Advanced Analytics Masterclass: Powering a Shopper-Centric Approach

Curiosity has the power to help marketers challenge the status quo and make game-changing discoveries. When it comes to making data-driven decisions, curiosity pushes us to get to the why behind the whats, towards better outcomes and visionary innovation.

That’s why Skai dedicated a whole day to the theme in our first fully-virtual summit, CURIOUS 2020. Thirty-four hours of content and 25 sessions later, CURIOUS 2020 has come to a close. If you weren’t able to watch the sessions live, then don’t worry – they are now available to view on our on-demand hub in your own time.

Visit the CURIOUS 2020 event page for informative and inspiring video content!

Today’s most successful brands focus on shopper-centricity to understand the key stages across the shopper’s journey in order to impact and influence them at every phase.

To do this, brands must understand how shoppers think and what’s important to them. They must understand their needs, how they see their brand versus their competitors, and which messages work or don’t work down to the keyword level.

But getting to that data is hard. 

How does a brand best gather shopper insights and drive action?

Hosted by Skai Ecommerce GM, Nich Weinheimer, and Signals Analytics Global Head of FMCG Solutions, Rigo Viezca, the CURIOUS masterclass, The Power of Advanced Analytics in Marketing Planning, presents a framework to turn the shopper-centric ideal into reality. It examines how advanced analytics can be used to answer key go-to-market questions and these insights, to better build a shopper-centric approach and improve their bottom-line performance.

Watch the complimentary, on-demand recording of this masterclass to learn more

Advanced analytics masterclass

A best-in-class shopper-centric approach combines organizational and strategic agility to utilize actionable data in meaningful ways. The shopper journey is highly complex, but through advanced analytics, brands have an opportunity to better understand the shopper and engage them.

Stages within the shopper journey and where/how they can be influenced

Fundamental data vs advanced analytics

Our experts explained the difference between fundamental data—first-party data that most companies already have and is easily accessible—and advanced analytics, which is harder to gather but can benefit brands in the following ways:

• Provides insights that help provide alignment to ensure marketing messaging, targeting, and product assortment harmonize with the shopper’s needs
• Identifies areas of opportunity to capture new demand by helping brands be more market proactive than reactive 
• Displaces competition and maximize market share by ensuring a superior brand/shopper alignment 
• Improves holistic advertising impact by tying together threads across channels and retailers

How to successfully use advanced analytics?

Step #1 – Goals: Have the right shopper-centric objectives in place from the top down.

Step #2 – Identify: Find the gaps in the data that will be needed to fill.

Step #3 – Gather: Create connections between datasets so that they can be accessible across the organization.

Step #4 – Analyze: Derive strategic insights from this new, unified dataset.

Step #5 – Action: Activate those insights within the marketing plan and automate as many of those actions as possible using technology.

Three advanced analytics use cases

After defining advanced analytics and sharing its potential benefits, our experts present through three real-world use cases to better illuminate the topic. Step-by-step, you can watch exactly how a brand might first gain insight and then build a tactical plan for strategic action.

Advanced Analytics Use Case #1 – Shopping Behavior 

Proactively know what your shoppers want, where they look for it, and how they ask for it.

In this use case, our experts walk attendees through a vitamins, minerals & supplements solution session that helps to uncover how marketers can answer key questions through advanced analytics research. They then develop a sample tactical plan on how informed marketers would then apply those insights into action. 

Mapping advanced analytics to a tactical action plan

Advanced Analytics Use Case #2 – Brand Purpose

Determine if what your brand stands for is aligned with your shoppers

The next use case is how a facial skincare company might use advanced analytics in the form of keywords from product descriptions, patents, and many other data sources. By analyzing these terms, marketers can better understand where their brand sits in the market in relation to competitor messaging and shopper needs. They can then use these insights to determine where they need to defend their brand against rivals or opportunities to expand their business.  

Mining unstructured data across the web and other datasets to find trending keywords

Advanced Analytics Use Case #3 – Cross-Channel

Know how to deliver the best ad & purchase experience to your shoppers & maximize ad performance

In this final masterclass use case, a coffee brand leverages intelligence from social media to see what shoppers say about your category to determine how to influence them early in their purchase path. When that data is blended with another channel’s data—such as product descriptions, ratings, and reviews on ecommerece sites—marketers can compare shopper terms at the upper funnel and how best to craft brand messaging at the bottom of the funnel. 

Stages within the shopper journey and where/how they can be influenced

Are you using advanced analytics in a shopper-centric approach?

If not, it’s understandable. Advanced analytics can be very difficult to mine without the right technology partner at your side. Today’s innovation in machine learning, AI, and natural language processing can turn market research into a painless, automated process to deliver you the insights you need from external datasets you’re not currently utilizing.

Interested in learning more? Reach out today or even schedule a quick demo to see Skai’s innovative and award-winning platforms in action. And, if you’d like to watch the on-demand recording of this advanced analytics masterclass, please visit the CURIOUS 2020 page.

Book a Meeting of Skai