Marketing & Media
Harness Marketing Efficency With Next Gen AI Insights
Accelerate your marketing and media campaigns by harnessing Outra's cutting-edge data science, machine learning and AI solutions. With access to audience segmentation expansion from millions of UK consumers, Outra equips you with precise consumer targeting to deliver high-ROI campaigns.
Let Outra turn your data into a competitive advantage through the power of AI
Supercharge your marketing campaigns with Outra’s predictive AI data insights which enables brands to dissect audiences, expand new growth markets, fine-tune messaging and scale your reach, all while maintaining high levels of compliance and data security.
Predicitve Consumer Behaviour
Identify households on the verge of making life changes requiring significant expenditure. Launch perfectly timed campaigns and products that resonate with your customer base at the right moment in their life cycle with predictive AI.
High Intent Consumers
Find consumers who have recently relocated or about to relocate and take advantage of an untapped opportunity for targeted campaigns. From home entertainment subscription services to home furnishings, address a wide array of consumer needs through focused advertising.
Media Spend Efficiency
Determine which segments of your audience are most likely to interact with specific advertisements, subscribe to services, or buy particular products. Leverage this AI to intelligently allocate your marketing budget across multiple-channels.
Maximise Sales Efficiency
Take your customer database to the next level with Outra's Lead Enrichment API. Infuse your database with detailed household data attributes to help identify high intent customers, uniquely interested in your products and services.
Insights
A 360 exploration of your customers, empowering brands to dissect audiences across regions and verticals. Leverage visualisations to transform insights into strategies for engaging high-intent customers.
Audiences
Pre-built audiences tailored to your product and services, or create custom AI-built segments based on household, socio-demographic, and lifestyle data for high-impact campaigns.
Enrichment
Connect our proprietary data with your existing customer data to gain precise, actionable insights into your current and future customers to generate leads that outperform industry standards.
Activation
Engage high-intent audiences by delivering personalised messaging and creative content at the right time across their customer lifecycle, from acquisition to retention, using a multi-channel approach.
AI-Powered Precision for Marketing Impact
ROI Amplification
Outra's next gen AI approach significantly boosts your campaign ROI by minimising ad spend waste and honing in on high-impact channels and audience segments.
Audience Segmentation
Dissect complex user behaviour, providing actionable insights that enable highly targeted and effective campaigns, optimising your media spends and minimising wastage.
High Growth Audiences
Unlock the true profile of your current audience while finding new untapped high growth audiences that would be interested in your services or products.
Precision Marketing Mastery
Personalise your marketing initiatives by better understanding household habits, thereby improving campaign performance and increasing customer retention.
Minimise Budget Wastage
Achieve unparalleled ad spend efficiency by precisely identifying high-conversion segments, thus minimising budget wastage and maximising ROI.
Elevated Campaign Success
Capitalise on high engagement opportunities during major life transitions, allowing for perfectly timed campaigns that significantly enhance customer acquisition.
Harness Household Behaviour
Gain a home-mover advantage by understanding behaviour and life-stage transitions, allowing you to deploy high-impact campaigns with surgical precision.
News & Insights
New Removal Company Partners for Q4 2024
In a dynamic home mover market new removal company partners are using Outra’s On Market Prospecting product with 99% market coverage and dynamic data insights so they can target home movers before, during, and after their move to generate leads and grow their business.
Transforming Lead Generation for Removal Companies
We're thrilled to announce our latest removal company partnerships for Q4 to finish a strong 2024.
These forward thinking removal businesses are joining forces with us to harness the power of On Market Prospecting, revolutionising how they connect with home movers through the power of local market insights and high intent leads.
- 1st Choice Removals
- Northstar Removals
- CM Removals
- Shirleys Removals
- MGR Removals
- More Than Removals
- UK Atlantis Removals
- Pack and Stack Removals
- Managed Mayhem Removals
- Riviera Removals
Stay Ahead with Hyper Targeted Home Mover Leads
Running a successful removal business is all about timing and precision with marketing campaigns.
With Outra's On Market Prospecting, our new partners gain local market insights and localised leads allowing them to;
- Target Home Mover Events - Connect with households across the entire home mover journey through key events such as "for sale" and “SSTC” timings.
- Engage With Households - Ensure no lead opportunity is missed before, during, and after the home move with effective direct mail communication.
- Identify High Intent Leads - Even before properties are listed in their local markets.
By leveraging Outra's 99% market coverage and live market data, these removal companies are perfectly positioned to generate high impact leads throughout the entire home mover journey to ensure they stay ahead of the competition by capturing the right leads at the right time.
Why Removal Companies Choose Outra
Our On Market Prospecting product isn’t just about lead generation, it’s about empowering removal companies to optimise their marketing efforts and better serve their customers through the power of data.
Here’s what makes our lead generation solution stand out.
- Full Account Management -Our experienced team provides full support to help refine strategies and results.
- Local Insights - Plan for seasonal demand so you can maximise operations and marketing for peak periods.
- Direct Mail Campaigns - Target homeowners at the right moment with effective communication.
- Fulfilment Services - We take care of everything including design, print, and distribution.
With Outra, removal businesses gain a strategic advantage through the power of data by tailoring their services to meet the unique needs of their ideal home mover customers based on the number of rooms to maximise packing, storage, or transport solutions.
Ready to Transform Your Removal Business?
Imagine being able to reach potential clients before they list their home, as they declutter, renovate, or search for storage solutions with dynamic local market insights.
Outra’s On Market Prospecting has already supported numerous removal businesses to transform their performance through the power of data by providing a crucial edge in connecting them with home movers at every stage of the mover journey.
New Real Estate Agent Partners for Q3 2024
Outra welcomes new real estate agent partners this quarter, joining us to harness the power of our Pre Mover product and reach home movers nationwide
Powering Targeted Lead Generation with Pre Mover
We're happy to announce our new real estate agent partnerships this quarter as more top real estate agents across the country join forces with us to leverage our Pre Mover product with the following joining our community;
- Newton Huxley
- Nest Seekers International
- Andrea & Co
- Property Foundations Group
- Clive Gregory at EXP UK
- Xchange Properties
- Home4 Estate Agents
- Wayne & Silver
- Ellis Winters
Pre Mover is helping agents stay ahead in a competitive market by giving them access to the latest data science backed leads and insights, enabling them to connect with home movers at the perfect moment in their moving journey.
Why Agents Are Choosing Pre Mover
The real estate landscape is rapidly evolving, and agents need more than just traditional marketing strategies to stay competitive. Our Pre Mover product has been specially designed to harness the latest in predictive analytics and home mover data, giving real estate agents an advantage by identifying leads at the earliest stages of the home moving journey.
Here’s why our new signings are excited to integrate Pre Mover into their lead generation strategy.
- Dynamic Market Insights - Agents gain real-time insights into home movers in their area, backed by our robust data science capabilities. This means they’re not just reaching out to every house, they’re targeting households with unmatched accuracy.
- Customisable Targeting - Pre Mover allows agents to focus on areas and households that align with specific property types, whether it’s attracting first-time buyers, down sizers, or families upgrading to larger homes. With customisable targeting, agents can spend more time on quality leads.
- Enhanced Customer Connections - Understanding a potential client’s stage in the home mover journey is invaluable for creating meaningful connections. Agents can craft timely, relevant messaging that resonates with home movers when they’re most likely to take action.
- Fulfilment Services - We take care of everything from design, print and distribution so you can spend more time converting targeted home mover leads.
Building on Success With Real World Results
Our Pre Mover product has already empowered numerous agents to transform their lead generation results. Through this innovative approach, they’ve been able to grow their client base by focusing their efforts precisely where they’re needed.
Delivering the best in targeted real estate lead generation
As we continue to grow, our commitment to innovation and supporting real estate agents remains strong.
We’re constantly enhancing our Pre Mover product to include more granular home mover insights, AI powered predictions, and seamless integrations with agents’ existing workflows to keep them at the forefront of lead generation technology.
How HUX’s ROAS reached new heights with Outra’s lookalike targeting
HUX Health, an e-commerce supplements brand, partnered with Outra to enhance its marketing efficiency using precision lookalike targeting. In just three months, HUX saw a 146% increase in ROAS), a 60% decrease in CPA, and a 32% increase in purchase volume. Outra’s unique data-driven approach enabled HUX to target the right customers more effectively, significantly improving their marketing performance despite geo-targeting restrictions on Meta and Google.
Launched in 2022, HUX creates the best tasting health supplements using expertly blended and scientifically proven ingredients. HUX is an aspirational brand marketing predominantly on Meta and Google.
The challenge:
In the first eighteen months HUX was averaging a return on ad spend (ROAS) of below 1 and a cost per acquisition (CPA) of £55. To really thrive the way HUX users thrive, the founders had to improve these metrics. But at the same time Meta and Google were introducing more restrictions on geo targeting making it harder to manage ad spend. As experienced entrepreneurs, the HUX team knew they had to be innovative and take a different approach to get ahead of the competition.
Outra has a unique data set that allows for precision targeting of customers. It feels like an unfair advantage
- Damien Byrne, EVP, HUX
The solution:
Outra approach targeting from a unique angle. Our machine learning goes far beyond how Google Analytics uses data like age and location. Rather than analyse individual personal data, our algorithms analyse a host of household data like financial status and lifestyle preferences. Outra AI dives deep into the interactions of 2600 data points for every household in the UK which enables us to predict their behaviour and generate a product specific score for over 30 million UK residential addresses. The house someone lives in tells us a great deal about their lifestyle aspirations.
In this way we create lookalike profiles that are GDPR compliant. They also circumvent the Meta and Google restrictions so we can create target postcode districts and long-lat disks with a high density of prospects.
Creating a lookalike profile for HUX
The first stage in creating a lookalike profile for HUX was to ingest all the household data about their existing clients. Then we trained our machine learning model to give each household a HUX score and create the lookalike profile of the top scoring households.
Before working with Outra, the HUX team thought their target market was mainly hipsters in their twenties. But when we crunched the data it turned out most of their customers were slightly older, more affluent and better educated. Their customers tended to be a lot more interested in the ingredients and the science of the products, rather than just the look and feel of the brand.
Giving HUX cost effective UK wide reach
Using Outra’s data, the HUX team were able to target lookalike households all over the UK and spot patterns in their locations. For instance the Outra model even revealed that many of the customers lived near parks, perhaps because more affluent people live near open spaces and also have the opportunity to exercise more often.
The results:
After three months using Outra data, HUX achieved:
- 32% increase in Purchase volume
- 47% reduction in spend
- 60% decrease in Cost Per Acquisition
- 146% increase in Return On Ad Spend
The Benefits:
One of the big benefits of the Outra data was that HUX could use it across all of its marketing channels. There is no division between what works best for PPC and what works best for paid social.
Outra unified the channel audiences and ensured they were consistent
- Damien Byrne, EVP, HUX
We also worked closely with the HUX activation team enabling competitor analysis and AB testing on messaging. This resulted in HUX narrowing down activity to five high performing ads. They were also able to refine customer flows through the funnel and steadily upsell to increase the average order value.
Outra works with many different types of clients and our data scientists create a lookalike profile, or customer centric propensity model for each one. For startups the aim is to enable the acquisition of customers with speed and efficiency often against very tight metrics. For larger established companies, the aim may be to identify and buy media with higher attribution rates. We are comfortable working with all the marketing stakeholders, including our clients’ tech and data departments, people and existing activation agencies.
Often a client will ask their agency to use our data. The agency can be reluctant, but once they see the results, they want to white label it so they can offer it to their other customers.
- Lucinda Edwards, Head of Growth, Outra
Heylo slashes cost of leads for shared ownership with Outra's Propensity to Buy audience targeting
Heylo, a leading shared ownership provider, partnered with Outra to implement their Propensity to Buy audience targeting. This integration drastically reduced Heylo's cost per lead from £15 to £3, increased applications by 129%, and boosted high-quality leads by 43%. Outra's data-driven approach allowed for precise targeting on Meta and Google, overcoming recent geo-targeting restrictions and optimising marketing efficiency.
Established in 2014, <span style="color: #00C79F; font-weight: bold;">heylo's</span> Shared Ownership solutions bring owning a home within reach for millions of previously excluded buyers. <span style="color: #00C79F; font-weight: bold;">heylo</span> has become one of the UK’s leading shared ownership providers, and works in partnership with national, regional and local housebuilders, and wider stakeholders to deliver affordable homes. <span style="color: #00C79F; font-weight: bold;">heylo</span> operates under two brand names:
With interest rates currently so high, there is a growing demand for affordable homes. But as <span style="color: #00C79F; font-weight: bold;">heylo's</span> Marketing Director Dan Jones points out, in property the margins are always tight:
We have a small marketing budget, so we have to make it work effectively
- Dan Jones, Marketing Director, heylo
The Challenge: targeting effectively on Meta and Google
<span style="color: #00C79F; font-weight: bold;">heylo</span> predominantly markets on Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Google (PPC). Ideally they want to target people who live close to the specific property and would be interested in shared ownership. But this has become a lot harder due to recent restrictions on geo targeting.
The Meta targeting restrictions have made the cost per lead rise significantly
<span style="color: #00C79F; font-weight: bold;">heylo's</span> ethos is to make owning a home affordable to previously excluded buyers, and would never discriminate. But as Dan Jones says <span style="color: #233DFF; font-weight: bold;">“pounds aren’t being spent where they should be spent”</span> and digital marketing agencies don’t have solutions to overcome these restrictions.
The solution: Outra’s Propensity to Buy, fine tuned for shared ownership.
Outra are the only people in the UK that have this property data, and are able to activate it so effectively
Last year <span style="color: #00C79F; font-weight: bold;">heylo</span> started using Outra’s Propensity to Buy solution and the results were startling. For instance in the four months previous to using Outra, the average cost per application to Your Home was £15. Less than two months after integrating Outra data into their digital acquisition marketing, that average was down to £4.
That is a 74% drop in the cost per application. Overall Your Home saw a 129% increase in applications and a 43% increase in high quality leads. Outra were able to do this by positioning Meta’s 17km disks precisely over high intent areas for shared ownership.
Since we started using the Outra UK wide informed radii placements, we have seen a record level of applications at an all-time low cost.
Outra’s Propensity to Buy models
Outra’s Propensity to Buy solution analyses and scores every household within a set radius of the property being marketed. This means <span style="color: #00C79F; font-weight: bold;">Heylo</span> can create GDPR compliant custom audiences that remove the restrictions of the Meta disk altogether.
There are three core components to the score:
- Product fit - a set of machine learning models that predict how likely each household is to be interested in a specific bedroom count, property type and property style.
- Readiness to move - a model that considers how long people have lived in their current house and life events that would trigger a house move.
- Affordability - This model takes account of the household income and equity to calculate if they can afford the property.
The scoring models are built with "Privacy by Design", and are based on household-level data rather than personal data. In other words Outra target households rather than individuals and is therefore GDPR compliant.
As Carolin Sievers, Lead Data Scientist at Outra says, there's a load of data going into the models. <span style="color: #233DFF; font-weight: bold;">“We use almost 200 features from our datasets to inform the model. For instance the current attributes of the property they live in, how long they've lived there for, their demographic data and lifestyle choices.”</span>
Outra’s ability to focus on people interested in shared ownership
The key differentiator for <span style="color: #00C79F; font-weight: bold;">Heylo</span> is that Outra has fine-tuned their model specifically to identify people that fit the profile of someone that would be interested in shared ownership.
The benefits: Scaleable and focused programmatic marketing
A big part of Dan Jones’ job is getting the right recipe for <span style="color: #00C79F; font-weight: bold;">Heylo's</span> digital acquisition marketing. Being able to live-ramp Outra data into their Meta and Google channels with custom segments that can go down to postcode level, enables them to target clusters of high intent customers. Dan can also use broader keywords cost effectively because he has been able to zone into locations using 1km disks rather than Meta’s 17km disks.
The fact that Outra’s data models are proprietary means they can be optimised for each client’s needs. They score each household so even specific letterboxes can be targeted for direct mail campaigns.
I love working with a partner who really is on the same page and knows what my priorities are
How Pre Mover Transformed UPSTIX iBuyer Acquisition Strategy
Upstix Case Study for Pre Mover: “Moving house is such a fundamental trigger point for so many suppliers. Pre Mover gives us an edge that others don’t have”
“Moving house is such a fundamental trigger point for so many suppliers. Pre Mover gives us an edge that others don’t have”
Upstix, a leading house iBuyer in the UK, provides people with a new way to sell their home. But as a disruptive start-up, the biggest challenge for COO Frederick Jones is identifying and marketing to people who are actively planning to sell their house.
Using the Pre Mover AI tool from Outra enables Upstix to not only target who is about to put their house on the market, but also to focus on the segment of those most likely to use an iBuyer.
The challenge: Identifying and engaging people actively planning to sell their houses
The most valuable consumer group in the UK are home-movers. They spend more before, during and after their move than any other consumer segment.
For Upstix to survive in a very competitive market, Frederick has to be able to maximise the return on his marketing investment by successfully targeting people who are actively planning to sell their house. “My challenge is to originate actionable leads in a very cost-effective way. We just can’t afford to spray and pray.”
On average homeowners spend £13,000 within a year of moving on expenses like renovations, furniture and electronics.
The solution: Pre Mover has a proven 1 in 4 success rate of identifying people selling their house in the next 6 months.
Precise Segmentation
Outra have trained Pre Mover to not only identify the people in the UK planning to sell their house, but also to focus on the people most likely to use an iBuyer. Pre Mover uses 2,300 data points and 130 signals to identify people who are looking for a quick sale, potentially due to probate or financial distress, and that have the type of property Upstix can sell on quickly. “Pre Mover gives us the base level of home-movers, and then we can apply various other layers on top of that around individuals in the household and the type of property, so we're able to precisely segment the type of person and specific location of houses on streets.”
No matter what segment of the home-movers your company targets, Pre Mover can be configured to find them.
Continual optimisation
A key part of the partnership between Outra and Upstix is the continual optimisation of the tool. “We do a 360 degree refresh every three months and we evaluate the success of every campaign to improve the machine learning. This segmentation analysis feeds into where we target our social media and direct mail spend, and the look-alike audience for email campaigns. It is an iterative process so we can constantly improve and retarget our marketing with Pre Mover.”
Machine learning within Pre Mover means that the longer it focuses on a segment, the more precise it gets, and so results continually improve.
Sales and marketing integration
Frederick also sees the benefits along the whole sales funnel. “It’s not just about targeting people initially, but also about how they go through sales and actually become clients. The whole sales funnel is continually fine tuned from top to bottom.”
90% of Upstix’s leads come from targeted advertising. This means that Frederick’s team isn't waiting for people to find them by chance as they search online. Upstix are proactively approaching the right people at the right time. What is more, the successful conversion rate on these leads is 12% which is four times the industry average.
“When leads come in, our sales team is spending time speaking to people who understand our service, and are in a position to sell. So we are having much more impactful conversations”.
The benefits: Evidence that your marketing is delivering return on investment
“A lot of companies promise better data analytics and more leads, but most don’t deliver”
Real estate DNA
A big factor that gives Frederick confidence in Pre Mover is that real estate is in Outra’s DNA. Outra’s founders have decades of real estate experience and a deep understanding of what data is meaningful and informative.
Fail-safe accuracy
The other big reason why Frederick believes in Pre Mover, is that there is a fail-safe way to check its accuracy. “If Pre Mover predicts a house move, say 98 Elscott Road, we can check on The Land Registry six months later, and see if that property actually has changed ownership”. This gives us a definitive score-card for Pre Mover, and a sure-fire way of optimising checking its accuracy.”
“To see the success of the model makes me feel really confident. It gives us an edge, and makes me believe the business will be a success”
The Art of Targeted Advertising with Home Mover AI
Maximise ROI with Home Mover AI's Precision Timing in Advertising
In the intricate dance of advertising, timing is not just a factor—it's the central stage. Home Mover AI has revolutionised this aspect, bringing an unprecedented level of precision to targeted advertising. By tapping into the predictive power of Home Mover data, advertisers can now reach potential customers exactly when they are most likely to make key decisions; significantly boosting the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
Section 1: Applying Home Mover Insights Across Industries to Reinvent Marketing ROI
Elevating Marketing Strategies with Predictive Accuracy
The Home Mover product from Outra, with its advanced AI and predictive analytics, offers an innovative approach to enhancing marketing ROI. By accurately predicting when individuals are planning to move homes, this tool enables advertisers across various industries to time their campaigns to this critical decision-making phase. This precise targeting ensures that marketing messages are not just relevant, but also delivered at the most opportune moment.
Real-World Impact Across Diverse Sectors
For instance, a furniture retailer can utilise Home Mover data to identify prospective customers who are in the process of moving, offering them timely deals on home furnishings. Similarly, a telecom provider can target households moving to new areas with special broadband and TV package offers. These targeted approaches ensure higher engagement rates, thereby leading to improved conversion rates and maximised sales efficiency.
Section 2: Innovative Use Cases Across Industries that Benefit from Home Mover Insights
Versatility of Home Mover Data in Targeted Advertising
The application of Home Mover data is not limited to a single industry; its benefits span across numerous sectors. This predictive tool can be used by companies in fields ranging from home entertainment to personal finance, each leveraging data to meet their specific advertising needs.
Precision in Campaign Execution
The strength of Home Mover lies in its ability to offer high-intent consumer targeting. For instance, an insurance company can utilise this data to identify households that are relocating to new home, and might be in need of home insurance products. This level of precise targeting enables businesses to not only reach the right audience but also to do so at a time when their products are most needed, thereby significantly enhancing campaign success and ROI.
Section 3: How Home Mover Data Has Become King of Targeted Success with Predictive Marketing in the Digital Age
The Evolution of Digital Advertising
Amidst the rapidly evolving digital advertising landscape, predictive marketing has taken centre stage. The ability to forecast consumer behaviour and preferences has become increasingly vital for marketing success. Home Mover data, with its rich predictive insights, emerges as a critical asset in this new era, enabling advertisers to craft campaigns that are not just reactive, but proactively aligned with consumer needs.
Home Mover as a Cornerstone in Predictive Marketing
Home Mover's data stands out as a key player within this transformative period. It provides advertisers with a powerful lens in which to view potential customer transitions, particularly in the context of moving homes. This insight proves crucial, as a home move often triggers a series of purchasing decisions. By tapping into this data, marketers can anticipate needs and offer solutions before the consumer actively seeks them out, thereby positioning their brands strategically in the customer's journey.
Shaping the Future of Marketing Strategies
The predictive power of Home Mover data is reshaping how marketing strategies are formulated. Instead of a scattergun approach, advertisers can now employ precise, data-driven strategies to target consumers. This shift not only improves the relevance and effectiveness of advertising campaigns but also enhances the overall consumer experience, as messages and offers are more likely to align with the consumer’s current life stage and needs.
Section 4: Anticipating Consumer Behaviour By Leveraging Data for Effective Campaigns
Harnessing Predictive Insights for Timely Engagement
The core strength of Home Mover data resides in its ability to anticipate consumer behaviour with remarkable accuracy. This predictive insight is invaluable for advertisers aiming to engage with their audience at the most opportune moments. Understanding when consumers are likely to make significant life changes, such as moving homes, allows for the crafting of campaigns that are not only relevant but also exceptionally timely.
Strategic Campaign Planning with Home Mover Data
By leveraging Home Mover insights, advertisers can strategically plan their campaigns to coincide with these key decision-making periods in consumers’ lives. This could involve targeting individuals with offers for home-related services and products, or providing timely information that assists them during the moving process. Such targeted and well-timed advertising not only improves campaign performance, but also enhances customer experience, leading to stronger brand loyalty and long-term engagement.
Section 5: Future-Proofing Marketing Strategies with Home Mover AI
Adapting to a Changing Marketing Landscape
As the marketing world continues to evolve, staying ahead of the curve becomes increasingly important. Home Mover AI is an essential tool in this respect, offering a forward-looking approach to predictive marketing. By understanding and anticipating the shifts in consumer lifestyle and behaviour, advertisers can future-proof their strategies, ensuring relevance and impact in a consistently evolving market.
The Continuous Evolution of Targeted Advertising
The integration of AI and data analytics in marketing is not a fleeting trend but a fundamental shift. Home Mover data is at the forefront of this shift, continually refining the way advertisers approach campaign planning and execution. Its role in the future of marketing is not merely about targeting the right audience but also about fostering a more intuitive and responsive advertising ecosystem.
Conclusion
The art of targeted advertising in the digital age has been significantly enhanced by the advent of predictive tools like Home Mover AI. This innovative approach has revolutionised the way advertisers plan and execute their campaigns, ensuring that they reach consumers precisely when they are most receptive. The predictive power of Home Mover data has not only redefined marketing ROI but also established a new standard for customer engagement and satisfaction. As the marketing landscape continues to evolve,the strategic use of such AI-driven insights will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in shaping the future of targeted advertising, making timing not just a factor, but the essence of successful marketing strategies.