Shawn Fenton of Natural Factors shares tactics for data-driven decisions, off-Amazon marketing, and more
Netrush’s Raj Sapru sat down with Natural Factors’ ecommerce leader, Shawn Fenton, who shared many of the tactics Natural Factors has deployed to fuel its growth on Amazon and beyond. From internal resourcing strategies, to data-driven decision-making, to off-Amazon marketing, and more, there’s bound to be something in here for every Brandrunner to take back into their own businesses.
Raj: Let’s start with some of the challenges that you and other modern commerce leaders are facing today, and then we can talk through solutions - which challenges tend to be top-of-mind for you?
Shawn: I think the biggest challenge is that things are moving so fast in modern commerce, which makes it hard for organizations to keep up. I’m constantly making the case for investment, in two forms - not only on the marketplaces that I think are important for us to be investing in, but also investment in terms of headcount, the people, the resources. And it's tough because a lot of these investments are new, so it takes a lot of time and effort. If there's a position we already had in the past and now it’s open so we need to fill it, that's going to move a lot quicker than a position that we’ve never seen before.
Then there are also things like content, making sure we have the right things for the right place. I need a lot of forms of content we didn’t historically need. Content can be especially challenging because it’s such a difficult thing to build, and it’s such a subjective thing. What is good content? That’s going to be different depending on who you talk to, which can slow down the building process.
Raj: Content tends to be one of the most common challenges that brands call out. Any thoughts on how to work through it?
Shawn: Because content is subjective and people in the organization will have differing thoughts on it, I would say give more autonomy to the content creators in the company. Empower them with solid guidelines, but from there give them the opportunity to create in more of a free-flowing manner.
Raj: And you mentioned it being hard to keep up - how do you solve for that, how do you move a little quicker?
Shawn: I think that’s where having Netrush has been so crucial. Because a lot of these things that we need, I might not be able to burn our internal teams to get them if it’s a new role or investment. So I have to figure out where else I can go, and Netrush is a key part of that.
Raj: What are some tips for how brands can best operate alongside their partners?
Shawn: One of the benefits of having a partner like Netrush is to collaborate with them. And true collaboration means you need to come to the table with some working knowledge and an understanding of how these things are being done. Even better, the brand should have suggestions on how to refine it. As an example, when our Netrush marketing strategist comes in and tells me how marketing is looking this month, and what may be underperforming, my job is to come with ideas or things that we can do, information she might not have about the products or about what's working in other parts of our business, and how we can use that to improve what we're doing on Amazon.
Another part of my job in that effective collaboration or partnership is getting internal buy-in. Netrush may come to us with some really great ideas of what we should be doing. And then I have to take those back to the organization and get everyone bought into it. And figure how we do it and who does it, and pull the right people into it.
Raj: Another common element of modern commerce that offers brands both challenges and opportunities is this blur between B&M and ecommerce. What does effective collaboration look like between those two parts of the business?
Shawn: I think one of the most important first steps is getting the whole organization to understand that digital platforms are more visible than they've ever been, so the things you're doing there will have downstream effects.
We also need to understand the consumer within this modern commerce world. I think everyone who owns a B&M store should understand by now that we’re sharing customers. There is rarely ever “one customer” that only shops here. Everyone shops everywhere, so we need to meet our customers there and provide the best, most consistent experience we can.
So, to me, the more places your products are, the more awareness you’re generating for it. I think it ultimately helps your retail channel and your retailers. But again, you just have to be aware of all the effects, and you have to be working together. As an example, if I started introducing a brand-new Walmart strategy without buy-in from others, that's going to create some ripples.
Raj: It’s a “connected consumer” as we call it here at Netrush. Those are great points. Besides driving more product awareness, are there other ways your work in ecommerce is additive to the B&M business?
Shawn: I try to bring meaningful data from the ecommerce side back to the B&M team to help inform what they're doing in the retail stores. And it’s not just heat map data, but it’s calling out things like, “This item is up 50% year-over-year in this zip code - we have a ton of customers buying this product online but we have low ACV in this region. There’s an opportunity there.” Those are the sort of things I want to bring back to the sales team.
The other thing that we just did recently is look at customer review data through Netrush’s data platform, Stitch360. I took all the data and started to build these personas of people. Why do they like the product? Why do they like our brand?
Typically, you’d have to have an agency run a third-party study for that, and pay a lot of money for it. And I think that's some of the stuff that sales reps might get in stores talking to people in the aisle, but that's so hard to do at a high volume. You only have so many people and so much time to be able to send sales reps to those stores. But on Amazon, I have thousands of people that I can survey in an instant. If you have the ability to pull in aggregate data the way that we can with Stitch360, it becomes really powerful.
So recently we looked at all these products and I was able to see what was common from the people that left a five-star review. Reasons people take the products, here's why they like it, and those types of things. We can infuse that into the marketing language we’re using anywhere, ecommerce or B&M. And it helps inform keywords we’re targeting elsewhere..
Raj: Any other tactics for ecommerce leaders wanting to lean in more to the data that’s available to them through the business?
Shawn: There is so much we can do with the data available. Another example that comes to mind is using it to guide which products we should focus on. At Natural Factors, we launch 20-30 new products every year, across the entire business. We make a ton of products and we're constantly innovating into new categories. But I cannot feasibly invest in all 20-30 of those on Amazon. So, I look at which categories each of those are getting into, and try to understand the trends within those categories. Where do we have products in places that are emerging? Where can I double down? I am constantly looking at market share data and understanding how these products will perform in certain categories.
If we launched a new gummy as an example, maybe I know gummy vitamins are going to be a saturated category. Maybe I don't have the money to get the penetration that I want there. But instead, we just launched a new whole food probiotic, creating a probiotic that's really unique to the marketplace. There's not many things out there like it, and the price point is competitive. And it has a really good story behind it. Well, now that's something, so I'm going to spend on this product because I know that it has potential to make waves on Amazon. So the data helps keep my finger on the pulse of what we'll do well in, what we won't.
And then beyond just the demand and the competitive landscape for the product, margin has to be there for ecommerce, after I pick and pack and ship that item. If some of those new products are built for B&M and below maybe a $10 or $15 MAP, there’s no margin in it on Amazon.
Raj: Are you doing any product development segmentation by channel, maybe due to that margin disparity or because the data is showing you an opportunity?
Shawn: Yes, we just launched custom sizes this year for Amazon-exclusive products. So in the prior example, we’re using the data to find the right space to fit a product that has already been created. The other piece is figuring out something that nobody else is seeing right now. How can I go create something to fill that white space?
So this year we found some new sizes and potencies that weren't in the marketplace where we knew we had an opportunity. As an example, we just did a larger count bottle of Vitamin C. Our 90-count Vitamin C was a bit of a loss-leader for us and for Netrush, but it was a wildly-popular SKU. And we also realized that during this time, families are sharing these types of VMS products, right? So we worked with our Netrush analyst on the data that showed a lack of larger-sized chewable varieties in the market. We also looked at customer reviews and realized many customers were sharing the 180-count with multiple users in the household. We also observed that larger sizes typically outsell our smaller sizes on Amazon.
Given the recent surge in our Vitamin C products and all of the data, we felt this was a great opportunity to carve out a specific niche for ourselves by being one of the only companies to offer a bulk/family-sized version of high quality chewable Vitamin C. We filled a gap in the market, while also improving margins for both Natural Factors and Netrush.
Raj: I love it. Any other types of data you find yourself looking at a lot?
Shawn: I'm also looking a lot at our marketing data. I'm trying to understand where our wins are happening, and how I can amplify those wins. What are the things that we are doing consistently really well? What places are we leaving really profitable sales on the table? I think those types of low-hanging fruit are obvious places you should be looking at.
Raj: Are you using any off-Amazon marketing tactics that are performing really well?
Shawn: We recently started driving Google search traffic to Amazon. Prior to this, we were tying it to our website, which at the time had no direct-to-consumer functionality, so it was kind of a dead end. But if we send that traffic to Amazon, we can measure the attribution. We can understand if they're buying, when they're buying, how they're buying, going back to all that rich data that’s available to you via the ecommerce channel, especially Amazon.
Driving to Amazon is also going to give you a boost. We know that Amazon likes when you do that.
Raj: Tell me a bit more about that campaign - what were you looking at to know it's working?
Shawn: Click-through is one of the key metrics, because we know that the traffic we generate is going to reward us through organic search, just by the Amazon algorithm seeing that people are coming from another platform to this listing. So we’re trying to get the highest click-through rate we possibly can.
And then obviously, the real goal is sales. So we’re trying to convert this traffic from Google, which is the other big place that people are using to try and solve problems. Amazon is the number one place people go for product discovery, but Google is still a big part of that. A lot of people are going to Google to figure things out, and if you can present them with a product that might solve the questions they’re asking, you can have a decent conversion from it.
But even if you can get someone to your page, to look at the product but don't buy, I'm still saying that's a win because I generated traffic, back to the first metric. I got them on the page and looking at it. Now after they've done that, I have the ability to retarget. I know that there was something that worked, and I can figure out what parts of it aren’t working. Maybe now I just need to work on my content and figure out how to convert them. So then the next time, I know they’re going to get to the listing and I know they’re going to buy it because I did what I needed to do through what I learned along the way.
Raj: How long was that test for, are you still running it out? And how often did you look at the data?
Shawn: We looked at the data every two weeks. Every two weeks we took a smaller view, and then when the monthly data would come in we'd take a bigger look at it. This test was running for three months and it was really successful, so we just greenlit it to start going again for the second iteration.
Raj: Do you think every two weeks was the right cadence?
Shawn: Yeah, I think so. More frequently could be going a little crazy. I think ultimately, with any type of digital marketing, you're typically not making those daily changes, a lot of times that’s being handled through automation. We all have things like Sellozo, making those quick daily decisions for us. So automating those is key. And then from there, the two-week time frame is good because that's when you should be making broader decisions - What’s working? And what isn't? And how can we do some bigger refinements here? Maybe it's completely getting rid of a campaign. Maybe it's completely rebuilding it. And then maybe it's adjusting your budget, some on a larger scale.
ABOUT THE SERIESWe’re keeping up the momentum of Expo West 2022 with a limited series all about the natural products industry. Throughout the month of March and April we’ll be publishing a powerful combination of category-level data, interviews with industry professionals, and expert perspective on the most important elements of the natural products space.
ABOUT THE AUTHORClaire McBride leads research, insights, and education for Netrush. She has spent the last five years helping brands grow and optimize their ecommerce businesses through written research, events, share group discussions, and one-on-one consulting, formerly with Cleveland Research Company before joining the Netrush team.
