You know, after working with dozens of brands over the years, there's one question that keeps popping up: “What KPIs should I be tracking?”
It's the key question to lay the right foundations for any brand, big or small. And I get it – navigating the sea of data and metrics can feel like a daunting task.
Today, I'm pulling back the curtain and sharing the top 10 Category KPIs that every brand should have in their toolbox.
These are the metrics that I've seen make a real difference in understanding performance, driving growth, and staying ahead of the competition.
1. Category Growth Rate
Understanding how your brand is performing always starts with understanding how your category is performing. This is crucial for brands to stay competitive.
While tracking the percentage change in value or volume sales is important, on its own it doesn’t mean much. That’s why it's equally vital to compare this growth or decline with the overall market or similar categories. This helps you gauge the category performance in the context of the wider market.
2. Brand Market Share (and movement)
It's crucial to track your market share in both value and volume to fully understand your brand's performance compared to its peers.
Monitoring share movement over different time periods (such as 52 weeks, 12 weeks, and 4 weeks) provides a quick and easy way to see how your brand is competing against rivals and whether your tactics are impacting performance effectively.
3. Share of Distribution (and movement)
TDP, or Total Distribution Points, is a key metric used to assess brand availability across measurable retailers.
Tracking both your share of TDP and its movement over time provides insights into your brand's presence in the market and helps identify opportunities to expand distribution channels and reach more shoppers.
4. Shopper Penetration
Shopper Penetration measures the percentage of households or individuals that purchase your brand over a defined period of time (most commonly 52 weeks).
This metric provides an idea of the reach and appeal of your brand among consumers. Tracking shopper penetration helps assess your brand's performance in attracting new shoppers and retaining existing ones.
Analysing trends in shopper penetration allows you to adapt your strategy to better align with changing consumer needs.
5. Brand Loyalty
There are a few ways to measure brand loyalty but I recommend Share of Wallet (SOW). Share of Wallet shows the percentage of a customer's spending within a category that goes to your brand. This demonstrates their loyalty and preference for your brand over competitors. This metric can also be used to influence retailers in their ranging decisions - it’s important to list the brands with the highest levels of loyalty!
6. Price Index
A Price Index measures the competitiveness of your brand's pricing compared to its competitors. This metric is calculated by comparing the average price of your brand's products to the average price of the category (Average Price Index) or to similar products offered by competitors (Competitor Price Index).
A Price Index value greater than 100 means that your brand's products are priced higher than the category average, while a value below 100 suggests that your brand's products are priced lower.
Monitoring the Price Index helps assess how effective your pricing strategy is in attracting consumers and maintaining competitiveness in the market.
Remember to consider whether to measure this using Average Unit Price (AUP) or Average Volume Price (Price per KG or L), based on how shoppers perceive price in your category.
7. Volume on Deal
Volume on Deal measures the percentage of total unit sales or volume sales (KG or L) that occurred during a promotion.
This measure can be a good indicator of the levels of promotion for a brand, especially if compared to other brands or to previous years. It’s also worth looking at changes in the depth of deal and volume on feature space for a fuller picture of promotional activity.
These metrics give you a view of promotional impact on long-term performance, but individual promotions should also be measured to understand if they were successful.
8. SKU Rate of Sale Ranking
It’s important to assess the performance of individual products or SKUs (stock keeping units) within your key retailers. A SKU Ranking should be based on the rate of sale (e.g. units per store per week) of each product, but you might want to add some other measures in there depending on what’s important to the retailer.
Understanding these rankings helps you optimise your range by identifying distribution opportunities, flagging any problem lines and highlighting any competitor SKUs to keep an eye on.
A helpful short-hand is understanding where you sit in the quartile ranking for your range. Those in the bottom quartile could be at risk at the next range review, unless you have some other information to help justify your place on shelf.
9. Share of Voice / Media Spend
Share of Voice (SOV) measures the proportion of advertising or media spend allocated to your brand compared to competitors within your category. This metric provides insights into your brand's visibility and presence in the media landscape.
By tracking Share of Voice, brands can identify opportunities to increase brand visibility, and allocate media budgets effectively to enhance brand awareness and market share.
10. Channel over / under index
In recent years, we’ve seen channels like eCommerce and discount stores gaining momentum. That's why understanding how your brand is doing across all these different channels is key. The Channel Over/Under Index calculates whether your share within each channel is above or below your share of the Total Market.
You can use this to highlight which channels need a bit more focus and tweak your strategy to make sure you’re keeping up with your biggest competitors.
There you have it - 10 KPIs your brand should be tracking. Let me know which ones you’re all over and if you’ll be adding any new metrics to your reports.
Have I missed anything? Let me know, and as always; if there’s anything we can help you with - just reach out!
Trying to upskill your team in all things Cat Man?
Check out our training courses or get in touch for a chat about how we can help.
Comments