U.S. food and beverage CPG products have seen average sales increase of 6.3% over past two years due to social marketing, study says

Nevin Barich

BOSTON , April 3, 2012 (press release) – BzzAgent, the social marketing arm of dunnhumby, and SymphonyIRI Group, Inc. today announced social marketing, when used to build widespread consumer advocacy, generates an average sales lift of 6.7% for CPG brands. Companies in the analysis used BzzAgent’s social marketing practices to build consumer advocacy and SymphonyIRI’s Matched Market Analysis to measure the sales attributed to these programs.

The study is based on 11 social marketing programs conducted between 2010 and 2012 for a variety of food, beverage and personal care products sold nationally at grocery, drug and mass retailers in the United States. Although results varied by product category, food and beverage products saw an average sales lift at 6.3%, while sales for personal care products jumped an average of 7.2%.

“Consumer advocacy in social media can make a significant business impact for all types of CPG products,” said Dave Balter, founder and CEO of BzzAgent. “Now with proven measurement practices like Matched Market Analysis, brand marketers can confidently invest in social marketing”

Unlike most social marketing measurement practices using Facebook “likes” and qualitative “engagement” assessments to determine success, SymphonyIRI’s Matched Market Analysis evaluates store-level transactions to determine sales impact. When applied to social media marketing programs like BzzAgent, marketers can see the effect of these programs, which leverage the same proven measurement method(s) used with all other types of media .

“Accurate media measurement data is critical for marketing success,” Srishti Gupta, executive vice president, New Media Solutions, SymphonyIRI. “This type of sales analysis in social media isn’t possible without the use of proven and trusted measurement practices like Matched Market Analysis as well as extremely robust point-of-sale data.”

About BzzAgent
BzzAgent, the social marketing arm of dunnhumby, activates influential customers to drive sales for the world's largest brands. With insights from over 400 million shoppers around the world, BzzAgent provides marketers precise targeting and a powerful engagement platform to turn loyal customers into advocates. Proven measurement practices provide detailed analysis of key retail metrics, incremental sales and ROI. BzzAgent has been a leader in word of mouth marketing since 2001, running thousands of programs for global companies including Unilever, Wrigley, L'Oreal, and Green Mountain Coffee. For more information visit: http://about.bzzagent.com

About SymphonyIRI Group, Inc.
SymphonyIRI Group, formerly named Information Resources, Inc. (“IRI”), is the global leader in innovative solutions and services for driving revenue and profit growth in CPG, retail and healthcare companies. SymphonyIRI offers two families of solutions: Core IRI solutions for market measurement and Symphony Advantage solutions for enabling new growth opportunities in marketing, sales, shopper marketing and category management. SymphonyIRI solutions uniquely combine content, analytics and technology to deliver maximum impact. SymphonyIRI helps companies create, plan and execute forward-looking, shopper-centric strategies across every level of the organization. For more information, visit: http://www.SymphonyIRI.com.

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