Specialists in Retail? Prove it…

At Summit we consider ourselves ‘Specialists in Retail’ having dedicated the last twenty years to our mission; ‘to make it more likely that people buy from our clients than anyone else’.  

It makes me proud to run a business that is so clear in its purpose and dedicated to being the best it can be in its market. But from a management position, I’m aware being so dedicated to and focussed on one market comes with risks. We are often asked are we not missing huge swathes of opportunity by focussing on brands in the retail sector? and the answer is YES, but we are not going to be distracted. 

Being a Performance Marketing agency dedicated to retail means we have developed technologies, strategies, practices and insights that are truly fit for purpose, replicable and drive huge advantage for our clients without any compromise on time and efficiency.  

I believe you should always be able to back up your claims with examples or data and at Summit, my favourite phrase is ‘Prove It!’. So, here is me proving our claim to be ‘Specialists in Retail’ and sharing why 28 of the top 500 retailers in the UK choose Summit…  

We recruit retailers… 

Let’s start with the people. We actively recruit from retailers. We hire the people who have walked a mile in the shoes of a Commercial or Digital Director. Not forgetting the 4 years I personally spent working for Co-op Scandinavia, let’s take my fellow MD Ryan Thomas as an example. As Omni Channel Director at Comet, Maplin and Liberty of London, Ryan was Summit’s biggest client and ran retail businesses for twenty years before joining us. 

With more than one in three Summit employees having worked in a retailer before, we know the importance of the Monday morning trading meeting, through to the impact of weather on in-store and online sales. Right now, we even have Summit staff 100% in-housed at retailers, such as La Redoute, directly managing their performance marketing channels, which could not be a bigger endorsement to our experience in retail. 

We create bespoke retail strategies… 

Secondly let’s consider the customised retail strategies and tactics we apply to our clients.  

We know there are different retail strategies for different moments, but all retailers are ultimately measured on their profit, and we optimise our marketing channels to align to your strategic needs. As an example, we have a longstanding fashion client who trust Summit with huge volumes of highly sensitive pricing and promo data. By optimising to profit margin, we have helped them grow their online profit by 18% through Paid Search, post implementation. 

We also extensively understand supply chain, logistics and fulfilment and we used our experience in this area to deliver tailored ‘drop ship’ campaigns for our client The Range. By focusing their paid media efforts solely on products dispatched directly from their partners’ warehouses, we were able to grow PPC revenue 49% during the pandemic whilst avoiding the supply chain costs. 

Having worked with Three for more than ten years now, it would be easy to simply replicate last year’s plan. But we didn’t. Their products and offering don’t stand still so neither can we. We are constantly developing our proprietary affiliates platform which most recently delivered 26% sales growth year on year and 125% improvement on the latest and most successful iPhone launch. 

Finally, our supplier funding hub (part of our bespoke Forecaster technology) is a retail technology we provide that enables retailers to open new revenue streams from the brands they sell. 

We provide retail focussed insights… 

Specific retail focussed insights and data is essential in supporting our claim to be the best of the best in retail Performance Marketing, helping our clients make better decisions and drive better returns.  

Let’s start with Purchase Predictor, Summit’s proprietary demand-based planning platform.  It combines customer purchase intent data (demand) with a retailer’s sales data to better help a retailer maximise sales across seasonality and trading events. It will even tell you how many more sales you can and should make in key periods across different categories. For Australian giant Big W we were able to add an incremental 1.7% sales uplift to their back-to-school event and saw 20% improvement in marketing efficiency.  

We conduct our ‘Voice of the Customer’ research biannually, where we survey shoppers on the moments that matter to them and how this affects purchase decisions. Our ‘retail ready’ insights such as ‘a consumer is 38% more likely to use social media and 30% less likely to use amazon to research fashion’ are tailored customer first insights that we use to inform strategies and to deliver swifter more efficient customer journeys to purchase. 

I could tell you more about our unique approach to competitor research and our Scorecard mystery shopping reporting, but I think you probably get the idea by now. 

We’re in a huge and highly competitive sector and we’re trusted by some of the biggest and best retailers and brands including The Range, Ikea, Joules, Ann Summers, New balance, Wayfair and many more because of our dedication and focus. You don’t find Raheem Sterling on the wing for the English rugby union side or Ryan Reynolds moonlighting as a brain surgeon and similarly you won’t see Summit far from retail. 

For more information about Summit and how we can help you with your Performance Marketing strategy, get in touch today at info@summitmedia.com.