Three Ways CPG Companies Can Unlock New Sales Opportunities with Explorium External Data Cloud

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies are in the midst of a digital transformation. With pressure from inflation, disruptions to supply chains, and increased competition around the globe, CPG companies must find new ways to grow revenue. In parallel, companies must maximize existing B2B channels with retailers, independent grocery stores, convenience stores, and small corner or mom-and-pop shops. Furthermore, they must implement new direct-to-consumer (DTC) channels to keep pace with changing post-pandemic consumer behaviors, preferences, and loyalties.

CPG companies that use machine learning (ML) models to make predictions for things like demand forecasts, customer segmentations, and purchase propensity will likely find that pre-pandemic ML models are no longer relevant. This is because ML models rely heavily on years of historical data, as noted in this McKinsey & Company article. As the article states, “COVID-19 is profoundly shifting consumer behavior—and these changes are reflected in the data feeding many analytical models, causing some to go awry.”

Going forward, CPG companies must use data and robust analytics capabilities to drive much of their digital transformation. Augmenting internal, historical information with external data is one of the best ways to transform processes and make better data-driven decisions. The Explorium External Data Cloud can help you do just that. Developed on AWS by Explorium, an AWS Partner, this automated data platform lets you access data from dozens of sources with thousands of signals and columns to enrich your existing data. This can be especially powerful for CPG companies that want to expand their retail footprint and increase revenue.

This post will cover three ways that CPG companies can enrich internal information with external data to drive growth.

1. Improve ML-based lead scoring models with external data

A leading AWS CPG customer wanted to grow distribution by adding new convenience stores to its roster of retail partners and re-engaging with former and inactive retailers. The company wanted to improve its lead scoring models with current market data to help drive decisions regarding which convenience stores could provide the most profitable engagement. By using the Explorium External Data Cloud, the company enriched its internal convenience store data with indicators such as:

• • Business ratings and reviews
  • Business visitor information
  • Website and consumer reviews
  • Geospatial and location data, such as population by zip code and nearby competitors or vacancies
  • Points of interest

This external data added context and increased the accuracy of the CPG company’s lead scoring models. In turn, this led to a 43% growth in conversions of net-new business and a 20% gain in existing/former customer accounts.

When CPG companies provide their sales teams with the right data and tools to better target accounts, you can accelerate the sales process, increase revenue, and build better relationships with retail customers.

2. Look for professional channels to carry your products

Consider a gym that sells sporting goods and wellness products; a dentist that carries oral care products; or a healthcare clinic that sells blood sugar self-test devices for diabetics. Typically, companies like these are small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), and CPG sales teams are challenged by the time consuming process of identifying and prioritizing SMBs. That’s because “there are more than 30 million Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMB) of fewer than 500 employees in the U.S., representing 99.9% of total business community,” according to this Deloitte report. Moreover, most SMBs are private, and thus data about them exists but is very fragmented.

However, by using the Explorium External Data Cloud, you can search for SMBs by industry, business type, geography, and more to create customized lead generation lists of potential professional SMBs that might be good targets for carrying your products. Explorium’s enrichment capabilities can help you refine your target lists even further.

3. Optimize marketing and advertising spend

As consumers increasingly shift to online shopping, CPG companies must refine their segmentation and provide a different experience to each segment. By augmenting internal data with external, third-party data using the Explorium External Data Cloud, you can add another segmentation layer with basic information, such as age and gender, as well as more detailed parameters, such as individual spending behaviors, household income, and higher education status. Additional signals, like an early adopter indication, can help reveal whether or not a consumer uses modern payment technologies which might make them a better target customer for a new digital experience that your company is considering. These indicators can help you better understand your target consumers, tailor appropriate offers to different segments, and identify your ideal consumers more quickly. Therefore, you can optimize your advertising strategy and increase the return on ad spend (ROAS).

AWS CPG customer GlassesUSA.com uses Explorium External Data Cloud to build custom audiences in Facebook, and the company increased its ROAS on Facebook Dynamic Ads by 10%. The ML-based predictive models that the company created on the Explorium platform helped identify new signals that increased its campaign efficiencies.

Each of these examples showed how external data from the Explorium External Data Cloud can help CPG companies enhance internal data with new insights from third-party information to drive better business decisions, unlock new opportunities, and enhance sales and marketing activities.

Contact Explorium today to schedule a demo, sign up for a 14-day free trial, and discover how the External Data Cloud can help your CPG company uncover new avenues of growth, keep pace with evolving consumer demands, and gain a competitive advantage.

And as always, AWS is here to help you gain insights from your data. Contact your AWS account team to get started.

AWS Partner Spotlight

Explorium provides an External Data Platform that automatically discovers thousands of relevant data signals and uses them to improve analytics and ML. The automated Explorium Platform enables organizations to discover and use third-party data to improve predictions and ML-model performance. Faster, better insights mean that retail and CPG brands can increase revenue, streamline operations, and reduce risks.