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Creative Strategies To Grow Sales and Improve Shopper Engagement
Featuring Karen Frame With Makeena
The secret to growing a successful brand is making it easy for shoppers to discover, find, and buy your products wherever they like to shop. Retail is pay to play and natural brands have always had a significant competitive disadvantage - but not anymore! 

There is a better way to confidently grow and scale your brand. An effective shopper engagement strategy can help level the playing field and give your brand a competitive edge. This is how you convert occasional customers into committed loyal shoppers - what every brand wants!

Retailers expect and brands need actionable insights to help grow category sales. It’s difficult to effectively measure how well your brand is performing in natural compared to other brands. Shopper loyalty data can more than fill that void - with the right guidance. Learn how to leverage these strategies to become a trusted and invaluable resource to retailers. This is how you become a category leader.  Savvy retailers might even reward you with incremental opportunities not available to others.  

You will learn how to:
Make it easy for shoppers to discover your brand
Make it easy for shoppers to find your product
Easily survey and engage your shoppers
Maximize your promotion ROI
Track customer engagement
Convert occasional customers into loyal shoppers
Use shopper buying insights in-place of retailer sales data
Gain an edge with retailers - become a Category Leader
Leverage these insights to grow sales and profits

I'm creating that direct relationship with your consumer, and then you can take that information to retail buyers. So we talk a lot about, we built your loyalty platform, so you don't have to. So this eight-week case study for a beverage brand on the left, is we tracked 75,000 of their retail sales.

And what we noticed through the app is that we're able to uplift their sales from repeat purchases because of the way that our platform is built. And so that beverage brand's return on their investment was 300%. So it was a 3X.

On the right side of this slide is what I just told you. The average repeat purchase per brand across all the brands on our platform and all of the products is 63%. So that means of all of the shoppers that are using the app, 63% of them are coming back and buying a product from a brand at least twice.

Wow, that's a really high conversion rate. Would you like to know how you can leverage this to grow your brand? Let's start the show.

Now here's Karen.

Today we're going to talk about creative strategies to grow sales and improve shopper engagement. So I want to give a special thanks to all the brands that you see down below who are helping to promote and support this. And one of the brands that's helping me with this is Makeena.

And Karen is here today, so she's going to be sharing some great insights. So you definitely want to stay tuned. Karen, can you talk a little bit about yourself and your journey to Makeena?

Yeah, sure. So kind of the short of the long, I guess it is. I grew up in actually in Central Illinois, and my dad had built this really cool house on a lake, but it was across the street from a cornfield.

And that cornfield was sprayed with pesticides every year. And as a result, everybody in my family is either sick or dead, and currently I'm recovering from cancer itself. So for me, it's super important that we know what we're putting in and on our bodies.

And I want to tell the world about these incredible natural products brands. So we're really at Makeena, we're super focused on that consumer engagement piece.

Fantastic. Thank you for doing that. And like I said, she's got some great insights.

And we're going to be talking about today is how to leverage shopper marketing over other sources of data. And at the end of the day, this is what's critically important. These are the things that are going to help you move the needle and drive sustainable sales.

And for those of you who don't know me, I've had the privilege of working with literally hundreds and hundreds of brands, everything from pre revenue to multi billion dollar brands. I've had an opportunity to work with a lot of brands and a lot of solution providers and people like Karen, who are trying to make a difference in the industry. And of course, my mission, next slide, is to make our healthy way of life more accessible by helping you get your products on the more store shelves and into the hands of more shoppers.

I started this weekly webinar series, this free weekly webinar series, when expo was canceled. And I did that because I realized the best thing I can do is to help you grow on scale, is to bring in the very best experts to answer your most pressing questions. So do me a huge favor, do us a huge favor, and reach out to us and let us know what questions you have.

How can we help solve them? And I'll do my best to find the best experts like Karen to bring on to this podcast, on this webinar series. So first of all, I should also say that I'm an advisor for Makeena.

And the reason I'm an advisor for them is because I believe in what they do and what the product can do. And we're going to talk a lot about more of that in a minute. But let's get into today's presentation.

So today we're going to talk about the secret to growing successful brand is making it easier for shoppers to find and buy your product. There's a better way to get your brand in front of people. And more importantly, there's also a better way to leverage the insights that Makeena, that Karen's going to be able to show us to help you grow sales at retail, to be able to really understand what's unique about your customer and how do you communicate in their voice.

And that's what retailers really want. So we're going to learn how to make it easy for shoppers to find and discover your brand. We're going to make it easier for shoppers to find your brand.

We're going to make it easy to survey and engage shoppers. Imagine if you could, best case scenario, if you could walk up in the store aisle and talk to everyone who buys your product or everyone who doesn't buy your product, buys your competitive product. Why did you choose that and why did you or not choose that?

And then how to use the product after you get home. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. We're also going to talk about how to maximize your trade promotion ROI.

And the point there is that when you're thinking about your promotions, if you're not laser targeted on the customer is going to buy your promotion, buy your product, then that's a waste of money. We're going to talk about strategies to track customer engagement, to convert occasional customers into loyal shoppers, and use shopper data instead of retailer sales data. And we're going to show you how to use all this to gain a significant and sustainable competitive edge at retail.

So with that, let's start with the shopper journey. It's changed dramatically, especially since COVID. Shoppers have literally unlimited choices as to where they buy their product.

Therefore, retailers want and need your help to help them drive sustainable sales in their store. The challenge is that there's a lot of noise out there. So how do you become relevant?

How do you help that retailer drive sales? And that's the focus of what we're going to be talking about today. So with that, I want to challenge the status quo, that the retailers have all the power.

I want to challenge that premise. And the reason for that is that retailers need brands as much as brands need retailers. And so with that said, savvy retailers need brands willing and able to help them grow sales.

This is how you become more than just another brand on a retailer's shelf. And with my experience, my claim to fame, my secret sauce, is by leveraging these strategies, several retailers have given me incremental opportunities for free that they don't give to other brands. And at the end of the day, this is what we're trying to help them with.

So it's all about relevance. I mentioned that. So what does that mean?

The retailer wants three things. Generically speaking, retailers don't make anything. What they do is they sell the real estate that your product takes up on their shelf, that small silver space.

What they need is they need more traffic in their store. They need a reasonable profit in the category. And they want a competitive advantage in their market.

And if you can help them achieve their goals, then savvy retailers will bend over backwards to help you achieve your goals. And that's the secret sauce. That's the magic of this.

And so what they need is not the same canned strategy that everyone else brings. They need you to differentiate yourself. So the traditional strategy that every brand uses, unfortunately, is they throw everything at the wall, the spaghetti at the wall, if you put that expression.

And that's not effective. That wastes a lot of money. And that doesn't help you grow sales.

Some give you statistics. 25% of a brand's gross sales is tied to their trademarking. That's your promotional budget.

And yet 70 to 90% of those dollars are wasted or ineffective. And we're here to fix that. So we want to teach you how to use a laser targeted strategy to help you grow sales and help the retail partner grow sales by leveraging the unique strength of the customer that your brand attracts.

So we don't want you to rely on cookie cutter strategies. Now, to give you a little bit more understanding of what I'm talking about, the same strategies that you hear from everyone else. Brokers, for example, there's definitely a need for them, but they use cookie cutter strategies because that's how they're efficient.

Other agencies, etc. rely on cookie cutter strategies. This is what you're being taught.

I believe that your brand strategy needs to be held in house and that you need to hold brokers and everyone else accountable to your brand strategy. And this is the focus of everything I talk about on the webinar series, the podcast, etc. And this is really critically important because we're going to teach you strategies that brokers and other brands aren't using.

So your creativity is your greatest asset. I have a belief that your go-to-market strategy should be every bit as creative and innovative and disruptive as the ingredients in your package. This is your opportunity to stand out and shine on a crowded show.

This is your opportunity to maximize your trade marketing ROI, your promotional ROI. And when you do that, then you get more runway for growth. You get more better valuations from investors, and you make it easier for retailers to say yes to any of your suggestions and offers, etc.

So you're told that you need data at retail. But where do you start? I get this question a lot.

Data is confusing and not all data is going to solve all your problems. For example, I live in Denver, Colorado. If I wanted to know how my natural product is doing in the Denver market, there is no database on the planet that's going to answer that question.

Now, that's a pretty shocking, pretty shocking comment. But the point is, you need to understand what data, what the problem is you're trying to answer. And you need to be able to understand what data solves that problem.

So we want to teach you how to avoid canned top line reports. The same report that someone used to sell motor oil is not going to differentiate your baby food. We want to give you strategies and insights that others aren’t using.

So what's the difference between shopper market dating and sales data? Sales data that you get from Spends, Nielsen and IRI. Or it comes from a syndicated.

It's called syndicated data. That comes from what sells through a register. Shopper insights come from actually asking the customer what they want, what they like about your brand.

They can be actually more impactful. And there's a lot more to this, but you can actually leverage those in place of syndicated data. And I was able to use that, this exact strategy to get the number one brand, get exclusive distribution and the number one brand of diapers when I worked for Kimberly Clark.

So why does this stuff matters? Well, category management is the art and science of getting your product in the hands of more shoppers. And by leveraging all of these advanced tools, this is how we help give you a sustainable edge.

So category management is not just a canned tall vine report. It's like I said, it's the art and the science of bringing together all these data sources to tell a story that's going to help your brand grow, to help your retail partner gain a significant competitive advantage. So real shopper loyalty.

A lot of people ask me this question. Well, I've got a shopper loyalty card. The reality is that is a coupon.

Real shopper loyalty is something that's not embossed on a plastic card. This is why Karen's here today and this is why this is so important. And this is why I'm so thrilled to be an advisor for this company.

Converting occasional customers into loyal shoppers requires a one-on-one relationship with them. Imagine if you had an opportunity to get to know your customers the same way that you would a good friend. That's what we're striving for here.

We want to get to understand what your customers want, why they want it, and then how can you meet their needs. And then we want to help you understand how to leverage those strategies to win at retail.

So how well do you know your core customer? Now, I talked to a lot of brands about this, and this is their Achilles heel. Most brands think of their core customer as female had a household, 2.3 kids, etc.

That is not enough. You need to understand who your core customer is at a very granular level. That's why I developed the free TURNKEY Sales Store Strategies course to give you that edge.

So what I'm talking about is you need to be able to really be able to, you need to be able to dig down into the insights. What motivates the customer to be able to buy and take your product home?

So what does your core shopper look like? And by the way, I've shared this slide at presentations all over the country when I've done them, keynote presentations, et cetera, and people struggle with this. So here's the challenge.

Most solution providers think of all consumers as being the same. Well, we're not the same. Natural committed consumers do not want to be sold.

They want to buy. And they want to choose the products that are best for them. So the challenge at retail is that with the promotion strategy, et cetera, that retailers use, is they spend more time trying to sell us the stuff on their shelves rather than asking us what we want to buy.

This is your opportunity to communicate to the retailer why your unique customer is far more valuable to the retailer than perhaps another brand's customer. And this is the secret. This is what's really cool, being able to leverage this.

So, as I mentioned, female had a household, 2.3 kids, etc. This is the way that literally every brand approaches retail. The cookie cutter strategies, where they look at every customer as being the same.

Some people will differentiate a customer, but they're not focused on your unique customer. For example, most solution providers, when they talk about a low house consumer, they're literally talking about someone who eats a couple salads and goes for a walk. In my world, in our world, we're talking about someone that is socially active, that is a vegan, that is concerned about their carbon footprint, etc.

You need to understand how that customer buys. And the reason this matters is because your product is super premium product, is responsible for driving more profit, more sales and more growth in the retail, in the store than other products. Oh, and by the way, when your customer buys your product, they're also buying a lot of other brands at the same time.

A lot of other premium brands. Consider this. If a customer goes into a store to buy organic milk, they're probably going to buy organic bread, organic spread, et cetera.

It's that unique customer that you want to communicate the value to your retail partner of, and that's going to help differentiate you and your brand. By the way, think of questions that you can be asking us later. We've got several already, but we want to be able to help answer or make sure we answer all your questions.

The future is with personalization. Customers want to feel important. They want you to talk to them as though you matter to them, as though they matter to you.

You want to be able to have that one-on-one relationships. You want to show them the love. You want to let them know that not only are they important, but that you're listening to them.

Imagine being able to reach out to your customers and say, you know what, we're coming up with a new product. Would you prefer chocolate or banana? And having them chime in on what they want the most.

And then being able to create that product knowing that you already have guaranteed sales before you even put it in retail. What a great idea. Or being able to develop a trade marketing strategy where you can be laser focused on who buys your product or how you're attracting those customers.

And then better yet, you could even put together a promotion strategy where you're rewarding people outside of traditional retail. And that's a strategy I talk a lot about on the podcast. So the benefit of this is that they will become your brand evangelists.

They're going to help sell your product. Imagine converting occasional customers into loyal shoppers. This is what we're talking about.

Shopping is simple. It's just a matter of giving customers what they want and need. And then helping them understand and appreciate the value that your product has.

So imagine the impact on your sales. Imagine the impact of you being able to go to a retailer and say, this is how my customer shops the category. And this is where my brand is.

This is how I'm growing sales for you. And then imagine, like I said, the impact on your trade promotion ROI. And so this is how you spell success.

By committing to engage with your shoppers. And that's what Karen's all about. That's what Makeena's all about.

So now we're going to dig into the part of the conversation where she's going to walk you through Makeena and give you some insights about it. Now, at the end of this presentation, you're probably going to have a lot of questions. Well, how do I leverage out at retail?

That's why I'm here. And that's why I'm a part of this, what she's trying to put together here. Because my expertise is leveraging all of these data sources to help you succeed, to help you get your product into more store shelves and the hands of more shoppers.

So Karen, take it away.

Yeah, well, hey, thanks so much, Dan. And we love having you as an advisor. It's been great.

And just helping us take all the data that we've collected from consumers all across the US. We've collected 115,000 receipts from over 30, literally 30,000 stores. And it's growing every day.

We have a ton of consumers that we're collecting real-time data from. And we're uploading it into our dashboard for brands. And you helping us make sense out of that is huge.

So as Dan said, Makeena is a free app for the consumer to download on the App Store or Google Play. They can use the app anywhere online. So Thripe Market, you know, VitaCost, Amazon, a brand's own website, or they can use it actually at a bricks and mortar store.

So Natural Grocers, Walmart, Target, Bodega, 7-Eleven, Circle K, I mean a farmers market. We actually don't care. And as you heard, my early story is really about helping the consumer buy better and meeting them where they already like to shop and collecting that data real time from them and then allowing the brand to talk directly to them through our backend dashboard.

So, you know, Dan talks a lot about, you know, connecting with that shopper. We get all of those shoppers on a dashboard for you. So instead of these one-offs on your own website, then Instagram and Facebook, they're all right there and you can do emails one-to-many.

You can do emails one-to-one. You can message through the app. You can really ask them, like, what do you love about my product?

Or would you share our product with five of your friends? If you do, I'm going to give you, like, some free samples. So that's kind of what Makeena is about, is creating that direct relationship with your consumer, and then you can take that information to retail buyers all across the US.

And we're expanding into Canada as well. So if you're looking at going into Canada, Makeena can go with you. So this first slide really talks about why brands love us.

And the interesting thing about Makeena is we're not just a cash-back app. We're truly a loyalty platform. So there's a cash component, and then there's a rewards component.

And as the consumer continues to engage with a brand, they get more points, and then a brand can decide what kind of rewards to give that consumer. Is it going to be additional cash? Right?

It depends on your consumer. If your consumer likes cash, then you're going to want to give them cash. Is it that you have some really cool hats that you want to share with them, or a really cool shopping bag, an eco-friendly shopping bag?

Well, you can give it to them through the app. Other things that other brands have used, like Ocean's Halo and Taste Republic and Zevia and some other incredible brands that are on our platform are really just free product, honestly. So it depends on what you as a brand want to do.

And we talk a lot about we built your loyalty platform so you don't have to. So this eight-week case study for a beverage brand on the left is we tracked 75,000 of their retail sales. And what we noticed through the app is that we're able to uplift their sales from repeat purchases because of the way that our platform is built.

And so that beverage brand's return on their investment was 300 percent. So it was a 3X. On the right side of this slide is what I just told you.

The average repeat purchase per brand across all the brands on our platform and all of the products is 63 percent. That means of all of the shoppers that are using the app, 63 percent of them are coming back and buying a product from a brand at least twice. And then here, as I said, we have over 115,000 submitted receipts.

So that's where we start getting some really interesting data on top of the data that the shoppers are giving us by just unlocking the rewards and watching videos and taking a snapshot of the display in the store or answering poll or survey questions for each individual brand within the app. So we we talk about each brand getting real estate within the app and for every promo dollar. And this is where, you know, Dan comes in and where we're really going to get, well, we get a ton of value out of his advisory services anyway.

But this every promo dollar that a brand spends are getting back on average $7.84 in retail sales. Now, again, that's for all of the brands on our platform and for all of the products. But at least that gives you kind of an idea as to what kind of, you know, ROI we have and why brands love us.

So this is just some of the sampling of our brands. I mean, we have a, you know, we have over 100 brands. We actually own the site Common Kindness as well, which is a free printable coupon.

And we're going to be relaunching that in January. So but we've had all sorts of brands that we've worked with, PepsiCo type brands, Canagra brands, Kraft Heinz brands, but also emerging brands, which is the bread and butter. No pun intended of the natural products industry.

So we have over 500 brands in our sales pipeline right now. Some incredible brands like Primal Kitchen and Green Goo. All these brands, they have great identities that are making a difference in the world.

And that's what our shoppers really want. So again, at a glance, you know, we, we, you know, we just show that a little bit differently. We have a product.

Well, our product locator is actually up to the brand. So if you want to direct your consumer, because you know that you need to turn more on Amazon, you can direct the consumer straight to Amazon through Makeena. If you want to direct the consumer to your own website, because you want to recognize a better, you know, better profit, then you just send them straight to your website.

But we always have an option on Makeena to help the consumer find you for your already being sold. Right? And where it's convenient for them.

We built into the platform also these surveys and polls. So if you want to get a little bit more data from shoppers that are already shopping, right, for your brand or even for your category or for your attribute, like let's say they're looking for gluten free and you have a gluten free product, but you also want to ask them about other gluten free products that they may buy, you can do that through Makeena. So that's what we are.

We're really truly this engagement platform for brands and shoppers to really connect and understand each other. So we have three different ways that we work with brands. And, you know, we like to combine them because I think that it helps the brand understand a little bit better, you know, their shopper, right?

So we have the main part of the platform is, of course, the app and the dashboard. So the problem in this space, as you know, is discovery and really understanding your consumer. So the app itself helps that consumer discover, engage and earn these cash and rewards.

And while they're doing that, we're unlocking all of these shopper insights and data. And then we're able to track, which sounds a little creepy, but it's really not because these consumers really, really want these incredible brands like yours. We're able to track their consumer behavior and then influence it through the back end dashboard.

And I can give a live demo as well anytime. So if you go to our website, which is just makeena.com, there is a brand page. And if you scroll down the page a little bit, there's a place where you can schedule a demo with us.

You can actually click on Learn More, and then that will pop up a landing page for brands. And then you can schedule a live demo with us. So again, the consumer journey is super easy.

App Store, Google Play. We have other ways to engage as well. So we have a free sample box that goes out.

It's called the Makeena Mix. We're collecting a lot more data than just the offer data, too. We're going to be scraping, and we are scraping the entire receipt.

So you can look at your competition. You can see how well other products are doing in the same store. You can see how well you're doing from store to store to store.

And you can actually share this information with retail buyers. So you actually own the data now, along with Makeena. It's not entirely yours, but a lot of it is yours to use.

So as Kroger charges, what, a thousand bucks a month for their data, and Nielsen charges, and Spins charges, you actually get this real time, and you can take it, and then you can use it. And you can use it with your retail buyers, as I said, or people like Dan that can help you really analyze it and create some additional actionable insights off of it. But, you know, super simple.

Consumer downloads the app. They discover Engage with you. They discover Engage with other brands.

There's a lot of crossover. We talk about this go-to place for natural products with consumers. They can buy anywhere at a store online, and they submit receipts.

They scan that UPC. They scan the barcode, submit the receipt through the app. As I said, they can answer surveys and polls, take photos of displays at the store.

I mean, everything is part of the package. And then when they get to 20 bucks, they can receive their cash back and rewards through PayPal or VIMO. It's that simple.

And then they can get a bunch of freebies. So Ocean's Halo is a really great example of being able to give lots of freebies to the consumers that are engaging directly with them. So these series of slides are really just kind of samples of our dashboard.

And they're real samples. It's live. It's ready to go.

So you get all that demographic analysis that you would get off of Instagram when you're looking at who's actually engaging with you on Instagram. Same kind of thing with Makeena. But remember, these are folks that are actually buying your products.

It's not people that are just looking at you. They're people that are going into the store or ordering your products online, either through Amazon or Thrive, your own website, going into Kroger or Safeway. So you get to understand your demographic breakdown of those shoppers.

And then you can retarget these shoppers based on gender, household size, ethnicity, food preferences. Are they plant-based? How many kids do they have?

Are they buying baby products? Are they like me, where they're really sensitive to pesticides and toxins? Who are these people?

And can you retarget them? And can they bring more of their friends in to shop with you? And then here you can keep track of their purchases.

So here is really an interesting, you know, where rubber meets the road. So you gain all these insights into what their purchase patterns are. Are they shopping as you go into the checkout aisle?

Are they buying 30 plus, you know, items? Can you help your retailer increase the basket size with your brand and your products? This is where, you know, as I said, the meat of Makeena is.

We track every single SKU that you have. We look at repeat purchase behaviors and we track it also by retailer. So now you're not just getting their Kroger data here.

You're getting the Walmart data here. And sometimes you get the Whole Foods data, but not always. It's all now in one place.

And as you grow with Makeena and as Makeena grows, you'll be able to even understand the consumer a lot better. So as I said, you can take a look at the map of the United States at a glance, and you can really understand where your loyal shoppers are buying. Again, we're not just a cash back app.

We're not just couponing. We're more. We're truly engagement.

And then you can start monitoring how well you're doing at your retailers. So if you're not doing super well, you got to change it, right? We don't we we advise the brands that work with us not to change up their offers too much and not to change up their rewards too much.

But we do say if something's not working, let's change it. Let's do a two for one special. Let's do, you know, why don't you reach out to some of the shoppers that have signed up, you know, through Makeena because we have this long list of shoppers that you can directly interact with through the app or through email.

So start talking to them. So it's kind of like having your little or a big demo at a store, which I know Whole Foods demos have gone away for the rest of the year now. But now you can talk to these shoppers differently.

And these are shoppers that may not have gone to your Whole Foods store. These are shoppers that are gauging with you now other places as well. So take advantage of it.

You're going to really be able to iterate on your product. And then on top of it, maybe some of your products just aren't moving. I mean, can you be a little bit more efficient with your manufacturing and your operations?

Maybe the shoppers just don't like, you know, packaging that you put out. So Makeena allows you to dig deeper with these shoppers to discover really, truly what these shoppers do care about. And as I said, this is just kind of a sample of, you know, that whole list of shoppers.

So you get, you kind of find out right away, did they unlock your reward? Did they unlock your real estate on Makeena? And then you find out, okay, well, did they engage with me?

Did they watch a video? Did they answer a survey? Did they answer a poll question?

And then you get to find out, well, did they buy my product? And then did they buy it again? Because you get, you can give points every single time somebody buys your product and then give them rewards for coming back again and again and again.

And so you track it through the backend. You can send, as Dan mentioned early on, a message one to one with these shoppers, or you can send a message one to many. So you can get your most active shoppers that are your loyal ones.

They're micro influencers, per se. And you can maybe feature them in a newsletter even. You could ask them to share with 10 friends.

And then you give them a little something. Give them a trip to your farm, or give them a trip to your operations facility because they just fell in love with you guys. So you got to be real.

You got to be authentic. But you can send messages directly with them. Engage with them even outside of Makeena.

But this is a great start for you. So this is our big thing here. So we have a new data portal that we've created where you can really start looking at not just what we've already created, which is already pretty great, but brand and category level shopping data and the spend as a percentage of the total shopping basket and what your competition is doing.

Now, you may not know the name of the competition. Depends on whether or not that brand is on Makeena. But we get all the receipts.

We get receipts even if there is not an offer on the platform because we've gamified Makeena. We're a little bit like a fetch where people submit their receipts. And as long as they have natural products or grocery items on them, we still collect them and they still get points.

So you get that retail breakdown, you get this personalization and subminutation. And also with Dan's help, I mean, it's expensive. I mean, trade spend is expensive.

How are you going to be able to help that retailer grow the basket size when your brand is found in it? And Makeena should be able to help you do that. It should help you with the insights that we're collecting to create actions out of them.

I think these are just some samples of what the extra data portal will look like. And just pricing wise, so you guys understand, I mean, this is anywhere from $500 a month. And we do require you being on the platform for at least three months before we give you access to this because we want to start seeing some patterns around it.

But it starts at $500 a month. So it's super reasonable even for a smaller to emerging brand to get a hold of this data now.

Please.

So as I mentioned, the third way is through our sample program. And as of now, we have, we launched in August. We're getting product samples in the hands of the consumer.

And what's super cool about it happening with Makeena and within Makeena, there are other sample programs for sure. But we can start measuring real return on your investment. So you get in a sample box, the consumer gets it in hand, and then they like it.

Wow, that's super cool. So now we have a way to track it after the consumer gets your sample. Are they going back into the store?

Are they going into the store again and again and again? And now you have also a way to communicate with them through Makeena. So that's what's super cool about our sampling program.

And as you can tell, beautifully branded. Shoppers are sharing their Makeena boxes on social media. And as we grow this program, there's got to be a lot more boxes out there and a lot more samples with a lot of your products being spread all over Instagram and Facebook and even TikTok.

Now I think I'm done, right?

Yeah, that's it. So please submit your questions. So great.

Thank you for sharing that. I've been taking a lot of notes. I want to go through a few things and I want to share with you or kind of comment on a couple of things.

So you made the comic column about tracking your data. Well, you know, that's what Facebook does. If you've ever been on a website or on any website and you've shopped for something and then you go to another page, and then you get a coupon for the thing you shopped for, it's that kind of thing.

So it's that personalization, understanding what you want. If you go to Amazon and you buy something, they're going to recommend several different products that are similar that other customers buy. So think about that in terms of how they're trying to leverage a unique customer that buys that product and what are the things that buy with them.

Now, she mentioned shopper data. You need to understand that shopper data is unbelievably expensive. This is a fact you need to understand.

The only thing you own in this world as a brand is your customer. So you need to understand what that customer looks like, how they shop, where they shop, et cetera. To be able to buy that data is nearly impossible to get good data.

In other words, you might be able to get information about the shopper at one store, but not at other stores. And you won't be able to differentiate your customer from maybe a store that does mostly mainstream products versus natural products, et cetera. So having that flexibility is critically important.

Market basket, that's what we're focused on. To be able to buy that level of insights is extremely difficult. I used market basket data throughout my time at Kimberly Clark, et cetera, to really differentiate the brand and to drive exponential sales.

And as a result, we had huge, huge double digit growth quarter after quarter. And I'm not talking about 10% or 15%, 20%, 80%, et cetera, because that's what retailers really want to know. How does your core customer shop their store?

This is data that they can't mine. Remember, this is your customer. It's the only thing you own.

And so you've got to help that retailer manage that little sliver of space you have as effectively as possible. One of the things that Karen was touching on was about promotions. Well, I've talked a lot about how you should co-promote because that makes your promotion a lot more effective.

So when you promote one brand, you get a certain lift. The lift is the increase over normal sales. When you promote two brands at the same time, you'll get a higher lift and you're introducing your brand to a competitive, no, to a complimentary brand's[…]

Now, wouldn't it be cool if you could leverage Makeena to be able to identify what are the brands your customers buy most often? Reach out to that brand and then have a conversation with them. Karen, your thoughts?

Yeah, so we get all that data. And we've had brands that have specifically asked us if they could do that. And yes, you can.

I mean, the possibilities of... I mean, we are a startup, right? But the possibilities are endless.

Dan, you've taken a look at what we have. So you know that it's there, which is great. And we could even help make some introductions, of course.

But there may be basket data that maybe that brand is not on Makeena. And you can leverage even that brand that's not on Makeena, because we've captured that data and help you increase the velocity of your products off the shelf.

Which is so important, because at the end of the day, you want to remove the risk to the retailer for putting your brand on the shelf. In other words, when you introduce your product to a retailer, what they want to know is, is it going to sell? Are you going to have any issues with out of stocks or other problems?

Remember what I said earlier. Most of the databases in natural do not accurately reflect the way your customer shops. One, and then two, because of how complicated the data is, or how it's not near as robust as it is in mainstream, it's difficult to get line of sight to shelf to be able to see what customers are really doing.

So by being able to work through the customers, essentially what you're doing here with what Karen's talking about, and leverage those insights to make sure you don't have out of stocks, to make sure that your product is handled properly on the shelf, to make sure it's easy to find your product. Imagine going to a retailer and say, well, customers can't find my product. It's in your store and you know that it's merchandise in the bottom or something like that.

You could go to the retailer and say, hey, my customers are having a hard time. Here are the comments that they make. Here's how I can help you drive the sales in your store by leveraging the strength of my customer.

These are all strategies that can differentiate your brand against other brands. Remember, your competitors aren't using this. And then, like I said, again, we're talking about the price of the product, the price of buying the data.

It's horribly, horribly expensive. And the data that you can buy is not going to be as actionable because it's not going to drill down into your unique customer. So that's why this is so important.

So do me a favor, send us some questions and we'll make sure we answer them. Dave, I see that you're on the call. This is actually one of the reasons I wanted to bring Karen on, to answer some of the questions that we've shared when we've talked.

The point being is you're asking specifically, how do you get your product in front of more customers? How do you identify how customers shop and buy your product? How do you differentiate the way you communicate or message your product against other brands and at retail?

So this is a strategy that is going to help you do that. And again, I'm thrilled that Makeena is here, that I'm going to be a part of it, be a work with Karen, Karen and her team, to be able to help you leverage those insights. Because at the end of the day, this is a game changer for natural brands.

And when you think about leveraging this versus syndicated data, well, syndicated data spends Nielsen and ROI. That's historical data. That tells you why what happened happened.

Excuse me. That tells you what happened before. What you need to know is why what happened happened.

And you can only get that level of insight if you bring in shopper marketing data. Karen, do you have some additional thoughts?

Yeah, what I wanted to to really point out is is Makeena interacts, helps a brand interact with the consumer before, during and after the shopping experience. So, as you know, on Amazon these days, you can get totally buried underneath sponsorships. Your brand will never get discovered.

And during COVID, it's really important that you have obviously digital visibility. What's cool about what we've done is we've basically put your brand at the top. We've identified you as a cleaner, better for you, better for the planet kind of brand that's mission driven, which is what our shoppers are looking for, although we have a lot of transitional shoppers as well, conventional shoppers that shop at stores like Publix.

But they'll discover you before they even get to the store. They'll put you in their shopping cart. And then when they get to the store, oh yeah, I was going to buy them.

So they find you at that store that they always shop at. And then we start collecting their information and then you can interact with them after the shopping experience. So this is like different than anything else, quite frankly, as a result of that.

Which is, thank you for sharing that. That's what matters so much. Imagine being able to go with your shopper to their house and understand how they share or evangelize your product with their customers and their friends.

Those insights are priceless. You cannot buy that data. And I'll share with you that a lot of the data that a lot of the bigger companies use is called panel data, where they bring a bunch of people in to a focus group.

And I can tell you story after story after story where the data, the insights that they get back from the focus group are not at all accurate. People say, yeah, this is the best product in the world. This is going to be huge success and the brand fails.

Because a lot of times those people that are getting paid to do that are not the consumer that's actually going to buy their product. So there's a lot of nuances here that we can help you leverage. One of the things I wanted to highlight that Karen was talking about is that the best defense against any virus is a healthy lifestyle.

And that begins with your product. And that's why making it easy for customers to find and buy your product is so important. This is your secret to survival.

This is how you future proof your brand and how you help your customers find what they want, when they want it, how they want it. And then again, all the promotional strategies and all things we've talked about after that. And by the way, like I've said before, leveraging those insights at retail.

This is the information that retailers can't get. If you walk into a store and hand them a canned top line report, some syndicated report you got from someone else, they're getting that same report from everybody else. They know how well your brand is doing.

But what they don't know is how your consumer shops your product, where your consumer lives, the demographics of your consumer, what's unique about your consumer. Think about all the things that we've talked about. By the way, John asked, is there going to be a replay?

And yes, there will be in a little bit. So you'll be able to go back and look at all these slides and really think about how to digest this. Karen, your thoughts?

Yeah, one of the other things that I wanted to mention now, it just escaped me. Oh yeah, that panel data. So that was the big thing.

So that's why we built the surveys and the polls into Makeena. It's really important that you ask them, well, do you like this flavor, this flavor, this flavor, this flavor? And then after the shopper has been verified as a buyer of your product, what happens is a screen pops up onto the app where there's another action item where the shopper actually can write a testimonial or give you feedback directly.

You can peruse through the back end of the dashboard on one of the screens and write that shopper back directly. You own, again, that feedback, right? You can take it.

You can put it on your own website. It shows up on the app if you just check it. It shows up live on the app.

So as you know, consumers are looking at other feedback all the time as to whether or not a shopper actually likes your products, right? So that is also part of Makeena. And you can engage with that shopper if they give you a bad review, bad feedback right away.

There's just a little message section on Makeena where you can just start having a conversation with them. So how can we do this better? How can we make this better for you?

Can we give you your money back? You guys could even give them their money back if they don't like your product. One of the brand's products that I bought recently is Magic Spoon.

It's not a plug for Magic Spoon. But what I loved about their founder, she came back to me, Gabby, I think is her name. I may be mispronouncing it.

And she said, what do you love about your, you know, what did you love about us? What didn't you love about us? And I was really honest with her and she gave me all of my money back, which is, you know, you don't always want to be doing that, but it was great feedback, I think, that I gave her.

But I'm a different kind of consumer. I really care about the industry. I want her to be successful and listen to her consumer.

Well, and on that note, that's what's unique about our industry. Our industry is not the canned, you know, commoditized consumer. It's that consumer that gets it, that understands why organic is better than non-organic and all those different nuances about our products and the missions that align with our products.

So thank you for sharing that. It's leveraging those insights. So let me, you were talking about how you can get, communicate with your shopper.

Big brands spend all their time and effort and energy and money telling us all, talking to, talking at us, excuse me. They're constantly telling us, we're great, we're great, we're great. You got to buy us because we're great, right?

Your ability to have that one-on-one connection with your customer and then being able to reach out to them in the story that Karen shared, that's how you can convert an occasional customer to loyal shopper. Karen just shared a story that's going to help that brand get on the radar of a lot of other customers. You can, you know, it's, you got to know that every time she talks to someone, she's sharing that as a story about a positive benefit, not only for Makeena, but how that brand helped her.

This is how you differentiate your brand. This is how you future-proof your brand.

This is how you build a thriving tribe outside of traditional retail, which is, by the way, something I talk a lot about on the webinar series, the podcast, et cetera. This is how you differentiate your brand. And this does a lot cheaper.

It's cheaper to nurture your customer that you've got around him to reacquire him. I was talking to the head of marketing for Whole Foods Market. And she said that they spend $270 to reacquire a customer.

Think about that. How inefficient is that? If you could engage with your customer and speak to them one-on-one, that's how you avoid spending and wasting all that money.

And that's how you increase your promotional ROI. I know we're getting kind of close to the top of the hour. Karen's got a commitment at 10 o'clock.

So anything anyone want to ask? Karen, you want to jump in?

Well, I can't see any of the questions. So I don't know how, unfortunately. So if there are any questions out there, happy to answer them.

You can always email me. You can direct message me on Instagram as well. It's go.makeena on Instagram.

My email is karen.frame at makeena.com. You can go to our website, send an email to info if you can't remember that. But I'm pretty much almost always available, but super busy.

I'll always tell you that I got your email, at least, and then get back with you when it's convenient for both of us.

Great. Thank you for sharing that. And there's a button there where if you push the button, it'll actually take you to the website so you can learn more about it, Makeena.

So with that, I guess we're finished. Karen, thank you for coming on and sharing your insights and telling us about this phenomenal platform and helping us help these small natural brands gain a significant competitive advantage.

Well, thanks for having me on. And again, door is always open. I mean, as you can tell, I'm super passionate about the space.

That's why I'm doing it. You know, I was a lawyer and a CPA by trade. This is actually my second startup in tech in the natural product space.

So I want to get the word out about your brand. I want to get you in the hands of the consumer. I want you to become more efficient with your marketing dollars.

I want you to create more profits so that you can spread what you're doing all across the US and in Canada. So yeah, thank you for having me on. And it's been an incredible journey.

And there's a lot more to come.

Thank you so much. Thanks, everyone, for being here. I appreciate that.

And the replay will be available shortly if you want to go back and take more good notes. Thank you, Karen. Thank you, everyone.

And we're taking a week off because of Thanksgiving. But we're going to be right back doing this again the following Friday. So go to the event page of my website to see what's coming up.

And do me a favor and share these insights, these resources, with every brand that you know that wants to grow sustainable sales. Thank you again. Thanks, Karen.

Bye. Have a good one.

I want to thank Karen for coming on today and for sharing your insights and for starting this incredible app. This is why I became an advisor. These are the kind of insights that I talk about all the time on the podcast and throughout all my content.

These are the kinds of insights that you can leverage at retail to gain a significant competitive edge. I'll be certain to put a link to Makeena on the podcast page.