A heathcare brand wanted to understand the impact of using different digital channels in a practical way – so that the quantum of investment on each could be decided. The idea was to create a baseline for a market and check the lift with the application of a campaign run on a specific digital channel.
RainMan first clustered the markets based on sales. The next step built a relationship wherein a specific market sales was predicted with a combination of the other markets. This algorithm is useful as it predicts the sale of “A” market – with the sales from other markets (B …n). Take was taken to validate this model and ensure that it actually predicted sales in “A” market with a low MAPE (mean absolute percentage error)
Now the stage is ready for the experimentation. Additional specific channel inputs are provided to “A” markets over a number of weeks. The sales in these weeks are predicted for this market and then compared with the actual sales. If the actual sales are “significantly” higher – that is over and above the usual deviation, then that lift is attributed to the specific channel. Repeat for other channels with other markets.
The advantage of this methodology is that ROI of key digital channels can be compared and spends optimized in line with these insights, significantly improving overall efficiency.
An Alco-Bev major wanted to understand the sizes of each of the categories of alcohol such as Whisky, Vodka and so on into the future for a plan strategy for a 5 year period.
The problem this CPG brand was faced with was a typical problem- Brand had presence across multiple connect points, paid media, owned media ( website, Facebook page etc) and earned media ( Twitter and other social mentions) but not knowing clearly what works across market clusters, and the interrelations between these connect points.
Using the insights derived from the modelling exercise, marketing budgets for various key inputs was reallocated in favour of digital using an advanced optimization process. This resulted in an additional 8% lift in sales, more than half its overall growth in the year.