Margaritas & the Consumer Conversion Challenge
A Marketers Recipe for Converting Prospects into Buyers
Converting consumers to your brand is no small task. It requires data and insights that allow the marketer to assess the competitive space in order to identify the best prospects, size the opportunity, and develop a message that taps into prospects’ specific mindset. Trying to accomplish this without a structured, proven approach is like trying to craft the perfect margarita without the right ingredients or a recipe to guide you. Many marketers who are faced with this challenge will likely start with a few ingredients such as demographics and a handful of attitudes characterizing current users, and then use an outside dataset to find other people who match this profile. This approach, however, leaves a lot of potential insights on the table and often ends up with a brand casting an inefficiently wide net without successfully identifying their very best prospects. The result is a drink that resembles a margarita, but the taste is muddled.
If, instead, marketers focus on what predicts brand usage, rather than what describes current users, the practice of identifying and messaging to prospects becomes much more efficient and well-informed.
Let’s dive into a use case on how marketers at a leading tequila brand (Jose Cuervo Especial) can defeat the conversion challenge.
The Shelf: Exploring the Competitive Space
Whether it be a liquor store or a bar, consumers have a number of choices when it comes to which type of tequila they want for their margaritas. As a spirit marketer, Jose Cuervo Especial already knows that shelf space plays a role in whether or not the brand is in a consumer’s consideration set. To gain a deeper understanding on exactly how much ‘space’ the brand currently has, a marketer can look beyond the rows of bottles and into the research:
Recently released data from Simmons’ National Consumer Study estimates that one-quarter of U.S. adults 21+ drink tequila, including 6% who drink Jose Cuervo Especial. However, this market is characterized by fluidity in brand choice, as almost 60% of those current Jose Cuervo Especial drinkers also drink at least one of its two competitors’ brands. Where exactly is the opportunity for Jose Cuervo Especial to grab some of its competitors’ market share?
Based on a predictive brand-use approach called Predictive Consumer Insights, Simmons developed a target of likely Jose Cuervo Especial Drinkers (who drink tequila already, but don’t drink this brand). This target of almost 30 million was derived from analyzing over 800 psychographic measures, which were culled down to a subset of 40 strong predictors of brand use. This resulting group is a more refined batch of consumers who have an above average likelihood to use this brand. This is where the best opportunity lies for Jose Cuervo Especial to expand their market share.
The marketers behind Jose Cuervo Especial can now focus on understanding and targeting this group of likely users, rather than a larger, less qualified target that would previously have been based on only a handful of profiling attributes.
Drilling down even further, Simmons’ data shows that 21% of Likely Jose Cuervo Especial Drinkers (who do drink tequila, but not this brand) drink 1800 Silver, and 39% already use Patron. The next task for the marketer is to hone a marketing message that speaks to Jose Cuervo Especial’s specific prospect target by leveraging the brand’s specific subset of strong psychographic predictors in order to convert consumers to Jose Cuervo Especial and away from competitors.
The Pour: Psychographic Identifiers
Crafting a marketing message without knowing what kinds of attributes will predict brand use is like choosing margarita ingredients based on what catches your eye from the bar shelf. The perfect margarita is both art and science – you need both to come up with something really special.
In the case of Jose Cuervo Especial, the right marketing message and creative will push on the right combination of predictive psychographics. Picking the right ingredients means combing through the psychographics that are among the strongest predictors, some of which will be unique to the brand and others that will also resonate among those who use competitors.
An analysis of the predictive psychographics for Jose Cuervo Especial’s brand and its competitors reveals that people who have specific interests in cars are likely to be users of any one of the three brands. However, interest in Latin American or Hispanic news is uniquely predictive of those who are likely to use Jose Cuervo Especial. Additionally, likely users for this brand consider themselves to be affectionate and romantic.
This alone provides clues around the kinds of messaging and creative that will appeal to Jose Cuervo Especial prospects, including those who currently drink a competitor. For example, the brand could develop a campaign about a couple taking a long road trip for their honeymoon. We don’t know where, but the scenery is beautiful and their meals intimate. At every stop, their romantic drink of choice is not wine or champagne, but a margarita, made with Jose Cuervo Especial – por favor.
Making the Perfect Margarita: Predictive Consumer Insights
With Predictive Consumer Insights, the marketers at Jose Cuervo Especial could serve up the perfect margarita to its prospects – with the right ingredients, artfully measured and mixed. In short order, a brand like Cuervo can size up its most likely prospects, measure this audience’s overlap with competitors, and begin to develop messaging and creative that speaks directly to their prospects’ unique motivations that are tied to brand use.
To learn more about what Simmons Predictive Consumer Insights can do for your brand, you can download slides from our recent webinar or fill out our Contact Us form.
