E-Retail Consulting

Help you structure, professionalize and expand your B2B2C online business with expert E-Retail consulting services

Driving an indirect e-commerce business is about defining and executing a distribution and commercial/marketing strategy for third-party e-commerce websites.

As part of your distribution strategy, you want to define your ideal distribution landscape and business model, among the different options offered by your potential partners.

For companies operating within the selective distribution legal environment, you will have even more control over your retailer’s landscape, allowing you to make sure that your partners fit with your brand’s positioning and equity.

Overall, from a marketing and commercial perspective, your main stakes will be to:

1. Ensure the best representation and user experience for your brand, which need to be in line with your brand’s positioning, DNA, values and story, etc.
2. And, engage your target through the retailer’s digital ecosystem, by activating acquisition and retention levers whether it is on-site retail media, CRM actions, social activities, specific commercial offers, etc.

Properly driving this activity also implies offering a consistent experience with all other touchpoints, using a global omnichannel strategy. Adopting a holistic vision will help you address this key stake, which will impact directly your overall performances.

Which areas to address, in order to master your e-retail business?

• DRIVING THE DISTRIBUTION
  • Identify new business opportunities, investigate emerging business models (e-concession, market places), list opportunities and risks for each potential new partner, and define a size of business with your internal commercial capabilities.
  • Selective Distribution – Define an up-to-date and relevant SDA process along with your internal legal resources, by leveraging and taking into account:
    • your brand’s image “bible”: positioning, storytelling, values, commitment, ambition, etc.
    • your target: will to accelerate millennials recruitment, preimmunize your brand, etc.
    • digital user habits: ideal UI and UX for each device, with a strong focus on mobile

• FOLLOWING AND OPTIMIZING YOUR ON-SITE VISIBILITY
  • Create detailed e-merchandising guidelines, to protect the brand’s equity and ensure the best user experience, and the best performance to the brand:
    • Content: engaging assets, SEO optimized to enhance the brand’s visibility
    • Assortment: relevant offer, adapted to the channel / market / retailer
    • Ratings & Reviews: both volume and quality of the reviews must be in line with the Brand’s positioning at least for your Top SKUs
  • Enable weekly monitoring of your visibility on each of your retailers websites, to secure a proper and effective representation of your brand (content, assortment, product availability, ratings & reviews, share of shelf) by using a automated technical solution

• DEFINING ACTIVATION PLANS FROM TOP TO BOTTOM FUNNEL
  A full panel of digital marketing levers will be at your disposal to master each one of the steps among the funnel, in order to build an effective activation plan with each one of your partners. Many of these levers, especially (but not limited to it) at a top funnel level, are part of “Retail Media” and will be absolutely key to achieve your goals. Retail media is a digital advertising ecosystem that enables brands to place targeted ads within the e-commerce platforms of online retailers. The main objective of retail media is to increase brand visibility, boost product sales and gain a competitive advantage in the e-commerce space. First, as a Brand, it is crucial to arbitrate budget investments between all third parties, depending on their business potential and target audience. Once done, we want to leverage each retailer’s advertising platform to its fullest potential. This may involve optimizing product pages, creating compelling ad content, and strategically targeting specific audiences. Of course, we will need to measure the performance of campaigns and make data-driven decisions to continuously improve results. “Activating” a Brand in e-retail, is not only about placing ads and securing a strong share-of-shelf / share-of-voice. We want to sharpen our bottom funnel, by boosting conversion and building retention and advocacy: product listings optimization, A/B testing, cart abandonment recovery, loyalty/referral programs, UGC, etc. From a commercial perspective, we will need to define a specific offer and strategy for each of our partners, considering their positioning and audience. Exclusive offers can help build awareness, and strengthen partnership with key e-retailers.

• TRACKING & ANALYZING YOUR PERFORMANCES
  As it is for any digital activity, performance analysis is a crucial process in E-Retail and requires the appropriate ressources and expertise. Prior to defining a process and choosing our ressources and technical enablers, as part of our objectives and strategy, we need to list what KPIs we want to collect, how often we want to collect them, and at which level of detail (data granularity) we want to collect them. We need to consider any potential sources to gather this data: e-retailers (wholesalers, marketplaces, e-concessions), panelists, automated digital shelf trackers, etc. Then, we want to choose the relevant solution(s) to consolidate all this data and build reports, as we need to ensure that the data is accurate, comprehensive, easy to understand, and easy to compare to any other relevant data available internally on other information systems. This might involve additional internal ressources: business analysis, IT, etc. Data visualization tools are particularly useful for this purpose, as they can help turn complex data into clear, concise, and actionable insights. Some examples: Google Analytics, Tableau, Power BI, and QlikView, which can provide with various charts, graphs, and dashboards to help make sense of our data.

If you want to investigate any to these topics, or are considering revamping your full e-retail strategy, I am confident that with my solid expertise, I will be able to assist you and help you reach new goals. Feel free to contact me, so that we can schedule a meeting.