Retail Marketing and Branding: A Definitive Guide to Maximizing ROI, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 10

REACH–COST–QUALITY

Thomas Bauer, Tjark Freundt, Ingeborg Hegstad

• “There is nothing like a TV commercial to build brand image.”
• “If you want to drive sales, you should spend your marketing budget where customers make their choices: at the POS.”
• “I've never seen so much impact at such low cost. Our online viral campaign was a real bargain. Why don't you try it, too?”

You've heard it all before; tips like these are a dime a dozen. Yet they often contain a grain of truth. For a given retailer, with a given budget, in a given country and competitive environment, they are all probably true at some point in time. But that doesn't mean they are true for you, here and now.

In this chapter, we present the “Reach–Cost–Quality” (RCQ) approach, a quantitative method for evaluating, comparing, and selecting different media on a like-for-like basis. It relies on the concept of a common currency across all marketing touch points: real cost per actual reach. Thanks to RCQ, you won't have to rely on trial and error, gut feeling, or plain rumor any longer. We will walk through this approach step by step, highlighting how it helps you generate a robust fact base for media mix and budget allocation decisions.

Optimizing individual vehicles one by one is challenging enough, but cross-media optimization is next to impossible without a universal metric

• “Why don't we run more sales stimulation ads in local newspapers and fewer fuzzy brand campaigns on TV?”
• “What is the most cost-efficient ...