Karo Healthcare’s Simon Swan on paid search ‘signposting’ and learning from Amazon

“I think in digital, the art is in not talking about your strategy in ‘digital’ words, but in simple language that everyone can understand,” says Simon Swan, Director of Digital Marketing & Media at Karo Healthcare, which offers a portfolio of healthcare brands grouped into core categories such as Skin, Foot, Intimate and Vitamins and brands like Lamisil, E45, Multi-Gyn and Nailner.

Karo’s vision is to become a leading player in the sector by providing smart choices for everyday healthcare, and over the past few years has expanded and strengthened its brand portfolio, geographical footprint, and commercial capabilities, including in digital marketing and ecommerce.

Swan is clear that even newer digital channels are not something that should be seen as complex by the rest of the business, or by stakeholders that may be setting marketing budgets.

“We’ve run a number of test-and-learns across completely brand new tactics and [we always] start with a market sizing for the categories that we play in… and where we think there’s a growing category or channel for that specific audience.”

“We work very closely with our insights team, brands and category leads, aligning our approach to the brand goal and the path to purchase,” says Swan, adding that it boils down to the basics of “understanding the audience,” the channels they use and where they decide to complete their purchase.

“We have to ensure we’re investing our time and effort and spend into those key retailers as well as how we invest in the right media channels to reach these audiences.”

Whilst Swan’s previous roles, at retail startups and notably as Group Head of Digital Strategy and Transformation at the Met Office, have often involved growing direct sales or reach, his remit at Karo is mostly in a B2B2C capacity, working alongside a media agency, T&Pm, to help retailers increase their sales of the healthcare company’s products.

However, part of Swan’s efforts to improve efficiency involves learning from direct selling, such as taking the skillset from Karo’s performance marketing team, who work on some Amazon-first brands, and “applying learnings to traditional Karo brands that are very much sold in the high street and not via D2C.”

How much incremental traffic are we sending to retailers?

“When I I first arrived at Karo, it was like going back to my startup days,” says Swan, referring to the task of getting into the detail in order to optimise for growth, and make best use of limited budgets.

At the time, Swan found that much of the paid search activity was going to brand websites, resulting in a high bounce rate and short time-on-site. “No one was consuming any of the information,” he says. “So why don’t we reassign our paid search, but also our performance marketing tactics directly into retailers where we can get some insights?”

Beyond this test, Swan says his team can then look at how much incremental traffic they are sending into a retailer that they wouldn’t have got before, and the incremental sales delivered since making this change.

“You can’t necessarily determine paid search is adding X percent in total retail sales,” adds Swan, “But what it is doing, it’s sending more traffic through the funnel into the retailer and once it’s on the retailer site, then we can use some of these new tactical measures like Criteo, CitrusAd, Amazon DSP to then begin to convert this traffic when it’s on the retailer site.”

Paid search for ‘signposting’

Swan uses the term ‘signposting’ when talking about Karo’s use of paid search for the brands it doesn’t sell direct to consumer.

“So, we only bid on generic, we don’t bid on brand. We let the retailers bid on brand because they’re selling our products and then we mop up any gaps and opportunities in the context of the path to purchase.”

“We’ll come up with a list of insights working across touchpoints to provide search data but also more importantly, what insights are provided through our path to purchase and how, if at all, search is part of the journey and more importantly the conversations of category users that provide us more rich insights”.

“We ensure that we’re not bidding on similar search terms to our retailers,” he adds. “So we’re reducing any potential bidding wars.”

The foundations of ecommerce haven’t changed

Amidst all the change that the ‘digital shelf’ has brought to consumer goods marketing, Swan says “the foundations of ecommerce go back 20 years, to when I was at Kitbag.com (an ecommerce startup), it’s the same principles: Do we have the right content? Do we have the right SKU listings on those retailers? Do we have customer reviews and ratings as they become more and more important? And are we visible for the key search terms and the taxonomy on the retailer side?”

Swan opines that there’s a danger marketers “move on to shiny tactics” and don’t revisit the foundations often enough. Only with the right foundations can marketers begin to diagnose the wider tactical opportunities that can be unlocked, working directly with retailers to shift spend towards retail media, for example.

“I found time and time again, [the need to] get the bread and butter fixed and then stay with those foundations. Keep on investing in them, applying the right analytics dashboards that drive change, and setting clear measurement goals to the wider teams”.

Starting with the fundamentals is an approach Swan takes to recruitment, too, when building digital teams. “They don’t have to have a digital marketing or media background. We can teach the tactics,” he says.

“It’s more about how they collaborate and persuade. Every time we interview, we always say, ‘60% of your time is collaboration, 40% is tactics’. It’s all about bringing fresh ideas into the sector.”