Challenging Some of Today's Most Common Commerce Misconceptions
Overcomplicating things in retail is very, very easy. Just ask industry veteran Risa Crandall.
Omnichannel solution provider SmartCommerce recently brought on Crandall as chief growth officer in part to help clear up misconceptions pervading commerce media and the role of technology within it. She joins the company after spending her career straddling both media and tech in such companies as Aki Technologies, Meredith Corp., Quotient and Crisp.
“Shoppability has been something we've all been talking about for some time, but there's still a lot of curiosity about it,” she told P2PI last week. “I was excited to come somewhere where it can be a very streamlined conversation, and clients who I've known for all these years could have a trusted conversation about how to use technology to drive their businesses forward.”
A key component of her new role is education. Ask what today’s CPGs are challenged by and the standard answer is: How much time do you have? More challenges equals more questions, even when they aren’t necessarily new.
For example, while organizational silos are as old as the cubicle, recent CPG reorgs have subsumed e-commerce into their larger commerce functions. Merging shopper marketing with e-commerce, while necessary, requires alignment of differing skillsets, notes Crandall.
Other complexities today’s CPGs are wrestling with: Making it easy for consumers to understand their brands across myriad channels. Competing with emerging brands. Understanding what consumers are buying, what they’re interested in, and the signs they're ready to shop.
Also: Finding efficiencies after increasing prices to offset decreasing volumes. Balancing consumer promotions into marketing mixes. Ensuring brand awareness and having the data to drive transactions.
And, of course: Navigating the growth of retail media for a cross-retailer understanding of the consumer.
“That's really what I'm hearing out there: How do I be the most efficient with my media spend across all the places I am, and what does the role [of technology and AI] play in having my campaigns be the highest performing they can be?” said Crandall.
Helping CPGs understand the full consumer journey in large part means playing the role of mythbuster, especially when helping marketers know what they don’t know, she notes. Among the misconceptions she’s working to clear up for SmartCommerce today surround shifting consumer behavior and product discovery, as well as the idea that adding to cart is the same as adding to a product detail page.
“There's this impression that going to the product detail page or going to an interstitial of multiple retailers is the same thing, and it actually is the opposite,” says Crandall. “The consumer drop-off is about 80% of people who go to an interstitial with multiple retailers and then go to a product detail page.”
[See also: Learn more about navigating today's retail trends at Retail Media Summit in May]
Similarly, as social media influencers play a growing role in the shopper journey, she’s intent on helping CPGs understand how to make the process more seamless. For many CPGs, being able to add to the cart of where the consumer typically shops is critical for frictionless experiences, but that does not mean it needs to be complicated, she asserts.
What’s Next
SmartCommerce is focusing this year on building off its foundation and strengthening its relationships with retailers, says Crandall. This includes creating cross-retail first-party data feedback loops so brands can put in proportion where spend is being actualized from the consumer perspective.
It also means helping companies not get stuck in their own way. Today’s marketers need to understand what’s being measured — and how to better communicate it, Crandall says, and part of mythbusting means showcasing unknown opportunities.
“It’s very important for marketers to understand what is being measured … and get this information to their CMOs. We've heard from some of the largest C-suites out there in our [CPGs] that they are ready to talk more about shopability because they understand it more, and that's a lot of it.”
