Pandemic Pivots: Growing Sales Through Digital Channels - with Paul Michel

In a recent lecture I had for my Digital Media Marketing Seminar course, we had the pleasure of listening to a presentation by Paul Michel, the current Performance Marketing Manager at Harry Rosen. We listened to Paul speak about marketing pivots during the Pandemic, what it means to be a Performance Marketing Manager, his Digital Media Journey, and loads of advice about digital marketing in general. What I immediately began to think about during the presentation, was how challenging it would be to run a brick-and-mortar store like Harry Rosen during the Pandemic. For brick-and-mortar retailers, who rely heavily on in-store sales and face-to-face consumer interaction, the Pandemic was the ultimate nightmare. However, the Pandemic also caused major shifts in consumer spending and shopping habits, with “82% of Canadians shopping online in 2020 and spending $84.4 billion.” (Lanthier, 2021). This change allowed Harry Rosen to pivot their focus online and grow their digital marketing efforts in order to continue to engage with their customers and make sales.

A New All-Encompassing Role

What's changing for many retail businesses, is the need to be online and what struck me during the presentation was the role that a Performance Marketing Manager has in a company, a role that I had never heard of before. Besides the fact that the job requires Paul to work alongside many different departments within his company, the ultimate goal of the job is about taking a more holistic and integrated approach to advertising. This approach includes figuring out how to provide value to the client rather than just selling a product to them. It’s about tracking, analyzing, and using customer data in order to make better advertising decisions, which also means understanding the customer in a more targeted and personal way. With that being said, measuring success can look different for every company. For Harry Rosen, measuring success means looking at revenue over media spend, as this is one of the most important KPIs that Paul tracks. Paul also emphasized the importance of looking at new acquisition. There always needs to be some sort of metric that focuses on the amount of new clients that are buying Harry Rosen products, in order to ensure that there is growth.

The Path to Digital Media Marketing Success

After explaining to us the Digital Media Journey that Paul's taken at Harry Rosen, there were two takeaways that I found to be the most important. The first, is to learn everything there is to know about the customers and the business you’re working with. In the end, if you can understand exactly what your customers want or need, you’re set up for success throughout the rest of the Digital Media Journey. The second big takeaway is understanding what success looks like. In order for any digital marketing campaign to be successful, it’s extremely important to know exactly what the campaign is set out to achieve. As Paul stated in his presentation, once you’ve established these goals, you’ll know exactly how to optimize them, see what works, and what should be done differently.

As part of the Digital Media Journey, Paul also explained what a lookback window is and how it’s changed for Harry Rosen over the course of the Pandemic. If you take a look at the picture on the right, it demonstrates that a lookback window is the period of time in which a platform will take credit for a sale being made. This is another way for Harry Rosen to understand where their sales are coming from and when, helping them to target the right people at the right time. During the Pandemic, Harry Rosen shortened their lookback window from 28 days to one day, in order to better align the sales that they were recording from various media platforms, to their actual revenue. Paul claimed in his presentation that “50% of sales happen within the same day of clicking on the ad.” (Michel, 2022), and so buy changing the lookback window to one day, he would be able to see exactly where the media they were making drove a sale.

Paul's Advice Corner

Paul gave some insight into the difference between starting off at an agency compared to working somewhere that has in-house marketing, which was very helpful information for me in my quest for a work term placement. For Paul, it was valuable to start out at an agency because he was able to work with a number of different clients and companies, which ultimately helped him to be exposed to new ways of thinking and different clients who all want different things. But he also found that working at a place where the marketing is all in-house is also beneficial because you get to be intimately involved with that specific company, you get to have more control, and you can prioritize last-minute advertising.

To Conclude

Paul was a pleasure to listen to and his insights on measuring success and his Digital Media Journey at Harry Rosen taught me how important it is to not only understand your audience inside and out, but also the companies you’re strategizing for. What I will take with me as I endeavour to find a work term placement for this program, is that I have value to give and good ideas to share, so thank you Paul for that newfound confidence and thank you for such a great presentation!

References

Lanthier, N. (2021, October 26). Innovation driving transformation of retail. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/industry-news/property-report/article-innovation-driving-transformation-of-retail/

Michel, P. (2022, January 26). Pandemic Pivots: Growing Sales Through Digital Channels [PowerPoint Presentation]. Pandemic Pivots: Growing Sales Through Digital Channels, Toronto, Canada. https://georgebrown-ca.zoom.us/rec/play/Lj66A1JjHuCPX_ytpp-RebhjfX0sz5Dim68AnsD4Nxbn30KETlq0LCu4l68x0DzVyEavM34imq99yTVH.wQQwDRzkuQZ_cV1Z