How to Win at Category Reviews
Once again, it’s that magical time of year — Category Review season, when retailers open the door for manufacturers to plead their cases for expanded shelf space, pitch new products, and conduct line reviews in order to set goals, expectations, and strategic plans for the coming year.
This process lies at the heart of the CPG retail business. It’s when the performance of products and brands are scrutinized — what is and is not performing across various categories, what new products can expand categories, and what products can maintain continued category growth.
Data Rich Insights Drive Growth
In the increasingly data-driven business environment of retail sales, buyers want to know that their suppliers are in step with the times, and not only understand how important data is, but how important it is to be able to speak around their data — to tell the strongest stories of their brands and products.
For CPG brands, this is perhaps the key meeting to dazzle retail buyers. This is your time to showcase how your products will drive incremental category growth through data-rich insights. Retail buyers want to see the benefits of adding your products to their category.
At Bedrock, our team has been through their fair share of category reviews, and have developed a playbook in approaching buyers with the information they need, presented in a format that makes the most sense to them — data that not only tells product and brand stories, but that also displays a knowledge of categories, and what it takes to drive growth at that level.
Bedrock’s CPG Category Review Guide
For CPGs of all sizes vying for valuable shelf space, we recommend a pitch strategy driven by a combination of the following metrics…
Period Comparison
How are your products performing in specific channels (food, natural, convenience, MULO, etc.) over time?
Product Comparison
What are your brand’s total sales versus those of competitors, specifically showcasing the growth of your categories?
Market Comparison
How is your brand performing in the retailer’s region(s)?
Product Multi-Metric Comparison
How can you showcase your best performing products versus competitive products, with velocity and ACV?
Category Drivers
Can you show how your products are driving category growth, using waterfall, weekly comparison, and product comparison visualizations?
Weekly Promotion Review
Can you track and compare your products’ incremental sales value across promotional events, per retailer, over time?
Product Opportunity Gap
Can you highlight how your brand’s items would outperform competitive SKUs with distribution increases?
At Bedrock, we specialize in transforming raw product, brand and category sales information into rich, informative sales presentations that help drive growth on retail shelves for our customers.
