Lower CPMs do result in conversions: SVP of Marketing at Backcountry

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In a shaky economy where marketing budgets are often first on the chopping block, outdoor gear and apparel retailer Backcountry has found that survival is rooted in numbers.

The company isn’t chasing splashy ad metrics like total spend or overall sales. Instead, its marketing playbook is focused on media mix modeling—using data to figure out which marketing channels are the ones actually helping with sales—and incrementality testing to show exactly what drives new ad revenue.

“In the current economic environment [we’re] very focused on profitability, obviously,” John St. Juliana, SVP of marketing at Backcountry, said during Retail Brew’s recent virtual event. “The metrics that we tend to look at are what is the incremental ROAS [return on ad spend] of our channels.”

One marketing channel that has proven useful in terms of converting shoppers for the adventure brand is Facebook and Instagram parent Meta. Backcountry—which sells skiing, snowboarding, and hiking equipment—has doubled its Meta ad spend in the last few years, according to St. Juliana.

Mix and match: “Our awareness, reach campaigns, video campaigns within Meta produce highly incremental results,” he said. “Because of that, it’s allowed us to scale there and scale there confidently.”

But the numbers are still small, “less than half of our spend to put it in perspective,” St. Juliana said, “but we have more than doubled our Meta spend over the last two to three years because of what we feel is more accurate measurement.”

St. Juliana said the team leaned toward Meta due to its lower CPMs—or cost per thousand impressions, which measure how much an advertiser pays for every 1,000 times their ad is shown—consistently translated into real, incremental sales.

“It is the audience targeting that we’re able to get in front of, utilizing UGC [user generated content] and video assets,” St. Juliana said. “Those are some of the things that have us excited and bullish still on Meta.”

Incrementality testing, which has become something of a buzzword in the world of marketing, ultimately drives profitability, St. Juliana said: “We’re all fighting for the consumers—not only eyeballs, but their dollars. We have to maintain profitability. And that’s the key. Incrementality helps you understand, ‘Is this dollar actually generating profit to my business?’ And it’s more critical than ever in the current landscape.”

Taking up more space: Another way Backcountry, which carries brands like Patagonia and The North Face, is hoping to drive more sales is by expanding distribution. The brand has expanded its marketplace strategy, placing ski kits and adventure gear boxes in premium department stores like Nordstrom, Macy’s, and Target Plus.

“We are still very much a DTC e-commerce company,” St. Juliana said. “We would love customers to transact on our website first, but we know that’s not where consumers are. We do have a pretty large Amazon presence. We continue to expand that. We launched a premium storefront [on Amazon].”

Backcountry is seeing consumers gravitate toward other marketplaces, St. Juliana said. Therefore, its marketplace strategy was to focus on premium platforms while keeping the ability to “move fast and test quickly,” he explained.

However, Backcountry’s marketplace sales on rival platforms are still a fraction of Amazon’s, but the brand is seeing promising growth during sale periods, with channels like Nordstrom and Macy’s adding incremental sales and lifting overall profits, St. Juliana said.

Zoom out: According to Neil Saunders, managing director at retail consultancy GlobalData, although Backcountry has a strong value proposition and visually impressive stores, it’s not top of mind for shoppers. “I think they do have relevance in the market, but a lot of people won’t have heard of them. It’s not the most visible brand,” Saunders told Retail Brew after the event.

However, Saunders concurred that using paid social media channels like Meta might be the right way to get in front of more people for Backcountry, “as long as it’s targeted properly and it’s going in front of relevant audiences. There should be some simple wins for them there, because they’re just really converting people who may not have heard of them before.”

Overall, the outdoor retail market is soft right now, Saunders added: “Consumers are trying to trade down a little bit. They’re trying to make products that they've got last for longer. Some of the buzz around doing outdoor stuff, which really peaked in the pandemic has kind of gone off the boil. So it is a challenging market.”

However, he said, as a smaller player, Backcountry has a growth advantage despite challenges: “They’re just trying to grow market share. That’s helpful for a smaller company expanding into the market. They can take share from others.”