Intro 0:04

Welcome to another episode of Ecom Experiences, a podcast for ecommerce marketing leaders who want to grow and scale their brands faster. Join us as we interview some of the smartest brand founders and marketing leaders in the industry. Explore the lessons they learned, discover the keys to their success and discuss what excites them most about the future.

Samir Balwani 0:31

Hi, it's Samir Balwani here, host of Ecom Experiences, where we talk to brand founders and marketing leaders about their experiences growing brands. This episode is brought to you by QRY. QRY is a paid media agency that helps brands balance brand awareness and performance marketing to drive predictable and profitable growth, to learn more about how we can help you visit. Weareqry.com, I'm really excited for our guest today. I have Craig Horsley, the Director of Ecommerce grid strategy from Revision Skincare. Thank you so much for joining us, Craig. I know there's a lot for you to teach us and talk about,

Craig Horsley 1:07

good morning, happy to be here and love the podcast. It's always good to find a good ecommerce podcast. So really enjoy what you do.

Samir Balwani 1:17

I appreciate that. I'm excited to have you as a guest to tell us about you and the brand you work, for sure.

Craig Horsley 1:25

So I've been in the ecommerce space, let's just say, a long time. I actually started in ecomm in 2000 and you know what's interesting was, in 2000 you couldn't really measure much in the ecommerce space, except for sales, and now you can measure pretty much everything. So you've gone from ditch to ditch no data to data overload. Now it's picking the right data to look at. So I've been with some different companies over time, both on the retail side@jcpenney.com, back in the early days, to where I am today. CPG, in the last six years or so, I've spent in the skincare category. So revision skincare, as you mentioned, so I've been with the company here about eight months, so not a long time. But Revision Skincare, a premium beauty brand, if you will, primarily has cut its teeth. You know, working with dermatologists, plastic surgeons, med spas, you know, it's a clinically proven skincare product that you know from an ecommerce perspective, you can either find on our DTC site at revisionskincare.com or, you know, on Amazon, in the premium beauty category.

Samir Balwani 2:48

That’s really cool. I love the premium beauty category, especially because as soon as you get dermatologists involved, there is a level of credence you have to, like fulfill on and you have to be able to prove it and show the value of it, right? So tell me, what's the favorite part about the role for you, like, what do you love about it?

Craig Horsley 3:10

Yeah, for me, and the reason I'm in this business to begin with is it's fast paced, always changing. So you know, you never get bored. That's good and bad, because it becomes hard to relax sometimes. But when I look at the fast pace of things, and, you know, I mentioned it kind of in the beginning, how things have changed in the ecommerce based over the last 25 years, there's always new things coming. There's new ways to talk to consumers and customers, and that's super exciting for me, because at the end of the day, the goal and the mission is to have that relationship with a consumer or customer and make sure that you're talking to them and having that great relationship so that they can trust you and will continue to buy your product.

Samir Balwani 4:04

Yeah, I think you used a really important word relationship, and it's like relationships at scale, right? That's the beauty of Ecom. The role is definitely fast paced. Everything is constantly changing. How do you keep up with what's changing? Where do you turn to how do you set aside time to make sure that you're, you know, ahead of, ahead of the curve?

Craig Horsley 4:29

Yeah, it's hard. And I say it's hard because we're a relatively lean organization. And I think the key is, you know, you got to take a step back and make sure that you're prioritizing the right thing. You know, in the world I live in, and probably most of us in this space, you tend to get a lot of what I like to call fire drills. Probably most people call them that, and things are always moving really. And everything's important. Well, if everything's important, then nothing's important. So for me, it's about prioritizing, what are the goals, what are the objectives, and making sure that we're spending the time in the right places, and staying on that mantra. There's always going to be fires, there's always going to be things that you have to have to do to make sure leadership has what they need to be successful. But prioritization is really it's

Samir Balwani 5:33

interesting because there's fire drills and then there's shiny objects and drum and they're like two sides of the coin, right? And so it's, how do you kind of sit in the middle and make sure that sure the foundational stuff is still getting done while and staying ahead of all of that, right?

Craig Horsley 5:47

You could not have said it better. I, you know, the shiny object syndrome is a huge one too.

Samir Balwani 5:53

Yeah,

Craig Horsley 5:54

when you live in a world where you're owned by private equity like we are, people see those shiny objects all the time. Whether it's, what's the shiny object today, it's AI, right? What are you doing with a How are you leveraging that? And that's just, you know, that's always going to be there. But again, you have to balance that. But the things you got to pay attention to, too.

Samir Balwani 6:18

It's almost that there is an element to prioritizing even those pieces, right? Like, what are the things? How do you build a business case? How do you prioritize it? And that's probably a whole nother conversation to be had around that. So Craig, you know, as as we kind of look ahead, what are the challenges that you guys are dealing with? What are the things that are kind of keeping you up at night?

Craig Horsley 6:47

You know? I think there's a couple things, right? So I look at competition, especially in the ecommerce. Now, I think no secret today, and if you read any of the trades, beauty is one of the fastest growing categories in the ecommerce space. You've got Amazon aggressively pushing to build their growth in beauty, and that brings in new brands all the time. There's again, going back to the shiny object, piece of it, so competitive pressure when you come in, especially if you're advertising, and we advertise, that increases your ad cost. It it hurts your share of voice, potentially, and you have to stay on top of that. So, you know that that's a big one. But you know, secondarily, I would say channel conflict is a current concern for us. You know, we've gotta be very mindful of our core customers. And you know, when I at the beginning, we talked a little bit about the dermatologist, the the plastic surgeons, the bed spas, etc, and we gotta be very careful not to disrupt that side of the house, right? So we've built a strategy to kind of support that, but it's always very top of mind for us. And then, you know, I think the other piece, especially in today's world in ecommerce, is with any kind of brand, is diversion or third party sales, you've got people that are always looking to make a buck in the marketplace, and they get their hands on your product one way or another, and they sell it, and it can be damaging to the brand. So staying on top of that, that's a hard problem to solve, but I would look at those three as the big pieces,

Samir Balwani 8:42

yeah. And are you seeing diversion, most likely on Amazon. I'm assuming that's the majority of it. Well,

Craig Horsley 8:46

you know, that's a great question, because one of the things, the answer is no. And the reason the answer is Oh, interesting is because in the premium beauty category, and this is a strategic decision, it's a gated category, so our brand, anybody gets out there, then Amazon takes them down. So that's a nice of it. Yeah, I've been in other places where that hasn't been the case, yeah. So, you know, there's that side of it. I think one piece I left out, and I want to call this out, because it's super important, I think challenging, and maybe I should have started here, because it's bringing new consumers to the brand. You know, getting your brand out there, growing the brand and bringing new consumers in is always, is always a challenge, and we're a growing brand, and that's what we're trying to do. It's

Samir Balwani 9:47

interesting, because the more we talk to brand leaders and marketing leaders and and the conversation has shifted, uh. And I think the right direction. I mean, we pegged our whole agency on this idea around brand is becoming more and more important, and people really are starting to remember the value of brand. And the pendulum is finally swinging from performance marketing at all costs to Oh, yeah, I guess we do need to build, like, a long term business that has a moat in its brand and community. And it is comforting to come back to that marketing fundamentals a little bit. And it's interesting to see how everybody is hitting that same pain point all at once. I guess, when you are thinking about growing the brand and what that means to grow the brand. Can you expand on what you guys think about that? How you think about that? Where do you think you'll win from that perspective?

Craig Horsley 10:49

Absolutely, I think you just touched. You just touched on a big piece of that, right? So it's really about focusing on the brand versus the product what is your brand story? Right? It's real easy to get caught up in product marketing. We have great products, and we take those products to market. We're very proud of that. But what is the brand story? You can't lose sight of that, making sure that your media talks to that efficiently, and that you're talking to the right audiences along the way. You know, that's another part of it, and that's where you get back to the the data piece and the technology piece that you know, again, in your business, that are so prevalent today.

Samir Balwani 11:42

Yeah, it's interesting, because one of the things that we notice from a media perspective is a lot of brands will come to us and say, Hey, we want to build a brand story, and we're going to go out to market, and here's our brand story, and here are all the reasons to believe and here are all the communities and segments that we want to go after, and our budget is x, and budget is x is always a 10th of what they need to do all of that. And so a lot of the work we do is help our clients and brands really understand, okay, if your budget is this, this is the segment and the story we start with, and then we grow from there over time. And it's really, you know, going back to prioritization, this is another example of prioritization, of, where do you start? And how have you guys thought about that? Like, where did you start?

Craig Horsley 12:32

Yeah, what a great call out. That was because we have the same problem. We don't have to.

Samir Balwani 12:40

No, you're not Coca Cola. You're not gonna go, like, and do a TV spot tomorrow. That's like, it's gonna hit everyone, so

Craig Horsley 12:48

100% and so you know where it really gets tricky then is you go through any given month, obviously you're looking at sales on a daily basis in your various channels. And as you get to about this time of the month, the 17th, 18th, 20th, whatever it is, you start to see, are you going to make the number? Are you not and

Samir Balwani 13:09

re forecasting at this stage.

Craig Horsley 13:13

And it's real easy to get caught into this trap of, okay, now you got to shift all your dollars to performance marketing, right? So you're, you're all going all low funnel, capture every dollar you can for the last two weeks and make these pivots. And that is an ongoing conversation for me. I'm like, if you do this, you can't have this. And these are about decisions, yeah. And to your point, with limited budgets, and we have one of those, then you have to be willing to look at what is your overall objective, and if it is growing new customers, let's pick the right KPIs right. And these aren't going to be ROAs and sales necessarily, right, because those take a little bit longer to hit home. But you've got to be diligent, and you've got to sit on your goals, and you got to stay firm with what you're trying to achieve. And if you do, you know, by and large, you're going to be successful over time.

Samir Balwani 14:23

Yeah, this is where I think marketing mix and media mix, like channel mix, is so important. And then, you know, media mix is really important too, because so many brands fall into the hamster wheel of on the seventh, like 15th or 17th, saying, Hey, we're not we're behind goal, we're going to have to reforecast. And you reforecast, and you pull all the budget to bottom of funnel, or you or, you know, in a lot of cases, you just cut budget, right, because you know you're going to miss goals. So you say, All right, well, then my media spend can't be nearly as high, or my marketing spend can't be nearly as high, which is fine. It's a very. Safe thing to do, but you're going to be in the same situation the 15th of the next month then, and it becomes this hamster wheel you can't get out of because you haven't grown that brand awareness or top of funnel that

Craig Horsley 15:14

100% and I think that that is where educating your leadership is so important. I have the same challenges all the time. People come to me and say, it's not working, it's not working. And you know, my answer is, yes, it is working. We're just not seeing the fruits of our efforts yet, and we've gotta be a little bit patient on that. So educating, and that's where I turn to education. You know, it's making sure that you, God forbid, I hate to say it, but you know, have the right PowerPoint in front of your leadership and say, This is how this is going to progress over time. And if, if you set the expectations right, hopefully they'll hold on. Now, how long they're willing to wait? That's a whole nother story, but I think education is a really big, important part of it. You know, channel mix, like you said, you got to be smart about this. There's 1000 ways to advertise, yeah,

Samir Balwani 16:17

and I think the part that people forget is marketing. Advertising is a piece of marketing, right? And so sometimes people assume, when we say top of funnel, that means, okay, great, just run, you know, display ads or CTV ads or meta ads to cold audiences. That's not always the case. It might be a PR stunt or an experiential event or something like that. And so I think that's where your role gets really interesting, because you get to look at all the puzzle pieces and say, All right, well, this is the puzzle piece I want to pull out today and put in place here, because this works better. So how do you guys think about that? Like, how do you move money out of advertising or into advertising or activate other elements, like, how are you kind of looking at the whole landscape? Yeah,

Craig Horsley 17:06

I think for me, it always comes back to, what does the data tell me and what does the consumer Tell me? So, you know, in our DTC channel, obviously we get a lot of real time information about how consumers engage with us, how they're interacting with our website, and we're able to make decisions and changes based on that kind of data. Then when you get out into the media space, or the Amazon space, in the media space, there is, what are the consumer trends, what are people searching for? Where do the demographic stage get? What are the audiences that are resonating and and we look at that all the time. You know, I every week, I I sit down with our agency a couple of different times, one on the Amazon side, one on the DTC side. And we go through that, we look at that very in depth, what is working, and what do we need to pull back on and move to other places. So it's really about being as efficient as we can be with the dollars that we have, and using the data really. I think that's where you get the advantage. It's a lot of work, and can be a lot of work, but if you're scrappy, and you get into the insights, and you're able to pull the right story out of that, I think you will be successful,

Samir Balwani 18:35

right? Yeah, that's awesome, yeah. I mean, I think it is fun because it is a lot of data and then, but another challenge that's going to be coming up is just measurement and data tracking as a whole is going to start to shift, especially as you layer in more brand work, right? And so really rethinking how you look at data, what data matters, and kind of going back to your concept around, you know, data overload, and what's the right thing to look at that's starting to become a whole other project, another whole another swim lane just by itself. Yeah,

Craig Horsley 19:13

great point. Because, you know, we have so much data accessible today, but to your point, and I can pull any number, I can tell you what, what campaign did, what last week. But there's a lot more to it than that, as you know, and it's really getting into it and understanding what's the story. Why did that happen? And that's really what it boils down to if you understand the why, then you can make the right tweaks. And you know, maybe that's a creative thing. Maybe it's an audience thing. Maybe it's a a tactical thing, right? So understanding it from that point, but being able to test and learn along the way will help you with that too. Yeah. Yeah.

Samir Balwani 19:59

That's perfect. That's exactly how we want to think about that. So we've talked a lot about obstacles for the last few minutes. What are the things that you're excited about for the future? You know, what are you looking forward to?

Craig Horsley 20:12

Yeah, I would say for me, it's being at the forefront of the ecommerce growth for our brand. You know, the brand is looking at us the ecommerce side for a lot of growth in 2024 and beyond, and there's a ton of opportunities. You know, I look at technology as being a key piece of that along the way. You know, we talked a little bit about AI at the beginning, yeah, whether it's AI or something else, there's always new technology that you have opportunities to look at and implement. Now, again, you can go crazy with that too. But automation, when you're a lean, mean team like we are, then automation really comes into play. So you know, I look at that as a big part of it, and then I look at, you know, from a media perspective, some of the things that you're talking about, a lot of the things that you do every single day, and that is, how do you get better with your media mix? How do you get more efficient, how do you better understand the data and how do you better tell those stories so that you can make the right enhancements and grow on the Lean budgets that you know people like me and many of your customers probably have as well? Yeah, yeah. I

Samir Balwani 21:38

the thing on lean budgets is, I'm pretty sure everyone thinks they have a lean budget. I'm pretty sure if you talk to any media person, even at Coca Cola, they probably say we've got a lead budget this year. And so I think it's, I think it's it is true about the I think the most interesting part about media is that you can make it do whatever you need to do, and there's always an opportunity to either improve it, to scale it, to grow it, to try something different. And so when you have that kind of limitless opportunity, the constraint is always budget.

Craig Horsley 22:17

Yes, there is always somebody out there that's going to have a bigger budget than you. Yes, yeah, that's a really good perspective. Everybody thinks the same. So yeah, you know, I probably sound like I'm complaining, but you know, it's one of many challenges. Frankly, I look at things like that, and I say it is what it is. I can't control that.

Samir Balwani 22:47

Honestly, our best Mark, let's be scrappy there. I think our best marketing leaders think they have a lean budget specifically because they already know what they want to spend it on. They already they can. They know their levers, and they know that if they could do this, they would be able to see more results. And so I am never surprised when someone says they have a lean budget. I'm always surprised when someone says I've got a full budget. And so I think that's the right way to think about it. I think AI is an automation you touched on it. I'm really curious to hear about how you guys are using automation. What pieces of where are you automating? Things I imagine reporting, I hope, is one, because I think every ecom person's daily spend and budget and revenue tracker has to be like the bane of their existence. So I know that's probably a pain point, but where, where are you kind of automating things?

Craig Horsley 23:51

Yeah, I think we're pretty basic currently to your point. Yeah, automation and reporting, we're not perfect there, either, but we're getting better. And I think that that's what I always look at, is, are we making progress, or are we not? I think on the DTC side, automation as it relates to nurturing consumers through customer experiences. That is something that you know when I got here was, you know, essentially non non existent. So building on that automation, those are things that have been around a long time. We're just now looking at ways and from a cross selling, up selling perspective, how to automate that technology to use data in the background to make sure that we're doing the right level of personalization. And again, we're at the very early stages of that. But. I'm a firm believer that personalization is where you have to be. Consumers. Attention spans are so short that they they want relevant information when they get there, and Tiktok is a great example of that. You know, they've got an algorithm that's so good that you log into Tiktok and you see videos that you want to see. And I'm not even Tiktok guy. You can tell from how long I've been around, but I know a little bit, yeah.

Samir Balwani 25:33

I mean, it definitely does a good job of holding attention. And the algorithm obviously works, because it has been performing so well for so many people, especially in the beauty space, right? So definitely agree with you. There. My last question, Craig, what advice would you give a new marketing leader, you know, for the first 90 days, or just kind of getting settled

Craig Horsley 25:59

in? Yeah, I think what I always like to say is, you know, listen, learn, and make sure you keep your focus on the customer there. There are going to be lots of opinions always on how to do things, but the customer is the one that is the most meaningful, and that's how you're going to win in this world. I think you it can be hard to do, but come into a new place and sit back and listen and see how things work, before you actually come in and and turn the place upside down. That can be hard to do. Obviously, there's always going to be things that need optimization when you come into a new role. But going back to understanding the why, there's probably a why in why people do things, why things are happening the way they are, and understanding that will help you be more successful, I believe in the long term, and help you make better decisions as you go down that road. And then,

Samir Balwani 27:07

yeah, it's sorry, no, no, I just say I think they drive as marketers to make changes as quickly as possible. Is a really hard one to overcome. So I think about is a really valuable piece of advice, of just like, taking your time there,

Craig Horsley 27:25

yeah, 100% you know, it's hard to do, because people expect a lot. You come into a new role, and you're like, you want to prove your worth, and I'm no different, yeah, so, so it's a really tricky balance, yeah,

Samir Balwani 27:41

yeah, yeah, especially when you have a PNL staring at you that you know you need to hit as quickly as possible, right?

Craig Horsley 27:48

And big growth tools, you got it? Yeah?

Samir Balwani 27:51

Craig, thank you so much for joining us. If someone wants to find you online, where can people go and learn more about you?

Craig Horsley 27:58

Yeah, I would go to LinkedIn. That's probably the best place to find me, so I can be found there. Always happy to connect. And you know, I love to learn about the ecommerce space. I don't know everything, and I love talking to new people and people that know more than me. So there's a lot of those amazing

Samir Balwani 28:18

Well, I will include your LinkedIn in the show notes, thanks so much for joining us.

Craig Horsley 28:22

Thank you. Appreciate it again. Great job with the podcast, and really enjoy.

Outro 28:34

Thanks for joining us. If you liked it, remember to subscribe, so you'll be notified of new episodes, and if you know someone who would enjoy the show. Don't forget to share and leave a review. It all helps us impact more brands. If you're looking to improve your paid media, go to weareqry.com, and schedule a consultation. We're always happy to chat. See you for the next one.