The prevailing digital path to purchase - Triangle Marketing Club 19 Sept 2017

The Prevailing Digital Path to Purchase
John Andrews, Prevailing Path Co-Founder and CEO
19 September 2017

© 2017 Prevailing Path, LLC All rights Reserved Source: Domino’s pizza coming: Company using self-driving robot to deliver pizza in your house - Thepresser.org
sources: I love My Human Genome Project,
Unlocking my genome, was it worth it?

© 2017 Prevailing Path, LLC All rights Reserved
Consumer Behavior Changes, Disrupt Yourself or Die
“Mom will never trust
her family’s memories
to 1s and 0s…” -
Kodak Marketing VP
source: Kodak file for bankruptcy – a lesson for all camera companies past and present, amazon.com

The Purchase Funnel is Dead
… but the Underlying
Consumer Need For
Awareness, Consideration,
Intent, Purchase, Loyalty
and Advocacy isn’t dead,
it’s just radically changed.
The Open Brand Imperative by Kelly Mooney

Private
Community
Discussions
Mapping the Shopper’s Path
In, 2008, Walmart leveraged Social Shopping to understand the iPhone purchase experience.
As influential shoppers shared content about their experience, something unexpected happened, it
affected the search results connecting product and channel; Social Shopping was born.
Path to Purchase Shops Content Creation & Sharing Organic SEO Impact

“Targeted savings messages will be delivered via
social networks and cell phones. The new “Eleven
Moms” blog offers economizing tips and in-store
media network Wal-Mart Smart presents
customized content on 27,000 screens. This three-
prong strategy will help determine how to best mix
private label, exclusive label, and national brand
products into shelf sets.”
Elevenmoms helped connect
Walmart’s marketing to new
shopper media behavior.
source: Best Retail Brands 2009, Interbrand

Influencer Driven Path to Purchase Evolution
2008
Walmart Elevenmoms/e.l.f.
Cosmetics Influencer
Cooperative Marketing
2009
Collective Bias
Influencer Social Shopper
Marketing
2017
Prevailing Path
Influencer-Driven AI
Digital Path to Purchase

Piggly Wiggly - 1950s
Source:History of the Supermarket: A Piggly Wiggly Past Indiana Public media

60 years later, the primary communication
tools for retail are basically the same. In-
store communication focused on price
and promotion are the primary tools.

Sources: Watson Supercomputer Terminates Humans in the First Round - Wired,
IBM Sales Miss Shows The Road to Growth Not Without Roadblocks - Bloomberg
Watson can win on Jeopardy
but no help yet with IBM’s
business…
But Wait, We Have Big Data!!

What’s the problem?

The problem with digital marketing, bots don’t
eat cheeseburgers…
$16bn digital ad fraud in 2017 - WPP Study
Image Source: Hardees Robot Commercial
Fake News Has Nothing on Fake Ads

The Prevailing Digital
Marketing Response
Has Become Overly
Transactional

Meanwhile, shoppers are moving on and
consuming media when and where they want.
Interruptive push messaging messaging is not
only ineffective, it’s just noise.
Relevancy is the new shopper imperative.
Shopping for most things is becoming
passive. Brand and retail marketing must
adapt to this new consumer behavior.
Source: Mobile Marketing ad from Shopper Marketing magazine
Every Digital Touch SHOULD NOT Be Transactional

1999 called and wants its retail strategy back…

In less than a decade, the store will not be the leading form of retail.
]
Study: Over Half of Online Shoppers Prefer Shopping Directly with Brands Over retailers - SGBMedia

This is not 2001-All of The Things Are Solving The Last Mile
Source: Domino’s pizza coming: Company using self-driving robot to deliver pizza in your house - Thepresser.org

The new purchase funnel…
…wherever the shopper decides

Google estimates that car-buyers have over 900 digital touches on their way to purchase.
Last Touch Attribution…doesn’t tell the story…

Awareness
Transaction
DISCOVERY
VALIDATION 
EDUCATION
Traditional Advertising
Prevailing
Path
Purchase
Mid-Funnel Shoppers Seek Info and Support

The Prevailing Path For Retail Is Shifting
Increasingly, active shoppers are
using Amazon as their primary
starting point. Winning the
Prevailing Path will depend on a
wide variety of content attached
along along the Path to Purchase.
source: State of Amazon study by Bloomreach

Store Shopping - 100s of choices
Voice Ordering - 2 choices
(guess which one is first)
Solving the Paradox of Choice

The Prevailing Digital
Marketing Response
Has Become Overly
Transactional
Source: adage.com

Why Influencer-Driven Marketing?
Content to Commerce
“When customers come across customer-
generated content during their web journey,
the average order value increases by 10
percent, according to BI Intelligence.
Brands see a 78-percent lift in conversion
rates when customers interact with user-
generated content, and a 75-percent
increase in revenue per visitor.”

Prevailing Path created an influencer
community around consumer passion
for sneakers. Member’s of this group
create, engage and share content
related to sneakers and their passions.
ForceField leveraged this effect to
create value for its retail partners.
Sneakerhead Content Creation at SXSWi 2016
Influencer- Driven Content Creation

Content Populates Channels Affecting Search
A Google image search
comparison of key
competitors show the
difference in influencer
created content and brand
driven media. ForceField
content is much richer and
more sharable than the
mostly product and brand
focused media of
competitors.

Content Impacts Share of Voice
Driven by influencer content,
ForceFieldNYC has created Share
of Voice leadership against its key
competitors.
The brand can maintain this
leadership through continued
content creation and community
engagement.

WWW.PREVAILINGPATH.COM
PPath’s platform analyzes most efficient digital path to purchase
Creates mid funnel brand conversation relevance index for brand partners
Community insights yield shopper driven content that converts

Scoring The Path
Conversation is very large for
Amazon Grocery, with over 20,000
mentions per month. Engagement,
especially on Youtube, is high.
While the overall sentiment score is
good, you can see the rise in
negative conversation on Forums,
where engagement is also high,
and people are seeking to hear
what people think about the service,
and how it works.
Conversation trends focus primarily on features and benefits,
with time saving and prime delivery being key drivers
Mentions by source
0
3000
6000
9000
12000
Twitter Blogs Tumblr Facebook
4030
9690
3005
4513
11171232
10200
The Path score for post-purchase is higher than pre-
purchase. The individual channel scores for Post-
Purchase conversation show that the content most
people are really wanting to read and engage with is
people who are sharing their experiences with Amazon
grocery – most likely to help them really understand the
value of the service before trying it themselves.
Content centered around experiences with the service
will not only improve the overall score, but give potential
customers more of what they’re wanting – an glimpse
into what it’s like to use the service.
Amazon only barely trails Walmart in SOV, and both far outpace Instacart.
55.0

Stainmaster PPath Score
People discuss the best ways to clean their carpets, dealing with stains, the search for easy solutions, and the time it takes to
deal with these issues. Odor removal is also a major driver of this conversation, and not the stain alone. As a distant related
topic, people do mention they love their dogs, but the conversation skews overwhelmingly negative, and is driven by
frustration of not finding a good solution.
28

Dawn
Google: “How to get rid of
candy stains in carpet?”
DIY Blog
Too involved/time consuming
Because of price
point, two purchases
source: Prevailing Path Shopper Panel Content
Assessing the Impact of Shopping

Shopper Storyline: Every Stain Has Story
With most carpet carpet conversations
being similar, there is an opening to
create a new narrative that reinforces
Stainmaster’s primary point of
differentiation; Protection.
There is an opportunity to create large
volumes of content in various formats to
connect emotionally to the prevailing
shopper path and attach that media to
key channels.
source: Prevailing Path Shopper Panel Content

What conversations really matter?
Conversation around the brand is important
but, what conversations do consumers really
pay attention to and engage?
Analyzing content involving the Children Stain
Conversation, we found that the Twitter
conversation on this topic is basically non existent.
However, Tumblr and Youtube are extremely
active and engaged.
The amount of time it takes to clean up after kids
is a key driving trend in overall conversation. Kids
tracking dirt into the home and keeping the carpet
clean is a secondary conversation “hub.”
source: Sysymos, P90D Social Media Mentions

Video and Tumblr posts
discussing carpet stain
removal tips are by far the
dominant source of content
for Child Stain
conversation.
Youtube: 429k videos
discussing carpet stain
removal and children far
outpaces any other
network. Video content
with product placement is
huge in this category.
Children + Stains Conversation
source: Sysymos, P90D Social Media Mentions

Belkin WEMO PPath Score
Smart Home Tech is relatively new to general market shoppers. Belkin has the opportunity to lead Share of Voice in emerging
shopper groups by creating a distributing content that connects with them along their shopper journey.
PPATH SCORE
26.6Mentions by source
0
200
400
600
800
Twitter Blogs Tumblr Facebook
63
550
198
729
116
169
507

Understanding The Shopper’s Path

House-Autry PPath Score
While McCormick Brands (on next slide)lead in mentions and the PPath score is still low, notice that conversations primarily
revolve House-Autry and other brands and products…indicating inclusion in reviews and recipes. Notably, two competitors,
Louisiana Fish Fry and Andy’s Seasonings did not even register enough conversations to assign a score.
22

Developing
Engaged
Personas
From organic content
engagement along the path to
purchase we are able to create
engaged-personas and
hypothesis test digital
engagement efficiency.

Paula’s Choice PPath Score
The Overall Path Score is slightly below average, despite top performance in the general conversation score and Brand Warmth.
Purchase Intent conversation and Post-Purchase conversation are both very low, however, we know that because Beautypedia is a
main source of sales, our goal is to identify additional paths to purchase that could be ripe for optimization. Additionally, while Twitter
commands a large number of brand mentions, overall, forums like Beautypedia have, by far, the highest engagement of any
channels. People are discussing the best products for certain skin types, and Paula’s Choice routinely shows up.
PPATH SCORE
41.1
Competition
Mario Badescu is the easy winner among all competition and
appears to have very good influencer relationships and a ton of
popularity with influencers on every social channel. We believe this
poses an opportunity to incorporate more imagery and visual
marketing as part of the path development.
Conversation topics focus on products and uses, and
feature a few influencer names as focal points of the
conversation.
Youtube engagement on Paula’s Choice is also very high,
along with overall mentions on that channel.

Path Example – Mapping the path
After going to the beach two weekends in a row, using sun block, drinking, eating foods we don’t normally eat,
etc. my man and I did not have the clear skin that we normally have. Paula’s Choice products were suggested to me to help clear up our skin. No animal testing
and free of dyes/perfumes is big thing for me so that made choosing Paula’s Choice very easy. I want my skin to look great for my first Mother’s day!
Before I shop from Amazon I like to check
the products out from the actual website.
I checked out the best sellers first.
I didn’t know what Retinol was so I
Googled it. It’s used to diminish wrinkles,
fade dark spots and smooth the texture of
your skin. I don’t really have any of those
problems, so their clinical 1% retinol
treatment wasn’t what I was looking for. I
needed something more like a
blackhead/blemish cleanser.
Their website makes it easy to shop for
the concern so I selected the blackhead
tab.
There are a few products to choose from and
I didn’t know the ingredients in some of the
products so I had to do some research again.
Google led me to an Allure article that
explained what salicylic acid is and
what it does for your skin.
I read through the article and found exactly
what I was looking for.
Perfect.
I now know something with salicylic acid
will work best for what I’m trying to
achieve.
Back to the website… browsing through the
products with salicylic acid. The CLEAR
Regular Strength Anti-Redness Exfoliating
Solution With 2% Salicylic Acid seems
promising so I scrolled through the uses,
product details, pros & cons and reviews.
Then I compared that product with the extra
strength version of it and with the SKIN
PERFECTING 2% BHA Liquid Exfoliant. I
wasn’t sure what BHA is so I Google’d it.
A Paula’s Choice article is the first that
pulls up! That’s awesome! I like when a
company gives you in-depth information
about what they offer. I’d like to see a tag or
something easy to click near the product
while I’m on the webpage that would give me
more info right then and there versus me
searching for it. Cuts down on the time it will
take me to make a decision and purchase.
I decided on a product with BHA for it’s
natural skin healing/calming properties. I
have very sensitive skin, especially to new
products. I then looked at the products on
Amazon to compare their price with the price
from the seller’s site and check out reviews. I
like to see what people have to say about
their experience and how they used the
product. Everyone always has a certain way
of doing things- you can always learn more
about what you’re buying and how to use
it based on other’s experiences.
The reviews were mostly positive so I
felt confident in the choice I made. I
went back to Paula’s website to make
my purchase. Since the price was the
same on both the seller's site and
Amazon, I prefer to buy directly from
the site. Especially since as a new
customer I would receive 15% off
my first order and 3 free samples.
I selected my three free
samples, signed up for the
email list and clicked to
check out.
Unfortunately the free
standard shipping wasn’t
guaranteed to get to me
before Mother’s day and the
cost to expedite shipping
wouldn’t make sense as I am
an Amazon Prime member.
This Clear Skin Beauty tool was
suggested to me in the “what
other people shopped for like
this” section. I figured I would
give it a whirl. It was under $6 and
I’ve seen people using this tool in
those absolutely-gross-you-want-
to stop-watching-but-can’t-look
away-pimple-popping-videos. Had
to have it! So I added to my
cart.
So here it is! Set to arrive in two days! I LOVE
AMAZON PRIME. Can’t wait to try this product out.
This popped up in my Instagram feed. Probably
because I didn’t make the purchase from the
website. Missing out on that 20% off!

PPATH SCORE
We executed a small test of our model and were
encouraged by the results achieving engagements
for .005¢.
A Few Insights:
Most engaged: 18-24 and 55-64,
Least engaged: 25-34 (Interesting gap worth
exploring further.)
97% of engagement came from Facebook App on
mobile phones.
Using this process we can build engaged personas
Paula’s Choice can leverage in its digital marketing.
Hypothesis Testing

Organic Search Impact
Once the prevailing path is
measured and optimized, we can
impact the organic search for
specific conversations in a way that
creates long term value for
shoppers.

The prevailing digital path to purchase - Triangle Marketing Club 19 Sept 2017

The prevailing digital path to purchase - Triangle Marketing Club 19 Sept 2017

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