Welcome to Episode 7. of Growing Ecommerce. Today, Mike is joined by Lucas Gordon, a solution specialist in native advertising at Microsoft. With 20 years of experience in digital media and advertising, working with brands like Revlon, Decathlon and many others, he's particularly strong in real-time bidding technology. Lucas walks us through Microsoft's ad tech offering. Why audience matters more than placement? Why he sees Microsoft as a low fraud environment? And we talk about partnerships inc...
Apr 04, 2023•53 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Welcome to Episode 6. of Growing Ecommerce. Today Mike is joined by Sam Tomlinson , of Warshawski , a boutique marketing agency in the US. Sam is also teaching at Johns Hopkins, University and Georgetown. Mike caught him while he was attending SMX Munich and discussed the conference briefly before diving into Sam's views on forecasting and emphasizes that forecasting is not out of reach. Then, we switch gears and we discuss the intersection of large language models and search. It's not a new top...
Mar 21, 2023•49 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Welcome to Episode 5. of Growing Ecommerce. Today, Mike is joined by Mike Taylor , who is making his second appearance on the show. He's the co-founder of Vex Power and author of the upcoming book marketing memetics. Last time we talked about testing, marketing, mix modeling and generative aAI, but this time we are digging in: we talk about the prospect for marketers in an age of AI, an interesting field called Prompt Engineering and so-called war of the search engines between the new BING exper...
Mar 07, 2023•48 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Welcome to Episode 4. of Growing Ecommerce. Today Mike is joined by his colleague Mark Haupt , smec`s UK commercial director. He brings years of online retail experience in several different contexts to the table as he talks to Mike about the Post Brexit, post - pandemic economic situation in the UK, how Google's Performance Max has landed with the UK market, the increasing allure of Microsoft ads and the agency in-house relationship. Join Mike and learn more about the paid marketing in the UK ....
Feb 21, 2023•45 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Welcome to Episode 3. of Growing Ecommerce. Today, Mike looks back at ecommerce in 2022. He reviewed the data and prepared a market report for 2022. He first looks at macroeconomic data like consumer confidence and inflation and then talks about trends identified in channel data for Google Ads, Shopping and Performance Max in particular. The focus of the market report is on Germany, Netherlands, UK, and France. Join Mike and learn what are the key trends to build on in 2023. Which ecommerce vert...
Feb 07, 2023•43 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Welcome to Episode 2. of Growing ecommerce. Today, we are joined by Scott Kennedy . He's a senior director at Franklin Sports where he's responsible for ecommerce analytics and tech capabilities. In the US, Franklin is synonymous with baseball and baseball for many is synonymous with stats. It is a numbers game, so it's only fitting that Franklin is a remarkably data driven organization and Scott is at the forefront of that. We discussed that data culture in quite some detail, getting into emplo...
Jan 24, 2023•45 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Welcome to Episode 33. of Growing ecommerce. Today, we are joined by Arend de Ruiter from bol.com , a dutch retailer and retail platform generating over €5 billion in annual revenue. Arend leads SEA measurement and data activation at this retail giant. We discuss what it's like to advertise 60 million products, how to approach segmentation in supersized accounts, and how to deploy automation in this huge oil tanker like organization. Advertising 60 million products - 10:30 What is the right amou...
Jan 10, 2023•47 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Welcome to Episode 32. of Growing ecommerce, the last episode of 2022. Today, we are joined by Philip, Ivelio Vellin who is an expert in analytics and tracking. This time, Mike and Phillip talk about google analytics 4, the complaints, the benefits, and how to get it right. They discussed cardinality, data retention, migration strategy, consent mode, and model data plus server side tagging . It's a great introduction to the topic and now is actually an opportunity to update your data strategy as...
Dec 13, 2022•36 min•Season 1Ep. 32
Welcome to Episode 31. of Growing ecommerce. Today, we are joined by Tim Aton, COO at Range Leather , where in a classic scale-up fashion, he wears a lot of hats. From paid, and owned media channels to product merchandising to managing shipping and wholesale teams. We discuss approaches to blended ROAS, meta advertising, Facebook in particular, and how is life looking post-iOS 14. Then we move on from marketing and discuss the interplay of marketing and operations. Meta & Facebook advertisin...
Nov 29, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 31
Welcome to Episode 30. of Growing ecommerce. Today is a special episode as we break the usual format. Long-time listeners will know we did a Q4 peak season panel back in 2021 and we did it again. Time Mike is in the hot seat joined by his colleague, Agnes Zottl. Many thanks to Maria Holzinger for stepping into the moderator rule. They discuss big-picture environmental trends, what it means to have the most automated Google Ads peak season ever, and how to profit this holiday season. You can have...
Nov 15, 2022•20 min•Season 1Ep. 30
Welcome to Episode 29. of Growing ecommerce. Today, Mike is joined by Mike Taylor, co-founder of Vex Power ( vexpower.com ) which offers courses for marketers who want to improve their technical skills. He also offers consultancy, growth and experimentation and he's a popular instructor on LinkedIn learning. Microsoft Excel for marketers and memetics ( Marketingmemetics.com ) are one of his big hits over there. They discuss Mike's stance on testing. When is it a waste of time? When isn't it? And...
Nov 02, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 29
Welcome to Episode 28 of Growing Ecommerce. In this episode, Mike shares one of his monologues to reflect the changes in advertising, and tackles the ongoing need for modernization, including testing, and account structure. Mike looks at the recent changes in the google ads universe and talks about what it means for ecommerce experts as google becomes the merchant center of gravity.
Oct 18, 2022•41 min•Season 1Ep. 28
Welcome to Episode 27 of Growing Ecommerce. In this episode, Mike is joined by Inderpaul Rai, Head of Acquisition at ufurnish.com. Indy has had a remarkable career spanning from small-scale SEO to award-winning paid work on the agency side, to enterprise in-house teams and all the way back to a startup environment. We discuss all that, and along the way we talk about what a modern partnership-driven affiliate model looks like, plus the importance of paid and organic search harmonisation – or in ...
Oct 04, 2022•52 min•Season 1Ep. 27
Welcome to episode 26. of Growing Ecommerce. In this episode, Mike is joined by Alex Greifeld. Alex has a long background in ecommerce and until recently she was a director at Tapestry, which collects brands you'll know from the luxury space like Coach and Kate Spade. Now, she's acting as an ecommerce growth advisor, so she's a really perfect fit for this podcast. We talked through age-old debates like retention versus acquisition and newer ones like Return on Ad Spend versus Marketing Efficienc...
Sep 20, 2022•41 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Welcome to Episode 25 of Growing Ecommerce. This time, Mike is joined by Katherine Munro, a data scientist at smec. If you have a stereotype in your mind that data scientists are brilliant, then Katherine will not disappoint you. She is a fountain of knowledge – disciplined and scientific as you might expect, and also incredibly creative in her thinking. We catch up about some current projects she’s working on and then dive into CLV, or Customer Lifetime Value. What is CLV exactly, what are appr...
Sep 06, 2022•51 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Welcome to episode 24 of Growing Ecommerce. In this episode, Mike is joined by Kirk Williams - his own professional hero. Kirk is a PPC and digital advertising expert who runs his own PPC micro agency, ZATO Marketing. In this episode, Kirk and Mike ponder about the Google advertising space, both the challenges and opportunities moving forward, as well as the role of data collection and privacy in the ecommerce operating environment. This episode gives an interesting counter or companion perspect...
Aug 23, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Welcome to episode 23 of Growing Ecommerce. In this episode, Mike is joined by his colleague from smec, Markus Harant. He is an online marketing expert who leads the Programmatic Advertising and Analytics team. Markus talks us through the technology behind programmatic , ecommerce use cases, how to view these campaigns, and What's going on with the dichotomy between brand and performance? If you wish to read about Programmatic Advertising instead of listening about it - have a look at the Progra...
Aug 09, 2022•41 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Welcome to episode 22 of Growing Ecommerce. In this episode, Mike was lucky enough to speak with Ginny Marvin, Google Ads product liaison. She supports communication and the working relationship between Google's product team on the one hand, and the advertisers and partners who use that platform on the other hand. In this episode you get introduced to Google’s latest resources to help you steer your retail business : your guide to search automation , Google Ads best practice guide and performanc...
Jul 26, 2022•51 min•Season 1Ep. 22
Welcome to episode 21. of growing ecommerce. In this episode, Mike is joined by Karin Schallauer, smec’s product marketing team lead who just came back from K5, one of the biggest ecommerce conferences overall in the German-speaking region. Tune in as Karin and Mike take you down the ecommerce landscape and discuss: Managing marketplace, supply chain, personalisation, and digital transformation Sustainability: the footprint of your sales - 5:47 Marketplaces: should I stay or should I go? - 11.25...
Jul 14, 2022•39 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Welcome to episode 20. of Growing eccommerce. In this episode, Mike is lucky enough to speak with Max Hallerstede, CEO of Hallerstede gmbh, a long-running family business in Germany that Max helped bring online under the ecommerce trading brand Kofferworld. What's so special is that Max is a real pro in logistics, purchasing, and pricing and he talks to us about: How years of consultancy helped him prepare for the disruptions of the last couple of years How strong brand relationships have secure...
Jun 24, 2022•48 min•Season 1Ep. 20
Welcome to episode 19. You can think of it as part 2 to the previous conversation with Christopher Rogl in episode 15 - Performance Max: One campaign to rule them all. In this episode, Mike Ryan gives you a brief context for the PMax, a framework for smarter PMax retail campaigns, and ideas for bringing that framework to life. Mike, smec’s portfolio strategist keeps you up to date with: What are Performance Max campaigns? Advantages and disadvantages of PMax Moving forward with PMax PMax Segment...
Jun 02, 2022•43 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Welcome to episode 18. In this episode, you get a deep dive into the story of healthy ecommerce growth and everything from attribution to efficiency metrics like MER and ROAS through the prism of challenges modern brands and retailers face daily: the dense ecommerce playing field, the volatile media buying landscape, and the conundrum of profitable marketing efforts. Mike, smec’s portfolio strategist is joined by David Rekuc, VP of marketing at 4x400, holding company of the direct-to-consumer br...
May 19, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 18
In this episode, you will get all you need to stay on top of Meta & Google earning reports, DTC Media Buying, and Retail media and marketplace networks. Mike, smec’s portfolio strategist, keeps you up to date with all the changes in the online retail environment keeping the most common challenge of retailers in mind: traffic acquisition. Looking at the direct-to-consumer business (DTC), the question to answer is: how to acquire customers in an online context? Retailers have to convince peopl...
May 05, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Competitive differentiation is key to marketing a diverse product portfolio, and it depends on the customer segment you target. It requires in-depth understanding of your customers’ concerns and behavior. Questions we had to ask: What are the jobs our customers do, how can our products support, and what are the competitive alternatives? Here we look at how Sean McGinnis, KURU footwear President and Integrator, breaks the product portfolio down into its product categories, product lines, and adde...
Apr 20, 2022•47 min•Season 1Ep. 16
Performance Max campaigns are a new way of automatically purchasing Ad inventory across Google’s entire network. PMax will replace other campaign types such as Smart Shopping and Local Campaigns later this year – leaving advertisers in a scramble to experiment with and understand this new technology. This podcast episode keeps you up to speed with the features, challenges and opportunities of PMax campaign implementation. Are you ready for Ad campaigns of tomorrow?
Apr 05, 2022•50 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Inflation is here, so is the rise in demand, disruption in the supply chain, and changes in the ecommerce universe. This podcast episode looks at the rise of inflation in the macroeconomic environment and its impact on consumers and online retailers. It aims to provide reasoning to decisions we can take now to deal with the changes in the macroeconomic environment. How did we get here? Is inflation here to stay? How are consumers handling the environment? What is the effect on retailers? What is...
Mar 16, 2022•43 min•Season 1Ep. 14
This episode looks at smec’s recent participation at NRF 2022, Retail’s Big Show taking place in New York. How have companies coped with the disruptions in operating environment ? How are industry leaders keeping their pace with data collection? What are the main differences in customer experience? Listen to Ralph Mayr, smec's product manager, Michael Weichselbaumer, smec's director of client data strategy and one of our podcast hosts, Maria Holzinger as they discuss key NRF takeaways and its im...
Feb 07, 2022•21 min•Season 1Ep. 13
ROAS is a seemingly mundane marketing metric, calculated as the ratio of revenue to advertising costs. And yet it is so much more than that. In this episode Mike Ryan will talk about ROAS, it's alternatives and why you should consider ditching this metric for something more effective. Read more in this article: https://bit.ly/3KbV3zz
Jan 17, 2022•28 min•Season 1Ep. 12
What does the future of ecommerce hold? How can retailers thrive in 2022 and beyond? Listen to Brian McBride, former chairman of ASOS & CEO of Amazon UK, Tristan Horx, futurist at zukunftsInstitut, Jan Radanitsch, CEO at smec and podcast host Mike Ryan, Head of Retail Insights at smec, as they talk about how to prevail as an online retailer in the ever changing world of ecommerce.
Nov 17, 2021•41 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Join pricing expert Ralph Mayr, data scientist Katherine Munro, and campaign strategist Stefan Stopper for a discussion of holiday promotional strategy, tools, and tactics. This panel discusses challenges and opportunities to profitability including supply & fulfillment, promotion timing & discounting, and the role of automation in marketing campaigns.
Sep 26, 2021•36 min•Season 1Ep. 10
