The Retail Journey
Welcome to the Retail Journey where we will cover important topics, interview industry stakeholders, and address emerging trends as we journey through our mission of helping our listeners thrive in retail. Your hosts for this show are CEO James Harris and CGO Charles Greathouse.
The Retail Journey
Navigating the New Era of E-Commerce with ShelfSight's Founder & CEO Joe Murphy
Join us for a captivating conversation with Joe Murphy, the trailblazing founder of ShelfSight, as he shares his remarkable journey from a sales career to becoming a product management visionary.
ShelfSight is transforming the way we understand product listing pages on Walmart, offering groundbreaking insights into search rankings, ratings, and reviews. With Joe's expertise, we reveal how blending organic and paid traffic strategies can revolutionize online sales and enhance digital shelf presence.
We uncover the dynamic evolution of Walmart's online platform, where complete product attributes are now essential for success. Walmart's Creator Program offers innovative tools for suppliers to strengthen their online presence, while Walmart Connect campaigns underscore the significance of the platform as a vital research and advertising hub for in-store shopping.
We also dive into the role of AI in streamlining processes and generating content, offering a glimpse into a future where automation facilitates rapid growth. The episode also addresses the strategic intricacies of retail media, from optimizing landing pages and search efforts to tackling offsite conversion tracking challenges. For suppliers hesitant about retail media costs, we provide practical recommendations, including the benefits of starting with low-budget automated campaigns and using marketplace platforms as testing grounds for new products.
Hello and welcome to the Retail Journey podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Charles Greathouse.
Speaker 2:And I'm James Harris, and today we're talking to Joe Murphy. Joe is the founder of ShelfSight, and ShelfSight provides a digital shelf scorecard for product item pages to optimize SEO, amongst other services.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. How are?
Speaker 2:you doing.
Speaker 3:Joe, I'm doing well. Thanks for having me, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Welcome, joe Murphy. The man, the myth, the legend. Wow, that's a lot to live up to. Yeah, tell us about it. I mean, introduce yourself. I'd love to hear a little bit about your retail journey thus far before we get to retail. Just the man that is Joe Murphy realized sales was not for me.
Speaker 3:I liked the data, so found myself at a small startup here collective bias, so influencer marketing and went from an analyst role into a product role so working with engineers and really got to figure out that I liked the building side of things. So working with an engineering team building out solutions and kind of stayed in a product role for the last 10 years after that.
Speaker 2:And your role was kind of guiding the engineers. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Taking business requirements, general product ownership, similar to what you did at Walmart, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1:Innovating with technology. I think some would compare you to Elon Musk. If we could roll the tape on the YouTube video of electric vehicles before it was cool.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Um.
Speaker 3:I don't know if we have that, If we can link it in the show notes we're going to link it, but Joe has how many views on this YouTube video?
Speaker 1:There's like a 250,000 views. I mean big time.
Speaker 3:This was this was uh 15 years ago, before kids, uh, before kids and before I had hobbies.
Speaker 1:Homemade electric bike.
Speaker 3:Building electric vehicles in the basement.
Speaker 1:No kidding.
Speaker 3:It only caught on fire twice.
Speaker 1:I think an entire industry has come from that inspiring video.
Speaker 3:That's right, I hope we find the link we need to link it below.
Speaker 1:You're welcome for that. Hopefully 260,000 views coming soon. Bring them on. Sorry for the brief aside, but yeah, always interested in innovating and solving problems in new and meaningful ways. From the fun bikes?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. So I fell in love with product ownership at that point, and as a startup product ownership is.
Speaker 1:That's the value prop of the startup ownership totally.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you get to, you get to build the value. You get to talk to the clients every day, you get to see where their needs are and then go work with the engineering team, designers, to build those things out. Yeah, that's an untraditional route to product right to go through traditional at.
Speaker 2:It's something that I don't think it's unique to Northwest Arkansas or the even the Walmart market, but sales, getting into sales is the goal for so many people starting out.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And just with the assumption that that's where I'm supposed to be Right, and it just isn't always that, yeah, that was the path.
Speaker 3:That was the path the analyst working there and then work under a sales leadership and then move into sales. But I quickly realized it wasn't for me after the buyer turnover every three months.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So moved back to the tech side of things and that's where I found myself for the last really 10, 15 years Awesome.
Speaker 1:Awesome Shelf site.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so shelf site was born out of just a need for more measurement opportunities for pdps.
Speaker 3:so product listing pages, product display pages on walmart a lot of the content that we worked on over the last really 10 years has been off-site media yeah and you have things that you don't necessarily have on a pdp, like Google Analytics ways to measure things that aren't always measurable for Walmart suppliers, and so part of that is kind of bringing more measurement opportunity to the PDP and hopefully improving the media performance that you're sending to those landing pages as well as on the entire internet. Everybody can measure who's coming to my page, where they're coming from, how my page is ranking on Google and how long the user's staying and what they're doing and who's adding what to cart. Not all of those things exist on Walmart and are slowly coming online, so we're there to kind of help bridge that gap as those things continue to evolve.
Speaker 1:I love that. I mean you say you can measure that, but you say that from a I have technical skills and can build technology that allows me to do that. So excited to see that come to life and bring measurement to things that matter.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think there's a lot of new innovation on the Walmart side of things as well with the digital landscapes report that can illuminate, so that that is essentially Google analytics for your, your product page Right, yeah, but there's still things that are missing from there. So it's kind of a combination of those two things that I think can really help some suppliers.
Speaker 2:Oh cool. So the shelf site is it. Is it a plugin? No, it's actually a platform. Yeah, so reads the page.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's actually reading everything from search results. So where do I rank today in my search versus tomorrow for any given keyword? How do I compare it to my competitors? So, ratings, reviews, how are those things trending over time? It's all of the things that bridge the gap from Walmart providing me a content score to that digital landscape report. There's still a lot of missing gray area in there, kind of bringing that together for clients so that, um, they can have a more, more informed digital strategy when it comes to growing their online sales.
Speaker 2:Awesome Is the focus more organic traffic versus paid for.
Speaker 3:I think it's. It's a combination of two. Like you, you want to extract as much out of the organic results as you can Um, just like it's been the truth for Google for the last 30 years, right? Like I want to rank on that first page of results if I can on my own, and then I want to pay for what I can't rank for, um, or in some scenarios I want to be. I want to have um more brand share of that page, and so I'm willing to pay and rank organically. But I think there's a big challenge for suppliers, especially new suppliers, finding their way onto that first page of search results. And if you're buried on the fourth page, nobody's going to see that. And there's one lever is to pay and the other lever is to kind of work on that organic rank as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, on the fourth page you don't exist.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just like the second page of google. It's like nobody clicks that. That's sort of my curiosity of how?
Speaker 3:how many pages until like, yeah, it's as if it wasn't there, yeah, um well, on google it drops off. I don't know the exact stats, but it's like it's actually the first five results. There's like 80 of all the traffic goes to those but a little at the bottom.
Speaker 1:When you get to one of however many, nobody clicks All the O's To the right.
Speaker 3:That's right. Nobody's going to that next page, unless it's me, and I'm trying to collect data.
Speaker 1:That's the only person. Yeah, only those in the academic, not those actually trying to buy.
Speaker 3:There's somebody checking a dashboard somewhere and they're like, how did they make it to page 16? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because they're searching for a client or something like that.
Speaker 3:That's exactly right yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know one of the things you're personally focused on, passionate about, is landing page.
Speaker 3:Yeah, talk a little bit, yeah, so I think the PDP is the foundation of your Walmart digital business, of your Walmart digital business, and content score has taken us to a point where there's a difference between completeness and effectiveness. And so completeness is I have a title, I have the images, I have the right amount of detail in my description. Those are all. Completeness check a box, yes or no. With the tools that we're building, we're trying to measure effectiveness.
Speaker 3:So can I increase conversion rates over time, um? Can I start to do things that are more advanced, that have been available for other? You know any d2c website, um forever, which is um? Can I increase conversion rates, um by ab testing? So simple ab testing. My title is complete, but I would like to change it and see if that has an effect on the number of people that go from the search page to the listing page. Maybe my description can be changed every once in a while and I can kind of measure the resulting changes. So I think we're getting to a point where that optimization is going to be available for suppliers and something that they're focused on, especially when, um you know you, you want to be as efficient as possible with that media spend. A small change in conversion rate on the landing page makes a big difference and, in turn, in terms of return on ad spend or even organic conversions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you, when you work with suppliers uh, that started in store. Is it a difficult journey to go from? Hey, you know, I get an item onto a mod. I have a year at least. Typically maybe it's six months until the next iteration of that product placement, all of these things, whereas digitally I can A-B test daily if I so desire. It's just a. It feels like a very different muscle. I'm curious of how that conversation goes, your thoughts on how you get someone from set it and forget it to. This is an optimization journey.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's all about showing the value and making that as efficient and possible for them over time. Like you said, like it's set it and forget it for a lot of suppliers. I've finished the process. My item score is good. My content score is good. I'm off the buyer's naughty list. I'm done.
Speaker 1:Although they do get that email Monday morning.
Speaker 3:That content score metrics have evolved, which?
Speaker 1:is a good thing because it means, I mean, essentially, the platform is optimizing to say, okay, here's what we say it takes to be good, and then okay, from there, what, what's better?
Speaker 3:yeah, and I think a lot of that is is long tail. Product attributes change for product categories. Walmart now has hundreds of product types, and so each product type has its own list of attributes that are required, and sometimes those change, like you're saying, and now you're missing that data. So I think that's still. There's still a learning process to go from I'm done with the thing I'm I'm oh, I've got new requirements. I'm going to go from I'm done with the thing I'm I'm oh, I've got new requirements. I'm going to go finish those too. I have an always on page that I can uh, fine tune and watch conversion rates change over time and really, at the end of the day, drive an increase in that online sales growth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a critical piece of the future at Walmart online sales growth yeah. I think, um, it's not the thing you just comply with anymore for that to be true.
Speaker 1:Not a box to check, so to speak.
Speaker 3:No, not a box to check.
Speaker 1:It's a effectiveness matters, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so those are the. Those are the two levels. It's like I get complete, I try to maintain that completeness and and then I move into an effectiveness journey which is increasing conversion rates, and it's the same playbook you've seen play out at Amazon as well and continues to play out Like there's a lot of focus on that landing page and ability to do some A-B testing and add things like rich media and additional content to help.
Speaker 2:But it's really a great way to use your ad budget to not have to run ads you know, invest in the time and you know the, the, the product to like, discover what some different options, better options could be yeah, like just give them another lever to pull. You know just pushing somebody to the page that isn't interested, right, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely yeah. So I think it's just adding that additional lever of I've got paid media, I've got focus on my content, my content production and how that's going to change.
Speaker 1:Conversion rates have set up your product to represent itself in the best way possible to customers. Walmart's the platform where people come to find trusted products, high quality, great price, save money, live better, save time and to deliver on that as a supplier. It used to be just send it in store, maybe have something online. Now the e-commerce platform is such a massive portal to customers. For many customers acquired through COVID, it's the primary way you experience Walmart is via walmartcom, and that is that evolving, constantly iterating. You can't set it and forget it kind of place, and so bringing data to life in a way that shows you hey, here's what's working, here's what's not, to me is a game changer. Yeah, If you don't have it, if you're not paying attention, you're not doing your job properly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I look at it as they've given you a playground to do whatever you can to increase your sales online, right, they give you the ability to change all all the things with some of the changes, with supplier one and rolling rich media into that platform as well. Like they're giving you a lot of tools Um, one of them, um, even things like brand pages. Like you can own more real estate on on walmartcom than you ever have been able to, and just having access to that traffic and the continued growth there is something that's really powerful for a brand over time. And especially, like you said, we saw all the digital, like the transformation from an in-store shopper to a digital shopper. During COVID, we felt that the product we were working on at the time at Rich Context was offsite media. So how do you drive from social to Walmart? And we got to ride that wave, um, as it was happening, um, and then you had the advent of, like Walmart's retail media really starting to take off and become something that suppliers were really interested in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've mentioned that a few times. What you know? What's the basis right now of rich media with Walmartmart and is there any changes coming?
Speaker 3:yeah, so what we were doing at the time was amazon has what's called a plus content, so it's just a section on your item page that you kind of have full rights to design around, and so we were doing that for suppliers at the time. That has gone away and come back in a couple of different iterations on Walmart, um, but I think you're seeing more tools built into supplier one than you have seen in the past, and I think there's a continued path for that. So, um, things like being able to bring in social proof for influencers there's the Walmart creator program. Um, I think you'll see uh that get brought into, uh something that a brand is able to access here in the future in addition to rich media. So being able to host your videos on there. It's like small things like that. It was hard to host it, get a video or multiple videos on your product page up until a year ago on Walmart. So I think we'll just see that continued evolution of more points of control for that brand and their their presence on Walmart.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I love about it. I mean, optionality is great, but the platform is growing so much that it it's all worthwhile investment Like this is time where you should be. This is a place you should be spending time and money because there's a tremendous amount of growth happening via the platform.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you see that from the merchants too. Totally them asking you what are you doing for my digital business and how are you helping increase that percent of sales?
Speaker 2:Well, it's that dynamic that you can't really find in the data is how much research was done on Walmartcom for an in-store purchase? Sure, Absolutely. For an in-store purchase? Sure, absolutely, Because it's I mean, we know some general numbers, but it really is the primary advertising venue for in-store products Sure yeah, and you can get at some of that through as long as you're running a Walmart Connect campaign.
Speaker 3:there's some really interesting reporting in there in terms of impressions and people searching for whether it's your branded term or that category, but it'll be really interesting as Connect and Luminate start to pull closer together if you get to see really the in-store purchase.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the advancement of the digital landscapes you mentioned huge breakthrough. So for those that don't know, tell us about this Luminate product called Digital Landscapes.
Speaker 3:The way I describe it I might have said it earlier too is just Google Analytics for your product page on Walmart. So it has everything from well. The big innovation is where is my traffic coming from and what are they doing on the page? So you used to. In Google Analytics you have what's called source medium. So what is the source of the traffic? What is the medium of the traffic Is's? Is it social and Facebook? Or social and Tik TOK, like, how is it getting there?
Speaker 3:Um, and so you start to see something that you've never been able to see before, which is organic traffic coming to my product page. Uh, uh, offsite media. I'm driving to that page, um, or sponsored search, sponsored display. So I can kind of start to break out all the ways uh, traffic is getting to my page and then how they're performing when they get there.
Speaker 3:So it really puts the brand in the driver's seat of how am I going to change my budget based on that information? So am I going to spend more on sponsored search because I see it's a high volume traffic but also converting better than the other sources? So it really puts you in control of budget allocation across different platforms when you get access to that level of data and you can also see things like where in the flow did they abandon my product, like where in the flow did they abandon my product. So it's, it's, it's deep um data that's available for every e-commerce provider on the internet, coming to Walmart providers now as well. So it really um allows um like traditional performance marketing to take place, which is I'm I'm here to spend my budget as efficiently as possible to drive sales, which wasn't always the case in the past.
Speaker 1:Super helpful at the world's largest retailer. Yeah, to have this kind of perspective. Um love seeing that come to life. Uh, it is a charter um option, so it's if you're wondering where it is in yours and you're not paying for charter, you don't have it. Uh, if you're paying for charter and you're not using it, you should be using it, like that's a huge advantage, huge value.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love the. Obviously we care about data um. We a little bit have also a data nerd um and really enjoy the power of data less, so you know ones and zeros, so to speak. Uh, but you know decision-making and just being able to see the things as they're happening draw correlation as you think of shelf site and you think about bringing decision-making to the forefront across landing pages, pdps. What are some of the decisions that people are going to change that motivate you to start this company?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that budget allocation is the biggest one. We had clients coming to us all the time at previous agencies and where do I spend my next dollar is the first question they'll ask, and a lot of times that's hard, especially with the visibility that we've had over the last several years. So I think that's probably the most interesting question to help answer for brands, and that digital landscapes is going to play a big part in that. Absent of that, I think um, just understanding where I sit on the digital shelf versus my competitors and how that's changing over time, and being able to articulate that to my buyer. So when they do come to me and say, hey, what are you doing from a digital standpoint, I could say, well, here's exactly what I used to be ranked something worse.
Speaker 1:Now I'm ranked.
Speaker 3:My focus is on getting on the first page, and here's how we delivered it and here's how long it took and here's what it looked like. And here's how we stack up against the competition and why we have a right to win a more, a larger share of that page. So I think those are. Those are the two things that I think are real challenges that are I'm excited about solving with that data.
Speaker 2:You mentioned earlier the content creator program. Talk to us a little bit about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so you see tests all the time on Walmart on the homepage, especially if you scroll down below the marketing modules at the top of the page.
Speaker 1:The people paying attention to usage behavior online are confused by you, because who scrolls down?
Speaker 3:all the way to the end. Who goes to page?
Speaker 1:16 in a search result. That's great.
Speaker 3:I love it I get flagged as being a bot all the time on.
Speaker 2:Walmart and press and hold the button.
Speaker 3:Um, that's me, it's funny, sorry guys. Um, yeah, so I think you're seeing that that what Walmart lacks today is social proof, right? You see that? You see the I mean the rise of like Tik TOK shops, and the amount of volume that's getting sold through those today. It's enormous. Yeah, um, and so I think you see Walmart trying to do what they can to have a brand safe version of that, and I think that's a lot of the reason for their creative creator program.
Speaker 3:Um, but you see it play out on you. You'll find them doing AB tests on you all the time. On Walmart Uh, the homepage is a great example, so vertical videos that feature products. Um, so it's a creator doing it specifically for Walmart with a product from from Walmart. Um so it links to the product page, so it's a new way to shop on the site.
Speaker 2:So does the creator submit their their thing, or are they already approved to be on the site?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's actually a program that you have to apply for. So you sign up to be a creator and once you're approved, that's where I'm not really sure how it happens from there Whether you receive a brief and you do the content it looks like that's probably the case or if you're just submitting content on your own. I think it's probably going to be a combination of those two and if I, if I like, look out a couple of years from now, it'll probably be a sponsorship opportunity through Walmart connect as well. So I I have a sponsored, you know, I'm doing a sponsored search campaign and a display campaign and there's a creator program in there as well, where I'm showing up on the campaign and a display campaign, and there's a creator program in there as well, where I'm showing up on the home page and a creator's demonstrating my product makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and it's just that, that, that social proof piece that's been missing from walmart for a while. So it's really cool to see um and, like I said, I've seen it everywhere, from the pdp to the home page, um, and so it's it's interesting to kind of track that evolution, what's the what's the benefit of using that program versus brands going to their own influencer network. I think it's it's getting on site.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I totally you could go use any of the influencer marketing companies and do stuff and drive traffic to your owned website, but I think it's more of a wall garden when it comes to Walmart and social and social proof and social integrations. So I think, um, they could totally do it and should be doing that for all sorts of different reasons. But, uh, I think working with the Walmart creator program is going to be a really powerful sponsorship opportunity for brands in the near future.
Speaker 1:I love that, Um, and I like being able to dive into things that are going to help us grow rapidly in the future. What about right now? Things on your mind that people should be looking at to hack growth yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, I'm the AI guy. Right now, that's my favorite thing to be researching.
Speaker 3:AI, what is, and a lot of it yeah exactly A lot of it is just seeing the power of what it's able to unlock. As somebody with enough technical ability to talk to an engineer and write product requirements of, I want this thing to do this so that you really have a new superpower, which is I can go throw that into one of the large language models and get out code that actually works and I can run, and so I think that's um, that's um something I'm excited about right now just being able to automate tasks that used to take me a long time in the past, and seeing every um everything as an opportunity for automation. Um, and then the future of that is just having, you know, agents, right, so I have a handful of agents that are working on my behalf to solve kind of difficult problems or things that need some sort of decision making um, but also are going to save me time and I can kind of monitor the results. So just seeing the, the evolution of being able to like write code for myself and quickly, quickly make changes to that, has been a really powerful thing.
Speaker 3:Um in terms of like hacks, for, as it relates to walmart, I think there's some really um interesting opportunities on um just the content side of thing as well.
Speaker 3:So, going back to ab testing, instead of having um my brand approve a title and description, why not send them 10 titles and descriptions to approve um and be able to test those things over time?
Speaker 3:Cause I don't have to have send that to a content team Now I can just write a prompt and um get back, uh, multiple different versions of those things, cause the the big failure in content is just the legal approvals that brands have to go through, and it's not a failure, it's just a roadblock, right, it's a roadblock to testing. And so I think having the ability to generate 10 new titles and descriptions and images you even see Amazon coming out today with new image tools, so taking your product on a white background and generating content for you. So I think we'll that's pretty powerful continue to see the platforms build in that, that same level of um, not automation, but just generating new content for you on your behalf and and really you're just an approver at that stage- yeah, what's your advice to companies when they come and ask the question about where do I spend my next dollar?
Speaker 2:And they've got a bias towards offsite media.
Speaker 3:Uh, I think we're just the internet has spoken and search dominates, right, like there is intent at that point. If you're typing in deodorant, you're looking for something Right, and so I think that's always, I, always, um, we always go back to like this hierarchy of needs. So, like, the foundation is your landing page, in this case, the product page above that is search, right, um, and so you want to maximize the results you have on search before moving on to other things. Um, if I was to go beyond search, I would start to um, I would start to look at um display, onsite display, just because the targeting and the audience is there with Walmart, and then I would move to offsite, um, as we see more tracking open up for offsite traffic sent to Walmart, I will continue to spend money there, um, and that's that's. That's just a data visibility thing today, and that's just a data visibility thing.
Speaker 3:Today, seeing and tracking conversions from an Instagram ad to a Walmart cart is very difficult, especially for low price point items. You know, a bag of chips or a thing of cereal Like, it's very difficult to track that If it's a TV and it's sitting in the cart for a long time and they make the purchase, it's a little bit easier to have that visibility. So that's why I can't say confidently, go spend your money off-site Right, because I can't track the conversion all the way through. And that's the advantage Walmart has, and Walmart Connect knows they have that advantage today, and so we'll see how quickly they open up tools to track that off-site conversion. Quickly they open up tools to track that offsite conversion. Um, if they were to follow in the footsteps of Amazon, you'd see, um, amazon has an attribution program where Amazon's basically like yeah, you think you're better at driving traffic and converting?
Speaker 1:Go for it.
Speaker 3:Here's, yeah, here's, the URL with the tracking link in it, and uh, go for it.
Speaker 2:See what you can do. Yeah, we can do this better than you You're going to.
Speaker 3:you're going to're gonna find more effective media um through them, through their retailer network, than you will off-site well, it's got to be true for that to be effective.
Speaker 3:I think they just yeah, at this point they don't, they don't have to maximize their um, their retail media network, as much like they can. They can let they want traffic and at the end of the day, like a retailer needs traffic because they need, each one of those eyeballs is another eyeball that I can show an ad to. So there's this kind of flywheel effect of, yes, I want to maximize my revenue of my on-site traffic, but I also need to add traffic, and so at some point suppliers or vendors need to drive more to the store or to their website.
Speaker 1:I love a call out to Maslow Love.
Speaker 3:Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Yeah, I got out the hierarchy of needs.
Speaker 1:Super helpful. So what would self-actualization be?
Speaker 3:The very tip top of the pyramid. I don't know. Okay, we stopped. We haven't gotten there yet.
Speaker 1:Just a ways up the pyramid.
Speaker 2:It probably has something to do with AI. Yeah, yeah, ai.
Speaker 3:It's just AI sitting at the top making all decisions. You are now removed from the loop. I like it. You can go drink your coffee in your shelter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at that point I'm not sure what's being converted. Ai took over. It's being tracked. That's great, big mistakes. You see people fall into Mistakes along the way. Overpassionate pursuing a particular path.
Speaker 3:I love to hear some warning signs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my, my biggest watch out for suppliers is um being reluctant to hop into retail media because, uh, they feel like it is this, um, because they feel like it is this a massive spend. Right, like I have to come in with a large budget, which is intimidating, and I think my recommendation is, if I was launching a product at Walmart tomorrow is just turn on the $50 a day automated campaign. Just get the data flowing. You're not going to spend that $50 every day. That's like the threshold for a minimum budget, but you're not going to spend it every day. So the barrier to entry there is super low, and so I see a lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about the strategy instead of just Instead of having $50 a day deployed To just start to generate.
Speaker 3:And the automated campaigns are pretty good, like they're going to. If you're a deodorant brand, they're going to pick up all the right keywords and start running media for you, and you have at least that at that point. If you're going to somebody else to help them with your digital strategy, you have some data for them to look at and it doesn't take them three months of of hey, we're going to do a trial period to figure out what's working and then reallocate budgets. Like you have some data to go off of. So that reluctance is probably my biggest watch out for suppliers, failure to launch.
Speaker 1:I mean, as a data nerd, it's amazing how obvious certain moves are if you're paying attention to the data. If you haven't done anything, you have no data to collect, you have fear stopping you from making progress yeah, and it's a.
Speaker 3:It's a beautiful thing to have self-service tools that are pretty powerful at your disposal with pretty low minimums, like honestly, if you're just doing a couple week trial period. It makes sense to do there's a.
Speaker 1:You know we we had a, a group here we were talking through. You know, the new no from a merchant is put it on marketplace, which, to be fair, is kind of a no because it's like, hey, I can't actually put any of my resources behind it, but why don't you give it a try, use your own resources and leverage marketplace? And sure, it's a no, but it's a really good platform and there's a lot of opportunity for growth and there's a lot of things you can do to learn about what customers actually want. You're going to learn how quickly and how easily you convert Walmart customers to your product, and so I've also seen the flip side of that, of that no being turned into a giant. Yes, because you had tremendous growth.
Speaker 1:Online Just takes an active stance and the platform is very equipped for the task. There's a lot of nuance, things that aren't intuitive. I'd love to hear some of the things from you. We work with several folks that do really well on Amazon, have been trying for a while on Walmart and are just irritated and it's not working, and so they come to us oh, okay, and we start fixing things for them. But I'd love to hear from you, like, what are some of those Like hey, I'm really an Amazon guy and I'm trying to figure out Walmart.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think just knowing where you have a right to win, so doing a little bit of research upfront, see how competitive the current category you're trying to get into is, just set expectations of what you think If there's a lot of incumbents that are spending a lot of money, who've been there for a long time and have an established product, just knowing that up front is one of the big learnings. And then being able to tailor a strategy to get there, even if there are those large incumbents. Maybe it's longer tail keywords, maybe it's bringing over know, bringing over more syndicated reviews, so you look like a more established brand. But, yeah, really, really being able to compare what's working to where you're at and kind of build a strategy to get there.
Speaker 2:That's. One of the newer innovations I've seen on the platform is that you can now syndicate through, whether it it's supplier one or walmartcom. Yeah, the reviews. That's fairly new.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we'll see where reviews go. I know FTC had a recent ruling where they're kind of cracking down on false reviews. But I think being able to syndicate those reviews from a Yopo or if you're a large D2C brand, being able to syndicate those reviews from a Yopo or, you know, if you're a large DTC brand, being able to bring those immediately to the marketplace, is incredibly important to establish credibility.
Speaker 2:And you're seeing a lot more direct-to-consumer brands coming to Walmart. Yeah, absolutely and at a lot earlier stage than was true, even five years ago.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's always a fun one to watch. Watch too, because the DTC brands have cut their teeth on performance marketing right, that's what I live and die by, and so to see them come into the Walmart world and excel at retail media is really exciting. It's also, at the same time you see a very different path of how they spend their dollars versus a traditional brand. So a DTC company will continue to build awareness and drive traffic to their DTC site while being on the shelf at Walmart, because they've figured out how to do that and they can measure that. Now, as Walmart gives them more tools to do that on site, you might see a shift in that. But Squatch is like Dr Squatch is a great example of that. Um, you still see their ads today and they're driving to their DTC site even though they're all over the shelf at Walmart. Um, it's cause they've they've built a machine to do that.
Speaker 3:Um and it works and maybe the awareness is there right. I see the ad and then I see it on the shelf and I'm pleasantly surprised and I purchase it.
Speaker 2:Well, I think there's a fear um, at least in some you know DTC companies that well, the more I grow my retail business, it's going to obviously be, it's going to offset my my DTC cannibalization, and I don't think, with the examples I've seen over the years, I don't think I've seen that.
Speaker 3:Um.
Speaker 2:I I see it as a new consumer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, um, I think I think so. I think the the Walmart consumers is eager for those new brands to be there, um, and and delighted when they see them on the shelf. Yeah, now, I don't know if that's like survivorship bias, like just the big brands that you know, the native and Dr Squash's of the world like deserve to be there, um, but uh, yeah, I think it's a, it's an interesting time from an emerging brand standpoint at walmart for sure.
Speaker 2:All right, are we ready for lightning round?
Speaker 1:I'm here for some lightning? Okay, I'll ask the first one. It's a zinger kind of actually uh biggest failure in uh your retail journey.
Speaker 3:Oh, looking for a story less less shameful, more just like something you learned from um, yeah, I would say my biggest failure in my retail journey was early on in my career in sales. Um, just uh, selling reusable p pads. So 26 years old at the height of my career. Kids or dogs, humans, oh, adult humans.
Speaker 1:Oh adults, incontinence, Incontinence. I mean, that's where I cut my teeth.
Speaker 3:Maybe I use a different analogy.
Speaker 1:First buying desk was incontinence.
Speaker 3:Okay. Yeah, it's a growing category. Yeah, it's a beautiful thing it is, but just having a failure to actually understand the market.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And just you talk about going into a buyer's meeting and have no idea, and no idea that I needed to prepare for it, but just felt flat on my face in that category, rough yeah.
Speaker 1:That was one of the big lose.
Speaker 3:Okay, lightning round, I'll go quicker. No, you're fine. No, that's great Biggest. The big big lose. Okay, lightning round, I'll go quicker oh, you're fine. No, biggest learning this year um, let's see biggest learning this year. Um, I think my biggest learning is probably it probably continues to be like simplification, so just being able to and I even catch myself talking about shelf site in a too complex of a- manner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, easy to do.
Speaker 3:I think simplification is still my. I'm going to keep that as the biggest learning going forward. It's just like break it down. I like to say, like you explain it, like you're explaining it to a golden retriever, I think that's the nicest way to do it.
Speaker 1:Golden retriever Love. A good golden retriever Awesome. What are you reading?
Speaker 3:Let's see. Right now I am reading some World War II books. Nice yeah, that. That seems to be a genre I'm interested in at the moment.
Speaker 2:on Churchill, yeah, yeah, I had about three or four years where I think I read about every book I could find that was written in English on Churchill. Yeah, yeah, I had about three or four years where I think I read about every book I could find that was written in English on Churchill.
Speaker 3:So, uh, churchill continues to be an inspiration and just man, what a uh, what a backstage pass. Some of these books, books are on what he was, he was going through, but also the leadership, the leadership lessons that are in there. Um, putting on a brave face despite everything crumbling around you. Yeah, the leadership lessons that are in there putting on a brave face despite everything crumbling around you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Love that For people who want to get a hold of Shelf Sight. How do they find you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's just shelfsightco. Or you can find me on LinkedIn, just Joe Murphy.
Speaker 1:Joe Murphy and then the YouTube video.
Speaker 3:we'll link that for sure, and then the YouTube video.
Speaker 1:We'll link that for sure.
Speaker 3:It's funny. One last funny story is the only class I failed in my academic history was intro to engineering electrical engineering.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then I built an electric motor and it caught on fire Totally.
Speaker 1:Only caught on fire twice, yeah.
Speaker 2:That seems like a pretty good record. They catch on fire every day.
Speaker 1:It like fires, small fires out in the world.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. Well, appreciate your time. Yeah, it was good talking to you today yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me on, guys.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it yeah, got it and thank you for listening. As always, you can hear all of our episodes on our website, highimpactanalyticscom, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for tuning in.
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