Measuring Success Across the Digital Shelf - Episode 220
INTERVIEW WITH JOHN MALTMAN
DESCRIPTION
In today’s podcast, we are talking with John Maltman about issues brands have been facing as a result of the shift to online sales channels. John gives his take on the best ways to measure success across retailers and retail media platforms, and explains what he thinks is next in the digital shelf tech.
Make sure you tune in to find out more!
John Maltman is the founder and CEO of Digital Shelf Analytics platform e.fundamentals. He has built a successful 30+ year corporate career with blue-chip FMCG (CPG) companies including global giants Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo and Asda Walmart, complemented with leadership roles in high growth B2B technology and service businesses, before stepping into the world of start-ups. Frustrated with the industry’s weak reaction to the enormous opportunities of ecommerce, John decided to apply his deep client-side knowledge to help brands win online, telling colleagues: ‘The market needs it, it doesn’t exist, so we’ll create it.’
“More and more people are going to want digital shelf analytics services to be not just providing insights but providing a route to action.”
KEY TAKEAWAYS
As a result of the shift to digital channels sale, some issues have come to the surface around organizational design. One of the challenges of building an ecommerce business is how to make good returns on the business.
Category management is one of the ways of creating the values that would help answer that question. Category managers can get more people to buy more and they can also encourage shoppers to buy higher value items. The tools used for that should be easier to use online than in a physical store.
Many companies have developed specialist ecommerce teams particularly focused on content and search. However, few of them have begun to think about the category playbook for online.
There is a big role for specialist ecommerce teams, but they will be responsible for developing best practice, setting strategy, and upskilling the rest of the organization. That will include customer teams, brand marketing teams, and category teams. Doing this is the only way to get the competitive advantage.
The challenge is to normalize ecommerce, to help people relate it back to their jobs as category managers, account managers, etc. which is something e.fundamentals focuses on.
Brands might be good at making their products appear in the key search terms, which is important. However, they often don’t look at what trends are happening in the category.
Brands should change the way they think about their offline/online marketing budget as shopping habits continue to shift online:
It should be a joint budget, not online/offline.
Trade promotion spend should be included in the calculation as well.
There’s been a lot of attention on marketing productivity, and that needs to be extended to include online investments - marketing or trade spend investments.
The most progressive retailers will start to think about themselves as selling marketing services and will understand that the money will flow to those marketing services that can demonstrate they’re highly effective. Walmart is moving in this direction.
The best ways to measure success across retailers and retail media platforms:
The foundation is ROI - not just buying the tools but using them effectively.
Balanced scorecard - to generate a profitable, sustainable business.
Sufficient brand equity - store space used for fulfilling online orders so there is a lot of pressure, as well as a move to change assortment; being between a strong brand and a well-positioned private label is a difficult position to be in.
Creating a good shopping experience - supply chain issues come up in shopper feedback frequently.
We see some retailers like Amazon and Instagram offer great ROAS to advertisers while other channels aren’t always as attractive. There are benefits beyond ROAS that brands should be considering when looking at performance of various channels.
We are all going to be looking for better productivity going forward and part of that will be spend effectiveness. A valuable intangible must be able to land a harder benefit somewhere down the line - better distribution, better presence online, stronger performance in search.
There are lots of routes to better returns, but there will be more discipline in this area going forward. The smartest retailers will make a big point about it, showing the efficacy of their digital marketing services.
e.fundamentals works with brands in 40 countries, from massive businesses with a big online presence to companies with small ecommerce opportunities. It’s important to fit the tool to the opportunity and the capacity of the client. The average ROI this year for e.fundamentals is around 10.
Some of the key step changes in the evolution of the digital shelf technology over the years:
Early solutions offered a way to see if the product content was reaching the customers
Lots of businesses focused on Amazon mostly or completely. Now most brands are operating a multi channel operation. It is important to figure out how to collaborate with them all.
Online order requirements - how to manage the in-store capability so that online activity is not driving OOS.
Some things that are coming down the line with this tech:
A need to join data sets together. Adding causal data to market share data, sales data, etc. and to clarify what is working and to adjust spend.
People will want digital shelf analytics services to not just provide insight, but closed-loop solutions. Also, integration of technologies is going to be important.
e.fundamentals’ goal was to equip frontline sales and marketing managers to work effectively in the omnichannel. It is a highly intuitive service that provides valuable, actionable and relevant insights.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Connect with Kiri Masters
Learn more about Bobsled Marketing
Connect with John Maltman
Learn more about e.fundamentals
