MARKETING STRATEGY:

At Binley Drake we work with clients to develop marketing strategies aligned to their business strategy. This leverages the organisation’s ambitions, passions, and sources of differentiation to identify the most valuable markets and customer groups. Recommendations will identify the most efficient and effective ways to interact with those groups, and how to leverage advocates, channels and technology to increase market penetration, frequency and loyalty.

CATEGORY MANAGEMENT:

We use Category Management principles, to deliver a powerful and immediate impact on the sales and profitability of your organisation. By defining the individual categories and their respective roles, specifically through their relationship with the target customer and market dynamics, we create an essential base from which to build product-level strategies. Recommendations cover many areas, from store planning to category extensions and business development. However, the most immediate impacts typically emerge in the areas below.

RANGE DEVELOPMENT:

Effective range development is about improving consumer choice whilst minimising complexity. It is a strategic lever to drive footfall, penetration, transaction value and margin and is used in conjunction with pricing and merchandising to drive consumer behaviour and loyalty. We use a combination of statistical and competitive group analysis to build a profile of category and product performance. We work closely with key suppliers to leverage category knowledge and shopper research, particularly around customer decision processes and the drivers of choice. Recommendations typically include rationalisations, extensions and changes in distribution and merchandising. Proposals are supported with financial models, which can be tracked against, and will provide a basis for ongoing range development.

RETAIL PRICING AND PROMOTIONS:

We use custom-built models to quantify the impact of price changes on volume and profit over time, producing “elasticity values” and “lifecycle curves”, which forecast the impact of future price changes. We use this in conjunction with competitor price information, to identify the biggest margin opportunities from raising and lowering prices. In previous cases this type of activity has driven volume shifts of up to 30%.

At the same time, we work with client teams to simplify pricing architectures and improve category mix, by optimising the steps in pricing between ranges, and highlighting anomalous pricing, where products are misaligned with the category or market. Recommendations include a fully modelled change plan, including anticipated volume impact and competitor response. Correcting anomalies can typically increase total company revenues by 1-2% and profit by 3-6%

We use similar models to evaluate promotions, evaluating volume impact, cannibalisation and pull-forward effects. This provides an objective mechanism for us to help you rationalise and prioritise promotions to deliver a sustainable growth trajectory across the business.