Solutions that drive successful results
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Substantiate consumer purchase potential for investors of startups
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Determine the true market potential for any new product or service
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Increase consumer sales levels through existing or potential purchase channels
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Improve close rates of b2b presentations with powerful, market specific 'proof-points'
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Increase the quality and ROI from acquired data or research, at lower cost
Why your startup Audience definition is so important!
Helps startups secure funding for all types of consumer products or services with credible proof of buyer Audience potential.
“Audience Intelligence: The Startup’s Magic Bullet to Getting Investors to Say YES”
Creating an investor pitch deck can be an all-consuming task that requires a lot of time, imagination and countless revisions. If investors are impressed with your idea and express interest in funding it, they will need to be convinced that your target audience is just as impressive. This is because the audience needs to be proven as real for your opportunity to be believed. To ensure that your opportunity gains market traction as quickly as possible, your audience should include ready buyers and mid-term buyers to sustain revenue momentum. Additionally, your audience should be large enough to support and sustain your proposed business model.
During the past 29 years, I have been able to successfully predict the audience for hundreds of brands, both for new and existing products, various consumer services, and causes. I was able to define each of these audiences based on specific brand attributes, as well as their size, location, and validation, before any marketing spending took place. I analyzed post-marketing spend results for over 300 case studies. The audiences that were defined based on brand attributes performed 2-3 times better than those defined demographically, and matched up to actual new customers 90-98% of the time.
Architecting the composition of an audience involves focusing only on consumers predisposed to buying a product, service, or supporting a cause, to ensure accurate brand audience definition.
"Discover the Importance of Defining Your Startup's Target Audience!"
The results presented in this chart are typical for all similar cases. However, there are some exceptions for brands that are defined by demographics. In such cases, the demographics include not only those who qualify for the brand attributes but also many others who do not.
Audience Validation for New Products or Services
Business development leaders can determine if new products or services will be successful by assessing consumer demand.
Investing in consumer products or services can be a risky proposition. Sales and revenue forecasts are based on assumptions about the percentage of the target audience that will become customers. However, if these assumptions are incorrect, it can lead to fundamentally flawed revenue forecasts. Furthermore, if a significant portion of the budget is spent on targeting the wrong audience, it can result in poor returns on investment, which could potentially have a negative impact on profits.
Over the course of 29 years, I have successfully predicted the brand audiences for hundreds of new and existing products, as well as various consumer services. Each audience was defined based on brand attributes, and their size, location, and validity were verified before any marketing expenses were incurred. More than 300 case studies were analyzed for post-marketing results. Audiences that were defined by brand attributes outperformed demographically defined audiences by 2 to 3 times, with new customers matching up to target consumers 90% to 98% of the time.
By architecting the audience's composition only on consumers with predisposition to buy, brand attributes are used to define audiences that can be reached through various marketing channels such as traditional, digital, mobile, print, direct, onboarding applications, and social media. This means that all types of creative and market-level executions can be transferred to these audiences.
Audience Centric Cost Per Sale Reduction
Lower your cost per sale or acquisition with audience centric spending decisions.
Helps marketing leaders lower cost per sale by showing them how to increase revenue levels for every dollar spent.
Marketing inefficiencies and spending waste are unavoidable realities in the world of business. At times, it becomes necessary to cast a wide net in order to reach a larger number of valuable consumers that a brand wishes to acquire.
The actual cost to the brand is not the wasteful spending itself, but rather the negative impact that low brand audience coverage can have on sales levels and cost per sale.
It's important to note that while it's not possible to completely avoid marketing waste, there are proven techniques that can help reduce spending waste while also increasing the number of highly valuable consumers reached. For instance, if you're currently paying to reach 100,000 consumers, what percentage of those consumers do you expect will be of future value to your brand? 10%, 20%, 30% or more?
While many media options may not be purchased by these percentages, all media or marketing options can be evaluated using these percentages.
As demonstrated in the chart, spending waste can be directly proportional to cost per sale. The percentage of Option A consumers outside of the brand audience can reduce sales levels and drive up costs and losses. On the other hand, Option B resulted in a small margin of gain per sale. This may seem insignificant, but when you consider the extrapolation to all new sales or customers acquired, it adds up.
It all starts with defining a correct brand audience, so that these percentages can be determined by individual spending options and managed for optimal cost per sale. A correct brand audience should consider the following factors: a) consumers who are likely to enter the purchase funnel and buy the brand based on their attraction to the brand's core attributes, b) a sufficient volume of high-quality consumers to support both near- and long-term business requirements, and c) the ability to distinguish and efficiently reach each type of brand audience based on business growth objectives.
Audience Centric BDI/CDI Analysis
Audience Centric BDI/CDI Analysis for Brand & Product Managers
Helps brand managers optimize and increase sell through from their consumer Audiences in the brand, category, and competitor context.
Marketers have been using Brand Development Index (BDI) and Category Development Index (CDI), also known as BDI/CDI Analysis, for several years to optimize the sell-through of packaged goods products at retail. The BDI/CDI Analysis involves analyzing and categorizing a brand's sales performance in comparison to its respective category sales levels.
The strategy is to identify markets or outlets where a brand's sales are performing better than its category and to capitalize on these opportunities to increase sales. Conversely, if there are markets or outlets where the category is outperforming the brand, then marketers should investigate why and make adjustments to their marketing or merchandising strategies accordingly.
Markets with excellent performance, where both the brand and its category are doing well, are more competitive. Therefore, it makes sense to focus on stronger brand incentives and offers in such markets. Lastly, markets or outlets where the brand or category is not performing well may require a reduction in investments, and marketers can redirect their resources to other opportunities.
The Audience Centric BDI/CDI Analysis follows the same construct, but instead of comparing historical sales levels, it is based on the people who will drive future product sales. This is important because audiences drive sales levels, and marketers need to drive these audiences to buy. Each brand has its own unique audience based on people who will be uniquely attracted to what the brand has to offer. The category is simply every single brand that competes in the same space.
The insights and volumetrics that come out of this analysis can be used to address several aspects such as:
- Identifying untapped sales channels by assessing retailers carrying the brand and those who do not.
- Aligning local and national marketing expenditures with best quality markets.
- Adapting creative messages and offers to competitive environments.
- Aligning budgets, sales, and revenue forecasts with reality.
Audience Centric b2b
Spatial Sales Dashboards
Close more and better deals, faster!
Helps local market sales teams close more/better deals with spatially based ‘proof of value’ selling points.
The strategy of using 'Proof of Value' as a selling point has been found to be highly effective whenever it has been implemented. However, very few sales or market growth organizations possess this capability due to its uniqueness. As an independent consultant, I specialize in designing, developing, and providing audience-centric B2B spatial sales dashboards for all types of sales organizations. For clients who already have their own data assets and capabilities, I offer to demonstrate how they can make this capability possible using their existing data assets or by acquiring new ones. Click on the link below to access Spatial Sales Case Studies.
There are various types of sales situations that are based on markets or areas. For instance, selling radio spots to one or several stations based on their signal coverage, selling cable networks to cable operators, selling products to a chain of retail stores for distribution, or pitching a chain of hospitals to offer patients a new wellness portal.
In such scenarios, the sales pitch deck has been shown to be more persuasive if "proof of value" data points cover the three bases seen in the chart. This three-pronged approach has been successful because the salesperson was able to make it all about what the buyer cared about and kept the value of what was being sold-in front and center. Most importantly, prospects want to keep their best customers happy and grow revenues. For salespeople, the "proof of value" presentation was simple, easy to talk to and boiled down to a few powerful visual slides.
How is this possible? Well, transactional and behavioral insights about all types of product and service consumers can be scaled to any geographic selection(s). The consumer audience insights are specific to the prospects line of business, what they sell, and where they sell it. Your prospect's high-value customers can be defined, sized, and their product/service purchase propensities profiled. Your product/service offering will be part of these profiles and enable "proof of value" with current high-value customers.
The consumer audience for your own offering will be separately defined so that it can be sized and profiled as well. What your specific high-value consumer target brings to the prospect's table will provide more "proof of value" points that speak to the future growth opportunity for all concerned.
B2B Spatial Sales Dashboards
Application Case Studies
A Hispanic television network faced difficulties in getting carried by cable operators. Despite repeated attempts, the cable operators were reluctant to carry the network as they believed that Hispanic viewers would not be quality viewers. However, the network's Affiliate salespeople came up with a "proof of value" strategy that showed the cable operators the potential value of their future viewers. The salespeople were able to forecast how many new subscribers could be acquired through joint marketing campaigns. This strategy became the lever for this and numerous other cable network launches across the U.S.
A major radio conglomerate with over 700 radio stations faced challenges closing political campaign ad deals in all local markets across the United States. Political advertisers preferred television ads, and radio was considered to be a secondary option. The radio company needed to prove that political radio advertising was an essential component for political campaigns. Despite management setting political ad revenue budgets, the company consistently fell short of these targets season after season. To help overcome this issue, a political radio advertising sales platform was developed for local station ad sales employees. The platform integrated all 700 stations, fused radio station signals with congressional district boundaries, and segmented station-specific listeners by all political affiliations. It automatically generated presentation materials, signal maps and ‘proof of value’ data points. The platform was deployed nationwide, and the resulting political ad sales revenues exceeded even the most optimistic expectations, and continued to do so.
In the case study of the City of Detroit, Michigan, it was found that a large number of African American residents did not have access to healthy food options such as fruits and vegetables. This resulted in a food desert situation, where residents were only able to rely on fast food restaurants and convenience stores, or travel outside the city to find a grocery store.
The Detroit Economic Development Corporation had proposed the idea of Whole Foods Market opening a store in Downtown Detroit, but their proposal was categorically rejected by Whole Foods as an unsound business decision.
To prove the value of such a store, a consumer insights analysis was conducted, which revealed that the African American residents of Detroit were eager to eat healthier, but had limited options available to them. The City of Detroit was able to provide evidence of an unhealthy food spending profile, which could be addressed by the opening of a Whole Foods store. The projections indicated that the store would be profitable and sustainable.
This "proof of value" strategy worked successfully, and the Whole Foods store has been thriving since its opening.
In 2015, Whole Foods CEO Walter Robb spoke about a project that was deemed impossible by many. The business plan was said to have gone off the rails, but Robb believed it could be done. He emphasized that when people claim that something can't be done, they are often mistaken. The key to success is to believe in your ability to achieve your goals.
On March 1, 2013, Whole Foods opened a new store located at 115 Mack Ave in Detroit, Michigan.
A data acquisition plan with higher ROI and lower negotiated cost
Help your organization avoid overspending on data
Helps buyers of data sources avoid the pitfalls of overspending on consumer, b2b, spatial and secondary research data products.
Over the past 30+ years, I have developed audience-centric solutions and have been a buyer of various data products. Data sellers prioritize trust in the buyer over the amount of data sold. They want to ensure that the data is used for its intended purpose and not misused or abused in any way. This is why sellers ask for disclosure about the intended use of the data. It is important to be upfront and honest about your intended use of the data, whether it is for creating a unique derivative data product or for reselling it.
Data overspending is a common occurrence among buyers who do not have a clear idea of what data elements they will need in the future. To avoid this, it is essential to anticipate which specific data or research sources will support your company's unique business needs and objectives. Once these needs and objectives are defined, you can create a data acquisition roadmap with purpose and clarity. It is important to note that there are many data sellers in the market offering the same thing. Some sellers offer data at a lower price, while others are more costly. The goal is to find the best quality data at the lowest possible cost because poor quality data can do more harm than good.
If you would like to have a free one-hour consultation to talk about your specific situation, please message me. I can help you earn data seller trust and avoid data overspending. I charge hourly rates and will cap my fees for clearly defined scopes of work.