ROI At Every Touchpoint: Applying DTC Insights to the Physical Retail Space with Rae Guimond, Director of Strategy at PriceSpider

Tim Rowe how consumers want to research products, buy products, engage with that brand. And it really becomes, how do you know which of those channels and which of those marketing opportunities are going to give you the most bang for your buck? And that might just be straight up ROI and conversion dollars, but awareness is a big one. The pandemic really step changed a lot of other categories outside of consumer packaged goods or households where you're okay buying things like consumer electronics, TVs, smartphones, computers, laptops, but hardware as well, completely online. Like you're more comfortable with those experiences. And so with that comes, how do you protect against cart abandonment? E-commerce cart abandonment rates are super high. How do you protect against returns and the cost of returns? And how do you ensure, you know, that to your point, You have your products available, your assortment connected to where you're going to find your shoppers. Like not all retailers are the same depending on who your core consumer is, where are you going to find them and where do you think they're going to be most loyal?

Rae Guimond Cart abandonment, it's, it's interesting when we think about that concept kind of applied to the physical space. We see, you know, a lot of unplanned purchases in the physical retail environment. 83% of purchases still taking place in, inside of a brick and mortar store. How, how do brands start to apply some of the insights that we've developed from DTC, from these online digital feedback loops? How do you start to apply some of those methodologies and thinking to the physical space?

Tim Rowe Yeah. And so that's really where it comes to, um, as I, I don't, I don't think I mentioned in the run-up is that, um, I come from brand and agency and now I'm over on the SaaS side of the biz. So that data acquisition, that technology. It's kind of really, I feel like I've come back to my roots of it. What's the information we can use to optimize our marketing targeting to consumers to understand which channels are most viable? And that really comes to engagement all along that path of purchase. It's keeping retailers accountable and those authorized seller programs like for price, for images, for updating content in a timely manner. When I talk to people who have worked with Amazon for shopper marketing and have been in Vendor Central, raise your hand who's ever done a ticket because you've updated it in Vendor Central, but it's not showing live on your product and you've got a really big campaign that you're running. that you want pricing to be right. You want your images, your new video, everything that you have done research on that helps move that product into the cart and to checkout for a sale and not a return. You want your retailer to be really accountable to helping working with you in a partnership to help make that sale. I always say brands want to sell more product. Retailers absolutely want to sell more product. The devil there is in the details, is what I expect to see online as the brand actually happening. And that's where I kind of get into the crawling technology of PriceBiter to help in what those experiences look like. So from top of funnel, how can I connect my shoppers to those PDPs? We have a where to buy shoppable solution. Down through how do I enforce price? How do I make sure I can send cease, you know, stop, cease, desist letters to

Rae Guimond Don't do that.

Tim Rowe Sorry to interrupt there, but you made me think just instantly of

Rae Guimond friend of mine, Chris Meade, an early guest of the podcast and, and, you know, an early, uh, advertiser for, for, uh, you know, uh, in my time here in the space and working with, with that brand. But thinking about that, the third-party sellers, how much of a problem is that? Like, what is the financial impact of third-party sellers to brands? Yeah.

Tim Rowe I would say whether a brand knows it or not. It is impacting them because we've seen, I mean, if you're a brand who's been on Amazon, you know, a lot of the brands that we talk to, they're, they're under pressure in their category. There's new quote unquote brands or sellers that pop up, right. They're losing the buy box, you know, maybe based on availability or price, depending upon how that goes. You know, that's a loss of dollars, especially if you have advertising and all of a sudden a third party takes over the buy box. Right. Um, Pricing is a big one. I think with seeing like the Shoppies, the Timus, the Sheen kind of come into the U.S. market, there's more options than just eBay. If you want to go find quote unquote, you know, what you think is a brand quality product at a discount price. And consumers are under pressure in their wallet. So it's something, you know, we saw coming out of the pandemic. I feel like we kind of had the heyday of the 2020s, like the roaring 20s. But I was just looking at CPI seasonally adjusted and for the 12 months, it's still at a 3.7%, which means, you know, prices, prices haven't, you know, come down beyond like what the inflation that we've seen, particularly in the U S over the past 12 months, and things are still costing more food, shelter, apparel, uh, medical transportation. And what does that mean? They have less dollars to play with when you think of discretionary spending. So they're going to look for quality. but they're going to look for value and they're probably going to be more motivated to purchase if they have perception of value and sort of price and promotion. And so I think it's a, it's a big one. A lot of retailers have seen that sort of tentative consumer over the last couple of quarters, like right now is kind of a big Q2, you know, earnings are starting to come out. And so it's looking at Home Depot, looking at brands as well as the retailers to try to understand. How is the holiday season in the U.S. going to shape up? I think you're still going to see a tentative shopper. They might spend money on fun and functional things, but you really have to do more and catch them out of the house to really incentivize that purchase or to be top of mind. I know we were talking about QR codes and last mile delivery. What are some other areas in which you can kind of help spur that moment to purchase versus just browse and delay?

Rae Guimond touching on that, that, that kind of cost conscious consumer. And you said Home Depot and this, sorry, Home Depot. This is not a jab at you. I love you. I love you dearly, but I got the email the other day. The APR on your Home Depot card has gone up and you're seeing it in the news headlines. You know, APR is up 30%, not your rate is 30%. Rates went up 30%. So if you were paying $3, now you're paying four because it went up another dollar. So that, that kind of put me back and said, wow, okay. Like this is, this is definitely a dynamic now. So the cost of variable debt, even if I am as a consumer, going to go buy a new stove and think about putting on that credit card. That might enable me now to cook a better omelet, but I'm going to be paying more for that stove over the next few months of paying it off.

Tim Rowe I mean, who, who doesn't want to pay interest on inflation? Really? Like, I mean, that's kind of how I think about it. And I was like, did you read my notes? Cause I just looked at, um, Forbes had sort of like the average credit card debt, um, you know, 2020 to 20, 2022 to 2023. And the average is around 5,700, 5,700. And that's up around 700 from 2022. And you have to also remember. student loan interest has started to accrue again in the US as of September 1st. And payments are starting to be due October 1st. So you kind of add all those things up. As a brand, as a retailer, how are you going to incentivize shoppers to not delay purchase and to keep their basket sizes, right? The total dollars in the basket You know, same, I think if you're, if you're keeping same as a brand, you're winning. Right. Because a lot of brands have seen. Pressure from trade down, um, you know, store owned Walmart, man, Walmart and their Q1, uh, earnings report was so very different than target because they noted that more shoppers, you know, making over a hundred K a year and a salary were coming on to like their Walmart, um, club subscription. They also noted that their best value line has been doing really great. Well, we've been starting to see consumers all across the social economic stratus make those decisions, shop more at discount, shop more at club. And I can't help but think for Home Depot,

Rae Guimond um if did you notice like they changed over to halloween in july july i know i went back actually i was thinking about i was thinking about getting myself new cushions for my patio furniture taking advantage of the end of season discount which I would imagine should be happening the end of August, the end of September. Oh yeah, but no.

Tim Rowe No, you're already into Halloween. And I think, so I think Christmas is probably going to start showing up in October, right? Maybe end of September. I don't know.

Rae Guimond Just continuing to pull buying cycles forward and hoping that there's relief kind of on the back end of that. I think from the marketing standpoint, I'd love your insight, you know, from the dynamic experience that you have. The risk of brand erosion as we start to make cost cutting decisions, as we start to take advantage of last mile delivery services because of maybe attrition in the workforce. And there's not as many truck drivers and, and these other factors at play that the risk of. brand equity just evaporating and these third party kind of companies stepping in. What, what do you think about it? Am I crazy? Am I, am I, am I sounding like a Looney tune? Like, is there a risk?

Tim Rowe There's definitely a risk. I mean, it's not all gloom and doom to continue with the Halloween theme, but I think that, um, some consumers. will trade down because they have no choice because the cost, I mean, energy has gone down. We'll see if energy goes up right as we kick toward like the cooler months in the U.S., something to keep in mind. But some consumers will have no choice. So if your targeted consumer has the demographic of spending more on food, more on shelter, more on transportation and medical care, You're going to have to look at your assortment of products and say, okay, where's your value play? What can you do with bulk? What can you do with packaging, bundling? You know, because promotions that are dollars, there's only so much price erosion you can give yourself as a brand, let alone anyone else out there who is not abiding by your minimum advertised price or an authorized seller agreement, right? How do you stop Tommy out of Salt Lake City, Utah, discounting a bunch of your product because he got it available via wholesale somehow, right? It's a big problem for some brands, even some well-known sporting good brands all the way to hardware and everything I feel like in between. You're going to have to take a hard look at your assortment that you have available in store, as well as what are you pushing online? Online we often say and see with brands that it's 20% of that assortment that really drives 80% of the sales. So do you even need to offer those smaller ones that someone's not going to pay for shipping? That's not going to, you know, be incentivized because It's a pack count or a bulk count, you know, to make that purchase online. So it's really about understanding the assortment, um, and your consumer. Which if you're a brand who has a pretty good sustainability program and you know, your consumer cares about that, what is the practice of the brand? How do they care about the environment? People, um, those connections, there are shoppers who will continue to pay for quality products from brands that support their values. And so. Um, you have to consider where that consumer puts their values, not only on their dollars, but also in what is being a part of this brand say, and I will say for younger generations, particularly in the U S that is a very important piece of where they choose to spend their money.

Rae Guimond Sorry, just to make it.

Tim Rowe Yeah.

Rae Guimond Let's play a, let's play a hypothetical game here. If you were a brand, how would you, so one at one of the exciting kind of ad platforms for us and out of home advertising, there's, there's a lot of folks listening that are involved with the spaces. Using specifically some of these last mile delivery platforms as ad platforms, whether that's, you know, delivery trucks or, uh, ride share vehicles that are wrapped in branded advertising. How would you, if you were, if you were making decisions for a brand right now, how would you look at last mile delivery as an ad channel, as a way to connect with consumers who maybe aren't taking transit into the office as much anymore? Who like myself, I sit here and, and, and, and I've probably told this story before, but I look out this window, my desk is at a window here and kind of looks out onto the street and I see box trucks go by all day. Yeah. But Raymoor Flanagan has, has a frequency of like a million with me because I see their truck at least once a day, at least once a day, my neighbors are all getting new furniture, apparently more often than I am, or we've got new folks moving in, but I see that truck and I'm not in the market, but Raymoor Flanagan is getting free attention from me. So I'm curious if you, if you were making those decisions. What would you be doing or how would you consider working with last mile delivery from an ad standpoint?

Tim Rowe I think I would, I would want to test and learn by, um, some of my distribution locations where I know I have, um, I'll use the Home Depot example. This is becoming like a Home Depot task.

Rae Guimond Home Depot. Home Depot, you can come back and you can, you can reduce my, my rate so I can get that stove and, and we'll just call it even.

Tim Rowe So I'll use my own experience, right? I'm a shopper, but I'm in this all day. So it's really hard for me not to like find someone at corporate and send an email and be like, please, please, please tell me the rationale here. So ordered a bunch of product from Home Depot, doing a little renovation in the side yard, you know, nothing exciting shot, you know, rocks. you know, tiles, that kind of stuff. And I was like, Oh, wow, I can get it delivered. Now there is a Home Depot less than a mile from my house, but I wanted heavy items and they were different things that you would use for landscaping. You know what? Convenience for me. Why go look at the store, figure it out, put it all in the cart, ship it all myself. If I could pay someone to pick it up, ship it to me. You know, I actually thought Home Depot was shipping it out in a Home Depot truck. No, not the case. So, Tim, I had three different three or four different. The last one came via FedEx. But the first two were just random cars that showed up at my front door because obviously they're using sort of like a last mile, you know, shopper delivery service. But the cars were general cars. It's not like we, you know, pizza delivery, right, where you had like the dominoes or the pizza. Sure. You know, at least on the car. So you knew there was an identity, but also great out of the home marketing, right? Um, so I think it'd be really interesting to, just to consider QR codes. We know coming out of the pandemic, more households are, everyone has a smartphone in their hand most of the time. Um, scanning it at concerts, scanning it on, maybe you're doing some truck wraps, some fun car wraps, you know, what if you partnered Um, you know, with someone like an Instacart or a door dash in which, you know, you were also then advertising, you know, on that vehicle. Um, it also gets to, you know, hopefully there's also skin in the game for delivery drivers who are doing this as well. Um, especially if you consider, you know, it's, it's gig work, right? Um, but it was interesting because I went with Home Depot cause I, I wanted the product in stock. I could find what I wanted, you know, sort through my convenience research online and then get it delivered for, you know, the cool figure. I think my delivery was like $79. I did not have the expectation that that would be delivered by three different sources across five different days. That's not a less convenient. Yeah. Actually it missed. The delivery date they had said, so I'm like, I did not do any yard work over labor day. Like, you know, Americans tend to do now that project is happening this weekend. Cause I finally have all my stuff. Um, not the experience I really wanted through home Depot home delivery. Um, for someone that lives a mile down the road, I should have just, well, and part of it was there was a product that wasn't in stock at my store, but they're like, we can ship it to you. And it would still be there like in time for my project. Right. Um, that didn't happen anyway. But now I'm just completely disappointed because it would give me pause in ordering by delivery. Like I paid the delivery charge, you know, through that, I, now I might just go in store because I had a really bad last mile delivery experience. You know, reference that with Costco. Haven't ordered Costco delivery in ages, was super busy traveling a lot this month, said, okay, get snacks for the kids. knew when my shopper was shopping, knew it was all fulfilled, delivered to my door. You know, again, no marketing on that car. Right. But that's an opportunity to also there's an opportunity to put in a coupon code, a promotion, a something to incentivize me to do that again. Right. Because clearly that was more of an Instacart where a shopper was shopping at the store. But there was nothing else that I got in that to incentivize me maybe to go through that channel again. So it's about how can you market that last mile, but make that channel loyal, make it sticky. Um, Home Depot, unless I'm getting like doors or, you know, a stove, I might not do delivery again. I'll probably say I'll, I'll take it myself and go, go in stock or just have it shipped directly to the store and then pick it up myself. Um, you know, Costco and target, you know, continue to offer. at least in my own experience, as expected, or even more like delightful experiences when it comes to either me doing the work of picking up, you know, of shopping in store, you know, myself, or, um, you know, doing click and collect, right. People love their drive up, um, to grab their groceries. A lot, a lot more people are doing that, um, just in terms of the supermarket as well, because then, you know, what's actually in stock or not in stock.

Rae Guimond There's a lot in the data kind of soup that all of these things that we've talked about today, it all comes together to tell a story. I think there's an important piece that doesn't get talked about often enough in that story, which is who owns the data. With all of these new channels, how should brands be thinking about the ownership of that data?

Tim Rowe I think for brands. So with personal identification information, so PII, and then in Europe, you have the GDPR. So you have to really understand as a brand, what engagements provide that first party consent. So where if you're on a brand.com website, we all get the cookie notification now. Yes, you're tracking me. Yes, I'm okay with that. So then I probably have a unique identifier number, right? That the brand can use to track my engagement. When it comes to things like advertising, marketing, even through, as I mentioned, like our where to buy products, let's say I'm on a shoppable powered by PriceFighter. I get served a social media ad and I'm like, oh yeah, I want to go shop that now. Go to a landing page, click out. It really depends on where in that interaction are you getting the consent to be able to then track that information? So PriceFighter, we actually don't collect any PII. We're able, if a brand has Google Analytics or their own to kind of match that up in the data. But it really is for a brand to understand between the retailer, their technology partners in the space, as well as themselves, where they're getting third party and first party data. With the ISO updates for iPhone and a couple others, you know, consumers can now elect not to be tracked. Consumers really do care about who is collecting their data, where it's being shared. And so, you know, a first party data is becoming more of that, um, priority for brands, uh, because relying on third party data. Might go down a little bit, depending on, you know, where you can get those groups available, right? If, if we've got less opportunity because of the changes in consumers demand to take back their privacy and their data, then how can a brand supplement? So that's, that's partly where, um. PriceBiter uses things like data insights through our where to buy, where you can, depending on what the retailer shares with us, see what was in the cart. Did they purchase that product they were marketed to? What other product did they purchase? What were the other things in the cart or in the basket of the shopper? Shopper habits and demographics, you know, what else is in that cart with me is really important for brands to understand. Because then they can remarket to different audience or segments. So they might not be in market for my product, but maybe they're in the lifestyle for my product. And now I can start to say, Hey, maybe I do want to run some marketing, um, you know, with sparkling water, along with chocolate, you know, along with my coffee product or exercise gear, things like that. So where can I find my potential consumer, um, in sort of that discovery advertising. And that's where I think out of the home too is an interesting place because you can do geolocation, you can look at demographic data and decide where do you maybe want to wrap cars, do some concert QR code things, even just offer, you know, work with a Costco on getting something into that, you know, Instacart delivery.

Rae Guimond And insert something. And it's something because- Newspaper might be dead, but the insert is very much alive.

Tim Rowe Email marketing is not. I'd say email marketing is not. Email marketing is a channel that is becoming more important, especially given a lot of the data privacy changes. You can get that email consent. You know, that's why you've seen on a lot of brand.coms like, you know, get that free first order 10% off, 20% off, because by doing that consent and getting that email, they now can remarket to you unless you unsubscribe from that and say, please don't bother me.

Rae Guimond Those owned channels.

Tim Rowe Owned channels is very useful in helping to collect some of that data that you can then use, you know, for your retailer partners or, you know, for marketing, either out of the home within social, or as I mentioned, I mean, maybe, maybe flyers, you know, things like that, kind of a little bit more old school, if you will. But again, knowing the average consumer is under pressure in their wallet. you know, maybe mailers might be an interesting test and learn opportunity to try out again.

Rae Guimond And, you know, check your own mailbox, see what's in there. If there's, you know, if you keep getting the same offers each month, it's not because they have a crush on you. It's because it's working. It's because they're getting response. And I think that, you know, you look around for these, where, where is there underpriced attention? Where are there opportunities? That's it. At the end of the day, it's what we're doing is arbitraging attention and trying to buy it for one price and sell enough product that we make. Uh, you know, uh, a Delta, uh, a margin above that. So thinking about measurement and the original idea that we led with influencing ROI at every touch point, $232 billion is going to be spent on location marketing. That's kind of the pie what, that we think about here and, and the universe that we live in. For brands that are investing, for brands that are looking at the modern consumer, the buyer journey, all of these things, measurements, tough, like everyone's got an answer. It's multiple touch points. It's being able to source the information that makes sense for your brand. What would you leave off with? What would you give someone listening as advice, a takeaway about measurement and being able to measure ROI at every touch point?

Tim Rowe I think that it's important to understand whether it's your brand technology, a vendor partner or retailer technology, what data are you getting from those, you know, touch points that support the KPIs you're trying to drive, drive for your business goals. So, um, when I work on our tools, such as brand monitor or shoppable solutions, it's about saying what metrics are going to get you to those KPIs that are, you're going to ultimately realize your brand goals. And where, where are we going to find those metrics? They're in the data. And so it's really about if we're talking, for example, let's go with media marketing shoppable. I want to know of my campaigns that I am running. What was the click-through value? What was the purchase lead value? Where did they ultimately go to purchase the products? What was the total count in that basket? What other things were in that basket? And more importantly, did they purchase competitor products as well? And so that's really about understanding if you're using a vendor like PriceByte or the retail partnerships, because vendors who have really good retail partnerships will have retailers pass back that data to get through the insights that a brand can then use with their own POS data and other metrics they have about returns, conversions, things like that, to then really put together that whole ROI equation. You know, how can we optimize that ad spend in real time? And it's not saying let's wait until the campaign runs. Shoppers, you know, are changing habits so quickly depending on you know, where things are ebb and flowing right now. I think we've seen a little bit more of a steady state. Um, but there's some big things, as you mentioned with APR, um, we talked about student loans and inflation that are still going to impact their dollars. And so where can I make changes in real time? And I think that's the biggest thing I want to be able to test and learn and then optimize not three days after I start my campaign. I want to know within that first 12 hours, 24 hours. Um, what else can I do? So I think speed delivery of that data is really important. As well as what levers can I also pull if I'm spending even a penny on marketing. And that's really where it comes down to like digital shelf analytics. You mentioned previously, like how, how can we ensure retailers are really setting up that product page or that SKU for how the brand knows, you know, it was going to move conversion. Um, I really like PriceBiters crawling technology because we actually crawl at the PDP level, meaning, um, we show you the product detail page from the eye of the shopper. Um, you know, I can get really good data. Yes. When you go, I want to know what Tim sees. Um, like what's, what's, what's a product you want to share that you've most recently purchased? What's the last product you were on?

Rae Guimond Oh my gosh, this is, it's, it's not even that I'm embarrassed. It's that I don't do a lot of online shopping. Let's see. It was probably something for my son. Um, oh, I know, I know. Paint pen markers for my son. Yes. A very specific kind. It was actually a French brand, I think, that I will not try to pronounce, but it was a specific kind of paint pen markers.

Tim Rowe Did you find what you needed to know if it was the right one? Were you looking at waterproof, washable, permanent? What were some of the things you were looking at to be sure that it was the right product for you to buy? And did that product page give you those answers or did you have to do more investigation?

Rae Guimond Admittedly, I had the, uh, the, the advisement of my son to say, dad, those are the ones. Um, and that was as deep as my research when I hope they're washable. I definitely hope they're washable. I think he's passed the drawing on stuff stage, but those are great points. I don't know. I actually don't know any of those things, but. If I had wanted to know those things, you know what, better example, Nerf guns. I have to always scroll to the bottom of the Amazon listing to learn all the things that I want to know about the Nerf gun.

Tim Rowe Yeah. And that's about, you know, you want to be confident in your purchase. Like. That Nerf gun, those paint pens are the magical item that is going to make your son the hero of his, you know, class project or party or, you know, wherever, wherever you guys are hanging out with sniping me from the couch, mostly exactly right. Never, never a dull moment there. And so it's really about being able to understand. I always say from the eye of the shopper, what is that experience like? How can a brand take that? Not only price, obviously in stock promotion, but all those other pieces on that PDP, ratings and reviews, content, videos. I love a good video. We know our consumers are digital first. We know they'd rather passively, like take a guide from YouTube and TikTok, right? Marketing through video is really crucial. Um, you know, even I don't know if we're at the point where we'll see video ads on trucks driving around. Right. But not, not that crazy of an idea. They're out there.

Rae Guimond There's, there's a company, there's a company that puts screens on the back of tractor trail. I don't, that seems unsafe to me. Yeah.

Tim Rowe That's too good for driving. It's, it's a thing. Video billboards. Right. Um, so there it really becomes about a brand having. Connectivity to get insight along that path of purchase so they can bring that data and metrics together in support of their KPIs. Because brands will love to say, and I'll use a Nestle, they came out and said in one of their quarterly earnings, we really want to make over 25% of our sales globally from e-commerce. Fantastic. How are they going to do that? Right. Awesome. Well, obviously they've got to make one plus one, not equal three. They've got to make one plus one equal five, 10, 15 to get to that goal. And what that really means is access to data all along that path to purchase so they can optimize where they need to and really like step change their, their full game on what is that customer experience like in engagement with advertising, but also at a retailer site. And then at the brand.com, we have a lot of brands who like to divide brand.com and the retailer channels as two separate things. And sometimes there are antitrust and regulations, depending on what country you're operating in. Um, but where you can, I think even now brand.com can really help drive. Retailer as well, because maybe fulfillment and shipping isn't as great on the brand.com as it can be at a retailer. Um, I've looked at a retailer site and then looked at the brand.com just to verify it was actually a real product, not a gray product or a counterfeit. Um, but then I might've went and purchased via the retailer site because I could cook and fluff, um, and get it the next day versus, you know, waiting three days for shipping. So. It's about kind of teasing those pieces together, um, with the data that's available so that a brand can react quickly. Um, you can't take like three months to determine. If you might want to test and learn a different out of the home, um, I'm kind of like, try it and see, and if it doesn't work, okay, well, you know, and then you can kind of whittle the pool down of what's really going to help drive your core consumer to purchase.

Rae Guimond Speed. Speed is an advantage. Test, learn, optimize. And I don't know if this story is true. Maybe, maybe we talked about this, but. I think that there's a story out there. This is again, dating, dating myself here. So indulge me. Okay, you're among friends. When when I believe it was target put target.com on the outside of their brick and mortar store. very, very, very early on in kind of this online revolution and there being a dispute with the land or lease owner about Target putting the dot com. I don't know if this is true. I feel like it's the thing I read or heard somewhere along the line. So, um, Yeah, they're the same. They're the same to me anyway. I buy it online, pick it up at your store. It's, it's the, it's, it's all the same.

Tim Rowe So, uh, look, I don't remember that one offhand, but I think it's really important as a brand to consider. You know, I, again, we go back to omni channel omni shelf, right? Where, what are all those shelves where your products are available? Your brand.com. Um, even if you don't have one, you're like, is it really worth it? If anything, having a where to buy on your brand.com. Some of our brands do a ton of sales through their where to buys. Hardware is a new one where shoppers are coming into that space. They're more comfortable purchasing those items. If you're a hardware brand, have a where to buy, you know, go to some of your top retailers. Well, how do you know who are your top retailers? might want to take a look at the experience on those PDPs, right? Reward those retailers who are giving your shoppers that better experience by organizing them in a different way in the where to buy. We have some brands who use that data within Brand Monitor and the where to buy to go to their retailers and say, here's why we need a better partnership. Here's why we're not going to spend that much money on your retail media network because Sorry, and I'll use like, like maybe it's Menards, right? Or Lowe's. Lowe's is always trying to unseat Home Depot as the first retailer.

Rae Guimond We dragged Home Depot a lot today, so. Sorry, but Home Depot often- Lowe's, if you want to sponsor this episode, this episode brought to you by Lowe's.

Tim Rowe I will say this, Home Depot is, I hold Home Depot up like the target when it comes to like a CPG shopper experience. Home Depot is. very much pushing innovation in the hardware and home goods category of what that experience should look like, what it should be like. So if you go look at a Home Depot, a Menards, a Lowe's, an Ace Hardware, I might look at something on a different retailer just because they might be more convenient to me. But I actually might go look at the product on Home Depot because I know I'm going to get that downloadable information. If I need install specs, I go to Home Depot. They're usually always there. They do provide a great customer experience, especially for brands who are able to deliver them that content. And that's often why they tend to be first in our where to buys with our clients. They see a lot of visits and they also see a lot of conversion. So you might see a brand.com first and then a Home Depot, and there's a reason why. So that's something for brands to consider too. What are the channels you're sending traffic to? And is that the kind of customer experience you want? Is that a best practice? And if they're not performing, well, let's take a look at it. Because if you're seeing purchases happen on other channels, well, it's like the tire story. I always say, go look at Pep Boys, Tire Rack, Costco Tire, Walmart Tire, and a couple of the other ones and tell me where you think you're going to purchase your tires from.

Rae Guimond It's funny because… Shopping for tires, Tim? This has been a trip down memory lane. So let's just, you know, uh, finish it off here. Tire rack. I remember when tire rack first came out, that was where you went to get the discount. You saved significant. There was, there was that much of a difference when, when they were, but it's all reached about parody and, um, The platform revolution is upon us. How can we integrate more of those customer experiences so that the shopper doesn't have to go to all of these other places to get the information? How can McCormick use recipes to enable more people to cook more things, right? How can we use data to build an ecosystem that enables our best customers and attracts more people that are just like our best customers?

Tim Rowe Yep. Shoppable recipes. Um. The other way to think of a where to buy, it could also be a list or a bundle of products. And so where can you make it easy for consumers? Where can you say, oh, we know, you know, let's take baby where if someone purchased diapers, you know, how can we help them easily sort to the right size? You know, and size is determined by weight, right? And it changes. So am I in a 2T or a 3 or a size 1 or a size 2? You know, how can you make that easy? But also, I'm probably purchasing wipes. Maybe I'm purchasing, you know, lotion as well with it. Bundling is a big one. It's become really interesting for brands to kind of play with the assortment that they have available online versus in-store to kind of make some of those online channels sticky for shoppers they know are probably going to be e-commerce shoppers anyways. There's some, you know, there's some consumers are like, I don't need to go in-store. I never find what I need in stock anyways. They're worried about security. They're worried about, we haven't even touched on what's happening in retail in the U S and, um, it's hard to hire for, uh, seasonal right now in retail. So how is that going to impact stock and shelves? And that's like a whole, probably another topic.

Rae Guimond And then the customer experience that comes with it.

Tim Rowe Exactly. Um, and so. You know, do we think that's here to stay? No, but it's definitely helping spur loyalty and stickiness with e-commerce channels versus in-store shopping in some areas where that really is a big concern.

Rae Guimond Stay tuned for part two, right? I can't thank you enough for being here. Give folks the lat long, if they want to learn more about Price Spider and all of the incredible work that you do, the brands that you work with and the ways that, that maybe they themselves can take advantage of the services you offer. Tell folks where to go.

Tim Rowe Absolutely. So Price Spider, you can find us at PriceSpider.com. So just spell it like it's named. We love to say like we've been crawling. Uh, the internet before, gosh, even Facebook was a thing. So we were founded in 2001. So. I always like to mention that our founder, John was, uh, in the business of crawling even before, you know, that iPhone was in your hand and now we're looking at app crawling. Um, so pricebiter.com for that. Um, for me, uh, LinkedIn is a great place to catch me. Um, I, I love to grow my network and have conversations like these with retailers, brands, you know, people in the marketing space. So. Those are all good options to kind of reach out for more details and information.

Rae Guimond Incredible. We'll link to all of that in the show notes below. Ray, thank you again. I appreciate you sharing as much as you have.

Tim Rowe Thank you, Tim. I appreciate the opportunity. We'll talk soon.

Rae Guimond Absolutely. And if you found this to be helpful, please share it with someone who could benefit. As always, make sure to smash that subscribe button and wherever you're listening from, make sure to leave the podcast review. That's how you help us grow. And we'll see y'all next time. Nailed it. And I, I don't want to dine and dash on you. I've got a one o'clock.

Tim Rowe So no problem.

Rae Guimond That was awesome. That was, that was absolutely awesome. You're incredible. I don't know how many of these you've done, but do more, do all of them. This is awesome. If there's any introductions, right. Do you know, and I don't want to step on anyone's toes and I do have to jump. Do you, have you connected? It was actually through North six Raghav Sharma. from Perfectly?

Tim Rowe I don't know, but I can ask, I can ask the six folks.

Rae Guimond Okay. So Raghav, I mispronounced his name, Raghav Sharma. We just recorded an episode, it's a couple episodes ago. He's the founder of a company called Perfectly. If y'all weren't already working with the same group, I would just make the introduction, but I think the two of y'all should connect. That would make a lot of sense to me. Okay.

Tim Rowe All right. Well, thank you. And yeah, I think I think we hit everything in your in your track.

Rae Guimond So I'll follow up with you.

Tim Rowe I'll let me know. Yeah, that sounds good. All right. Have have a good one o'clock.

Rae Guimond Thanks. Right. I'll see you. Bye.