a small retailer is making a big impact with a retail network.

Retail Media Networks (RMNs), are making big money for large companies. According to a BCG study, they are responsible for 68% Amazon’s global profit and 12% Walmart’s.

It may appear that you require millions of customers, or thousands of brick and mortar stores to create an RMN. This is not true. It all comes down, as with anything in marketing to the connection you have with your customer.

Learn how Home Depot and Kroger are using RMN to enhance the ad experience for shoppers

Tamara Pattison is the chief data officer at The Save Mart Companies, which has over 200 grocery stores across California and Nevada.

The journey of the organization to become an RMN started a little over a year before when it was bought by a private equity company. Shane Sampson was appointed CEO by the new owners. He had previously served as chief marketing officer at grocery giant Albertsons. Pattison said that he has a vision to use technology to empower customers and associates, as well as “our supplier audiences by enabling them take their digital advertising spend and communicate in an effective marketplace.”

Start with Mobile

Pattison, who was hired in October last year to implement this vision, has been working on it ever since. She spent her first six-months investing in “basic infrastructure and tech technology”, to improve engagement with customers, in order to achieve the goal of an RMN. Swiftly is a company that provides technology to smaller retailers.

Pattison said, “We partnered up with Swiftly to power our mobile apps.” “We noticed that the engagement with our customers was really increasing as it related our digital connectivity.”

Sean Turner, Swiftly’s Chief Technology Officer, believes that the connection between shoppers and the RMN will determine whether it succeeds or fails.

Turner said that the first challenge for retailers is to establish a strong relationship with their brick-and mortar shoppers. We help them to do this by helping them to create a digital connection.

Pattison says that mobile engagements are usually short and quick. This usually happens in or near the store. After they got that to work, they began working on the desktop experience. Here, shoppers will do more research and educate themselves about products.

Unique audiences

Pattison and Turner understood that a good level of engagement was key in convincing suppliers that RMNs were worth the investment. TSMC’s ability to provide suppliers with access to multiple unique audiences was a big help.

TSMC offers three retail brands: Save Mart, Lucky, and FoodMaxx. Each brand caters to a different market segment.

• Lucky is a consumer brand that caters to a densely populated and traditionally urban market.
• Save Mart customers are suburban with smaller families, including empty nesters.

Food Maxx differs from these two. The website describes these stores as “proudly bag-yourself, warehouse-style shops that thrive on consistently providing customers with the best deals,” and shoppers tend to be more multi-cultural.

Pattison says that if you are a supplier and want to introduce a new product or plan a campaign, it is possible to do so in a single place, with multiple formats, across different regions, ethnicities, etc., using a one-stop-shop. It’s a dream activation for those who want to test and learn, run multiple messages, and receive very fast feedback. Then they can plan a more extensive media plan.

Move it in the store

TSMC wants to extend the RMN to stores by the end Q1 2024.

Turner said that “driving activation at brick-and mortar is critical for grocery, because 80 to 90 percent of sales occur there.”

The in-store RMN’s goal is to influence shoppers both at the point of sale and the decision point.

Pattison said that the point of purchase was clearly at the checkout lane. But the point of decision is made in many small intimate touches all over the store. We want to ensure that the opportunity for a return is also there, while not compromising anything in terms of the customers’ experience. No one likes to feel shouted at when they enter a store.

What size do you have to be?

What size must you be to qualify for a RMN?

Pattison said, “That’s an excellent question. It is perfect for this time.” I was a part of Albertson Safeway a long time ago, where you had to invest a lot of money across the board to achieve this. Both internal technology investments and resources are needed. “That’s not the case anymore, given where technology has evolved.”

She claims that partners such as Swiftly are able to provide infrastructure at an affordable cost. It is not about how many consumers you can serve, but rather the quality of the service.

If you own 10 stores, sell an incredibly unique item and have a high degree of engagement with the community you are interested in, you may have a retail network opportunity.

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