Tim Zawislack is a senior eCommerce executive for global DTC and B2B brands. He most recently served as the Chief Digital Officer and Senior Vice President of eCommerce at Conair, where he managed the company’s eCommerce channels for its brands. With over a decade of management experience leading consumer and digital strategies, Tim has delivered rapid, profitable digital growth for multi-brand portfolio companies. He is also an Advisory Board Member for BWG Strategy.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [1:44] Tim Zawislack shares insights from leading digital strategies for legacy brands
• [7:19] How to integrate AMC into your Amazon Ads strategy
• [10:59] The importance of establishing an Amazon presence 
• [17:37] Why you should hire an Amazon agency — and how to integrate them into your team
• [28:45] Tips for developing an omnichannel strategy

In this episode…

In the early days of eCommerce, brands could advertise and sell on Amazon without a defined strategy. Today, Amazon should be used as a storytelling medium. How can you optimize your presence on Amazon?

With new brands hijacking market share from brands with an established Amazon presence, eCommerce executive Tim Zawislack says to expand your channels and advertising strategies. This requires integrating top-of-funnel advertising with branding and retail efforts to increase platform visibility and generate customer loyalty. Tim also recommends hiring an Amazon agency as an extension of your marketing team to ensure adequate market share and optimize ad spend.

Tune in to this episode of The Digital Deep Dive as Aaron Conant chats with Tim Zawislack about the past, present, and future of Amazon. Tim shares how to develop an omnichannel Amazon strategy, how to integrate AMC into your ads strategy, and what he learned from leading eCommerce efforts for legacy brands.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Aaron Conant on LinkedIn   
• BWG Connect  
• Tim Zawislack: Website | LinkedIn 
• “Measuring Incremental Retail Media ROI” with Meghan Corroon on The Digital Deep Dive 
• Clerdata
• “Going Beyond the DTC Checklist With Tim Zawislack” on The Digital Deep Dive

Quotable Moments:

• "Amazon serves not only as a cash register but also as a vehicle to really explain why your brand is relevant."
• "The days of brands having the ability to throw money at these things today; it's over."
• "Find me a tech vendor that won't take all your money. Google, Meta, TikTok, Yahoo; they'll all take your money."
• "If you're not orchestrating some meaningful channel strategy, you have challenges of profitability."
• "At some point, the spend can't just have a sales team asking for more on a specific retailer."

Action Steps:

1. Leverage Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC): Utilize AMC to integrate Amazon Retail, Amazon Ads, and your internal brand strategies. By doing so, you can orchestrate a cohesive marketing approach that maximizes brand visibility and potentially increases sales.
2. Develop a comprehensive channel strategy: Create a dedicated merchandising strategy for each channel, such as Amazon, Walmart, and DTC platforms. This approach addresses profitability challenges and ensures you’re not leaking market share to smaller, more agile brands.
3. Engage with a specialized agency partner: Partner with an agency that understands Amazon's unique advertising and retail landscape. A specialized agency can help you stay on top of rapid technology and platform changes, providing an outside perspective that can lead to better strategic decisions.
4. Focus on top-of-funnel advertising: Invest in top-of-funnel advertising to build brand awareness and drive potential customers to your product listings. This strategy is crucial for stimulating market consumption and creating long-term customer loyalty, which addresses the challenge of nascent brands eating into your market share.
5. Evaluate your product unit economics per marketplace: Analyze the unit economics of your products on a per-marketplace basis to inform your advertising strategy. Understanding the profitability of each SKU at each retailer allows you to allocate your advertising budget more effectively, ensuring your investment yields profitable returns.

About BWG Connect...

BWG Connect provides executive strategy and networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution. We network and knowledge share together to better understand and adapt to the newest trends, strategies, and pain points shaping growth in the digital space. BWG Connect, in conjunction with BWG Strategy, has built an exclusive network of 125,000+ senior professionals and hosts over 2,000 virtual and in-person networking events on an annual basis.

In addition, we have had 1x1 conversations with over 5,000 brands and have a real-time pulse on what digital strategies are successful and why. This in-depth knowledge allows our team to operate on the cutting-edge and provide our clients with best-in-class guidance on how to win in the digital world. We have provided free consultations and strategy sessions for companies of all sizes, from start-ups to Fortune-100, to enable growth, resolve issues and make curated service provider introductions that can impact your digital footprint.

We have held to the philosophy of providing high-level insights and actionable knowledge with no sales pitches in order to provide to our network the ability to listen, learn and act to improve themselves as well as their organizations. Our ultimate goal is to be the resource out there to help digital executives find the research they need to excel in the modern marketplace.

If you are interested in getting involved with any of our current or past events, you can find them here. If you are looking for help & would like to set up some time to chat with our team, you can schedule a time or reach out directly to Aaron@bwgconnect.com or Tiffany@bwgconnect.com.