Marketing Experts Reveal Top Strategies To

Arlen
[00:00:57]
Welcome to the e-commerce marketing podcast, everyone. My name is Arlen Robinson, and I am your host. And today we have a very special guest Kathleen Booth, who is SVP of Marketing at Tradeswell, where she’s on a mission to empower a new generation of digital-first marketplace brands. Prior to joining Tradeswell, she led marketing at several VC-backed B2B SaaS businesses in the ecommerce and cybersecurity spaces, and was the founder and CEO of a digital marketing agency where she advised hundreds of companies on go-to-market and digital marketing strategies. Outside of work, Kathleen is the host of the long running Inbound Success Podcast, which features interviews with top performing marketers, and was named one of the Top 50 B2B Marketing Influencers of 2021 by TopRank.Welcome to the podcast, Kathleen, thanks

Kathleen
[00:01:49]
For having me Arlen. I’m so excited to be here.

Arlen
[00:01:51]
Yes. And I’m excited to talk to you, you know, today we’re gonna be diving deep. We’re gonna be talking about paid ads and data alignment, data unification, and, and really, how do you grow a profitable company utilizing paid ads, gathering the right data, and that’s really kind of your bread and butter. So we’re gonna be diving deep into that, but before we do get into all of that, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about your background and specifically how you got into what you’re doing today?

Kathleen
[00:02:17]
Sure. So as you mentioned in the intro, I had a digital marketing agency that I owned for 11 years. And in that time I had the wonderful opportunity to work with companies from so many different industries and really learned a lot about different business models and, and go to market strategies and channels, et cetera. I sold that business in 2017 and I went in-house as head of marketing for a series of different B2B tech companies, several of which have been in the e-commerce space. And so that really led me to trades well, which is building really the first operating system for e-commerce brands. And what that means is we basically pull in all of their business, critical data from their marketing reach, help that with their finance data. And we normalize it all at the skew and category level to provide them with really actionable insights on how to optimize their business for not just growth, but also profit.

Arlen
[00:03:14]
Okay. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And as we all know, you know, these days it’s, they used to say content was king with regards to marketing, which I think content still is king, but I think it’s data these days really is king is really all about the data. And so if you’re not making data based decisions with regards to marketing paid marketing specifically, then you’re gonna be spending a lot more than you’re pulling in. And so very critical time to be in this space. And so where I wanna kind of start at is really when a company or an e-commerce brand is looking to do paid ads. I know before you just kind of get out there, launch a, paid a campaign, there’s certain things that you need to get in place internally. What are those things that really need to be in alignment prior to launching, you know, a paid ad campaign?

Kathleen
[00:04:00]
Yeah, so I think there’s a couple different categories here as somebody who, in my case, I’m head of marketing for a company that does paid advertising. I think regardless of the industry you’re in, you need to have your sort of brand voice ironed out. You don’t really need to have your messaging ironed out, believe it or not. Because to me paid ads are one of the, the best ways to test messaging. Now, if you’re using paid ads to generate leads or revenue, having the messaging really nailed down will help you get better results, but you certainly don’t need to wait for that. And so I think there’s very little that should stop you from getting started, but what really should be in place if you want to get the most of your paid ads is a good sort of data collection and analysis strategy, because so much of what goes into building a really robust paid ads funnel is looking at the results and quickly cutting. What’s not working and doubling down on what is and launching experiments, but you have to be able to move fast and, and to do that, you really need the data to support it.

Arlen
[00:05:03]
Yeah, very important. It’s really critical that you have it supported. I think I I’ve talked to other people that have been on the podcast and this, of course, in this e-commerce marketing space. And one of the things that we’ve seen over over the years is a lot of times businesses really don’t use that frame of thought with gathering that data first, because there’s so many channels paid ad channels out there these days. It’s so easy to just pop in your credit card, launch a campaign in just a matter of minutes and, you know, just start spending money. And unfortunately if you start doing that, you’re gonna burn cash really quickly, but it’s just, you know, it’s just so easy. I think that’s one of the advantages and disadvantages, I think that exists these days.

Kathleen
[00:05:45]
Yeah. I totally agree with you. I mean, there’s a very low barrier to entry. Yeah. Which is great. Makes it accessible for anybody to get started. But the thing that I think is really important to keep in mind and we all know this, but I think it’s easy to sort of like push it aside is that all of these platforms are very algorithmically driven. You know, we’re used to, you mentioned content in the beginning, we’re used to thinking about the algorithms behind a Google search result and the how that works, but a platforms are totally algorithmics as well. And so algorithms move faster than the human brain can. And as a result, that’s why having real time access to good data and the ability to quickly synthesize it and make decisions on it is so important because if you’re not moving as fast as the algorithm is, you’re missing opportunities. And you’re probably overinvesting in things that are not driving results for you. And that’s literally literally like putting money down the, down the drain. So the good thing is there are lots of solutions out there today to help with that. The reality is you can’t simply, if you wanna have a world class paid ads program, you can’t simply rely on spreadsheets and human brains and eyeballs because we are not capable of moving at the pace of the algorithms.

Arlen
[00:07:01]
Yeah, exactly. That is so true. It’s, you know, a lot of times we tend to think with the Googles of the world and all of these different search platforms that there’s a human at the other end making these decisions. But of course that’s definitely not the case at all. And so they’ve got these high speed algorithms that they’re constantly tweaking over time. And it they’re almost, I guess you could say it’s a form of artificial intelligence because they’re, they are learning as searches are being done as people from different areas, demographics are searching from things that, you know, they’re just, they’re really kind of growing at a, at a tremendous pace. So it’s really, I mean, yeah, it’s really mind blowing when you think about it and these things are just really moving. Like you said, at a pace that there are human mind can’t really keep up with.

Kathleen
[00:07:48]
Yeah. And what’s really interesting is that, you know, we talked about the slow barrier to entry and, and I think the thing to remember is that if you’re just advertising say on Facebook, it’s not that complicated because Facebook has built in tools that will help optimize for you like dynamic creative and things along those lines. And so if you’re a single channel seller, who’s advertising on a single channel, great, you can use those platforms. You can get started quickly. You can rely on their built in tools and you’ll have a perfectly adequate paid advertising program and you’ll probably get perfectly adequate results. The problem is that very few, particularly in eCommerce, very few sellers are single channel and very few sellers rely on single channel marketing strategies. And so that’s not a, the real world for most of us. And so I think, you know, I was doing some research recently and something like 95% of e-commerce brands are selling on more than one channel.

Kathleen
[00:08:48]
So this means if you’re using ads to drive business, you are se you’re using those ads to point to two different product listings. It could be your direct to consumer site. It might be a listing on Amazon using Amazon ads, or maybe it’s an ad that’s pointing to a product sold via target or through, you know, another marketplace, but very few of them are single channel sellers. And so there’s a level of complexity in selling across different marketplace and retail channels, but then they also have these multiple marketing channels. And so, you know, we’ve all heard recently about what’s happening with Facebook and ever since the most recent iOS changes have been updated, Facebook results have tanked and customer acquisition costs have gone way up for e-commerce brands. And it’s, it’s really kind of size Nick because a lot of these brands have built their businesses largely on Facebook ad funnels and this points to the danger of relying on one channel.

Kathleen
[00:09:49]
And so I think what you see today is these brands testing different sales channels, but also having to test a lot of different marketing and advertising channels because otherwise they’re not gonna get the results they need. And that’s where you really start to see the problem with the, the algorithms, because you might be advertising on Facebook, Google TikTok, and then you might be selling on Shopify and Amazon and target or Walmart. And all of a sudden it turns into this massive nightmare of spreadsheets, like, right, right, right. It’s a convenient way to marry up all that data. And that’s where I think you see brands falling behind pace with the algorithms because every one of those platforms I just mentioned is algorithmically driven minus your own D TOC site. That’s the one place where you actually have control. Right. But so few brands are only selling on their own D TOC site.

Arlen
[01:10:43]
Yeah. Very, very true. Yeah. It is really hard to keep up if you’re across all of those channels, you know, there are some tools that are out there that can kind of aggregate your data into a dashboard. Even Google has Google dashboard, something that you can customize for a variety of different data sets and kind of in one. So I, I think you’re almost at the point where you, yeah, you really do have to get something really almost customized if you’re across spread across all of those channels, even. So you feel very difficult to kind of keep a handle on what’s going on.

Kathleen
[01:11:16]
You’re right. And obviously this is the problem we’re trying to solve for. And the thing that is very subtle, but really important that underpins all of it is that there are a lot of dashboarding tools out there, but what they don’t solve for is the fact that you’re not gonna be able to see one unified view of your product’s performance across channels. Because for example, you might have a product you sell on your Shopify site, but on Amazon, it has an ASIN, which is their version of Aku. And then Walmart has its own version of Aku. And you have your own version on your site. So even though you can use things like Google data studio and other platforms to pipe all this data in, it’s not gonna be able to tell you, you know how this cup is selling across three different sales channels, because it can’t marry up the product identifier. And so you still have this last mile of complexity around the data that prevents you from really making speedy decision making. And that’s, that’s really like the thing that needs to be solved to truly make this easier for merchants.

Arlen
[01:12:22]
Yeah. Yeah. Very true. You talked about kind of unifying all of this data in a quick way, but yeah, like you said, it really is something that yeah, we haven’t quite solved yet. Yeah. It’s really, it’s really difficult to really figure out how this is gonna be with that in mind. Where do you see these platforms, these channels, these paid ad platforms, like the Googles, the Facebooks, where do you see? Cause you know, ultimately they want the brands to have success cuz you know, the more success the brands have, the more money they’re gonna spend, you know, if the brand is not having any success is having a hard time keeping up with all this, they’re gonna just move on to the next platform. Where do you see these platforms going? As far as being able to assist brands with keeping up with all of this, what do I mean, are there any kind of latest and greatest things on your end that you’ve seen? Or what, what do you think they’re headed with everything?

Kathleen
[01:13:14]
Yeah, it’s a good question. I mean the reality is that all these platforms are basically walled gardens. They have famously held data, very close to the vest and they also don’t really tell you transparently how their algorithms work and the, you know, formulas that underpin some of the data they’re giving you. And I don’t really think that’s gonna change anytime soon. You know, I think that’s Facebook built its business on, on a lack of transparency around these things. But for a long time it was delivering great results. So nobody really pushed it Google similarly, you know, it, it gives a lot of data, but there’s not a lot of transparency into how it arrives at it. And even on the look, even on the SEO side, it’s, you know, started to mask a lot of the keywords that are driving traffic to your site. There’s just a lot that we don’t know.

Kathleen
[01:14:04]
And the reason is that these platforms need to keep that data confidential because that’s effectively what they’re monetizing. And if they start to give it out that they, they undermine their very business models. And so that’s why we think at least at trades, well that there’s really a need for a neutral party to come in and sort of be that impartial arbiter that sits on top of all of this and is able to say to marry up the information for brands and tell them what’s really working and what’s not. And at the end of the day, what it’s about is really for us, it’s like about shifting the balance of power away from the wall gardens and putting the brands in control of their own data, you know, because shouldn’t, they shouldn’t, they have it it’s data on the performance of their own business. And, and we fundamentally believe that they should have access to, to all of that.

Kathleen
[01:14:57]
And they should have it in real time and they should be able to structure it in a way that’s meaningful for them. So for example, you know, we have one customer who’s selling two different types of salt on Amazon. One is a bath salt, and the other is an edible salt. And Amazon decides how those two things are categorized. Well, we want this customer to be able to categorize those products in the product categories that make the most sense for them, not the categories that make the most sense for Amazon, at least when they’re looking at their, their product performance and how they do bundles and mix shift and optimization. So that’s what it’s really all about. And it’s, it’s, there’s a little bit of, of a mission underneath this where we believe strongly that the brand should, should really have the say on all of that so that they can make the best decisions for growing their own businesses.

Arlen
[01:15:40]
That’s very true. Yeah. But it’s just hard to say if these wall gardens are going to bend a little, cause like you said, they, they kind of have their own secret sauce if you will. And they’re kind of protecting that, but at the same time, you’re totally right. When you mention the data, the brands, this data really essentially is the brands, even though these wall guards are kind of profiting from it and God knows what they’re doing on the back and with the harvest data. Right? So it’s, it’s a tricky thing. Yeah. It’s a, there’s always been a big debate about this data who owns it, who has the right to do certain things. And this tug of war I think, is gonna go on for quite some time. So I don’t know if it’s gonna be solved anytime soon, but I think the bottom line is that as a brand, you need to make sure whatever data that you’re gathering is going to, you know, help you make those right decisions that are gonna be the best for your brand.

Arlen
[01:16:31]
And so you have to kind of start looking at what are some ways that we can truly own our own data, whether that’s via our own, you know, mailing list, creating our own segmented list based on what we’re gathering from our site, what we’re gathering, maybe from surveys, from customers, all of that. So it’s, I think that’s more important than ever that that brands, you know, gather their own data to make their, the right decisions. Now I’m speaking of decisions, one of the things that I think, and we kinda alluded at this earlier is because there’s so many of these particular platforms out there that they each, you know, have their own respective pros and cons. How does a brand even decide where to, or particular what particular ad platform is gonna be right for their business? I

Kathleen
[01:17:19]
Think it’s a tough question to answer. And it there’s a lot of it depends, right? Obviously you gotta go back to your marketing fundamentals and think about who your audience is and the platforms that they’re using. But I also do strongly believe that, especially in today’s environment, the answer to that question really lies more so than ever in experimentation. And I’m seeing this everywhere. I look in, in the conversations that eCommerce brands are having around what they’re doing right now with their ad strategies, particularly in response to what’s happened on Facebook. There’s a lot of brands that are testing out TikTok and snap ads and going now to start launching on marketplaces where they might not have done that before. And it’s all in this vein of experimenting and, and sort of seeing what’s gonna work and then doubling down in those areas. And we did this research last year in 2021, where we surveyed 300 plus different e-commerce leaders to try to find out kind of what their thinking was around these topics.

Kathleen
[01:18:19]
And what was really interesting was that we were able to isolate from the responses we got. There were three things that the best in class eCommerce brands would really need in order to be successful in the future. And the first of those was what they called clearer cross functional visibility into data. So not just for your marketing team, cross functional means like you really need your finance team, your marketing team, your retail team, your logistics team, all looking at the same information, especially because in today’s world, we’re dealing with supply chain crunches and rising costs of good sold. Like all of these things are so interrelated. And if you’re not all looking at the same data set, you are handicapping your ability to make good decisions for your business. So that was number one, which I would classify as alignment, internal alignment, that’s fueled by data.

Kathleen
[01:19:12]
The second thing that they said was improved access to unified data. And this goes back to what I was alluding to earlier around, you know, having all these different skews on different platforms and trying to marry it up. And what we heard from a lot of them is that they’re spending upwards of one day full day a week, just trying to synthesize data from all their different channels and platforms. And if they were able to do that in an automated way, first of all, they would free up tremendous amount of time. That’s something like 20% of the team’s time and focus on other things around product innovation and other areas that could potentially contribute to the bottom line. And then the third thing was AI powered insights because this is so fascinating to me. And I think it’s not unique to e-commerce, but I have had a lot of people say to me, we don’t actually want more data.

Kathleen
[01:19:59]
Oh wow. And as soon as I hear it, I kind of cringe. But what they’re really saying when you dig deeper is we don’t want the data. We want the insights because if you just give us more data, we’re already spending a day a week trying to figure out what to do with the data we have. So if you just give us more of it, we don’t have the time right. To figure that out. And so the better thing to deliver to these brands is the answers they’re looking for from the data. And so it’s like these three, if you really boil it down, it comes down to three things. It’s alignment, data unification and speed, and speed really speaks to like time to action from data to analysis, to insight, to action. Like that’s the life cycle that needs to be solved for.

Arlen
[02:20:43]
Yeah. Yeah. Very, very true. And you you’re right. When you hear that, you know, I don’t want any more data you do cringe, but it makes sense. It makes sense.

Kathleen
[02:20:50]
I get it. I mean, I don’t want more data either. I just wanna know what to do with it. Right.

Arlen
[02:20:55]
Exactly. Exactly. That’s really the bottom line. Yeah. I mean, you could have all the data in the world, but if you don’t know what to do with it, then, you know, you’re just kind of buried in amount of data and you’re trying to swim through and make the right decisions with it. So yeah, I, I get it. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. You know, I was getting ready to wrap things up. I wanted to see if you could point out some examples of some data that was gathered from some top performing companies that you’re familiar with, maybe that you work with and that were successful with kind of taking that data to make specific decisions regarding paid ads.

Kathleen
[02:21:28]
Yeah. So this is the thing that we spend all day, every day kind of obsessing over is like, how can we help these brand surface insights that are gonna enable them to grow more profitably? And it’s interesting because in that same research I talked about, we asked brands what their, the top factors were that were hindering their growth. Cause that’s really what we wanna solve for. And the number one answer we got with 79% of people citing, it was the ability to measure and score the productivity of their advertising programs. And so the, some of the things that we’ve seen that have been really helpful in decision making, number one, it’s having the finance data married with the marketing and sales data because traditionally, most marketing and advertising programs have been, their effectiveness has been measured on Roaz, which is return on ad spend, but Roaz is a measurement of top line revenue.

Kathleen
[02:22:20]
And it is a feel good metric. Marketers love it because it is fully within our control to measure and report on. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s fairly easy to optimize for. And so Roaz is, is literally like I spent this much on advertising and it drove this much in revenue for the company and you want that ratio to be positive with more, more revenue than ad spend and the higher, the multiple the better. Right. It’s very simple. And so that’s what you hear most teams talking about, but a more telling metric, if you will, is net margin contribution. So for every dollar I spend on ads, what does it contribute at the end of the day to my net profit margins as a business. So subtracting out landed costs from the equation, the reason that more brands don’t talk about that and don’t think about it. Well, there’s a few reasons. Number one, it requires the marketer to have visibility into the finance data. And that’s not always something that finance teams are willing to share, but then it also requires the marketer to be willing to partner with the finance team and, you know, look, I’m head of marketing. If somebody said to me, your CFO’s gonna be looking over your shoulder at your ad program performance, I’d be like, oh, hell no.

Arlen
[02:23:37]
Yeah.

Kathleen
[02:23:37]
You know, like get outta my business. You know? And I, I love my CFO, I should say, like, she’s a lovely person and we have a great relationship, but there is that feeling of like, oh, I don’t need that level of micro involvement. Yeah. That’s not really what this is all about. This is about empowering marketers with the data that they need to really understand the true impact. They’re have the true financial impact they’re having on the business. And so it’s getting that data into whatever system they’re looking at and it’s making it actionable. And so, so we’ve had brands that find out that maybe their Roaz looked really good on a particular ad campaign, but the product itself that they were pushing with that campaign was either a loss leader. In which case they had to make a decision about, were they gonna optimize for profit from the first sale or they looking at customer lifetime value, which we, we also show them cohort analysis and lifetime value across channels.

Kathleen
[02:24:28]
So like there’s a lot of factors that go in here on understanding, should you continue to spend on that ad? And oh, by the way, you also need inventory and logistics data. Because if you have a very successful ad pushing a product that you can’t deliver on, that just creates tremendous customer friction and dissatisfaction, and that leads to poor reviews and churn. And so it’s marrying all these points up together and that, that’s what we’re really trying to help the brands we work with do. And so the brands that do use our platform tend to see really tremendous growth in terms of bottom line profit.

Arlen
[02:25:00]
Yeah. You’re you’re right. There’s, there’s really those key points that you really have to kind of marry together to really see the big picture of it. And it does take a little bit of, you know, working with, like you said, the finance accounting team marketing team, and yeah. Unfortunately it, like you said, a lot of marketers may not be too keen to having, you know, the CFO or finance person peeking over the shoulder, but there’s certain things that, you know, they they’re gonna need to, I guess you could say, it’s not really a peeking over the shoulder, but more kind of a pass back and forth, just so they are really kind of on the same page. And then, so you’re really fully aware of all right, what are we really making on this ad when it comes down to it after everything is paid after the products is delivered all of that. So yeah, it makes, makes really a lot of, a lot of sense.

Kathleen
[02:25:50]
Well, and I should just add one thing I forgot to say earlier. Sure. Which is that let’s not forget that most paid ad agencies are paid based on Roaz. And so there’s a built in disincentive to change that because the compensation models are tied to it. And so there’s a lot of reasons that this shift hasn’t happened faster, but I think we all need to start talking about it more.

Arlen
[02:26:11]
You’re right. It’s like the, like you said, it’s the easiest metrics to track. And of course that’s why most agencies are really, you know, basing it on it. Yeah. The change definitely has to happen there because it, it could be a little deceptive at the end of the day when you to really start looking at all right. What was our profit? Yeah. You know, after all said and done, so you, I totally agree. Well, Kathleen, it has been awesome having you on the podcast. I really learned a lot, definitely is a timely subject. And this whole conversation about data as res respect to paid ads and marketing in general is, is definitely not going anywhere. I think we’re gonna be having these discussions for a long time as our whole marketing world shifts with eCommerce. You know, there’s a lot of changes going on. So this is definitely something that I know is keeping your team on their, on your toes, on their toes. So good stuff. But lastly, before we let you go, I always like to switch gears just so our audience can get to know you a little bit better. If you don’t mind sharing one closing fun fact about yourself that you think we’d be interested to know.

Kathleen
[02:27:11]
Sure. So I did not start my career in marketing, even though I did study marketing in my MBA, I actually started my career in international development consulting, cuz I also have a master’s in international politics. And during the 10 year span that I worked in that field, I traveled to 54 countries in the world. So if you’re thinking of going any place, particularly in the developing world, send me a message on LinkedIn and I’ll tell you my thoughts around it, cuz I’ve probably been there.

Arlen
[02:27:39]
All right. That’s good stuff. Yeah. Well you’ve conquered quite a bit of the world’s countries, 54 that’s that’s a lot

Kathleen
[02:27:45]
Still so many more left though.

Arlen
[02:27:46]
Yeah. Yeah. There still is. But yeah, you got a lot, lot under your belt. Yeah. Good to know. And thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that. And as I’m plotting my next travel, I’ll definitely may I may take you up on that. Yeah, definitely. Do that. Get your opinion about a certain area for sure. Well, Kathleen, it’s been awesome having you on the podcast. If any of our listeners wanna reach out to you and pick your brain anymore about this subject or any e-commerce marketing subject in general, what was the best, what would be the best way for them to reach you?

Kathleen
[02:28:15]
Sure. So you can definitely go to tradewell.com and I’m findable through there, but you can also feel free to reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn. Or you can tweet me at Kathleen L. Booth and I’m active on all those platforms and I’m happy to answer any questions.

Arlen
[02:28:30]
All right. That’s awesome. I definitely encourage our listeners to hit you up and it’s been great having you today, Kathleen, on the e-commerce marketing podcast.

Kathleen
[02:28:37]
Thanks Arlen.

Arlen
[02:28:38]
Thank you.

speaker 1
[02:28:40]
Thank you for listening to the e-commerce marketing podcast. 

Podcast Guest Info

Kathleen Booth
SVP of Marketing at Tradeswell