In week 3 of the Digital Marketing Seminar class at George Brown, my classmates and I had the opportunity to meet with the Performance Marketing Manager at Harry Rosen, Paul Michel, and learn more about the digital marketing that is done within the company. Paul gave us an overview of his background, performance marketing, and the digital media journey at Harry Rosen.
The COVID-19 pandemic impacted many different businesses and industries throughout the world. One industry that was especially hit hard during this pandemic was the retail industry, as many stores temporarily shut their physical stores down to abide by lockdown protocols. Brick-and-mortar stores, such as Harry Rosen, have faced many different challenges throughout the pandemic, from lockdowns to capacity restrictions, these stores have had to adapt to new situations very quickly to ensure they are still providing their customers with excellent customer service. However, this pandemic helped some of these brick-and-mortar businesses build their digital presence to help connect and engage with their customers online.
As a performance marketing manager, you are responsible for overseeing many different aspects of digital marketing, such as online channel focus, media planning and execution, and achieving digital media KPI’s. Paul describes the overall goal of a performance marketing manager as, “evolving beyond a single channel focus to a more integrated and holistic view”, and "linking your digital marketing to a broader process” (Michel, 2022). Performance marketing involves tracking and analyzing customer data, which can be used to make better decisions going forward to advertise specific products to customers. Measuring KPIs such as conversion rates can help performance marketers measure the success of online advertisements and campaigns.
After reviewing the Digital Media Journey at Harry Rosen, I would agree with Paul’s statement that the first two steps are crucial to the digital media journey. The first step is learning about the customers and macro-trends. This is essential when implementing a marketing strategy, to ensure you have a good understanding of who you’re targeting and how to properly advertise to them. The second step is understanding what success looks like. Success can be measured in many different ways, so it is important to understand and determine what success looks like for your business. You need to know what success looks like, so you can continue working towards it and recognize it once you’ve achieved it.
A lookback window is a period of time after an advertisement is clicked or viewed, within which a publisher can claim the impression that leads to an install. Lookback windows are typically open from 1 to 30 days. The marketing team at Harry Rosen was using a lookback window of 28-days but realized that data may have been overreported within a large period of time. They decided to change this lookback window to only one day, to be able to better determine when someone bought something after clicking on the ad.
Source: https://mr-mag.com/harry-rosen-canadian-edge/
Paul was able to offer the class some great advice regarding internships and starting positions in the industry. He shared with the class his story and how he progressed as a marketer to end up where he is now. Throughout his story, he was able to provide us with tips and advice he learned firsthand when he started his first internship. As someone who has little experience in the industry, it was nice to hear the pros and cons of working in a marketing agency versus in-house marketing for a company. There are pros and cons for both, however, I think it would be very interesting to work for a marketing agency because you are exposed to many different clients in different industries, with many different types of projects.
Overall, Paul gave a great presentation and introduced me to the concept of performance marketing. The information about the industry was new and interesting and made me want to learn more about performance marketing altogether. He also provided the class with great advice to help us network with other marketing professionals and land a great summer internship!
References
Michel, P. (2022). Pandemic Pivots: Growing Sales Through Digital Channels. Lecture.
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