast. And the product correlations that product level insights reveal don’t just provide inspiration for them, they also provide the data to back these ideas up. Think of them as allowing you to make a safe bet for your brand rather than an educated guess.

So, with all this in mind, are you interested to learn how you can leverage product level data and eliminate the guesswork from your strategy planning? Get in touch with the ChannelSight team today for your FREE eCommerce performance review and let us help you identify where your consumers are dropping off in the digital path to purchase and give you advice on how to overcome this.