The Two Most Important Metrics in Marketing?

Every product gets one shot at trial. But if they don’t come back? You’re done! TNR, or Trial and Repeat, might be the two most underrated metrics in marketing. Here’s why they matter more than ever.

1970s Life Cereal.  “Hey Mikey, he won’t eat it, he hates everything.  He likes it!”  A classic commercial.  A classic lesson though:  trial matters, repeat is far more important.  You might get anyone to buy your product or service once but will they return?  If they don’t return, your product or service may be done.  We argue that Trial and Repeat (aka TNR) rates are the most important metrics in marketing - even in a digital age, not just Mikey’s.

Let us first define trial and repeat (recognizing that we can alter these calculations across any of the marketing data cube dimensions we have previously discussed, such as, geography, time, product, etc.), as follows:

Trial Rate (%) = [Number of 1st time triers in period t] / [Total Population] * 100

Repeat Rate (%) = [Number of 1st time triers in period t who bought again] / [Number of 1st time triers in period t] * 100

Thus, let’s say we have a universe of 1,000 people and 200 of those have tried our product (or service) and of those 200 who have initially tried, 20 have come back in the defined period and come back and tried it again.  Thus, we would have a trial rate of 20% [(200/1000)*100] and a repeat rate of 10% [(20/200)*100].

What good is it knowing trial and repeat rates?  A lot.  You can leverage these metrics for a host of actions, such as:  

• Determine how well a marketing campaign is performing

• Understand how well the product(s) is meeting consumer’s need

• Geographies which require more marketing investment

• Which product variants can have long term success

Along with many others. 

However, before we go further, know that Trial is the responsibility of marketing and sales to promote the product or service.  Repeat is the responsibility of product development and delivering on the promise of the product or service.  Thus, these two metrics bring together multiple aspects of a company’s operations.

The best applications with trial and repeat is when you develop a history and/or are able to profile different products or geographies against these metrics in a plot, as described below the table.  Knowing where you sit against this plot leads to the following indications:

High Repeat Rate, Low Trial Rate You have marketing issues! These products may survive but suffer from low awareness.	High Repeat Rate, High Trial Rate Keep up the good work!
Low Repeat Rate, Low Trial Rate You have both marketing and product quality issues! These products will be off the market quickly.	Low Repeat Rate, High Trial Rate You have product quality issues! These products will be off the market despite good marketing.

No one product or service can get to 100% trial - this is simply not practical.  However, a product or service should strive to get to the highest possible repeat rate as possible.  This is important to keep in mind.  For example, Metamucil from P&G is targeted as a fiber additive for the elderly.  Metamucil may only have a 10% trial rate but the fact it has a 90% repeat rate implies it is a viable product long-term.  Whereas, a local craft beer company which has developed an apple cinnamon IPA that has a 75% trial rate yet a 5% repeat rate implies this product will not make it long-term, given the low repeat rate.

Trial and Repeat need not be limited to physical products.  For example, we helped a global legal research firm diagnose the health of its entire website by using web data by user ID to determine how often its subscriber base clicked on a feature and returned to that same feature within a 90-day period.  Essentially we mapped 100+ features of its website on trial and repeat metrics, eventually allowing for fact-based decisions to remove features not needed in order to “declutter” its overall website appearance and promote those features to individuals not aware of the most popular features they were not yet using.

TNR generates two simple metrics but yet they can tell a lot about the vibrancy of your operations.  Embed them in your operations, use them to understand the success of your campaigns, the success of your products and future decisions to make.

If you are interested in determining how best to calculate trial and repeat and leverage these metrics for your organization for competitive advantage, TAP Analytics can help you get there.  TAP Analytics has a heritage of assisting its clients in applying marketing metrics to improve an organization’s health and vibrancy.  If you’d like to learn how we may be able to help your organization, get in touch with us as hello@thetapconsultancy.com.