June 19, 2023 • 47 mins
Join Luigi and Matt Dornfeld from Feedonomics in this engaging conversation with valuable insights on creating an effective omnichannel strategy for your brand.
Matt shares his experience at BigCommerce and how their M&A strategy led to the acquisition of Feedonomics, why the platform plays such a crucial role for merchants and the importance of bridging the education gap for B2B merchants.
From Google Ads to more complex channels, Matt and Luigi explore a wide range of omnichannel opportunities for B2B merchants to leverage as their brand expands.
Discover the keys to investing in the right tools and gaining the necessary education to make confident decisions without feeling overwhelmed.
Efficiencies and integration are imperative for business growth, and we delve into the complexities of investing in platforms like Feedonomics. Learn about the benefits of automation, improved data integrity, and reduced human errors. The conversation also covers the importance of considering long-term business goals and the potential for redeploying personnel to focus on higher-value activities.
Don't miss out on these invaluable tips on using the same product data for both Google Ads and post-purchase communication strategies.
Matt Dornfeld on LinkedIn
Feedonomics
Watson Weekly Podcast
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, welcome to the Big Commerce podcast.
Hello and welcome to a brandnew episode of the Big Commerce
podcast.
I'm your host, luigi, and intoday's episode I'm joined by
Matt Dawnfeld from Feed Nomics.
Feed Nomics is a feedmanagement tool, and in today's
episode we're going to betalking about how B2B merchants
(00:24):
can capitalise on theopportunities offered by Omni
Channel and the tools needed tomake sure that the Omni Channel
strategy is a success.
I hope you enjoyed the show andlet's get to it.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hi Matt, welcome to the podcast, thank you.
Thanks for having me.
How are you Doing?
well, we're up bright and early, we've got a flight later today
, so full day, but I'm excitedto kick it off.
Here we are actually.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
And you're off to Chicago.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, i've got the retail innovation conference
this week, so I'll be in Chicagothrough Thursday afternoon.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Excellent.
Good luck with that.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, they'll keep me busy, I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
So you're from Feed Nomics one of our partners.
Why don't you tell us a bitabout yourself and a bit about
Feed Nomics?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
For sure.
I'm a senior director.
I lead our tech partnerships atFeed Nomics, and Feed Nomics is
really an enterprise datatransformation and syndication
platform, which basically meanswe help our clients take their
product data, enrich it,optimize it and then send it to
a destination, And thatdestination could be Google or
(01:33):
TikTok or Facebook or Amazon oreBay, Walmart, or it could be
even another tech solution, Soit could be an ERP or search and
merge platform, email marketingplatform and so forth.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Excellent, which, at a time when A everyone's talking
about data and B everyone'stalking about omni, is critical
Because, fundamentally, youeliminate things like CSVs and
spreadsheets, but also make surethat the relevant data goes to
the correct destination, as youcall it.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Absolutely.
Yeah, i mean, the big focus forus is on conversion and
experience, and hopefully thosethings are going hand in hand.
But we often find that when youoptimize the product data
catalog and then get that intothe right place, the right
destination, that's when you seeresults, and so we're really
hyper focused on delivering thatkind of performance on the
(02:33):
behalf of our clients And that'srapidly expanding beyond
standard retail and more so intoB2B and other spaces, as of
late as well.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Excellent, and you used to be at BigCommerce as
well.
You're now at Feedonomics.
Feedonomics was acquired byBigCommerce.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
That's correct, yes, Yeah Yeah, it was a busy time
for us a couple of years back.
But Sharon, who leads therevenue or get Feedonomics
really?
she ran the M&A strategy fromthe big commerce side.
So previously I ran on thechannel business development for
the big commerce team.
So basically, if you sawBigCommerce in the news with
(03:14):
Walmart or TikTok or someonelike that, that was our org
going to market with thosepartners.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Excellent, cool, very well over there, and especially
now, kind of as OmniChan hastaken off and all the different
channels that merchants need tobe on, there's never been a more
important time for merchants toutilize a platform that not
only makes it possible tointegrate with these various
(03:41):
systems but also, i think,manageable, because that's
something that can sometimes bea barrier for a lot of merchants
is that they'd love to beomnipresent.
It's just they don't have thebandwidth or maybe the know-how
to be able to capitalize And, asyou said, it's not just feeds
to things like Google ormarketplaces, you're also
(04:03):
talking about, like, erp systems.
So you're not necessarily justfor B2C, are you?
You can actually support everytype of merchant.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Exactly, i think, if you zoom out from Channelsworld,
which is where a lot of theconversation tends to happen,
especially online.
Really, what we're talking aboutis taking data from one place
and reaching it and then movingit to a new place for the
purposes of, again, experienceand conversion.
I think what I've started tofind really interesting about
(04:34):
B2B is, as I've gotten deeperand deeper into it, is how are
manufacturers moving theirproduct data into the hands of
their distributors and beingcreative and thoughtful about
what that experience is as moremanufacturers go online and more
distributors sell thoseproducts also online?
So, to your point, beingomnipresent and doing it in the
(04:55):
right way is becoming, and hasbeen, very, very important, and
the folks that invest in thetools and the strategies and the
education to get ahead will.
And so, to your point, actually, what we see quite a bit of is
is the education gap.
The how tends to be one of themajor blockers, and in the
phenonomics world, we offer fullservices here.
(05:19):
So we partner with our clientsdirectly to help them do a lot
of these things and enable thehow, just as we would partner
with agency partners likeMcAlloch-Hopkin and others to
enable those experiences on thebehalf of clients too.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
I think that's really important thing that you do
there, because I hear storiesfrom merchants sometimes that
they've tried to self serve And,again, whether it's a resource
or, like you said, education, oris just they haven't done it
correctly.
And one of two things happensthe product was no good or it
didn't work.
(05:55):
For us, And it's not no, itjust the product is good.
It didn't work because maybeyou didn't get the support or it
wasn't implemented correctly Or, you know, maybe you
misunderstood the best way ofapproaching that.
Last week we had our mutualcolleague from BigCommerce,
Lance, on talking about B2B.
Bigcommerce is doing a big pushon B2B And as an agency we work
(06:16):
with a lot of B2B merchants aswell And I think OmniChannel
historically has been very B2Cfocused.
But now that B2B is reallyaccelerating on the B2B side,
I'm sure you'll agree, state inthe obvious that B2B merchants
need to start understanding andharnessing that OmniChannel
(06:36):
strategy.
So would you like giving uskind of an overview of what an
OmniChannel strategy for a B2Bmerchant kind of entails or what
it looks like, or maybe someexamples naming or not naming,
but you know of merchants ofyours?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, absolutely, i think you know.
First thing I'd call out is youknow, especially for for
Federnomics, we're working withclients across any e-commerce
platform, So we're completelyagnostic.
And so in that world we'reworking with a lot of Magento
merchants, shopify, salesforce,commerce Cloud and beyond, just
as we would with a big commerceclient, but the platform almost
(07:13):
doesn't matter.
They all have the samechallenges from an OmniChannel
perspective because everyone'skind of learning at the same
time.
So I think, to directly answeryour question, the really the
goal here for B2B clients is tonot overcomplicate it and to get
comfortable with investing innew channels and new tools to
enable the outcomes they'rehoping to get.
(07:34):
My background is in inventoryand order management And what we
frequently saw was theinvestment in cheap solutions or
cheap self-serve solutionsmight address, you know, a
challenge in the moment, buttypically sets the client or the
merchant, the business, up forfailure long term because those
tools aren't really futurelooking, they're not ready for
(07:56):
three years worth of growth,they're working really for today
And what you know our role isto make sure we're advising
about what those tools shouldlook like as we build out into
the future.
So typically the way weapproach it is at Federnomics.
We offer something calledOmniChannel consult, so it's a
free service.
Whether you work with us or not, we're happy to work with you
and help outline what the futurecould look like.
(08:19):
So you know, we invite anyoneB2B, b2c and so forth to come to
us, lay out their text.
We'll actually go through adiagram of what tools you're
using today, what tools youmight want to consider in the
future, based on your categoryand your growth goals, and then
we'll work backwards out of thatto figure out where do you
exist today, where do you wantto exist in the future, and then
(08:39):
how do we help you get to thatpoint?
So I think the easiest thing tothink about in the near term is
how you think about Google ads.
If you're standing up a websitefor the first time, ultimately
at some point you're going towant to drive traffic to that
site And you're going to need toinvest in channels and
solutions that help do that.
Again, for some merchants andsome businesses, self-serve
(09:03):
might do the trick.
A lot of platforms, includingBitCommerce, offer self-serve
integrations into third-partyads channels like at Google.
But ultimately again to yourcomment brands grow and they
grow really fast, especially inB2B, and so preparing for the
future and the services and theneeds that come about as a
result of that growth issomething you can do right now.
(09:26):
So my recommendation is pursuinga website, especially and
you're going digitally, goingonline, consider Google ads, and
then, as you grow and grow, youmay want to consider other
alternatives.
So in the retail space more B2Cwe see a lot of wild things.
Right, you may want to considera lot of TikTok and Facebook
and Snapchat and Pinterest andso forth, just as you might see
(09:47):
investment in marketplace ads aswell.
And so, as your B2B merchantmay be considering selling auto
parts at scale, maybe eBaystarts to become more and more
attractive to you for their autodivision you may also want to
consider eBay ads, right, andsimilarly, if you start selling
something at wholesale toWalmart or to Amazon, you may
want to consider Amazon ads andWalmart ads respectively.
(10:08):
So I find that the first thingthat I tell clients is well,
it's not over complicated.
Let's just figure out where weare right now, figure out what
those growth goals are betweennow and even the end of the year
, and then figure out the rightchannels and tools to help back
our way into that target withoutover complicating about all the
bells and whistles that youtypically see and hear about in
(10:29):
the retail space especially.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
I think it'd be quite daunting for someone to have to
feel like they're jumping inboth feet and, you know, having
to drink from the fire hose,because kind of omni is
Everywhere you omnipresent, butactually it's going to be.
Unless you've got a massiveteam and massive resources.
It's not going to work, as yousay, if you just try to do too
(10:51):
much.
So let's start from back.
Me, keep it simple, as thesaying goes, and just work your
way up.
And From our perspective also,you know, when we replatful
merchants on to be commerce,there's no point them drinking
from a fire hose because thenthey feel like they're just not
in control and That that youknow, spinning all those plates
becomes really difficult.
It's like just gaining someconfidence, understand, being a
(11:12):
position where you can makethose judgment calls yourself
and, you know, not so reliant onthird parties, and then move on
to the next thing and continuefrom there.
And one of the points youmentioned fundamental, which
comes down to agility, whetherit is kind of a self-serve or a
custom solution is Is they lackthat agility to be able to make
those changes?
because now you're not saying,well, let's just change our
(11:33):
e-con platform or a pimp data orwhatever you're saying, we have
to change our wholeinfrastructure right, and You
know, even though they're notnecessarily a composable and
build the fact that everythingis so ingrained in everything
else because they've kind ofwallpapered over wallpaper over
wallpaper, it's just, it's justtoo difficult to start taking
(11:54):
little things out and makingthose changes, whereas I think
you know, from a feed-numbersperspective, you're saying look,
you know, we've got thatagility, because you don't have
to, you know, plug into all thesystems that we plug into, but
when you're ready, we just openthat door, we open those
floodgates.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, exactly.
And so I think, when you thinkabout the tech stack
architecture I'm sure these arethings you've consulted on as
well as let's, you know,eliminate Breaking points and
figure out we are where thesystems might be weak or not
even talking to each other insome cases, and then directly
enable those internalexperiences.
And so Helping systems talk toeach other and getting the right
(12:30):
data to the right system, theright time and the right format
Can also impact externaloutcomes.
And so, again, these are all.
This is super in the weeds,right, these are.
These are challenging topics,they're not easy, but, as I like
to tell clients, if you're notgetting the answers, you need to
run your business from yourvendors.
You're working with the wrongvendors.
(12:50):
And so, in my case, atPheonomics, you know, we we see
this a lot, where someone Youknow is trying to grow 30%, has
a tool, has a team, but stillcan't quite go from zero to one,
from idea and conception todelivery and results.
And so, to your point, like,you could, of course, get really
(13:13):
creative and make all thesetweaks to the site and all these
things, but stick to the ABCs,you know.
Ask the questions to yourvendors, put it on that, give
them the homework.
That's why you've hired them inthe first place to go and help
address those questions.
I mean, then I think you'd besurprised at the result.
But the first step, i think, isactually trusting your vendors
to give you the answer that youneed to run your business,
because You know the.
(13:34):
You know again, if you'reinvesting in a channel for the
first time, that can be scary.
If you're investing in newtools for the first time, some
of which you maybe didn't knoweven existed prior to purchasing
, that can be scary, and so it's.
It's about addressing, i think,those concerns to enable the
long-term growth that you'rereally trying to drive for your
business.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I think it's fair to say that historically B2B
marketing has been verydifferent, very unique, and It's
having to learn The digitalmarketing space a bit better.
So social media, for example,is pretty much a must have for a
B2C brand or a D2C brand, butfor B2B it's still fairly New
(14:17):
territory and at the same time,maybe the strategy is just our
own point.
Maybe it's about publishing.
You know that PD.
I mean I've seen these.
You know the publishing PDFs orthe publishing product images,
but they're not reallyharnessing the opportunity that
social brings.
To a new mention, tiktok, i meanfinal be, it's got a couple of
problems at the moment, butfundamentally all these social
media platforms that we'veAssociated with a particular
(14:38):
type of demographic are actuallyrelevant now for B2B marketers.
And so If we kind of say youknow the first layer of of on
the channel strategy is kind ofyou know that the, the
traditional, you know PPC adsare Google being and so on, then
I guess the next level up issocial media.
So you know social media ads,like you said on tiktok and
Facebook and and so on, how canB2B merchants capitalise on
(15:02):
everything kind of beyond Socialmedia for for achieving kind of
omnichannel success.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
It's a great question .
I think it definitely dependson the kind of Category you're
in, the kind of business you'retrying to run, of course, and
that'll dictate which channelsto invest in and when and how,
but I'd say the the two areasthat come to mind for me would
be investing in marketplaces andalso investing in affiliate
programs, and so one key thingto think about when you think
about social media too, is thatit's not always about selling
(15:34):
the Products.
Right doesn't have to be to seehow the singular item that I
happen to sell at scale is thething I want to talk about.
You can also just focus onbrand or even how to videos
right.
So it's Enriching content thatactually helps the end user
figure out How is this thingsupposed to work, what could I
use this thing for, andexplaining how this product fits
into the story more broadly.
(15:54):
So I think first is again backto over complicating.
The quickest thing I think ofwhen I think of tiktok is like
an apparel merchant, right?
Someone who just hops on, sella bunch of cool products and
move on.
But there's a lot going on ontiktok.
There's a lot of content.
There are a lot of things thatexist in that ecosystem that I
(16:15):
think maybe, if not right nowAnd into the future, b2b
merchants might be able to takeadvantage of when they start
talking about Where they fit inthe ecosystem, what their
products actually do, what thatdelivers for the end user.
So if you're a distributor whohappens to exist on tiktok and
you're thinking about who am Iselling to, that channel may
(16:36):
also be just as just asinteresting, for different
reasons.
Back to directly to yourquestion.
You've got marketplaces andaffiliate programs right.
So in the marketplaces arenayou may exist in eBay, you may
exist in fair, you may exist inTundra that there are so many of
these different marketplaces,some that are actually specific
to B2B merchants completely,where they're focused on
(16:59):
connecting distributors andsuppliers.
So I think the first step isfiguring out what kind of
products do I sell and where canI positively sell them, and
then figuring out okay, based onthe tool selection I have, can
I connect to those channels, canI invest in those channels now,
or do I need to adjust services, people, tools to go and enable
(17:20):
that?
And then on the affiliate side,there's something called cost
per acquisition, which somefolks may be familiar with,
where basically the ads model isthe brand is only spending when
a conversion happens, and so wesee this a lot in retail.
I don't know how deep this goesinto B2B right now, but I'd
(17:41):
imagine, as the investmentdigital spend, investment in B2B
continues to scale asaggressively as it is, this will
come where brands are basicallysaying I'm gonna put my product
into the world, i'm going toexpose it to as many relevant
people as I possibly can And,unlike Google ads, i'm only
going to pay the channel whenthe conversion, the sale,
actually occurs In a down market, especially in the retail side.
(18:04):
That's really attractive,because now I'm only putting
money into the world that I'mwilling to spend to actually get
a sale on my product, versusGoogle ads, which is more saying
let me get you as much highquality traffic as possible.
Some will convert, some won't,but you're gonna spend the money
regardless of what happens.
All of this is part of ahealthy channel mix and is a lot
to think about, right?
So this is stuff you have tomap out and think about.
(18:27):
How much do I want to invest indigital spend this year?
What kind of return do I needto drive out of that spend?
And then again back to toolsand services do.
I have the stack in the team tobe able to deliver on the thing
I just mapped out, and so Ithink you may see marketplace
ads or affiliate investment etcetera.
That may not happen for twoyears if, based on your goals
(18:48):
and things you have in yoursystem, stack don't yet enable
it, and so all that goes into Apart of what we talk about with
our clients, with the consultingand then B I'm sure similar
might be conversations you havetoo.
Would you say that that'ssomething that comes up for you
when you're talking about, hey,where should you invest now?
How are you planning to do that?
and backing out of thatsolution, 100%.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
we can't build a website if you don't understand
the customer.
If we don't understand thecustomer, we won't know where
those eyeballs are.
And, as you mentioned, kind ofthe not only just in a down
market, but we've seen the costof acquisition go up, the cost
of digital marketing, paid ads,go up over the last few years as
everyone's moving online.
So the fact that kind ofmerchants now need to make sure
(19:32):
that their dollars work as much,or their pounds or euros or
whichever currency, work as hardas possible for them and bring
them in the highest ROI.
that's never been moreimportant, because we're not
just talking about a down market.
We're also talking about downmarket with really high costs
associated with it.
So there's gotta be a balancebetween saying, well, hang on,
(19:52):
if spending 10,000 a month thismonth, last year got a X amount
of sales or X amount ofconversions or X amount of
traffic, today, that's.
they probably ended up beingabout half that, really, And so
it's kind of what we can eitherthrow double the money or we've
got to be a bit more creative orfind solutions to make sure
that we can make that money gofurther.
(20:14):
And the great thing aboutmarketing at the end of the day
is it's all about ROI, like ifit's not working, you've
optimized it, then just you cutit.
But to answer your point,absolutely, because I'm like I
said earlier and not one to kindof get people to drink it and
fire hose, because that's justinefficient.
If you've got category managersand you've got a team of
(20:34):
digital marketing managers foreach different vertical or
different platform, fine, butthe reality is 99% of businesses
don't and they have to workwith the resources they've got.
And we're big proponents ofasking or telling merchants to
leverage tools that are outthere that make it easy for you,
because we've all got the same24 hours a day.
So how can we work asefficiently as possible?
(20:59):
And that's one of the greatthings about kind of the
feed-nomics tools, is it?
the tool is that it helps ourmerchants achieve from a lot
more with less kind of lessinput.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, i think just to your point real quick.
On the efficiency point, i thinkthat's something I've actually
been thinking a lot about too,especially when it comes to tech
stack architecture whatconnects to what and how, and so
what we're seeing too is theability for, especially in
Europe like this is less commonin the US, where a manufacturer
may have to distribute theirproduct catalog to distributors
(21:33):
and Spain, the UK, germany,france, and they all have
different languages orrequirements per country.
The map price might be the samePotentially, but there's so many
other variables that go intothat, and so I think one area
where you may actually say Howam I gonna find more budget for
investment in these things?
is creating more operationalefficiencies based on the time
(21:56):
And money you're spendingelsewhere, and so that's one of
the areas we've started to diginto more especially lately.
Is you know How can, in thiscase, for you know makes take
the product data that themanufacturer has and then begin
to distribute that much moreStrategically to the different
distributors in differentmarkets, based on those local
requirements, would you say.
I guess, based on you know,your climax and how you're
(22:18):
working with things and kind ofeven the folks that listen to
the podcast.
Are you finding thatoperational efficiency is
Becoming more of a hot topicwhere folks are trying to
consolidate and streamlinesystems to kind of deliver?
See much more seamlessexperiences elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah, i mean, i think kind of just sitting on top of
that is how much money is beingspent?
Yeah, because you know,fundamentally a budget is budget
is only so much you can do.
But one of the ways that youcan make the budget go further
Which is obvious is obviouslygonna the efficiencies.
So, you know, we have gotmerchants that you know Have had
to cut budgets because maybethey're down sales or their
(22:57):
costs have gone up and and theyhave to manage those things.
But also, you know, when welook at the ecosystem that's
available to a lot of merchants,there are so many efficiencies
that are quick wins for them.
It was that merchants working onthings like spreadsheets or
just, you know, having two orthree different Systems that are
just not talking to each other,or if they are with minimal
(23:18):
data or maybe with a customsolution, and it just Sometimes
makes you cry because it's likewe're in 2023 and if you just
really harness the SAS modelwith API's, you've just you know
it is literally like going fromkind of an old banger that's
splatter your way to just thisbullet train.
Yep, the glides, and yes,there's a cost attached to that
(23:41):
and it's sometimes difficult toConvince merchants say look, yes
, you're gonna be spending more,but actually, overall, you're
gonna be saving time, which youknow, could, i guess, mean you
know Effective workforce, or youread you know you move those
people around, so right, youknow longer.
I mean, we got a merchant anddoes like three and a half four
(24:05):
million online and was manuallyinputting orders into the area
of the system.
Oh Well, i'm dispatching themseparately, but then for that
the accounting side of things.
And anyway, got them onto bigcommerce and got them onto a
system that integrates withtheir ERP system.
And the guy's laughing.
He's like I'm saving two peoplea month And I can repurpose them
(24:27):
.
So you know, we at the end ofthe day you got to do what's
best for the business.
But he's been lucky so I canrepurpose those people now
somewhere else And it's not costhim the same as the salary for
those two people, but it yes,you know the cost I guess has
gone down.
But it's the efficiency And Ithink that's the risk is it's
not so clear cut theefficiencies because it's not
like a direct that if you savehere Or if you spend here you
(24:48):
literally get rebate over here.
You kind of have to wait for itto trickle down, but it's out.
It's also our approach is, youknow we're looking for those
efficiencies because withefficiencies and with automation
, if it's done correctly, alsocomes a lot more kind of or
improved integrity.
So you know less human errors,you know what happens if that
person's on annual leave or ifthey're real Or if they've got a
(25:09):
really busy day and they'remaking mistakes And you know.
So actually you can look atrunning on more reliable data or
more stable data.
So it's really important for usthat you know The end of the
day, some is investing in aplatform like the commerce, and
you know they're looking at somelike phenomics, that they are
Making the most of thatinvestment or saying, well, all
I need is, you know, i just needsome orders going and I just
(25:31):
maybe need the total amount.
It's like, look, if we've gotall the ability to set all this
data up, start harness it now.
You have to be careful not tooverload yourself with data
percent.
You know, like you, like yousaid in your Scoping sessions,
it's understanding where do youwant to be in three or five
years time And how do we getthere, because that data might
help you to achieve that eitherquicker or certain.
(25:51):
When you get to the You knowlevel where you say, right now,
i'm ready to make that jump, youhaven't then got to reinvent
things and say right Let's just,you know, let's just look into
this data.
So 100% agree with you that Youknow efficiencies is such an
important factor, especially asnow we're kind of under this.
I wouldn't say they call it acloud, but everyone's talking
(26:11):
about AI.
Yeah, i think you know it's nota mean thing.
I think we just got to harnessit and there are benefits.
But you know it's talking about, you know, replacing humans.
So it's that discussionsalready happening.
Yeah, and you know, i thinkoverall, most people don't want
their staff replaced with humans, because we're all people.
But it's actually understand,right?
where can we get thoseefficiencies?
(26:32):
Where can we leverage andharness technology that's going
to help us work better?
and You know how do we getthere.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
So, You know, in some cases with the AI, you know to
your point about replacingpeople.
It can also be a redeploymentof people, right?
Maybe those three purpose thing,Yeah right just focus them on
more higher earning activities,and that's also part of the
planning, right, that goes intoyour, your tech stack and beyond
.
Yeah, the other piece tomarketing we've talked a lot
about where you should exist,but there's also okay, now I
(27:02):
exist there, what happens now,and so you know, in a lot of
cases you have to set up emailmarketing flows, or maybe you
want some sort of text.
You know live chat experienceon the site or beyond post
purchase, and so, especially asyou have merchants that are both
B2B and B2C, there'sdovetailing potentially between
(27:23):
one strategy on one side of thehouse versus what you might
deploy in another.
So what we're finding, too, isthere are many merchants who
take that same product data thatthey've enriched for the
purposes of Google ads, Let'ssay, and they also flow that
same data into their emailmarketing tools or their review
solutions or their You know, youname it any any solution that
(27:44):
could benefit from a bettercatalog experience, and so now
we're seeing more efficienciesaround how these same merchants,
the same businesses,communicate Post-purchase, or
they communicate even during theby process to these, these end
buyers.
So I think there's a there's alot of room to get really
creative with all the newfounddata You actually acquire when
(28:07):
you start investing in yourGoogle's or your marketplaces or
what have you.
And so the the life after theinvestment ads can also be
really exciting and profitablefor a lot of businesses.
And I think You know, to theearlier comments we were talking
about around, what's scary, andyou know What could be
challenging if you dive feetfirst, is that the reality is
(28:29):
They're very likely could be amuch greener other side here If
you decide to invest early andoften because you're gonna get
something out of that, it's notjust I'm gonna exist in this
place and then we'll see it's.
We're gonna exist, then we'regonna perform, then we're gonna
tweak it, perform some more, andthen, once we have all that
data, we're gonna go retarget,we're going to go build in more
customized flows and all thesethings Start to invoke that.
(28:52):
Well, now, how do I do this kindof question, which kind of
comes full circle, that the theidea that we're talking about
Phenomics I'm sure you talkabout your clients is that
there's a there's a life cycleto all of this and it's quite
cyclical, and so investing earlyand often yields these other
results later.
To your point, sometimes it'snot one for one, but you start
to pull from the results ofdifferent areas to deliver even
(29:15):
more net new experiences, and sothese things tend to grow arms
and legs very quickly, which iswhy we recommend take that first
call, start asking questions.
You bring it up to your vendorsbecause, to your point, ai and
these other tools they're allgoing to start yielding new
opportunities.
And just getting creative andstrategic about which ones to
actually lean into is where wecan really team up quite
(29:38):
effectively to deliver theoutcomes we're looking for.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
When you mentioned about integrating various
systems.
Whether it's an email marketingplatform or not, the important
thing around there also ishaving a single source of truth.
You don't want to offer anomnichannel experience that's a
bit fractured and segmented,because it should be unified.
And if that data is all comingfrom a single source or a shared
source, so all the differentsystems are getting the same
(30:03):
data, Rather than, like I said,having different systems that
don't talk to each other, maybedon't have the latest product
data Some data's enriched, somedata isn't Then really it's
another reason why youromnichannel strategy will fail,
because you're not working toyour full potential.
The tools are out there tooffer that pure.
(30:24):
We still see it with some bighigh street names where online
and offline are different.
Whether it's the logistics oryou buy online, you can overturn
online.
Customers aren't interested inthat.
They want to know whether I seeyou offline online on an app in
a concession stand, in a shop,Whatever it is retargeting.
I want that unified experienceat the end of the day.
(30:46):
Absolutely And in that case, itis one for one.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
It's me and the website the retailer Totally And
I think, as you invest in morechannels.
What I've seen a lot online isI've spent years at Ecom at this
point is the difference betweenmulti-channel and omnichannel,
and they sound very similar.
In fact, many cases they'reused interchangeably, but, at
least from my perspective,they're quite different.
Multi-channel suggests that theproduct is at the center of the
(31:11):
story.
So you sell a product onWalmart and eBay and Amazon and
your B2B site and your ownwebsite Great, whether the
shopper buys from you at Walmartor on your website, there's no
threading of the story there.
It's just they sell the productthat you sell and they purchase
it at that location.
Omnichannel actually puts thecustomer, the buyer, at the
(31:31):
center of that story.
And so, to your point, theywant to know OK, i've seen you
on the app, i've also seen youon the website.
How do those experiences tieinto each other?
How does the brand acknowledgethat interaction happened and
then do something about it atthe end, which is hopefully
where you're converting,wherever you convert.
But the idea is that theshopper, the buyer, should feel
(31:53):
like they were recognized.
They were acknowledged, theywere engaged with wherever that
first place was, and then thatcarried through to the next
place to deliver, an experiencethat hopefully makes that
shopper feel comfortable aboutcoming back in the future.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Really important point to remember that the
distinction between Omnichanneland Multichannel, which I think,
like you say, is maybe somegray lines, but it can quite
easily be first or misunderstood.
I've spoken with other peoplearound our friends over at
Amazon that we hypocriticallylove to hate.
(32:28):
So from a B2B perspective,because we predominantly all buy
from Amazon as well, amazon'smoving into the B2B space.
Obviously It's seeing thatopportunity And I think Amazon
is certainly one of the trendsetters in the market.
They rarely get it wrong.
Obviously they do.
They've been in the news, butfundamentally, in terms of their
strategies, i think they've gota spot on that.
(32:51):
That B2B buyer is also B2C Andthey like that B2C experience
and they want to continue withthat.
And so we've also quitefamiliar with the phrase buy
with Prime obviously set thestandard there of wanting
something now, not in threedays' time or five days' time.
How can something like buy withPrime fit into a B2B merchants
(33:16):
Omnichannel experience?
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Great question.
So buy with Prime is a prettynew service offered by Amazon,
where the merchant or thebusiness can display the Prime
badge on their PDPs, sobasically on their products on
their website.
So when a shopper goes to thatwebsite and they go to check out
(33:40):
, they'll be able to enter into,basically, a Prime experience.
So they'll check out via AmazonPay.
Amazon Warehouses will actuallyfulfill those orders, and so
the idea here is that if ashopper sees the Prime badge and
they inherently know what Primemeans, they're more likely to
convert on the website, which iswhat everyone wants.
(34:01):
And so I think the story now,ironically, as I said at the
beginning of our session today,is about conversion and
experience, and so in this casewe're really focusing on
conversion, of course, becausePrime just invokes a promise.
We know what Prime means.
It's part of daily life at thispoint.
So as far as how to go aboutengaging that, there are
(34:25):
numerous ways to pursue it,although today it does require
having inventory at Amazon'swarehouses.
So as a B2B business, you needto be comfortable with allowing
Amazon to fulfill on your behalf.
But what could be reallyintriguing is if you're getting
started and you're trying tofigure out how do I go about
investing in this experience?
(34:46):
How do I go about building up aB2C presence and start
collecting more and more shopperdata?
It's very easy to spin up a bigcommerce website.
For example, turn on theBioWidth Prime integration.
There's a native app rightwithin the App Store today And
that experience assuming youturn on the appropriate payment
options and so forth is thenenabled on your website.
(35:07):
And so, with that said, themerchants job is just make sure
they get that inventory over toAmazon and enable the
appropriate payment functions toturn it on, and so one path
here is you might sell to Amazon1P.
They may help you with theirown purchase orders where
Amazon's the client.
In that case, amazon isbasically working on a flow here
(35:28):
that would help those samemerchants and the same
businesses selling 1P to Amazonflip that inventory over to then
be used for this websiteexperience, which is completely
novel.
So, as you start to think aboutI'm B2B today, i'm interested
about this new service.
I want to shopper data.
How do I go about doing that?
BioWidth Prime is actually avery fluid way of migrating your
(35:51):
business into this new arena,which is taking your B2B
experience and B2B inventory,flipping it over into a B2C
experience under the promise ofAmazon and then flowing through
conversion based on theexperience you've enabled on
your website.
So for us, again back to theconsulting point.
This is something we talk withmerchants about all the time.
(36:12):
Currently it's available in theUS.
We believe in the not sodistant future that'll move its
way into the UK as the strategycontinues to mature.
But I think in general, theidea should be if you're a B2B
business and you're thinkingabout investing in B2C and you
don't do much of that today andyou feel like you're missing out
on shopper data or experiencesor otherwise, this could be a
(36:34):
really interesting way to beginto try that out, knowing that
you've got the weight of AmazonPrime as a tool in your tool
belt to go pursue those futuresales with.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
So you're leveraging all the I guess kudos that
Amazon Prime has built, thetrust I guess that it's built
over the years into your websiteand on the flip side, not just
that your customers are thenbuying with more confidence They
are obviously it can lead tohigh conversions, so the benefit
(37:09):
there as well But also you'regetting that data which can then
again help make those decisionsas you look to grow your
business on that roadmap that'sbeen agreed with you over the
coming years Exactly, have youseen a kind of merchants' access
stories with Buy With Prime?
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Yeah for sure.
So on the Buy With Prime front,i'd say those experiences today
thus far have been primarilyfocused more on the retail side
of the house, but even thenwe're seeing upticks of up to
25%, lifts and conversion.
I think there's there are a fewpeople on most at least within
the Western world focused onPrime that haven't heard of what
(37:50):
it is, and so I think, when youthink about the level of
expansion they've invested in,how broad the reach of Prime is,
it's hard to find someone thatdoesn't know what it means at
this point.
That said, i myself am not aPrime user, but I'd say that
they've enjoyed the world thatdoes invest in that.
(38:11):
They do it for a reason Theyknow what they're getting.
There's a purpose behind it,and so when you take that
purpose and you move it off ofAmazon, put it onto your own
website, that can be a reallypowerful tool.
I think we've heard the concernsaround experience, and does
giving this thing up to Amazonactually impact my brand
(38:32):
experience?
And I think that's a fairquestion that every brand should
ask themselves.
But I'd also say we're in areally tough economic time, and
so the goal for at least if Ihad a business would be on
conversion and doing as much aspossible to enable experience,
and so a solution like thisobviously focuses on conversion.
(38:53):
That's why you're investing inPrime in the first place, but
there are things you can do withthis new shopper data that can
drive experience, post-purchaseand beyond.
That, i think, can be reallyattractive.
So a deal Again, i think itcomes back to just having the
right team around you at theright time.
These are not easy solutions tojust think about.
I think there are things thatinvolve and require inputs from
(39:14):
third parties, like yourself,even getting in the room and
understanding does this makesense for the business and then
investing if so.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
I think that's.
This is a really importantthing you say there, because the
OmniChannel is like anything isnot a set of forget you've got
to look at constantly innovating, constantly iterating and
approving.
And I think, from a B2Bmerchant perspective, you just
told them how they can not justimplement but also prove their
OmniChannel strategy, which isabsolutely getting again, i
(39:44):
think, in a space which isbroadly underestimated or
misunderstood.
I think those B2B merchantsmaybe need as much support as
possible And I guess you know,convince them that it is for
them, it's not for that otherB2B merchant, it's something
that they can capitalize on aswell.
Are there any kind of trendsthat you're seeing in the market
(40:06):
for B2B merchants when it comesto OmniChannel that maybe new
or existing?
I guess entrance in theOmniChannel sphere can start
preparing for Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
I mean, i think, not to be almost repetitive, but
just the idea that people wantto buy online.
Right, it's not a new idea,it's not a new topic, it's just
a reality of where we're at, notto say that's the entire
industry.
But if you look at wheredollars are going, they're
aggressively flowing intodigital experiences.
And so I think investing in theright platform, right
(40:44):
e-commerce platform for yourself, like a big commerce, making
sure you've invested in then thenext set of tools or channels
to drive traffic and volumethrough that site, are really
critical.
And so, trends-wise, i'vehopped around to a few different
ERP conferences and really hada number of conversations with
different manufacturers and avariety of verticals, and the
(41:07):
trend I'd say, if I had a labeland a word would be curious.
I think a lot of manufacturersare curious about what else is
out there for them, what elsethey should or could be
investing in.
But to your earlier point aroundhow and the things that go into
that, the knowledge gap, thoseare very real blockers and real
(41:29):
challenges right now to, i think, getting to that next step for
the industry.
So the trend for us is we'reseeing a lot of brands and
manufacturers push into online.
We're seeing, now that they'veset up the website or start to
invest in those websites,they're saying now what do I do
with it?
And so for us, that's theGoogle search opportunity, these
(41:50):
other experiences that we'vetalked about over the last 40
minutes or so, and the interestis growing.
The budgets are there.
Many folks are starting to seethe volume that they would have
hoped and that's going to needto be reinvested to drive more
growth later.
So, yeah, i wish I had a morefancy answer, but it's really
(42:11):
brass tacks of get the websitestood up, invest in the right
tools to stand it upappropriately and invest it in
appropriately, and then startpursuing third party channels
that can drive traffic to thatsite to drive more volume.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
If people want to learn more about Fidnomics how
Fidnomics can help theirbusiness, I think probably, if
it's the right fit, but how itcan help them start achieving
their objectives, how it canstart taking advantage of gaps,
maybe in their strategy.
What can they do?
Speaker 2 (42:44):
That's a number of things I think the first thing
is, if they're a Calishek client, they can reach out to you and
get connected directlyPersonally.
I'm always available to havethese kinds of conversations,
just matdornfield atFidnomicscom.
Beyond that, one of the I havementioned this in the beginning
those free on the channelconsults reach out to me, ask
(43:07):
for a consult.
We do a lot in that space wherewe'll walk you through your
tech staff.
We'll talk about channelinvestment.
We'll also walk you throughsomething called a feed audit
where Fidnomics will actuallyevaluate your product feed
through the Google taxonomy andwe'll go through and evaluate,
like a book report, how yourproduct data is ready to perform
(43:28):
and how it is performing today.
If you're already investing insomething like Google, what that
will help you understand is ismy product data actually in a
place to begin this big growthjourney that I want to embark on
?
In a lot of cases it's not.
That's okay.
That's where we come in to helpmake those adjustments.
But, yeah, obviously, reach outdirect LinkedIn email, all the
(43:49):
things.
I'm very available.
But the team I'd say and thething you should ask for is that
on the channel consult, it'sfree, it's available now and I
think it's highly relevant towhere a lot of these brands and
manufacturers are at today.
We'll pull the links in the shownotes anyway, as we linked in
and the Fidnomics website.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Thanks very much for your time, matt.
I've enjoyed talking to andlearning more about OmniChannel,
which I think we're both inagreement, oh no.
I think everyone should be inagreement on this is a really
important strategy fore-commerce retailers.
The question I'd like to askyou and is what's the latest
book or what podcast are youcurrently listening to?
Speaker 2 (44:30):
that you would recommend.
Great question, Watson Weeklyno brainer.
Rick Watson is just atremendous, tremendous
influencer at this point in thee-commerce space, posts daily on
LinkedIn.
I've learned immensely fromreading his posts and listening
to him speak.
In fact, when we onboard newemployees, we have a channel
(44:54):
internally within our companycalled Omni News.
So as you're onboarding, youactually have to read through
the last month's worth of newsand then tell me about it.
And similarly, Rick Watson isone of very few LinkedIn
profiles we actually recommendpeople follow from the day they
join, just because it's great tolisten to such a force in the
(45:15):
industry And, in my case,actually because of this fight
to Chicago, I'll get to see himspeak tomorrow.
So check it out.
Watson Weekly huge fan,especially if you're looking to
grow across B2B and B2C.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
We'll put a link to that podcast as well, but I
enjoy Rick's content.
I think a lot of the peoplethat I'm partnered up with or
connected on LinkedIn certainlywithin the tech side of things
follow his content, so we're100% agree on that.
Excellent.
Well, thank you very much foryour time, matt.
It's so enjoyable.
I hope you make it fly toChicago, have a good time in
(45:50):
Chicago And give Rick ourregards when you come into him.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
Absolutely, we'll work with shout out.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Yeah, we'll post them on social And thank you very
much for your time.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Thank you, i appreciate it.
Have a blast Really.
Cheers, matt, bye.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Thank you for listening to the BigCommerce
Podcast.
If you've enjoyed today'sepisode, please leave us a
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bigcommerce podcast, and alsoon LinkedIn.
Alternatively, you can catch upon all older episodes on our
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If you've got ideas for anyepisodes, please reach out to us
(46:32):
Info at thebigcommercepodcastfm.
Until next time.
Thank you for listening.
Please leave us a review onyour favorite podcast platform
(49:04):
And if you want to follow us onsocial media, you can find us on
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Alternatively, you can catch upon all older episodes on our
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If you've got ideas for anyepisodes, please reach out to us
Info at thebigcommercepodcastfm.
Until next time.
(49:26):
Thank you for listening andtake care.
Hi, welcome to the Big Commerce podcast.
Hello and welcome to a brandnew episode of the Big Commerce
podcast.
I'm your host, luigi, and intoday's episode I'm joined by
Matt Dawnfeld from Feed Nomics.
Feed Nomics is a feedmanagement tool, and in today's
episode we're going to betalking about how B2B merchants
(00:24):
can capitalise on theopportunities offered by Omni
Channel and the tools needed tomake sure that the Omni Channel
strategy is a success.
I hope you enjoyed the show andlet's get to it.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hi Matt, welcome to the podcast, thank you.
Thanks for having me.
How are you Doing?
well, we're up bright and early, we've got a flight later today
, so full day, but I'm excitedto kick it off.
Here we are actually.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
And you're off to Chicago.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Yeah, i've got the retail innovation conference
this week, so I'll be in Chicagothrough Thursday afternoon.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Excellent.
Good luck with that.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, they'll keep me busy, I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
So you're from Feed Nomics one of our partners.
Why don't you tell us a bitabout yourself and a bit about
Feed Nomics?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
For sure.
I'm a senior director.
I lead our tech partnerships atFeed Nomics, and Feed Nomics is
really an enterprise datatransformation and syndication
platform, which basically meanswe help our clients take their
product data, enrich it,optimize it and then send it to
a destination, And thatdestination could be Google or
(01:33):
TikTok or Facebook or Amazon oreBay, Walmart, or it could be
even another tech solution, Soit could be an ERP or search and
merge platform, email marketingplatform and so forth.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Excellent, which, at a time when A everyone's talking
about data and B everyone'stalking about omni, is critical
Because, fundamentally, youeliminate things like CSVs and
spreadsheets, but also make surethat the relevant data goes to
the correct destination, as youcall it.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Absolutely.
Yeah, i mean, the big focus forus is on conversion and
experience, and hopefully thosethings are going hand in hand.
But we often find that when youoptimize the product data
catalog and then get that intothe right place, the right
destination, that's when you seeresults, and so we're really
hyper focused on delivering thatkind of performance on the
(02:33):
behalf of our clients And that'srapidly expanding beyond
standard retail and more so intoB2B and other spaces, as of
late as well.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Excellent, and you used to be at BigCommerce as
well.
You're now at Feedonomics.
Feedonomics was acquired byBigCommerce.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
That's correct, yes, Yeah Yeah, it was a busy time
for us a couple of years back.
But Sharon, who leads therevenue or get Feedonomics
really?
she ran the M&A strategy fromthe big commerce side.
So previously I ran on thechannel business development for
the big commerce team.
So basically, if you sawBigCommerce in the news with
(03:14):
Walmart or TikTok or someonelike that, that was our org
going to market with thosepartners.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Excellent, cool, very well over there, and especially
now, kind of as OmniChan hastaken off and all the different
channels that merchants need tobe on, there's never been a more
important time for merchants toutilize a platform that not
only makes it possible tointegrate with these various
(03:41):
systems but also, i think,manageable, because that's
something that can sometimes bea barrier for a lot of merchants
is that they'd love to beomnipresent.
It's just they don't have thebandwidth or maybe the know-how
to be able to capitalize And, asyou said, it's not just feeds
to things like Google ormarketplaces, you're also
(04:03):
talking about, like, erp systems.
So you're not necessarily justfor B2C, are you?
You can actually support everytype of merchant.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Exactly, i think, if you zoom out from Channelsworld,
which is where a lot of theconversation tends to happen,
especially online.
Really, what we're talking aboutis taking data from one place
and reaching it and then movingit to a new place for the
purposes of, again, experienceand conversion.
I think what I've started tofind really interesting about
(04:34):
B2B is, as I've gotten deeperand deeper into it, is how are
manufacturers moving theirproduct data into the hands of
their distributors and beingcreative and thoughtful about
what that experience is as moremanufacturers go online and more
distributors sell thoseproducts also online?
So, to your point, beingomnipresent and doing it in the
(04:55):
right way is becoming, and hasbeen, very, very important, and
the folks that invest in thetools and the strategies and the
education to get ahead will.
And so, to your point, actually, what we see quite a bit of is
is the education gap.
The how tends to be one of themajor blockers, and in the
phenonomics world, we offer fullservices here.
(05:19):
So we partner with our clientsdirectly to help them do a lot
of these things and enable thehow, just as we would partner
with agency partners likeMcAlloch-Hopkin and others to
enable those experiences on thebehalf of clients too.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
I think that's really important thing that you do
there, because I hear storiesfrom merchants sometimes that
they've tried to self serve And,again, whether it's a resource
or, like you said, education, oris just they haven't done it
correctly.
And one of two things happensthe product was no good or it
didn't work.
(05:55):
For us, And it's not no, itjust the product is good.
It didn't work because maybeyou didn't get the support or it
wasn't implemented correctly Or, you know, maybe you
misunderstood the best way ofapproaching that.
Last week we had our mutualcolleague from BigCommerce,
Lance, on talking about B2B.
Bigcommerce is doing a big pushon B2B And as an agency we work
(06:16):
with a lot of B2B merchants aswell And I think OmniChannel
historically has been very B2Cfocused.
But now that B2B is reallyaccelerating on the B2B side,
I'm sure you'll agree, state inthe obvious that B2B merchants
need to start understanding andharnessing that OmniChannel
(06:36):
strategy.
So would you like giving uskind of an overview of what an
OmniChannel strategy for a B2Bmerchant kind of entails or what
it looks like, or maybe someexamples naming or not naming,
but you know of merchants ofyours?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, absolutely, i think you know.
First thing I'd call out is youknow, especially for for
Federnomics, we're working withclients across any e-commerce
platform, So we're completelyagnostic.
And so in that world we'reworking with a lot of Magento
merchants, shopify, salesforce,commerce Cloud and beyond, just
as we would with a big commerceclient, but the platform almost
(07:13):
doesn't matter.
They all have the samechallenges from an OmniChannel
perspective because everyone'skind of learning at the same
time.
So I think, to directly answeryour question, the really the
goal here for B2B clients is tonot overcomplicate it and to get
comfortable with investing innew channels and new tools to
enable the outcomes they'rehoping to get.
(07:34):
My background is in inventoryand order management And what we
frequently saw was theinvestment in cheap solutions or
cheap self-serve solutionsmight address, you know, a
challenge in the moment, buttypically sets the client or the
merchant, the business, up forfailure long term because those
tools aren't really futurelooking, they're not ready for
(07:56):
three years worth of growth,they're working really for today
And what you know our role isto make sure we're advising
about what those tools shouldlook like as we build out into
the future.
So typically the way weapproach it is at Federnomics.
We offer something calledOmniChannel consult, so it's a
free service.
Whether you work with us or not, we're happy to work with you
and help outline what the futurecould look like.
(08:19):
So you know, we invite anyoneB2B, b2c and so forth to come to
us, lay out their text.
We'll actually go through adiagram of what tools you're
using today, what tools youmight want to consider in the
future, based on your categoryand your growth goals, and then
we'll work backwards out of thatto figure out where do you
exist today, where do you wantto exist in the future, and then
(08:39):
how do we help you get to thatpoint?
So I think the easiest thing tothink about in the near term is
how you think about Google ads.
If you're standing up a websitefor the first time, ultimately
at some point you're going towant to drive traffic to that
site And you're going to need toinvest in channels and
solutions that help do that.
Again, for some merchants andsome businesses, self-serve
(09:03):
might do the trick.
A lot of platforms, includingBitCommerce, offer self-serve
integrations into third-partyads channels like at Google.
But ultimately again to yourcomment brands grow and they
grow really fast, especially inB2B, and so preparing for the
future and the services and theneeds that come about as a
result of that growth issomething you can do right now.
(09:26):
So my recommendation is pursuinga website, especially and
you're going digitally, goingonline, consider Google ads, and
then, as you grow and grow, youmay want to consider other
alternatives.
So in the retail space more B2Cwe see a lot of wild things.
Right, you may want to considera lot of TikTok and Facebook
and Snapchat and Pinterest andso forth, just as you might see
(09:47):
investment in marketplace ads aswell.
And so, as your B2B merchantmay be considering selling auto
parts at scale, maybe eBaystarts to become more and more
attractive to you for their autodivision you may also want to
consider eBay ads, right, andsimilarly, if you start selling
something at wholesale toWalmart or to Amazon, you may
want to consider Amazon ads andWalmart ads respectively.
(10:08):
So I find that the first thingthat I tell clients is well,
it's not over complicated.
Let's just figure out where weare right now, figure out what
those growth goals are betweennow and even the end of the year
, and then figure out the rightchannels and tools to help back
our way into that target withoutover complicating about all the
bells and whistles that youtypically see and hear about in
(10:29):
the retail space especially.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
I think it'd be quite daunting for someone to have to
feel like they're jumping inboth feet and, you know, having
to drink from the fire hose,because kind of omni is
Everywhere you omnipresent, butactually it's going to be.
Unless you've got a massiveteam and massive resources.
It's not going to work, as yousay, if you just try to do too
(10:51):
much.
So let's start from back.
Me, keep it simple, as thesaying goes, and just work your
way up.
And From our perspective also,you know, when we replatful
merchants on to be commerce,there's no point them drinking
from a fire hose because thenthey feel like they're just not
in control and That that youknow, spinning all those plates
becomes really difficult.
It's like just gaining someconfidence, understand, being a
(11:12):
position where you can makethose judgment calls yourself
and, you know, not so reliant onthird parties, and then move on
to the next thing and continuefrom there.
And one of the points youmentioned fundamental, which
comes down to agility, whetherit is kind of a self-serve or a
custom solution is Is they lackthat agility to be able to make
those changes?
because now you're not saying,well, let's just change our
(11:33):
e-con platform or a pimp data orwhatever you're saying, we have
to change our wholeinfrastructure right, and You
know, even though they're notnecessarily a composable and
build the fact that everythingis so ingrained in everything
else because they've kind ofwallpapered over wallpaper over
wallpaper, it's just, it's justtoo difficult to start taking
(11:54):
little things out and makingthose changes, whereas I think
you know, from a feed-numbersperspective, you're saying look,
you know, we've got thatagility, because you don't have
to, you know, plug into all thesystems that we plug into, but
when you're ready, we just openthat door, we open those
floodgates.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, exactly.
And so I think, when you thinkabout the tech stack
architecture I'm sure these arethings you've consulted on as
well as let's, you know,eliminate Breaking points and
figure out we are where thesystems might be weak or not
even talking to each other insome cases, and then directly
enable those internalexperiences.
And so Helping systems talk toeach other and getting the right
(12:30):
data to the right system, theright time and the right format
Can also impact externaloutcomes.
And so, again, these are all.
This is super in the weeds,right, these are.
These are challenging topics,they're not easy, but, as I like
to tell clients, if you're notgetting the answers, you need to
run your business from yourvendors.
You're working with the wrongvendors.
(12:50):
And so, in my case, atPheonomics, you know, we we see
this a lot, where someone Youknow is trying to grow 30%, has
a tool, has a team, but stillcan't quite go from zero to one,
from idea and conception todelivery and results.
And so, to your point, like,you could, of course, get really
(13:13):
creative and make all thesetweaks to the site and all these
things, but stick to the ABCs,you know.
Ask the questions to yourvendors, put it on that, give
them the homework.
That's why you've hired them inthe first place to go and help
address those questions.
I mean, then I think you'd besurprised at the result.
But the first step, i think, isactually trusting your vendors
to give you the answer that youneed to run your business,
because You know the.
(13:34):
You know again, if you'reinvesting in a channel for the
first time, that can be scary.
If you're investing in newtools for the first time, some
of which you maybe didn't knoweven existed prior to purchasing
, that can be scary, and so it's.
It's about addressing, i think,those concerns to enable the
long-term growth that you'rereally trying to drive for your
business.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I think it's fair to say that historically B2B
marketing has been verydifferent, very unique, and It's
having to learn The digitalmarketing space a bit better.
So social media, for example,is pretty much a must have for a
B2C brand or a D2C brand, butfor B2B it's still fairly New
(14:17):
territory and at the same time,maybe the strategy is just our
own point.
Maybe it's about publishing.
You know that PD.
I mean I've seen these.
You know the publishing PDFs orthe publishing product images,
but they're not reallyharnessing the opportunity that
social brings.
To a new mention, tiktok, i meanfinal be, it's got a couple of
problems at the moment, butfundamentally all these social
media platforms that we'veAssociated with a particular
(14:38):
type of demographic are actuallyrelevant now for B2B marketers.
And so If we kind of say youknow the first layer of of on
the channel strategy is kind ofyou know that the, the
traditional, you know PPC adsare Google being and so on, then
I guess the next level up issocial media.
So you know social media ads,like you said on tiktok and
Facebook and and so on, how canB2B merchants capitalise on
(15:02):
everything kind of beyond Socialmedia for for achieving kind of
omnichannel success.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
It's a great question .
I think it definitely dependson the kind of Category you're
in, the kind of business you'retrying to run, of course, and
that'll dictate which channelsto invest in and when and how,
but I'd say the the two areasthat come to mind for me would
be investing in marketplaces andalso investing in affiliate
programs, and so one key thingto think about when you think
about social media too, is thatit's not always about selling
(15:34):
the Products.
Right doesn't have to be to seehow the singular item that I
happen to sell at scale is thething I want to talk about.
You can also just focus onbrand or even how to videos
right.
So it's Enriching content thatactually helps the end user
figure out How is this thingsupposed to work, what could I
use this thing for, andexplaining how this product fits
into the story more broadly.
(15:54):
So I think first is again backto over complicating.
The quickest thing I think ofwhen I think of tiktok is like
an apparel merchant, right?
Someone who just hops on, sella bunch of cool products and
move on.
But there's a lot going on ontiktok.
There's a lot of content.
There are a lot of things thatexist in that ecosystem that I
(16:15):
think maybe, if not right nowAnd into the future, b2b
merchants might be able to takeadvantage of when they start
talking about Where they fit inthe ecosystem, what their
products actually do, what thatdelivers for the end user.
So if you're a distributor whohappens to exist on tiktok and
you're thinking about who am Iselling to, that channel may
(16:36):
also be just as just asinteresting, for different
reasons.
Back to directly to yourquestion.
You've got marketplaces andaffiliate programs right.
So in the marketplaces arenayou may exist in eBay, you may
exist in fair, you may exist inTundra that there are so many of
these different marketplaces,some that are actually specific
to B2B merchants completely,where they're focused on
(16:59):
connecting distributors andsuppliers.
So I think the first step isfiguring out what kind of
products do I sell and where canI positively sell them, and
then figuring out okay, based onthe tool selection I have, can
I connect to those channels, canI invest in those channels now,
or do I need to adjust services, people, tools to go and enable
(17:20):
that?
And then on the affiliate side,there's something called cost
per acquisition, which somefolks may be familiar with,
where basically the ads model isthe brand is only spending when
a conversion happens, and so wesee this a lot in retail.
I don't know how deep this goesinto B2B right now, but I'd
(17:41):
imagine, as the investmentdigital spend, investment in B2B
continues to scale asaggressively as it is, this will
come where brands are basicallysaying I'm gonna put my product
into the world, i'm going toexpose it to as many relevant
people as I possibly can And,unlike Google ads, i'm only
going to pay the channel whenthe conversion, the sale,
actually occurs In a down market, especially in the retail side.
(18:04):
That's really attractive,because now I'm only putting
money into the world that I'mwilling to spend to actually get
a sale on my product, versusGoogle ads, which is more saying
let me get you as much highquality traffic as possible.
Some will convert, some won't,but you're gonna spend the money
regardless of what happens.
All of this is part of ahealthy channel mix and is a lot
to think about, right?
So this is stuff you have tomap out and think about.
(18:27):
How much do I want to invest indigital spend this year?
What kind of return do I needto drive out of that spend?
And then again back to toolsand services do.
I have the stack in the team tobe able to deliver on the thing
I just mapped out, and so Ithink you may see marketplace
ads or affiliate investment etcetera.
That may not happen for twoyears if, based on your goals
(18:48):
and things you have in yoursystem, stack don't yet enable
it, and so all that goes into Apart of what we talk about with
our clients, with the consultingand then B I'm sure similar
might be conversations you havetoo.
Would you say that that'ssomething that comes up for you
when you're talking about, hey,where should you invest now?
How are you planning to do that?
and backing out of thatsolution, 100%.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
we can't build a website if you don't understand
the customer.
If we don't understand thecustomer, we won't know where
those eyeballs are.
And, as you mentioned, kind ofthe not only just in a down
market, but we've seen the costof acquisition go up, the cost
of digital marketing, paid ads,go up over the last few years as
everyone's moving online.
So the fact that kind ofmerchants now need to make sure
(19:32):
that their dollars work as much,or their pounds or euros or
whichever currency, work as hardas possible for them and bring
them in the highest ROI.
that's never been moreimportant, because we're not
just talking about a down market.
We're also talking about downmarket with really high costs
associated with it.
So there's gotta be a balancebetween saying, well, hang on,
(19:52):
if spending 10,000 a month thismonth, last year got a X amount
of sales or X amount ofconversions or X amount of
traffic, today, that's.
they probably ended up beingabout half that, really, And so
it's kind of what we can eitherthrow double the money or we've
got to be a bit more creative orfind solutions to make sure
that we can make that money gofurther.
(20:14):
And the great thing aboutmarketing at the end of the day
is it's all about ROI, like ifit's not working, you've
optimized it, then just you cutit.
But to answer your point,absolutely, because I'm like I
said earlier and not one to kindof get people to drink it and
fire hose, because that's justinefficient.
If you've got category managersand you've got a team of
(20:34):
digital marketing managers foreach different vertical or
different platform, fine, butthe reality is 99% of businesses
don't and they have to workwith the resources they've got.
And we're big proponents ofasking or telling merchants to
leverage tools that are outthere that make it easy for you,
because we've all got the same24 hours a day.
So how can we work asefficiently as possible?
(20:59):
And that's one of the greatthings about kind of the
feed-nomics tools, is it?
the tool is that it helps ourmerchants achieve from a lot
more with less kind of lessinput.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, i think just to your point real quick.
On the efficiency point, i thinkthat's something I've actually
been thinking a lot about too,especially when it comes to tech
stack architecture whatconnects to what and how, and so
what we're seeing too is theability for, especially in
Europe like this is less commonin the US, where a manufacturer
may have to distribute theirproduct catalog to distributors
(21:33):
and Spain, the UK, germany,france, and they all have
different languages orrequirements per country.
The map price might be the samePotentially, but there's so many
other variables that go intothat, and so I think one area
where you may actually say Howam I gonna find more budget for
investment in these things?
is creating more operationalefficiencies based on the time
(21:56):
And money you're spendingelsewhere, and so that's one of
the areas we've started to diginto more especially lately.
Is you know How can, in thiscase, for you know makes take
the product data that themanufacturer has and then begin
to distribute that much moreStrategically to the different
distributors in differentmarkets, based on those local
requirements, would you say.
I guess, based on you know,your climax and how you're
(22:18):
working with things and kind ofeven the folks that listen to
the podcast.
Are you finding thatoperational efficiency is
Becoming more of a hot topicwhere folks are trying to
consolidate and streamlinesystems to kind of deliver?
See much more seamlessexperiences elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah, i mean, i think kind of just sitting on top of
that is how much money is beingspent?
Yeah, because you know,fundamentally a budget is budget
is only so much you can do.
But one of the ways that youcan make the budget go further
Which is obvious is obviouslygonna the efficiencies.
So, you know, we have gotmerchants that you know Have had
to cut budgets because maybethey're down sales or their
(22:57):
costs have gone up and and theyhave to manage those things.
But also, you know, when welook at the ecosystem that's
available to a lot of merchants,there are so many efficiencies
that are quick wins for them.
It was that merchants working onthings like spreadsheets or
just, you know, having two orthree different Systems that are
just not talking to each other,or if they are with minimal
(23:18):
data or maybe with a customsolution, and it just Sometimes
makes you cry because it's likewe're in 2023 and if you just
really harness the SAS modelwith API's, you've just you know
it is literally like going fromkind of an old banger that's
splatter your way to just thisbullet train.
Yep, the glides, and yes,there's a cost attached to that
(23:41):
and it's sometimes difficult toConvince merchants say look, yes
, you're gonna be spending more,but actually, overall, you're
gonna be saving time, which youknow, could, i guess, mean you
know Effective workforce, or youread you know you move those
people around, so right, youknow longer.
I mean, we got a merchant anddoes like three and a half four
(24:05):
million online and was manuallyinputting orders into the area
of the system.
Oh Well, i'm dispatching themseparately, but then for that
the accounting side of things.
And anyway, got them onto bigcommerce and got them onto a
system that integrates withtheir ERP system.
And the guy's laughing.
He's like I'm saving two peoplea month And I can repurpose them
(24:27):
.
So you know, we at the end ofthe day you got to do what's
best for the business.
But he's been lucky so I canrepurpose those people now
somewhere else And it's not costhim the same as the salary for
those two people, but it yes,you know the cost I guess has
gone down.
But it's the efficiency And Ithink that's the risk is it's
not so clear cut theefficiencies because it's not
like a direct that if you savehere Or if you spend here you
(24:48):
literally get rebate over here.
You kind of have to wait for itto trickle down, but it's out.
It's also our approach is, youknow we're looking for those
efficiencies because withefficiencies and with automation
, if it's done correctly, alsocomes a lot more kind of or
improved integrity.
So you know less human errors,you know what happens if that
person's on annual leave or ifthey're real Or if they've got a
(25:09):
really busy day and they'remaking mistakes And you know.
So actually you can look atrunning on more reliable data or
more stable data.
So it's really important for usthat you know The end of the
day, some is investing in aplatform like the commerce, and
you know they're looking at somelike phenomics, that they are
Making the most of thatinvestment or saying, well, all
I need is, you know, i just needsome orders going and I just
(25:31):
maybe need the total amount.
It's like, look, if we've gotall the ability to set all this
data up, start harness it now.
You have to be careful not tooverload yourself with data
percent.
You know, like you, like yousaid in your Scoping sessions,
it's understanding where do youwant to be in three or five
years time And how do we getthere, because that data might
help you to achieve that eitherquicker or certain.
(25:51):
When you get to the You knowlevel where you say, right now,
i'm ready to make that jump, youhaven't then got to reinvent
things and say right Let's just,you know, let's just look into
this data.
So 100% agree with you that Youknow efficiencies is such an
important factor, especially asnow we're kind of under this.
I wouldn't say they call it acloud, but everyone's talking
(26:11):
about AI.
Yeah, i think you know it's nota mean thing.
I think we just got to harnessit and there are benefits.
But you know it's talking about, you know, replacing humans.
So it's that discussionsalready happening.
Yeah, and you know, i thinkoverall, most people don't want
their staff replaced with humans, because we're all people.
But it's actually understand,right?
where can we get thoseefficiencies?
(26:32):
Where can we leverage andharness technology that's going
to help us work better?
and You know how do we getthere.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
So, You know, in some cases with the AI, you know to
your point about replacingpeople.
It can also be a redeploymentof people, right?
Maybe those three purpose thing,Yeah right just focus them on
more higher earning activities,and that's also part of the
planning, right, that goes intoyour, your tech stack and beyond
.
Yeah, the other piece tomarketing we've talked a lot
about where you should exist,but there's also okay, now I
(27:02):
exist there, what happens now,and so you know, in a lot of
cases you have to set up emailmarketing flows, or maybe you
want some sort of text.
You know live chat experienceon the site or beyond post
purchase, and so, especially asyou have merchants that are both
B2B and B2C, there'sdovetailing potentially between
(27:23):
one strategy on one side of thehouse versus what you might
deploy in another.
So what we're finding, too, isthere are many merchants who
take that same product data thatthey've enriched for the
purposes of Google ads, Let'ssay, and they also flow that
same data into their emailmarketing tools or their review
solutions or their You know, youname it any any solution that
(27:44):
could benefit from a bettercatalog experience, and so now
we're seeing more efficienciesaround how these same merchants,
the same businesses,communicate Post-purchase, or
they communicate even during theby process to these, these end
buyers.
So I think there's a there's alot of room to get really
creative with all the newfounddata You actually acquire when
(28:07):
you start investing in yourGoogle's or your marketplaces or
what have you.
And so the the life after theinvestment ads can also be
really exciting and profitablefor a lot of businesses.
And I think You know, to theearlier comments we were talking
about around, what's scary, andyou know What could be
challenging if you dive feetfirst, is that the reality is
(28:29):
They're very likely could be amuch greener other side here If
you decide to invest early andoften because you're gonna get
something out of that, it's notjust I'm gonna exist in this
place and then we'll see it's.
We're gonna exist, then we'regonna perform, then we're gonna
tweak it, perform some more, andthen, once we have all that
data, we're gonna go retarget,we're going to go build in more
customized flows and all thesethings Start to invoke that.
(28:52):
Well, now, how do I do this kindof question, which kind of
comes full circle, that the theidea that we're talking about
Phenomics I'm sure you talkabout your clients is that
there's a there's a life cycleto all of this and it's quite
cyclical, and so investing earlyand often yields these other
results later.
To your point, sometimes it'snot one for one, but you start
to pull from the results ofdifferent areas to deliver even
(29:15):
more net new experiences, and sothese things tend to grow arms
and legs very quickly, which iswhy we recommend take that first
call, start asking questions.
You bring it up to your vendorsbecause, to your point, ai and
these other tools they're allgoing to start yielding new
opportunities.
And just getting creative andstrategic about which ones to
actually lean into is where wecan really team up quite
(29:38):
effectively to deliver theoutcomes we're looking for.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
When you mentioned about integrating various
systems.
Whether it's an email marketingplatform or not, the important
thing around there also ishaving a single source of truth.
You don't want to offer anomnichannel experience that's a
bit fractured and segmented,because it should be unified.
And if that data is all comingfrom a single source or a shared
source, so all the differentsystems are getting the same
(30:03):
data, Rather than, like I said,having different systems that
don't talk to each other, maybedon't have the latest product
data Some data's enriched, somedata isn't Then really it's
another reason why youromnichannel strategy will fail,
because you're not working toyour full potential.
The tools are out there tooffer that pure.
(30:24):
We still see it with some bighigh street names where online
and offline are different.
Whether it's the logistics oryou buy online, you can overturn
online.
Customers aren't interested inthat.
They want to know whether I seeyou offline online on an app in
a concession stand, in a shop,Whatever it is retargeting.
I want that unified experienceat the end of the day.
(30:46):
Absolutely And in that case, itis one for one.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
It's me and the website the retailer Totally And
I think, as you invest in morechannels.
What I've seen a lot online isI've spent years at Ecom at this
point is the difference betweenmulti-channel and omnichannel,
and they sound very similar.
In fact, many cases they'reused interchangeably, but, at
least from my perspective,they're quite different.
Multi-channel suggests that theproduct is at the center of the
(31:11):
story.
So you sell a product onWalmart and eBay and Amazon and
your B2B site and your ownwebsite Great, whether the
shopper buys from you at Walmartor on your website, there's no
threading of the story there.
It's just they sell the productthat you sell and they purchase
it at that location.
Omnichannel actually puts thecustomer, the buyer, at the
(31:31):
center of that story.
And so, to your point, theywant to know OK, i've seen you
on the app, i've also seen youon the website.
How do those experiences tieinto each other?
How does the brand acknowledgethat interaction happened and
then do something about it atthe end, which is hopefully
where you're converting,wherever you convert.
But the idea is that theshopper, the buyer, should feel
(31:53):
like they were recognized.
They were acknowledged, theywere engaged with wherever that
first place was, and then thatcarried through to the next
place to deliver, an experiencethat hopefully makes that
shopper feel comfortable aboutcoming back in the future.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Really important point to remember that the
distinction between Omnichanneland Multichannel, which I think,
like you say, is maybe somegray lines, but it can quite
easily be first or misunderstood.
I've spoken with other peoplearound our friends over at
Amazon that we hypocriticallylove to hate.
(32:28):
So from a B2B perspective,because we predominantly all buy
from Amazon as well, amazon'smoving into the B2B space.
Obviously It's seeing thatopportunity And I think Amazon
is certainly one of the trendsetters in the market.
They rarely get it wrong.
Obviously they do.
They've been in the news, butfundamentally, in terms of their
strategies, i think they've gota spot on that.
(32:51):
That B2B buyer is also B2C Andthey like that B2C experience
and they want to continue withthat.
And so we've also quitefamiliar with the phrase buy
with Prime obviously set thestandard there of wanting
something now, not in threedays' time or five days' time.
How can something like buy withPrime fit into a B2B merchants
(33:16):
Omnichannel experience?
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Great question.
So buy with Prime is a prettynew service offered by Amazon,
where the merchant or thebusiness can display the Prime
badge on their PDPs, sobasically on their products on
their website.
So when a shopper goes to thatwebsite and they go to check out
(33:40):
, they'll be able to enter into,basically, a Prime experience.
So they'll check out via AmazonPay.
Amazon Warehouses will actuallyfulfill those orders, and so
the idea here is that if ashopper sees the Prime badge and
they inherently know what Primemeans, they're more likely to
convert on the website, which iswhat everyone wants.
(34:01):
And so I think the story now,ironically, as I said at the
beginning of our session today,is about conversion and
experience, and so in this casewe're really focusing on
conversion, of course, becausePrime just invokes a promise.
We know what Prime means.
It's part of daily life at thispoint.
So as far as how to go aboutengaging that, there are
(34:25):
numerous ways to pursue it,although today it does require
having inventory at Amazon'swarehouses.
So as a B2B business, you needto be comfortable with allowing
Amazon to fulfill on your behalf.
But what could be reallyintriguing is if you're getting
started and you're trying tofigure out how do I go about
investing in this experience?
(34:46):
How do I go about building up aB2C presence and start
collecting more and more shopperdata?
It's very easy to spin up a bigcommerce website.
For example, turn on theBioWidth Prime integration.
There's a native app rightwithin the App Store today And
that experience assuming youturn on the appropriate payment
options and so forth is thenenabled on your website.
(35:07):
And so, with that said, themerchants job is just make sure
they get that inventory over toAmazon and enable the
appropriate payment functions toturn it on, and so one path
here is you might sell to Amazon1P.
They may help you with theirown purchase orders where
Amazon's the client.
In that case, amazon isbasically working on a flow here
(35:28):
that would help those samemerchants and the same
businesses selling 1P to Amazonflip that inventory over to then
be used for this websiteexperience, which is completely
novel.
So, as you start to think aboutI'm B2B today, i'm interested
about this new service.
I want to shopper data.
How do I go about doing that?
BioWidth Prime is actually avery fluid way of migrating your
(35:51):
business into this new arena,which is taking your B2B
experience and B2B inventory,flipping it over into a B2C
experience under the promise ofAmazon and then flowing through
conversion based on theexperience you've enabled on
your website.
So for us, again back to theconsulting point.
This is something we talk withmerchants about all the time.
(36:12):
Currently it's available in theUS.
We believe in the not sodistant future that'll move its
way into the UK as the strategycontinues to mature.
But I think in general, theidea should be if you're a B2B
business and you're thinkingabout investing in B2C and you
don't do much of that today andyou feel like you're missing out
on shopper data or experiencesor otherwise, this could be a
(36:34):
really interesting way to beginto try that out, knowing that
you've got the weight of AmazonPrime as a tool in your tool
belt to go pursue those futuresales with.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
So you're leveraging all the I guess kudos that
Amazon Prime has built, thetrust I guess that it's built
over the years into your websiteand on the flip side, not just
that your customers are thenbuying with more confidence They
are obviously it can lead tohigh conversions, so the benefit
(37:09):
there as well But also you'regetting that data which can then
again help make those decisionsas you look to grow your
business on that roadmap that'sbeen agreed with you over the
coming years Exactly, have youseen a kind of merchants' access
stories with Buy With Prime?
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Yeah for sure.
So on the Buy With Prime front,i'd say those experiences today
thus far have been primarilyfocused more on the retail side
of the house, but even thenwe're seeing upticks of up to
25%, lifts and conversion.
I think there's there are a fewpeople on most at least within
the Western world focused onPrime that haven't heard of what
(37:50):
it is, and so I think, when youthink about the level of
expansion they've invested in,how broad the reach of Prime is,
it's hard to find someone thatdoesn't know what it means at
this point.
That said, i myself am not aPrime user, but I'd say that
they've enjoyed the world thatdoes invest in that.
(38:11):
They do it for a reason Theyknow what they're getting.
There's a purpose behind it,and so when you take that
purpose and you move it off ofAmazon, put it onto your own
website, that can be a reallypowerful tool.
I think we've heard the concernsaround experience, and does
giving this thing up to Amazonactually impact my brand
(38:32):
experience?
And I think that's a fairquestion that every brand should
ask themselves.
But I'd also say we're in areally tough economic time, and
so the goal for at least if Ihad a business would be on
conversion and doing as much aspossible to enable experience,
and so a solution like thisobviously focuses on conversion.
(38:53):
That's why you're investing inPrime in the first place, but
there are things you can do withthis new shopper data that can
drive experience, post-purchaseand beyond.
That, i think, can be reallyattractive.
So a deal Again, i think itcomes back to just having the
right team around you at theright time.
These are not easy solutions tojust think about.
I think there are things thatinvolve and require inputs from
(39:14):
third parties, like yourself,even getting in the room and
understanding does this makesense for the business and then
investing if so.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
I think that's.
This is a really importantthing you say there, because the
OmniChannel is like anything isnot a set of forget you've got
to look at constantly innovating, constantly iterating and
approving.
And I think, from a B2Bmerchant perspective, you just
told them how they can not justimplement but also prove their
OmniChannel strategy, which isabsolutely getting again, i
(39:44):
think, in a space which isbroadly underestimated or
misunderstood.
I think those B2B merchantsmaybe need as much support as
possible And I guess you know,convince them that it is for
them, it's not for that otherB2B merchant, it's something
that they can capitalize on aswell.
Are there any kind of trendsthat you're seeing in the market
(40:06):
for B2B merchants when it comesto OmniChannel that maybe new
or existing?
I guess entrance in theOmniChannel sphere can start
preparing for Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
I mean, i think, not to be almost repetitive, but
just the idea that people wantto buy online.
Right, it's not a new idea,it's not a new topic, it's just
a reality of where we're at, notto say that's the entire
industry.
But if you look at wheredollars are going, they're
aggressively flowing intodigital experiences.
And so I think investing in theright platform, right
(40:44):
e-commerce platform for yourself, like a big commerce, making
sure you've invested in then thenext set of tools or channels
to drive traffic and volumethrough that site, are really
critical.
And so, trends-wise, i'vehopped around to a few different
ERP conferences and really hada number of conversations with
different manufacturers and avariety of verticals, and the
(41:07):
trend I'd say, if I had a labeland a word would be curious.
I think a lot of manufacturersare curious about what else is
out there for them, what elsethey should or could be
investing in.
But to your earlier point aroundhow and the things that go into
that, the knowledge gap, thoseare very real blockers and real
(41:29):
challenges right now to, i think, getting to that next step for
the industry.
So the trend for us is we'reseeing a lot of brands and
manufacturers push into online.
We're seeing, now that they'veset up the website or start to
invest in those websites,they're saying now what do I do
with it?
And so for us, that's theGoogle search opportunity, these
(41:50):
other experiences that we'vetalked about over the last 40
minutes or so, and the interestis growing.
The budgets are there.
Many folks are starting to seethe volume that they would have
hoped and that's going to needto be reinvested to drive more
growth later.
So, yeah, i wish I had a morefancy answer, but it's really
(42:11):
brass tacks of get the websitestood up, invest in the right
tools to stand it upappropriately and invest it in
appropriately, and then startpursuing third party channels
that can drive traffic to thatsite to drive more volume.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
If people want to learn more about Fidnomics how
Fidnomics can help theirbusiness, I think probably, if
it's the right fit, but how itcan help them start achieving
their objectives, how it canstart taking advantage of gaps,
maybe in their strategy.
What can they do?
Speaker 2 (42:44):
That's a number of things I think the first thing
is, if they're a Calishek client, they can reach out to you and
get connected directlyPersonally.
I'm always available to havethese kinds of conversations,
just matdornfield atFidnomicscom.
Beyond that, one of the I havementioned this in the beginning
those free on the channelconsults reach out to me, ask
(43:07):
for a consult.
We do a lot in that space wherewe'll walk you through your
tech staff.
We'll talk about channelinvestment.
We'll also walk you throughsomething called a feed audit
where Fidnomics will actuallyevaluate your product feed
through the Google taxonomy andwe'll go through and evaluate,
like a book report, how yourproduct data is ready to perform
(43:28):
and how it is performing today.
If you're already investing insomething like Google, what that
will help you understand is ismy product data actually in a
place to begin this big growthjourney that I want to embark on
?
In a lot of cases it's not.
That's okay.
That's where we come in to helpmake those adjustments.
But, yeah, obviously, reach outdirect LinkedIn email, all the
(43:49):
things.
I'm very available.
But the team I'd say and thething you should ask for is that
on the channel consult, it'sfree, it's available now and I
think it's highly relevant towhere a lot of these brands and
manufacturers are at today.
We'll pull the links in the shownotes anyway, as we linked in
and the Fidnomics website.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Thanks very much for your time, matt.
I've enjoyed talking to andlearning more about OmniChannel,
which I think we're both inagreement, oh no.
I think everyone should be inagreement on this is a really
important strategy fore-commerce retailers.
The question I'd like to askyou and is what's the latest
book or what podcast are youcurrently listening to?
Speaker 2 (44:30):
that you would recommend.
Great question, Watson Weeklyno brainer.
Rick Watson is just atremendous, tremendous
influencer at this point in thee-commerce space, posts daily on
LinkedIn.
I've learned immensely fromreading his posts and listening
to him speak.
In fact, when we onboard newemployees, we have a channel
(44:54):
internally within our companycalled Omni News.
So as you're onboarding, youactually have to read through
the last month's worth of newsand then tell me about it.
And similarly, Rick Watson isone of very few LinkedIn
profiles we actually recommendpeople follow from the day they
join, just because it's great tolisten to such a force in the
(45:15):
industry And, in my case,actually because of this fight
to Chicago, I'll get to see himspeak tomorrow.
So check it out.
Watson Weekly huge fan,especially if you're looking to
grow across B2B and B2C.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
We'll put a link to that podcast as well, but I
enjoy Rick's content.
I think a lot of the peoplethat I'm partnered up with or
connected on LinkedIn certainlywithin the tech side of things
follow his content, so we're100% agree on that.
Excellent.
Well, thank you very much foryour time, matt.
It's so enjoyable.
I hope you make it fly toChicago, have a good time in
(45:50):
Chicago And give Rick ourregards when you come into him.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
Absolutely, we'll work with shout out.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Yeah, we'll post them on social And thank you very
much for your time.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Thank you, i appreciate it.
Have a blast Really.
Cheers, matt, bye.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Thank you for listening to the BigCommerce
Podcast.
If you've enjoyed today'sepisode, please leave us a
review on your favorite podcastplatform And if you want to
follow us on social media, youcan find us on Instagram, at the
bigcommerce podcast, and alsoon LinkedIn.
Alternatively, you can catch upon all older episodes on our
website at thebigcommercepodcastfm.
If you've got ideas for anyepisodes, please reach out to us
(46:32):
Info at thebigcommercepodcastfm.
Until next time.
Thank you for listening.
Please leave us a review onyour favorite podcast platform
(49:04):
And if you want to follow us onsocial media, you can find us on
Instagram at the bigcommercepodcast, and also on LinkedIn.
Alternatively, you can catch upon all older episodes on our
website at thebigcommercepodcastfm.
If you've got ideas for anyepisodes, please reach out to us
Info at thebigcommercepodcastfm.
Until next time.
(49:26):
Thank you for listening andtake care.
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