(By Bob McCurdy) The advent of target demographics decades ago was more a result of available technology, or lack thereof, and the need for some sort of accountability/currency, than the belief that they were a perfect proxy for product usage. We all intuitively understand if a target demo is 25-54, that individuals outside this demographic purchase the product or service and can even account for the majority of purchases/usage. If the target is women, men will also likely purchase the product or shop the stores, often in large numbers, and vice versa.
Such is the case with grocery stores. This week I worked on several pieces of key long-term businesses that were targeting W25-54, one of which was a nationally known grocery chain. The challenge in this particular market with this specific station was twofold: to overcome “rank” and a heavy male skew. This required building a case for the importance of the total audience — women and men.
I, and another seller, began by putting Tapscan to work. The data we extracted below clearly enabled us to more effectively tell our story.
We ramped up the Target Profile program as we wanted to highlight just how involved men in this market were with grocery shopping. We used expenditures of $100+/week as the benchmark and discovered that 47.9% of those A25-54s who spent more $100/week on groceries were men. The numbers were virtually identical for $200+/week grocery expenditures.
Next, we accessed the Bonus Spending Program which showed that while our station’s W25-54 annual grocery spending was considerable, the rest of the station’s audience (primarily men) spent three times as much on groceries.
We then identified the percent of M25-54 in the market who were single, separated, divorced, or widowed, as these consumers would clearly need to personally shop for groceries. Accessing the Target Profile program once more, we determined that more than half (52.6%) of men in this market fell into one of these four groupings.
We next wanted to build upon this insight by pinpointing the percentage of “married” men in the market who spent over $100/week at grocery stores. The figure was 45%.
These market specific insights, combined with the fact that 71% of W25-54 work full/part time in this market (Tapscan) and that 16% of all stay-at-home parents are male (Google), makes for a logical, fact-based, market-specific narrative.
Our final deck included these facts:
- Men account for 47.9% of all adults who spent over $100/week on groceries.
- Our station delivers $1.7 billion dollars in annual grocery sales outside the W25-54 demographic.
- 52.6% of all men in the market are single, divorced, separated, or widowed.
- 45.5% of married men spend over $100/week in groceries. They clearly share the shopping responsibilities with their wives, 71% of whom work full or part time. And…
- 16% of all stay-at-home parents are men.
A W25-54 demo for this or any grocery chain in 2016 appears to be out-of-date with the times and likely preventing them from maximizing revenue. Our next step is to get in front of the planner to review these facts and, if need be, the client.
One of the commandments of marketing is to ensure that commercial messaging is being delivered to all current customers and category buyers. We believe we’ve made a compelling argument that targeting women exclusively is not accomplishing this.
This entire process took 30 minutes. Whatever the outcome, we’ve more effectively positioned the value of our station and, as we all know, good selling is never wasted. The “selling” process has begun supported by the marketing mindset and direction outlined above. We’re closer to landing the order now than we were prior to investing the half hour of prep.
Bob McCurdy is the Vice President of Sales for the Beasley Media Group and can be reached at [email protected]
