Bant Breen:
Alpha Precision Media is an omnichannel delivery company that leverages full-funnel commerce strategies to deliver databased advertising campaigns that help brands and media buyers achieve their business goals. When you came up with the thought and the idea of alpha, what was the eureka moment behind the idea, and how did that coalesce into a business?
Larry Harris:
No eureka moments, just running some test outcomes. Generally speaking, when I pitch to people on letting me invest their money and drive sales for them, I’m big on results. Always have been and it’s always been a driver for me since I started my career. I’ve always cared about the outcome, as well as the message persuasive, and did it appears in places where people could see it. I ran some test stuff on Amazon, I thought it was great. Nobody knew how to use the DSP. They weren’t using it. No matter how you view the funnel or think of it, you do need to drive awareness. You do need consideration and your advantage in Amazon, for telling stories across all the different mediums is you can tell a brand story on CTV. You can do retargeted banners that reach out of Amazon and onto ESPN and Vogue and on to the New York Times. Then when you get them on Amazon, we all do as we search, no one in history has ever gone to the men’s pants section of Amazon, right? You do that in Macy’s, or you do that in Bloomingdale’s, but you have an idea of what type of men’s pants you search for. Either it’s a branded search, or it’s fleece running pants. In any event, you’re driving the search, and then you have a shot out of 10 stars or if it has been reviewed or not. The final addition that I think is amazing is that Amazon is that one click to buy. It’s just so fresh to them to figure out what you’re interested in. How many books have you bought almost without thinking, right? You walked away from a conversation where someone said this book is amazing. You did it on your mobile and you saw and you were like clicking it, and it shows up at your house or in your Kindle and you’re done. It was barely thought that power, that persuasiveness of that unique user experience in the satisfaction. More of us got things we never had delivered. I never had Whole Foods delivered before. But you’re gonna be very hard-pressed to get me in a Whole Foods going forward.
Bant Breen:
This is not the first early-stage business that you’ve been involved in. I know the work that you’ve done with Ansible, obviously PubMatic. As you guys get going here with Alpha, what are some of the challenges that you guys are facing?
Larry Harris:
I think there are challenges. I think we are unique in that we’re a minority business enterprise. Out of Amazon’s 5 million sellers, it doesn’t matter, right? I think the challenges we have are threefold. The first is one of the responsibility abilities. That’s difficult for people in a data-driven market, not just enough to be the right time, right place, you have to have a persuasive message in that place. What you do on CTV, is going to be different than what you’re going to do on an NFL game. All those things are available to you on Amazon if you are an advertiser. What are the stories you tell when you retarget versus when you’re just doing a banner? How do you measure those things? If you’re an e-commerce person, you’re obsessed with ROS. Understanding that the top of the funnel contributes to ROE as it’s almost like a Farah Chaka function, right? What you do in terms of driving awareness shows up later in sales. It may be outside the window that many people are used to when they are so search-focused. Search has a very short measurement back window because we search and there’s an immediate benefit for that. What’s the importance of a brand? I think a lot of people we’ve been teaching that a branded search on Amazon is more powerful than a general search. If you search for a particular type of earbud, you’re more likely to buy those blue earbuds, right? We see all those things, we can see all that on Amazon. Awareness of the different channels is less understood in our time than it was when we were kids. That’s reinvigorated now. It’s more important than ever, because, with all the fractured stuff, it is a way to cut through. What if I tell you what Beats is, but unless you are of a certain age, and I say JBL you think speakers and don’t think earbuds. Those things matter and reinvigorating that within our clients is important. Then report so you’re nothing if you can’t report and if it’s not enough, show them the report. Every report has a story about success and learning. Teaching people dashboard is not going to make them better marketers because, at the end of the day, to earn this business we won marketers because it makes it easier for us. Every client experience I want them to see sales and reporting data is a little bit like your car engine. I don’t think people want to know the real details of the data but they want the general story. You take your engine that either runs or it’s broken and if it’s broken too bad.
Bant Breen:
Larry, thank you so much for being on UNCAGED today and we look forward to having you back.
To see the full interview on the Uncaged YouTube channel, go to: