Collecting market data is important so brands can develop a deeper understanding of their competitors, consumer base, and the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. A brand that doesn’t prioritize data capture is effectively stumbling through the dark without any feedback on its marketing campaigns or the impressions of its customers. Consumer and market data provides critical insights to help CPG brands interact effectively with their customers and address their customer’s needs. After data is collected, it can be analyzed and strategically utilized to help brands better reach their target demographic.
Methods for Collecting CPG Marketing Data
There are many different ways to go about market research. CPG marketing teams can collect essential brand data using capture methods like social media, interviews, surveys, reviews, and focus groups. Let’s dive a bit deeper into each of these methods to gain a greater understanding of how the data they collect can be leveraged by brands:
Social Media – Brands can collect secondary data from their social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. This includes data like impressions and engagement metrics so that brands can understand what content appeals to their customers. For example, video content typically gets 21% more engagement than static images.
Interviews – Interviews are another useful method for collecting consumer data. Interviews can be conducted either in person, online or on the phone. This method is powerful because brands can collect long-form answers from customers and engage in an actual back-and-forth conversation.
Surveys – Surveys are similar to interviews but provide greater reach so brands can collect impressions from more consumers. And while CPG brands can select the survey questions, they can’t ask for further clarification or ensure the respondent is an actual customer.
Reviews – CPG product reviews can be a great source of information for marketing teams. It provides a direct indication of what the customer thinks, complaints or issues with the product, and anything they wish was done better. Reviews can be set up many different ways on a brand’s website. If a brand doesn’t require verification of purchase to leave a review, it may have trouble identifying true customer reviews, making this information far less useful.
Focus Groups – Focus groups are a great way for brands to carry out in-depth conversations with potential or actual customers. A focus group session usually involves 6-12 individuals who meet to discuss a brand’s business and products. This is an opportunity for the brand to provide product samples, discuss its values and goals, and display marketing materials. CPG brands can gain valuable feedback on different aspects of their business to better understand what works and what doesn’t.
Limitations of the Current Approach
Unfortunately, current data capture methods present some challenges for CPG marketing teams. Data collected from non-customers is of little to no value for extracting useful insights, but surveys and social media don’t effectively screen for actual customers or other useful factors like purchase frequency.
Brands that only want data from verified customers are limited to interviews, verified reviews, and focus groups. The problem is that these formats yield a much smaller set of data. And while surveys can return large volumes of feedback, they are expensive, time-consuming, and usually complicated by convenience biases and sampling errors. In other words, not all surveys turn out to be useful surveys.
Abrio enables CPG brands to get first hand consumer data much easier
Abrio tackles the limitations and challenges of capturing market data by connecting CPG brands with actual customers. Abrio presents this solution through strategically placed QR codes that verify product consumption and encourage customer participation.
Brands can collect a comprehensive data set from verified customers, including frequency of consumption and the 5 Ws (when, where, who, what, which). With Abrio’s marketing platform, brands can also access never before seen data on consumer behavior and supply chain data like production to consumption time. This first-hand data can be leveraged with confidence to enhance and influence the direction of branded marketing campaigns.