Steve Payne and PS&Co Partner Romain Mercier

Hardlines Editor and podcast host Steve Payne interviews Romain Mercier, a customer engagement and communications expert and a partner at PS&Co, an agency that provides consulting services and harnesses data to build measurable customer experiences. Romain describes his extensive background in banking, data analytics, and finally, digital marketing. He shares considerations for SMBs and mid-markets on catching up with Canadian Tire and the big box stores in customer engagement. Romain speaks of the importance of digital channels for SMBs and why it is important for your brand to digitize your business. He explains the Federal Canadian Digital Adoption Program, available to all businesses that have had over $3 million in revenue over the last three years. Listen in for tips on digitizing your Candian SMB.

 

Key Takeaways:

 

[:17] Steve introduces Romain Mercier. Romain is a partner at PS&Co, an agency that provides consulting services and harnesses data to build measurable customer experiences. It’s clear that Romain knows what he’s doing with tech and customer engagement. He’s worked for some of the biggest names in tech after beginning his career in banking.

 

[:56] Romain has worked in senior capacities for Oracle, Adobe, Playtech, SAP, and Resulticks. He’s based in Vancouver and hails originally from France. Steve welcomes Romain to What’s In Store.

 

[1:33] Romain speaks of his financial background, working for a Big Five bank. He got the crash course on how to run a business, look at it from a P&L point of view, and look at the strategies that can drive revenue and drive efficiencies.

 

[1:56] More than a decade ago, Romain made the move to a tech vertical, leveraging data to find ways to generate more revenue and find efficiencies. He developed reports for finance departments, operations departments, sales departments, HR departments, and rarely for marketing departments. Marketing was getting roughly the same budget, year after year.

 

[2:42] Romain joined Oracle Eloqua, where he started nurturing by email. Romain started working more with technology that enabled him to build engagement with customers and better communication, leveraging data to find out more about the interests and intents of the customers, and leveraging technology to automate communication to reduce the cost of sales.

 

[3:22] Romain has been doing this for 15 years. As the market matured, servicing very large North American companies, Romain realized the value he provided was more to the service of guiding his clients than the technology itself.

 

[3:51] Romain brings a spectrum of large tech vendors, small tech vendors, and digital engagement, taking the strategy that big corporations use and simplifying it for the benefit of SMB and mid-market organizations in Canada.

 

[4:37] Steve and Romain contrast Canadian Tire’s omnichannel strategy with the online sales of independent hardware and building supply dealers. How can independent retailers compete in technology not only with Canadian Tire but with Amazon? The digital technology industry has been maturing over the last 15 to 20 years to be faster, cheaper, and more convenient.

 

[6:38] Independent retailers now have access, at a tenth of the price, to the same technology Canadian Tire has invested in for years, using the same strategy on social media and digital advertisement, much more cost-effectively.

[6:50] The challenge that SMB and mid-market retailers have is they don’t have the talent in-house that a Candian Tire team or other large retailer’s digital marketing team might have. They don’t have the same budget to pay the top marketing agencies to help them. But the cost of the technology is now affordable to the SMB market. Hire outside talent to help you.

 

[8:27] When did advertising and marketing turn into customer engagement? It started before COVID-19, when the social media started happening. The big accelerator was COVID-19 when every store except essential services was closed. The only way to generate revenue was to have an eCommerce site. During COVID-19, the purpose of digital commerce was survival.

 

[9:38] Since then, the acceleration of social and new apps that come on the market, has snowballed but it’s still done without a strategy or goal. Engagement means better understanding your customers to bring them something of value. Grab all the digital data crumbs your customer leaves with you and put them together for a better view of the customer.

 

[10:50] When you know your customer or prospect’s interest and intent, you can communicate better with them and reply to their needs with the proper positioning of your offer.

 

[11:40] The importance of social media for retailers. What are the goals and objectives you have? Depending on your brand and your intention, some channels are better than others for your purposes. Pinterest is for browsing. LinkedIn is B2B. Social media is huge for Direct to Consumer eCommerce. If your market is B2B, social media might not be a good value for you.

 

[13:05] The home improvement retail industry has 5,000 stores. A thousand are hardware stores. Three thousand are building supply stores or lumberyards. Just shy of 1,000 are Canadian Tire and big box stores. Steve asks, with 5,000 points of sale, how is our industry positioned for the digital age? Romain thinks the industry is well-positioned to catch up fast!

 

[13:44] Romain says there are a lot of improvements to be done for smaller organizations to digitally transform. They haven’t been investing over the same period as the big box stores. The most compelling need is for SMBs and mid-markets to adopt more digitization in their businesses to survive. Before COVID-19 that was not the case.

 

[14:23] The momentum for compelling events for change is there. Changing needs planning. Changing without an objective is not going to work. The Canadian federal government realized that SMB organizations do not have internal knowledge of digital experts on payroll. They don’t have data analysts.

[14:58] The Canadian federal government has developed a $4 billion program available for all Canadian organizations that generated over half a million dollars in revenue over the past three years.

 

[15:17] That fund provides each organization with $15,000 funding for agencies certified under the program, like PS&Co, an assessment of their current situation, and a roadmap of a multi-year, muti-step plan to increase the usage of digital technology in their organization, gain efficiency, and generate additional revenue.

 

[15:50] These funds could be used for brands to create a digital logo, a website, an eComm site to bypass a distributor, or research for using digital in a supply chain, including QR codes to manage an inventory. It could be for digital security to prevent your website from being hacked or suffering a data breach of customer information. All of these topics are important to plan.

 

[16:49] Romain strongly urges the listeners to look into this Canadian Digital Adoption Program. There are talented government-certified experts at PS&Co, that can help them over a couple of years, make sense of how to move forward,

 

[17:03] Steve thanks Romain Mercier for joining What’s In Store and telling listeners about the Canadian Digital Adoption Program. Romain thanks Steve for having him on What’s in Store.

 

About Us:

What’s in Store is a podcast series of the Hardlines Information Network, brought to you by Jeld-Wen.

Resources:

Hardlines.ca

Steve Payne
Romain Mercier

PS&Co Brand Studio

CDAP

Sponsor: Jeld-Wen

 

Quotes:

“[At a big bank,] I got the crash course on how to run a business and how to look at a business from a P&L point of view and look at the strategies that can drive revenue and efficiencies.” — Romain Mercier

 

“Over time, I realized the value that I provided was more into the service that I guided our clients with than the technology itself.” — Romain Mercier

 

“The challenge that SMBs and mid-market have is they don’t have the talent in-house that a Canadian Tire team might have. … They don’t have the same budget for agencies to help them.” — Romain Mercier

 

Since [COVID-19], the acceleration of social and … new apps that come on the market, has snowballed but it’s still done without a purpose, without a strategy, or without a goal.” — Romain Mercier