The Eight Secrets of How To Increase YOY Brand Sales

We looked at the four most recent years of data we have for 33 top advertisers in the Auto CPG QSR and Tech fields and found that the average yearoveryear brand sales change was 36McKinsey finds that 70 of CEOs want year over year YOY brand sales increase above all other marketing goals That was in 2025 the year before that stat was only 50 So CEOs are becoming more explicitly focused on currentyear sales effects which drives their bonuses incidentally Nevertheless most outcome measurement in advertising today looks at things other than sales effects Why Because itamp8217s cheaperWould a country be wise to cut corners on military weapons Would a husband be wise to buy the cheapest cancer doctor for his wifeGetting the cheapest price for things generally makes sense but in certain areas it is shooting oneself in the headRule 1 Buy the best information possible Donamp8217t save a few thousand bucks on information you use to make decisions on millions or billions of dollarsamp8217 worth of advertising Bad or even just noisy information doesnamp8217t just lower your sales effects a little bit it can totally eliminate sales increases or cause sales decreases by causing you to make the wrong decisionRule 2 Donamp8217t judge information based on what other people say Test it inmarket against sales changes People in general donamp8217t know what theyamp8217re talking about They however all talk a good gameRule 3 Donamp8217t measure sales effects just based on MMM MMM is a good tool when it is best in class methodology and the data are complete and accurate amp8211 which is rare But because media tend to overlap in time one must be extremely careful about how to attribute the incremental sales made during overlap periods Itamp8217s best to use other methods along with MMM to be certain about those overlap periods ie most of the yearRule 4 In those amp8220other methodsamp8221 do not use sales proxies use sales see Rule 2 But donamp8217t compare the incremental sales between the exposed group and the unexposed group No matter how you weigh these to be seemingly comparable you are fooling yourself Measure changes in buying behavior in the same household from before multipleyear lookback period to duringafter the campaign and aggregate these across millions of households This is the only way you can be close to certain that the campaign lifted sales Example measure the number of households that have not bought the brand for a year or more now buying since this campaign started Yes some of that can be coincidence or the results of product improvements word of mouth price discounts or even the weather so you still need to have human and AI analysts consider all those possibilities Marketing and media research is not more perfect than medical research The world is complicated and oversimplification is the cause of most business errorRule 5 Target the Moveable Middle Those are the people who buy your brand sometimes but not all the time A long time ago I discovered that 83 of CPG users who switched their favorite brands had six months earlier considered their current favorite brand their second choice In 2006 my companyamp160TRA now part of TiVo published findings that 80 of the sales effects of advertising were accounted for by what I called amp8220swingamp8221 purchasers Todayamp160Joel Rubinsonamp8216s moniker amp8220Moveable Middleamp8221 has taken hold If you target your loyals they canamp8217t do much for YOY increase If you target people who never bought your brand you can get new users but the acquisition cost might take a long time to be recouped it is still worth experimenting with neverusers because of lifetime value more on this below in Rule 8This does not mean detargeting everyone else because the next Rule will include a way of being reasonably sure you do not miss all the possible opportunities because it will involve including linear TVRule 6 Maximize Reach If you do not reach someone your advertising will not have any direct effect on them This is obvious Yet the amount of reach marketers are settling for is unsettling This recent article documents the fact that 4 out of 5 campaigns in the US are getting reach levels of below 10 Yes they may be hypertargeted and only wanted to reach those imminent purchase luxury SUV intenders Yes over the course of a year a brand running a number of campaigns might have a 90 reach while only reaching under 10 each month but that is very unlikelyHow do you get high reach Does it simply mean spend a lot of money use a GRP Reach curve get at least 1800 GRP per campaign or is there more to it There is more to it than GRP In fact as the same article cited in Rule 6 shows you can save a fortune on excess GRP by following these principles taken together under Rule 6Use linear TV CTV mobile and computer distributing target impressions across them in roughly 30303010 percent chunksUse multiple publishers within each of those four types Preferably at least ten publishers per type and in linear 70 would be idealDispersed campaigns across a great many media types publishers and dayparts is the way to minimize spend while maximizing reach Source of these findings Nielsen ONERule 7 Pay attention to attention norms by platform types and avoid overspending in media types with average ad attention of only a few seconds That is only going to function as reminder advertising when it has any effect at all Donamp8217t follow the herd and do what everyone else has been doing for the past ten years which has wildly overspent in shortattentionspan media This is why there are now over 40 companies measuring attention but the people who place the money bets on the media are evidently not paying attentionRule 8 Increase the sales effect of advertising by using a amp8220dating service for ads and contextsamp8221 as Hank Frecon CEO of Source Digital describes amp8220myamp8221 company RMT When an ad finds the contexts that are most motivationally similar to the ad itself sales effect goes up 36 NCS When an ad is sent programmatically or otherwise to an advanced audience of people whose motivations as revealed by their content consumption mirror the adamp8217s subconscious motivators sales effect goes up 95 Neustar This targeting of people based on their motivations goes beyond the Moveable Middle and even beyond current category users and the same Neustar study shows that it increases New To Brand by 115 This is the only prebuy impression quality measure that has been proven over and over again to increase the sales effect of advertising and validated by Wharton Neuroscience to be amp8220the only statistically significant predictor of EEG Synchronyamp8221 which has a 91 correlation to sales increaseTest RMT and any other impression quality metrics against sales effects following the guidance in Rule 4 Decide for yourself what really works and use it on all your global marketingIf you follow the 8 Rules above I personally guarantee you will achieve YOY brand sales growth If you come to me and show me that you have followed all these Rules and your YOY brand sales have not gone up I will provide free consulting services until your YOY brand sales do go upBuilding HighPerforming TeamsOur new podcast explores the topic of Being in the Inbetween Phase a liminal stage of growth when we can feel disoriented lonelyamp160or frustrated and why itamp8217s also a powerful indicator that real growth is happeningamp160Rather than rushing to amp8220fixamp8221 the discomfort this episode invites listeners to slow down listen more deeply to themselves and learn how to navigate uncertainty with trust patience and selfawarenessThis monthamp8217s podcast length is amp877646 minutesamp160Watch the VideoPosted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership selfpublishing platformClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of 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The Eight Secrets of How To Increase YOY Brand Sales

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