Throughout my career, working across both brand and media owners, I’ve watched the media and advertising industry rapidly evolve. It has experienced seismic shifts, fuelled by customer behaviour change, tech and data, relentless focus on customer growth and return on investment (ROI).

With customer growth becoming an increasingly important metric, retail media is uniquely positioned to remove the guesswork for brands, utilising quality data and providing end to end customer journey access.

What you need to know:

• Customer growth is the key to success in 2022 as more than three quarters of business leaders record ‘acquiring new customers’ is their top growth strategy
• Petcare giant Purina gains 14,000 new-to-brand customers, with a 30 per cent repurchase rate, leveraging retail media and the Woolworths Pet Event
• Per Purina Petcare’s Ryan Hollis: ‘The Purina ONE campaign delivered some of the strongest financial and executional results we’ve seen on this brand, which is phenomenal.’
• If you’re keen to better understand retail media and how it solves customer growth objectives, download Cartology’s This is Retail Media playbook here.

The battle for customer growth

For marketers, customer growth is key to success in 2022 and beyond.

The latest State of the CMO 2022 Report shows that marketing budgets are firmly focused on driving growth through acquiring new customers. In fact, more than three quarters of respondents said ‘acquiring new customers’ was their top growth strategy - a significant increase from the 48 per cent recorded the year prior. Other key themes to emerge from the report were an increased focus on the measurement of activities and the focus on lifetime value.

Among key learnings from the report, the shift from third party to first party data was identified as imperative for marketers, with one in four CMOs seeing this shift in the next 12 months as ‘very important’. The pressure on demonstrating ROI is also continuing to rise, up 2 per cent this year.

Solving the customer growth puzzle

As this pressure mounts, the question of customer growth outcomes and how retail media is best placed to solve them is being raised more frequently. Working closely with clients on their brand challenges and having analysed thousands of campaigns Cartology has delivered to date, the vast majority of briefs aim to achieve one of five key customer growth outcomes:

1. Acquire new customers
We know customers are actively looking for inspiration for what to cook or buy. Retail media’s trusted environment and sophisticated targeting provides the ideal opportunity to introduce brands to prospective customers. Through our deep understanding of customers, brands can target active category buyers and those customers with the highest propensity to purchase.

2. Grow existing customers
Retail media’s precise targeting enables brands to stay top of mind, reinforcing choice and ultimately driving repurchase and loyalty. Through an omnichannel offering, we connect brands with recent buyers to trigger repurchase amongst existing customers.

3. Drive customer trial of new product
Driving awareness and first-time trial of new products is an incredibly powerful sensory experience and especially valuable to brands. The hallmark of a successful new product launch is achieving brand trial and experience at scale, enabled by retail media’s omnichannel offering. After all, what’s more powerful than getting your product into a customers’ hands?

4. Win back lapsed customers
The trusted retail environment provides permission to reconnect with customers where they actively welcome inspiration. Retail media has the unique ability to identify and target these lapsing and lapsed buyers to help win them back.

5. Retain existing customers
Using targeted messaging or personalised offers to connect brands with customers when they are next in market is an effective method to prompt repurchase or increase customers’ frequency of purchase at all stages of the decision-making journey.

Nestle’s Purina: 14,000 new-to-brand customers

Demonstrating this in the most effective way, in launching the new Purina One range, Purina leveraged the Woolworths Pet Event to reach pet care customers with a larger scale campaign and solution that increased sales and delivered more customers for the brand.

In collaboration with Woolworths and Cartology, the campaign was an incredible success recording 14,000 new-to-brand customers. In addition, Purina’s existing customer base recorded a 30 per cent repurchase rate and increase in basket spend with year on year customer loyalty growth of +2 per cent.

Ryan Hollis, Senior Customer Business Manager - Woolworths from Nestle Purina Petcare, said: “The Puria ONE campaign delivered some of the strongest financial and executional results we’ve seen on this brand, which is phenomenal. Planning was key and workshopping the Cartology suite of tools enabled a strong activation, focussed on the shopper. We were able to deliver a truly 360 omnichannel strategy via a clear call to action, targeted to all touchpoints, both above and below the line.”

It is campaign successes such as Purina’s that are contributing to the growth and adoption of retail media, fuelled by the customer.

So what next and how does retail media meet marketer priorities? 

Retail media is uniquely placed to meet marketer priorities and is proven to grow new customers for brands, is completely measurable due to its depth of first party insight and provides a trusted, brand-safe environment. 
To know more about solving the customer growth puzzle, check out Cartology’s This is Retail Media playbook here.