How to Uncover the Real Gaps in Your Retail Media Strategy

How to Uncover the Real Gaps in Your Retail Media Strategy Speaker 2: Hello everyone and welcome back to the Better Advertising with BTR Media podcast. Today I'm incredibly excited to have another, I keep saying, are they BTRs, BTRs? BTR specialists, I don't know. I don't know the best way to introduce us, but today I have Jess Jackson, the head of growth at BTR. Thank you so much for joining me. Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited. We haven't done one of these together, so I'm really, really excited to see how it goes. Speaker 2: Wow, we haven't. I think we hopped on and did a piece of LinkedIn content where we talked about just the things that you see when auditing a brand, but it's been a long time since we've had that conversation. Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely. And I feel like so much has changed. We had that conversation, yet we're hearing a lot of similar pain points with brands that come through the door. But there have been some updates for sure. Speaker 2: A lot of updates just in the industry in general, a lot of changes on our end from a BTR perspective. I think the last time we had a conversation we were definitely better AMS and we are focused on just different priorities I would say in this space. We've recently grown quite a bit. Rebranded to BTR because we transitioned to not only being focused on Amazon advertising, but a broader vision of the industry. I would say we now manage brands across pretty much all of the major retailers in the space. We have much more emphasis on brand marketing, moving up the funnel, DSP, being combined and correlated with your search performance. So you've had your hands full, I would say, having to balance and manage all of that, because as the industry changes, you're the one that pretty much has to be first to market with understanding the shifts and the transitions. And you're also hearing all of the pain points of all the brands we talked to, which is You know, quite something. A lot of people reach out to us and we run pretty much free marketing plans for everyone that reaches out, I would say, especially if they're within the threshold of maybe an ideal brand for us. You are never bored within the company. Speaker 1: I love it. That's how I prefer it. It's one of my favorite things about working at Better Media is being able to speak with these brands and really come up with a customized, tailored solution to what they're experiencing and where they're at in the company. Because it's different, as you know, five years into a brand versus 10 years into a brand. So I get to be the one to see where they're at right now and then listen to where they're hoping to be in the next five years and then make a plan to get them there. Speaker 2: I want to call out that you mentioned the customized plan because that's something that we're really passionate about at BTR. We always say we want to be the Ritz Carlton of agencies. You know, we're constantly striving towards that goal, which means There's not a one size fits all solution. We're not the McDonald's, the heavily SOP, you know, in and out model. And why we value that is because we do find that every brand is so different. I have hopped on with one of the largest beauty and makeup brands in the country, maybe international as well. And they wanted to talk to me about match types, which I thought was incredible. On the flip side, I popped on with mid-sized brands who are so in tune with the industry. They want to talk about AMC and household penetration. The thing that I would say makes your job so difficult is not only is the industry changing so quickly, but we're having to customize our solution and advice based on level of education for internal teams. We're having to make recommendations based on operational scalability. One of our larger apparel brands has one of the leaner e-commerce teams we've seen, which means we had to provide recommendations that are best fit for a lean team versus, again, I have small teams that have 20-person deep e-commerce teams. That makes your job really difficult because not only are you an expert and a thought leader in the space, but then you're having to break down that recommendation expertise to the person you're talking to because if they don't quite understand, they're not going to have full buy-in and that's something we're really passionate about BTR. We don't just, here's what we're going to do, talk to you in six months. We train leaders and we really value internal education because that's, in my opinion, one of the key drivers to our 95 plus percent retention rate. Any thoughts on all of that? Speaker 1: Yeah, so much. So back to what you said about the tailored solution, it very much is. And for those that have not been a part of our process of a marketing plan slash audit, We start with a discovery call, which I know is pretty common, but that discovery call is so important because to what Destaney's point, we need to know more about what is your level of understanding? What are you currently doing? What is your leadership need to see? Where are you at? Where are your pain points? What have you done? What have you not done? And all of those things help us really understand how we need to build out your full funnel marketing, right? So if you've only focused on DSP maybe you haven't even you haven't even completely tapped into to search. That's that's a common thing I've seen a lot. People think they need to really over leverage DSP or maybe they're under leveraging. All these little things add up to showing us the bigger picture of where the gaps are. And it's our job to plug those gaps and make sure the funnel doesn't have holes. And that's that's something we see a lot is that there are holes. And then on top of that, it's our job to explain what those holes are causing and revenue gaps, right? Or why it's causing new to brand not to grow year over year or month over month. So recognizing where those gaps are and then explaining what ripple effect it's having on the growth of your brand and affecting the awareness or brand authority or why competitors are coming in and growing much faster than you. And, you know, when a brand comes to me and says, you know, for the last five years, we've been focused on ROAS. And they're like, we're starting to see that this is having maybe a negative effect is what are your thoughts? And I can, you know, very clearly paint them a picture of you're absolutely right, because of X, Y, and Z. And putting that that picture or that roadmap together, getting to explain that to them is one of my favorite things because It kind of makes things click with them of, oh, I see where those gaps are and why we're having those pain points. And then we're able to come up with a solution that they're comfortable with and they understand. Because if you don't understand it, you're not going to be comfortable. And we really see that and that transparency so they understand what we're building and how it's going to work and then giving them data to show them how it's working. Speaker 2: There's a key point to that that I want to highlight. In our experience, I would say one of the biggest misalignments we see across every brand we audit is a misalignment in expectations and execution. Speaker 1: 100%. Speaker 2: And what I mean by that is we are a top 2% Amazon advertising agency, something along those lines. We're advanced Amazon partner status. So when we're talking about Amazon specifically, We know, we know our stuff. And out of all the top agencies, it is not difficult to hit ROAS and to spend a budget typically, especially for our ideal brands, right? The difficulty in the area where we have really over-prioritized from that discovery call to understanding leadership to handing off and transitioning to our client success team, Are the expectations aligned with the execution in the account? Everyone is optimizing bids and hitting budget typically. But to your point, if your expectation is to grow 20% in the category year over year, but you are only executing on strategies aligned with ROAS, And Branded Search, you're not going to hit those goals. And that's why we kind of overemphasize that relationship before the deal even signs. Because our job is to understand what is your leadership prioritizing? What are their expectations with Amazon? And does that align with what you're doing in the back end? And not to mention those goals change frequently. We could get into a whole conversation about our CS team and how we stay in touch with the business, which maybe I'll throw Adam on for another interview after this. But I think that's what makes us different and makes us special. Results. Everyone who is in this position can typically drive good results. But do those results align with expectations? And what does a good result mean for you and your leadership? It is not always ACOS. That's a huge myth in the space. It's not always ROAS. There's typically, you know, three other things beyond that that typically matter for a brand. And I think that's important to note. And with that, what are the things that you typically see brands prioritizing as of late, Jess? Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say it's still we're still having the ROAS conversation. And growth is something they come to the through the door saying, you know, we want to grow, right? That's a comment. But they don't necessarily understand what that means, right? To your point, I have to explain to them, okay, you want to grow, but you're telling me we have to continue to hit this ROAS. Let's talk about what that means. So I would say a good example of this is a brand came through our door and after doing the audit, I realized they were spending 70% of their budget on branded and non-branded was getting about 30%. So I explained to them, you know, that this was going on and they're like, yeah, we understand, but this, you know, we're getting such a good ROAS, we're scared to pull back, the current agency, you know, says they're they're investing more, you know, that common conversation we have. Well, fast forward, we ended up signing the brand, we flipped that about two months and we were at 30% on branded and 70% on non branded. And, you know, tacos is a concern with the CEO. So on every call that we hop on, Actually painting the picture of how this is having a top line growth impact was super easy because it was right. So the whole team was a little uneasy with the shift. They trusted us enough because of being able to kind of explain our strategy. And they were super happy they did trust us because they immediately saw the result of making that shift and that top line growing. Right. Speaker 2: So I want to pause right there just for listeners. So Tacos is your advertising spend related to your total sales. And typically when you make that shift from branded to non-branded, your spend increases because your CPCs, your cost per clicks, are more expensive on non-branded traffic. Your branded traffic has your highest converting and typically your lowest cost, right? So your spend stays low. When you make a shift as aggressive as what we did on this account, your ad spend almost immediately increases. If your total sales do not increase, that means your tacos is worse because your ad spins up and your total sales are staying the same. What Jess is highlighting here is when we made the shift because we identified that the brand did have aggressive growth expectations still, even though they want to see that ROAS and that tacos. What happened when we shifted from branded to non-branded is we started driving new customers. But the customers we were initially targeting still converted on branded terms because if you make a branded search, you're more likely to convert because you're more likely already aware of the brand and probably a little bit more loyal. So what Jess was effectively discussing and able to do here is when she made the shift, ad spend did increase probably a little bit. Because ad cost increased, but it was okay because total sales increased because we were now going after new customers rather than just targeting our current customers again. ROAS more than likely decreased a bit, but it was fine because Tacos stayed stable, which meant top line sales grew. And that brand immediately started growing within the category versus prior, they're stagnant because they were only going after current customers with their advertising. Speaker 1: Yeah, correct. And competitors were coming in and taking the shelf, like they were gaining that share of voice. And they were losing, you know, bestseller badge and things like that because they were not investing in category terms. So since then, you know, they have been growing month over month and really happy with the results and new to brand. We're tracking that and that is growing amazingly. So really, really happy with those results. But that's that's, you know, one one area new to brand. I mean, branded search is not always an issue. I would say another common one is brands not tracking. How they are, what, what amount of share they're getting on category search terms, right? So, you know, that's something that we can easily see inside of Amazon and that'll be something I'll pull up within the marketing plan and I'll show them like, you know, last year you guys were actually taking up more branded, branded share than you are this year because the category is growing, but you're not doubling down as the category grows. So your branded share is shrinking. But competitors are not right. They're showing up more frequently. So if you're not tracking those things, you don't know what you don't know. Right. And that's where we're able to. And it's something we will do often with the brands that we manage is show them this is where you were at and this is where you're at now. And if we see that they're falling behind, then we know we need to be more aggressive. Speaker 2: I want to hit on that as well and dig a little deeper there because something that we see frequently is brands do almost function in a silo. They are like, I only care about my revenue and my ROAS. And we've grown out of a little bit of that. I think brands are starting to realize you can't solely focus on profitability and survive on the platform. The reason being, and the reason Jess has called it so important is because what we are looking at is did these shoppers within the category increase? And if they did, did your sales increase relative to the category? Did your sales increase relative to your competitors? This is super important because a lot of people like to say the digital shelf is infinite. It's not. Customers don't typically go to page two. So if you are on page one, And the category is growing 50% and you're only growing 20%, your position on the page is going to start decreasing. You're going to start falling down page one. And what happens on Amazon when you fall down page one, others increase. It's just an algorithm. And as others are going up and you're falling down further, you're getting less and less views. And if you start getting less organic views, you have to spend more. You need your ad to show up at the top of the page. So now your profitability is even worse. This is why it's so important to keep up with the category and track the category. You may think you're doing fantastic at your 7% year over year growth, but if we hop in and we see that the category grew 20%, You're not in a good position because that means that your position on the page is probably starting to decrease and you're going to have to pay more in ads to show up on page one in order to drive the visibility you were last year organically. It's a dangerous place to be. Speaker 1: Absolutely. And on top of that, if the category is growing, we know the demand is growing. So you're in a better, I mean, you should be in a better place than you were the year before because we know that that particular keyword is either trending or more people are discovering it. So we need to be there. Speaker 2: Absolutely. So the first thing we really dove into, I would say, is, you know, understanding the actual problem and driving overall growth. Second thing is analyzing the category and making sure that we are doing better compared to competitors and compared to category. I'll shut up the third thing. I think one of the third biggest reasons brands come to us is because they want to try something new. And we are known as the absolute thought leaders in the space. So AMC has came up on almost every single call that we've had. I think that's a big one. A lot of the new DSP things. I think we got an email about Performance Plus just yesterday. That's a relatively new rollout within DSP and that's something that our team's leaned into. Creative opportunities. I know Jess, you yourself is diving in pretty deep into AI and creatives. We're pretty much known for, I would say, pioneering the expansion of sponsored brands within Amazon. I think that's a really big one. How do you navigate that conversation with brands? There's so many new things that they can test. How do you let them know when they're ready and are brands ready for it? Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad you brought that up because that was going to be my third point as well. It's something that comes up on every single call. I bring it up in the disco call. Are you guys utilizing AMC? Because we've had such good results with it. I want to know, have you taken advantage of it? And I would say 90% of the time, they haven't, or they're just using it for that kind of Customer journey aspect, but they're not using the actual audiences to increase conversion rate and ROAS. And they don't even know you can utilize it in search. They're only using it in DSP. So that is a that is something I bring up on every call. And it is something I would say. No matter how big or small, there is a place for it within your strategy. From our smallest to biggest brands, we're testing it definitely on the search side because some small brands aren't utilizing DSP yet, but you can use it on the search side and you can get incredible results. Definitely, I would say you're not too small and you're not too big. We can customize a strategy with an AMC and even DSP to help grow your brand. Speaker 2: Absolutely. I think one of the more difficult things, honestly, about your position is everyone wants to do the new shiny objects and they're coming to you. I mean, we both were on a fun call talking about shiny objects a few weeks ago. Everyone wants to do the new stuff. Yeah. But I think one of the competitive advantages of working with an agency and working with an agency like ours is our highlight on operational efficiency. So the last podcast released, the one, actually it was released this morning, it's with Dustin. And Dustin's our kind of head of product and really head of all innovation within BTR. And his expertise and skill set is taking things that we see as valuable for brands and making them operationally scalable. AMC is a fantastic callout. Every brand we talked to has dabbled for the most part at this point. And like you said, maybe they pulled their path to conversion rapport, maybe they're looking at ad type overlap, but they're not doing it in a scalable fashion. They're not applying it to all their appropriate campaigns. They're not putting it across both search and display. And that's where Dustin comes into play. He allows us to take that vision and make it scalable. And it's really important because as mentioned, AMC can work for everyone, but brands aren't typically familiar with it or ready for that. Speaker 1: Exactly. Speaker 2: I would say 40% of the brands that come to us ready for AMC will log into their account. They're not even maximizing sponsored brands or they're not even expanding their keyword research. So a lot of your job is saying, yes, we can. But we should do this first. And it goes back to the expectation setting of like, look, we can execute on these things, but let's set expectations on what's going to move the needle the most in the beginning. And I think that's where brands actually tend to struggle because they're usually well aware of what's going on in the industry. They follow our team. They know all the new shiny objects, but they're not able to execute operationally because they don't have the systems or the tech that maybe an agency like BTR has. Speaker 1: Absolutely. And I would say that's almost caused us a couple times to lose a few deals because we pointed out the more actionable, not more actionable, but the more important things that needed to be cleaned up. Speaker 2: So they weren't the fun things. Speaker 1: Fun things, exactly. And that's why, Grant, It wasn't what they wanted to hear, right? But that's not our core values, our trust and transparency in relationships. So we're going to make sure we are being transparent with the brands that are walking through our door and actually telling them what condition their accounts in, what's going to drive, what's going to move the needle, what's going to drive the results. And of course, definitely like to Destaney's point, we can do those things, but we want to make sure we are doing what's best in the brand's interest and plugging those holes. If there aren't, if there are in the account, then we need to plug those holes in order for their marketing to work. Speaker 2: Absolutely. There's a step for everything and there's an order and one of the things I would say we are exceptional at is knowing what's going to move the needle the most. And like Jess mentioned, I've personally lost a few deals. Jess has been a part of and a lot of it was due to the fact of I wasn't leaning into the shiny object that the brand thought would change their business. I'm more than happy to help support and educate in those scenarios. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's who you're targeting and how you're targeting them. And then you can start layering in all of the other fun and exciting things. And I think that's a big part of what we do. Again, going to continue to shout out our retention rate here. Because Jess does such a fantastic job of, again, reiterating those core values, reiterating to me when I lose a deal and saying, you know, hey, sucks, but you are transparent. And that is such a big part of everything that we do is making sure we're doing what's in the best interest of the brand, not necessarily the best interest in the shareholder who may have ideas about the business that aren't the best. Speaker 1: Yeah, if you want yes men, we're definitely not for you. We are going to be the first to tell you when an idea is not in the best interest of you at that time. And we'll explain why because we lead with education. We're going to be happy to explain to you why. We're not just going to say no. We're going to say, this is the effect. This is the ripple effect. So if you're okay with that, then we can do it. But we are warning you that it's not the best move at this point. Speaker 2: I love it. Well, I think we've covered the three key areas I was really wanting to dive into today. I think at this point, we could probably do a whole episode on, you know, DSP and moving up the funnel, but we'll save that one for later. Anything else you want to throw out there? Speaker 1: No, I think this was great. Like you said, we could talk for an hour on this, I feel like. But no, this covered the big portion of it. Speaker 2: I love it. Well, as always, make sure to follow the whole BTR team. Jess posts content. She's very hands-on keyboard because one of our values, again, is making sure we have that incredible relationship. So Jess is always in the weeds, more than happy to talk to you about all things Amazon advertising, Walmart advertising, Instacart, Nordstrom, Target, all of the fun ones. So again, make sure to follow us. Let us know if you have any questions or comments that we can answer on the next podcast and thank you all so much for listening. See ya.