Retail media networks (RMNs) are bringing in big money for big firms. They are chargeable for 68% of Amazon’s global profits and 12% of Walmart’s, based on a BCG report which notes that “thus far, large firms have led the best way in retail media.”
While it could appear that you just need thousands and thousands of shoppers or hundreds of brick-and-mortar stores to have an RMN, that’s not the case. As with the whole lot in marketing, all of it comes right down to your connection with the shopper.
Dig deeper: How Home Depot and Kroger use RMN to enhance shoppers’ ad experience
So, “the small guys can play too,” said Tamara Pattison, chief data officer of The Save Mart Companies (TSMC), which operates over 200 grocery stores in California and Nevada.
The organization’s journey to an RMN began a little greater than a yr ago when it was purchased by a private equity firm. The latest owners brought in Shane Sampson, former chief marketing officer for grocery giant Albertsons, as CEO. He has a vision of using technology to empower customers, associates and “our supplier audience by enabling them to take their digital ad spend and communicate in a highly effective marketplace,” said Pattison.
Start with mobile
Last October, Pattison was hired to execute that vision. With an RMN in mind as a goal, she spent her first six months investing in “baseline infrastructure and tech technology” to raised engage with customers. To that end, they partnered with Swiftly, which provides smaller retailers with the technology utilized by the biggest of firms.
“We partnered with Swiftly with the intention to power our mobile applications,” said Pattison. “We saw that engagement really increased because it related to our digital connectivity with our shopper.”
The connection with shoppers, greater than the dimensions of the organization, is what is going to make or break an RMN, says Sean Turner, Swiftly’s chief technology officer.
“Challenge primary for retail media is you first need to have a relationship with the consumer and we help retailers to construct a very strong digital connection with their brick-and-mortar shoppers,” said Turner.
A client’s mobile engagement is normally very short and rapid, says Pattison. It normally occurs in the shop or very near the shop. Once that they had that working they worked on the desktop experience which is more deliberate. This is where shoppers are doing more planning and going for information and education about products.
Unique audiences
Pattison and Turner knew that having good engagement in each of those was the important thing to convincing suppliers that an RMN could be price their investment. It helped that TSMC was able to offer suppliers access to several different, unique audiences.
TSMC has three different retail brands — Save Mart, Lucky and FoodMaxx — serving different demographics.
- Lucky serves a very densely populated, traditionally urban consumer market.
- Save Mart shoppers are more suburban, with smaller families including empty nesters and retirees.
Food Maxx is very different from those two. These stores are, as the web site puts it, “proudly no-frills, bag-your-own, warehouse-style stores that thrive on consistently bringing customers the very best deals on the town,” with shoppers who are likely to have a more multicultural background.
“If you’re a supplier partner and also you’re occupied with a latest product introduction, otherwise you’re occupied with a specific promoting campaign, you’ll be able to go to a single location, operate across multiple formats, different geographies, different ethnicities, all with a single one-stop shop,” says Pattison. “It’s type of the dream activation should you’re fascinated with testing and learning, if you must run multiple messages and get very quick feedback after which ultimately plan a larger scale media plan.”
Moving it in-store
With that audience and the power to point out customer engagement, TSMC is trying to extend its RMN in-store by the tip of Q1 2024.
“Driving activation in brick-and-mortar is really critical in grocery because 80% to 90% of sales occur there,” said Turner.
The goal for the in-store RMN is to affect shoppers at each the purpose of purchase and the purpose of decision.
“Point of purchase is clearly within the check-out lane,” said Pattison. “But point of decision happens in a lot of little intimate touches throughout the shop. We need to make certain that there’s a possibility to repay there as well, but additionally not degrade anything because it pertains to the patrons’ experience. Nobody likes to go in and feel such as you’re being shouted at.”
How big do you have to be?
So, what size do you’ve got to be for an RMN to make sense?
“That’s a great query and one which is, is so perfect for the time,” said Pattison. “I actually was a part of the Albertson Safeway organization a very long time back where to do that you needed to have a ton of investment across the board. Internal technology investment, in addition to resources. Given where the technology has moved to, that’s now not the case.”
She says partners like Swiftly can provide the infrastructure at a reasonable cost. The real query, then, is in regards to the quality and never the amount of consumers you serve.
“If you occur to have 10 stores and also you occur to sell a really incredibly unique product and you’ve got a high level of engagement with a community that is of interest you’ve got a retail media network opportunity.”
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