Page 6 - Australian Pork Newspaper

by PETER HAYDON General Manager Marketing
Figure 2
WHILE there is mixed news on the producer front – pig prices having started to go up but not as fast as grain prices are driving up costs – the need to maximise short- term demand is as urgent as any time since Janu- ary 2017.
Domestic sales continue to grow in volume terms in both retail (for at-home cooking) and foodservice (meals eaten out).
Sales for in-home cook- ing are growing at a slow- er level than they were a year ago.
In Figure 1, the pink bars are pork volume sales increase versus the same period last year, the blue lines are fresh meat vol- ume sales growth versus the same period last year and the dotted pink line
Marketing Matters
is pork’s volume growth trend over the past year.
So, we are growing fast- er than the market but not as fast as a year ago.
The Australian Pork Limited Board has ap- proved joint-funded (with Western Australian pro- ducers) additional mar- keting activity in WA (the extra TV advertising started on October 7) and increased activity in the
first quarter of 2019.
This obviously seeks to continue volume demand
growth.
We need to keep in
mind, however, that while production has increased by around 35,000 tonnes or 9.1 percent since De- cember 2016, we have shipped about a quarter of that increase (roughly 9000 tonnes offshore at large discounts).
In order to lock in price growth, we need to focus on re-accelerating pork consumption, even though it has grown faster in the past couple of years than at any time since 2003.
One of the tools market- ers use to identify where to target marketing activ- ity is called an adoption funnel (see Figure 2).
This works on the ba- sis that every time a per- son buys anything, they go through a number of stages.
1. Consumers have to be aware of a product in or- der to buy it;
2. Once aware they need to have a reason to con- sider buying it;
3. Once considered, a product needs to be pre- ferred to be bought;
4. Then the consumer has to actually buy it; and 5. Finally, a big part of whether they buy a prod- uct again is based on whether they enjoyed the experience of using the
product.
One of the analyses
marketers complete is to understand whether the major challenge is to get more consumers into the funnel at the awareness stage, or whether the main challenge is to convert consumers who are al- ready in the funnel from a higher stage closer to the purchase stage.
We do this using conver- sion factors (examples are in the circles).
In Figure 2, 66 percent of people who consider this product are converted into people who prefer the product.
In this case, normally we would focus on increasing
the lowest conversion, that is, the 66 percent.
To create awareness and consideration we use mass communication like TV and radio.
To convert consideration to preference we would normally use more tar- geted media such as in- store recipes and online channels.
This change was prompted by the recent marketing review done by KPMG and has given us reasons to trial more ex- tensively media channels such as catch-up TV, You- Tube, taste.com.au and so on.
While the plan is not yet finalised, for those producers including Tim Kingmar, Caleb Smith and Mark MacLean (among others)... yes I can hear you saying “about bloody time” and that’s a fair cop.
Conversely, some of you may remember that:
• Digital payback is worse than TV and radio according to the sales stat- istician;
• ‘Don’t get ribbed off – digital advertising’ was less successful than spending the same money on radio; and
• The latest Facebook test we did exposed an extra 800,000 Australians to versatility, messaging an extra eleven times on mince with no discern- ible significant increase in sales.
The difference here is those tests APL did were comparing online chan- nels’ ability to do what TV and radio are good at.
These activities in 2019 are aiming at using online channels to do the conver- sions TV and radio have not been completing, they are complementary, not substitutes.
Do we know this ap- proach is going to work better?
No, we don’t.
However, there is good evidence from the learn- ings of many other com- panies both in Australia and abroad representing a fact base that suggests success is likely.
As ever, we will measure the results so we are able to determine effective- ness.
One thing is certain: if sales growth is slowing and we don’t want that to happen, we have to embrace change and do something different.
We will keep you post- ed.
Figure 1
Funnelling for more sales
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Page 6 – Australian Pork Newspaper, November 2018
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