238 – Michael Hard of Brickwork – Making Sure People Hear the Tree in the Forest

Leveraging digital to drive brick-and-mortar sales... Michael Hard, Chief Revenue Officer for Brickwork, a leading SaaS platform that enables retailers and brands to drive qualified online traffic to unique in-store experiences via geo-location features, joins Rob Sanchez and Pavan Bahl on location at Valtech’s Innovation Lab during NRF 2018 in New York. Valtech is a global digital agency focused on business transformation. MouthMedia Network is Powered by Sennheiser. In this episode: In retail, a majority of customers still in brick and mortar stores, but 80% of path to purchase starts online, mostly on mobile Hard’s background, in software for a long time, worked with Microsoft for 17 years, ran digital advertising for the US, then started his own software companies Brickwork is into even more interesting applications built on foundation of last time Digital to store conversation for retail customers Helping brands them to scale platform The ability to create higher lifetime value of customer Clients like Kate Spade, Bonobos, a lot of value booking one-to-one appointments to drive traffic for boutiques, or getting celebrity into store to drive traffic and excitement Having rich experiences in stores, but if no one is aware of it why does it matter Case study of Urban Outfitters working to make themselves a critical part of neighborhood, making each store unique to that neighborhood, exposing events to wider range of people, search optimized for local search How Brickwork enables better workflows and more features such as appointment booking Adding globalization that offers appropriate localization using regional conventions Integrations tracks all stages on user side from what ecommerce marketer thinks of it, email and marketing From back/store side, systems retail associates or administrators think about (POS, inventory, clienteling) Level of lift to implement and manage is minimal due to design and support by Brickwork A sweet spot is a global brand with a big footprint Why Brickwork is focused specifically on retail Is there friction from employees/partners wanting to be able to take client books with them when leaving stores Hard’s takeaways from key cities, being from Arizona, small town guy in New York and finding your world there, and rowing for the USA Rowing Team