How Partnerships are Reshaping Product Discovery with Seth Hagerty, Senior Director of Performance Marketing at Best Buy

Speaker A: And I think partnership marketing is really strong in this area. Aligning with your business partners, what are the business KPIs they care about, what are the products they care about, the levers on your end to reflect those business priorities. It's just a way to earn a lot of trust.

Speaker B: Welcome back to the Partnership Economy podcast. This is your host, Dave Yovano, and I'm thrilled to be joined today by Seth Haggerty, Senior Director of Performance Marketing at Best Buy. Seth's career is anything but typical. After serving eight years as a captain in the United States Marine Corps, he transitioned into the digital marketing world, joining his family search agency in the early 2000s. This was back when paid search was still brand new and his family had built proprietary bidding software for scoring organic search results. That's where Seth fell in love with direct response marketing and the ability to tie real investment to the visible, real time outcomes. He carried that performance first mindset to Best Buy, where he now oversees the broader performance marketing stack, including search partnerships and creator programs. He's been instrumental in launching Best Buy's Creator Storefront program and integrating partnerships into

Speaker C: their retail media business.

Speaker B: In this episode, we get into how Best Buy's Creator Storefront program is changing the way creator creators partner with major retailers, the rise of retail media, and why it's converging with partnership marketing and what AI driven product discovery means for brands right now. Seth also breaks down how Best Buy thinks about measurement incrementality and where partnerships fit within a larger marketing mix. Let's get into it.

Speaker C: Seth, how you doing today?

Speaker A: I'm doing great, Dave, and I really appreciate the opportunity to come on your podcast today. Uh, this space is evolving really fast. A lot of opportunity in it, and I appreciate the time to speak to it.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm really looking forward to, um, digging in. I mean, Best Buy is just one of those iconic brands. You've had an incredible run in your journey, so really looking forward to unpacking that with you.

Speaker B: So to that end, you've built your

Speaker C: career inside of digital marketing environment, search, affiliate, and now kind of the broader, uh, performance marketing stack, essentially. Could you maybe just kick us off by sharing a little bit about your path into performance marketing? What drew you specifically into partnerships as well?

Speaker A: My path is a little nonlinear. So graduated college and then went into the Marine Corps for eight years. And then while I was in the military, my dad is a, is an entrepreneur, uh, my brother's a software developer. Uh, so they had started this database marketing company, uh, and then this database marketing company Got asked to do an organic search project uh back in like 2002. And that grew into uh, they, my brother and my dad developed proprietary bidding software for paid search in the early 2000s. They developed a methodology to score the organic search results that you see in Google, Yahoo, msn, uh, and then create a score and then provide recommendations to clients. So when I left the military, joined that company with them, uh, started working business development and then I got more into account executive managing um, accounts, more hands on keys type work. I really enjoyed the direct response aspect of it. And that was relatively new back then. Um, the thought of, of somebody investing marketing dollars and then having a visible outcome, essentially real time was something that was, was new. Uh, especially when you were talking to folks that were familiar with linear TV or newspaper. It was very groundbreaking at the time. I actually see a lot of similarities with, with what's happening now with the LLMs and AI search. It's a lot of the same themes we were tackling back in 2007, 2008. So started in search and then I started expanding out of that uh, into partnerships. I like the routes and direct response. Uh, you can make an investment and you can see a tangible outcome. Uh, I like the way that the investment's nonlinear. Paid search, as you scale you're going to have to invest more and more. There's more of that network effect and ecosystem building with our partnerships that I really like and uh, feeding into that and how do we grow it and nurture it and align it with our business. Uh, has been a really fun journey for me.

Speaker C: That's awesome. I feel like in some ways you and I are kindred spirits. I feel like we followed maybe a similar path. When did you first start to see signals that partnerships could become this compounding growth lever rather than just a tactical add on?

Speaker A: I think product discovery has such a strong tie in with search. That was always my mindset was like hey, if somebody wants to learn about a product, their first stop is going to be a search engine. They're going to do a search, they're going to learn about it, they're going to click into that content. I started learning about the, the different content partners and content sites that are out there, uh, the review sites and the power of a, of a third party review, how that influences a customer's journey. Uh, I think creator content is and will continue to be this growing authentic, influential channel in the consumer journey. But like product discovery is essentially occurring within that context. Our customers have a relationship with their financial institutions, these financial institutions uh, they have specific promotions, they have relationships to retailers. Um, a lot of times we'll see that activity as beneficial to our consumer journey. And then finally deal and loyalty sites, uh, that would be another place that I would see product discovery happening outside of search. So people have these relationships with these loyalty sites. They're accumulating points or it's a trusted way for them to learn about new products or learn about uh, different sale events and promotional periods. And uh, we want to leverage that not just as a tactic that's like a bolt on to a sale event, but as this evergreen growth lever that's bringing in new customers or it's contributing positively to a consumer's entire journey.

Speaker C: Tell me if you agree. Like you know, was there a point in time in your experience where you started to see kind of the community sort of takeover? I had to imagine like YouTube played a big role in this, obviously the social platforms right now. But there's been a real community unlock I think that has kind of opened up this, this uh, partnership marketing channel to where we define it as where somebody else is advocating for the brand. It's not the brand doing the talking about themselves. It's like somebody else is doing the talking. So first of all, two questions in there. Would you agree with that perspective and point of view on what partnership marketing is really about? And then second, was there a point in time in your professional uh, journey to where you saw that inflection point where brands trying to relate to the voices within the community became more um, important, equally important, um, than some of the other types of one way broadcast where communication, advertising, let's call it, this

Speaker A: is how I think of it and this will speak to your first point I think of. It's this mind shift from control to influence and it's allowing to let go of some of that control. And you're going to have to rely on these partners and they're trusted partners, um, but they're going to be the ones that are going to have to represent your story and represent your value proposition and represent your version of product discovery. I see that as a good thing though is like us letting go of some of that control, broadening this network, uh, tapping into the power of something like creators, uh, to enable them to tell our story on our behalf. Media is incredibly fragmented today. There's a lot of very niche audiences that exist. How do you reach those niche audiences at scale is really like the core of a lot of marketing these days and they come across in this authentic way. Uh, so I think partnership Marketing fits perfectly into that kind of model.

Speaker C: Especially coming from your experience at a major brand like Best Buy. I think that's a huge takeaway for this audience. You know that brands need to be okay with somebody else driving the car. Right. You might be tempted to grab the wheel but you know, kind of like let them drive, let them engage with their audience in their way, you know, uh, invest in, you know, the partnership, you know, where they're kind of understanding your brand, getting behind it the right way, but still staying true to their authentic voice with their audience. What would you say most companies get wrong honestly about partnerships when they're, especially when they're first getting into the space.

Speaker A: So this has been a big mind shift for me too because search you can enable, pause, increase budget, decrease budget, shift focus very fast. It's a network that builds on itself. Uh, and the power of the network is you investing in it and thinking of it as a relationship, uh, and curating that relationship and caring about it and, and continuing to uh, nurture it. It's not just this one and done like hey, we have a big sale event and we're gonna do this activation. It's evergreen, it's ongoing and then it's a two way street too. I love getting feedback from our partners, especially our creator partners about uh, how we can work more closely together. It's easy to come into a channel like this and think of it as kind of a one and done or it'll just show up in a specific time like holiday rather than thinking of it this evergreen uh, positively contributing to the consumer journey type channel.

Speaker C: Measurement obviously is a hot topic uh, with most marketing organizations. Just a very high level conversation because we don't have time to really unpack it. But just curious, I know a lot of our audience would be curious um, to understand just how you think about measurement. Generally speaking, how are you applying, measuring the effectiveness of your marketing dollars?

Speaker A: I like to start with leading KPIs and these are always going to be imperfect and leading KPIs could be the numbers you're seeing real time, day to day basis. Uh, we also would receive modeled ah type outcomes but there's usually a pretty significant delay uh in you receiving those numbers. I'm going to do my best to make decisions off those leading KPI indicators and then go back and review in the modeled outcomes if those decisions were correct and if they weren't we'll, we'll shift course on them. Um, a lot of times retail is hour to hour type performance that you're you're measuring and, and you're looking at uh, so those leading KPI indicators are, are really important. Great thing about Impact is, is my team can log in there. We, we can see that performance. Uh, we have a lot of different dimensions that, that we can dive into. So I mean not only just like return on ad spend, ad spend like a typical leading KPI, but also uh, we have new, new customer acquisition type metrics in there. So those are the things the team would look at on a more day to day basis and then you know like quarterly, monthly look at more of the modeled outcomes.

Speaker C: Is it right to assume that your, your measurement system, let's call it, you know, is a holistic view, like you know, all of your channels, the interplay between them.

Speaker A: I really appreciate this about Best Buy and I believe this is how we come to life for our customers too. And we do it in a way that's a huge value to our customers. But whether you shop on our, on our, on our website, in our app or in the store, it's this cohesive experience. And on my end, um, I'm designing channel activation to help align our customers to that outcome.

Speaker C: Best Buy as a brand you get so many services like you mentioned, right? Whether people are shopping online in the store, uh, through partners, um, having a holistic view and stitching that together like tracking those conversion events across different uh, services like that, being able to tie it in to kind of understand the ROI that your different um, you know, marketing investments are driving.

Speaker A: If I had to give a piece of advice on measurement though, I would, I would tell people understand last click modeled revenue outcomes. And then if you, if you have access to multi touch attribution, I, I would just think of it holistically, um, think about the audience you're speaking to, which data points you bring in. And then I cannot emphasize this enough and I think partnership marketing is really strong in this area. Aligning with your business partners, what are the business KPIs they care about, what are the products they care about? Like really lining up the levers on your end to reflect those business priorities. It's just a way to earn a lot of trust uh, internally.

Speaker C: And I'd love at the beginning you talking about the early days because I just got nostalgic when you were just talking about that Just for a minute rewound the, the early Internet days, you know, discovery was dominated by Google and Search. But you know, as you mentioned and uh, we're all aware of that today we're entering into this world where AI is playing a central role in how consumers are researching and making decisions. How would you describe this transition for you, uh, at Best Buy and what, what you're, how you're looking at that.

Speaker A: So now the LLMs creators, different platforms, uh, different social, uh, networks, they're all contributing to this journey in millions and millions of different permutations. Uh, I'll get these path to conversion reports and it'll be paid search, paid search display, YouTube, paid social, paid search, all in one journey before they made the uh, before they made the purchase. And that's just the data that I can see. Like there's other, other underlying activity that occurred there, there's other media that they were exposed to. It's this very complicated journey. It's only going to get more complex. I see AI as being critical in helping us reach consumers where they're at. I see that as this like evergreen mission that would still be in place whether you know, it's 2000 or it's 2026.

Speaker C: I think the biggest trend that we're tracking uh, with AI and how consumers are using it is that what is most interesting is that what the LLMs are relying on as like sources for the answers that they're giving is largely, you know, the affiliate and partner style content that's being produced. Right. The fact that somebody did a review or you know, did some sort of write up or comparison, that's what's driving the answers in this AI driven discovery environment. Where do you think this partnership model becomes essential rather than optional if you assume that that's true.

Speaker A: So I'm going to call it third party citations. And those third party citations can be anybody in this partnership ecosystem. So it could be creators, it could be review sites, it could be content sites. And if you start to deconstruct the sources that these LLMs are referencing, like you said, a huge part of their sourcing is coming from these third party sites. Uh, so I think it's even more critical than it was two, three, four years ago, uh, to be actively participating in these partnership ecosystems. Um, our customers are seeing that data, they're seeing that information and then they're making their choices. I'm sure you've heard the phrase zero click searches. So they're ingesting this information, maybe they're not clicking directly on it, but it is influencing their, their journey. It is influencing whether they purchase a product at a specific retailer at a specific moment. So I, I do think it's important to be there. Uh, we're probably gonna have to evolve how we think about it though?

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, those are the additional signals, uh, that I'm talking about that would complement any direct path, any direct click or link that's used. Uh, being able to interpret signals on how content is uh, showing up and influencing the answers, that's certainly something that us@impact.com are, are working on. Maybe switching gears to um, talking a little bit more tactically. Um, you think about like scaling a program. You know, I remember, you know, discussing this with you when you and I first met. You mentioned a little bit about the hardest battle isn't really external, it's a little bit more internal. Uh, like what kind of objections do you typically face from call it finance, Just leadership in general media teams internally at Best Buy. How do you overcome them?

Speaker A: You could say it's about any form of media really. But so, so the first objections always around incrementality for a specific media activation or marketing channel. So demonstrating incrementality is, is always going to be something that marketers are going to have to center themselves on and to tackle. I would say taking that head on and not being afraid to test the channel and to work closely with your decision science team and your finance partners to set up tests that give confidence to those adjacent partners that the investment is incremental to the business. That's always my recommendation. I never. And if you do the test and it doesn't work out how you want it to work out, the great thing about partnerships is, is uh, it's this huge ecosystem, uh, it's ever evolving. Just don't be afraid to challenge yourself. And then the second piece, I really want to stress this. If you set up your partnership ecosystem to be a reflection of the business priorities and have that alignment with your business partners and I'm talking um, assortment priorities, new products, sale, uh, events, evergreen type, uh, strategies and priorities that would exist across the business.

Speaker C: Excellent, excellent. I just wanted to shift gears a little bit here and focus on Best Buy as a powerful example of a company that's managed to evolve with their customers. Earlier I mentioned them being an iconic brand. I remember back in the 90s when the Internet was coming online, you and I both lived through that. Seth. It's like a lot of people were saying the big box stores are going to go out of business during the dot com boom and then the bust, the whole rise of E commerce. Now we've got AI driven discovery. Just really curious how such uh, an established brand like Best Buy has navigated, uh, these massive shifts and somehow has managed to stay relevant Any takeaways, any observations on your part on how the brand has successfully navigated that?

Speaker A: I would say at a high level there's always this constant is bringing tech to life and showing our customers what it can do for them. And the context can be in an E commerce setting or it can be in an in store setting or in our app. Uh, we've always been extremely close to the customer and adapting to how they shop. And I'll just give you an example. We were pandemic hit. We were one of the first ones, if not the first one to have curbside pickup. Um, and I was involved in that and it was uh, this huge mind shift, operationally stand that up message, uh, it to customers. It was a needed adjustment and you know, across our entire store footprint and fulfillment and marketing, uh, we were able to adapt quickly and do that. But at the end of the day it's uh, just continuing our focus of meeting the customer where they're ah, at adapting. Really it's doing it across all our surfaces. So our web, the app and the stores is how we think of it.

Speaker C: I think it's a great example of during the pandemic just how a brand like ah, Best Buy can recognize that and really come up with something like that to provide a much better consumer uh, experience to kind of get through such a very difficult time. What's going on now is just incredible because consumer behavior has changed so much, right. It used to be that a customer's primary point of contact with a brand was an in store associate. Now many consumers in a lot of cases have already made up their decision before they even walk into the store. They buy online uh, entirely. How has that, just to pull that thread a little bit more, how has that dynamic itself kind of changed the role of partnerships specifically at Best Buy?

Speaker A: Dave, you hit the nail on the head and I'll just reiterate, uh, that's a customer segment we know and has enormous value to us. So they've done the research on their end. They've been to the review sites, they've been to the OEM site, they've done comparisons on the products themselves. They know, uh, in a detailed way that didn't exist 10, 15 years ago. What they want and the value from that product they're going to get. I see partnerships contributing to that whole customer research and customer discovery phase further up the funnel than I think people would traditionally think of as like affiliate marketing. Uh, so they're intersecting with the customer when they're more in that consideration phase and they're doing research, uh, and then all of this is simultaneously happening in the background of LLMs, which can uh, produce a very detailed comparison, side by side comparison of products. So the partnerships are sitting side by side, this kind of detailed content and output from the LLMs at the same time. And then people are walking into the stores, um, or logging into our app or shopping online, uh, with a lot more knowledge than in having made that decision prior to even interacting with us.

Speaker C: And one thing I'm observing is the way that you talk about kind of an affiliate strategy versus a creator strategy. Could you tease that out a little bit, explain the differences in those strategies if they are essentially, you know, different or slightly different strategies, but then also how they work together.

Speaker A: Big picture, we always want to meet our customers, where they're at and their customer journey. The affiliate model is inherently more conversion oriented. I think that creator model, uh, is perfect for influence and discovery. Maybe a few steps up that ladder in the marketing funnel, they're shaping opinions earlier in the journey. They're contributing to a customer's perspective on the products they want to purchase. I see them working in tandem together and I like to think of them both as important and valued partners relative to our customer's journey.

Speaker C: That's another thing I'll call out is different, uh, about partnership marketing versus like standard advertising. This isn't a standard ad unit that we're just paying a standard uh, price for and sticking it in the slot. There is some nuance to the partnership as you're talking about. So uh, it's important to have the flexibility to how you craft, um, you know, the commercials and you know, kind of like what the work that's being done essentially. So yeah, definitely an important call out I think about what makes partnership marketing unique. Maybe just one last question about uh, creators specifically, because I think, you know, from where I sit, a lot of brands talk about creators, but very few of them are operationalizing it very well. What do you think Best Buy does differently, specifically working with creators?

Speaker A: I would say two things, Sol. Number one, I myself, the organization, we understand what a valuable channel creators are for our customers. Uh, and it's only going to grow the customers today and future customers are going to have these one to one relationships with creators that they trust and that they view as authentic and their opinion matters to them. Um, and it's a way that we can broaden our reach in an authentic way and reach audiences that maybe are a little more difficult to reach with. With a traditional channel like something like linear tv. We stood up our Creator Storefront program last year. Creators are receiving compensation from within our retail media model. Integrating creators into our retail media business, uh, is another huge unlock, I think

Speaker C: what you're talking about with the Creator Store and Storefront we call it internally, uh, the Creator edit, right, the capability on our platform to have creators kind of build their curated list of products at Best Buy. So it's, it's the creator's own little store essentially sitting inside of Best Buy. So they're doing a review, let's say on how to, you know, design a home theater system within your home and they're taking people through content about how to do that and to point them to their own little store inside of Best Buy I think is incredibly cool, you know, very relevant and it gives that, that creator an opportunity to earn essentially on any of those products, not just an individual link out, but you know, kind of a full selection, you know, of products that they're recommending.

Speaker A: We launched our marketplace, uh, last year, so our assortment dramatically increased. Lots of new categories. I just think it's like another great way for, for creators to partner with us is, is on our marketplace, on our retail media, on our enterprise business, like multiple ways to, to partner with us, you know, and all of them have unique audiences and like you said, the store, I'm calling it Storefront, but the storefront would be great to create this like curated, unique experience they could expose to their audience.

Speaker C: Good segue to uh, you know, uh, towards the end of this conversation, just looking ahead, always love to ask, you know, what do you think are some of the next major trends that you're seeing in partnerships in digital marketing in general?

Speaker A: I'm going to call it a convergent of convergence of channels. And a lot of this is, is going to be related to AI, but like what we think of as performance marketing, media channels, partnerships, retail media, like those lines will be blurring. Um, so I think the strategies that will win in these types of trends is treating this more holistically and integrating them into this larger ecosystem and partnerships a are a huge focus now and, and I think that's only going to grow. But I, I see that as, as this glue that holds this whole ecosystem together. Um, I think AI is going to create that convergence of these channels and, and media and, and revenue outcomes and business outcomes. I just think five years from now if we, if we look back, it won't be like these distinct channels like we think of them today.

Speaker C: I do see retail media as being a hot trend in your category right now. Just curious as to how you think about and describe what retail media is, what the opportunity is. Um, you know, with Best Buy, I see it as bit of an unlocked where you can be a publisher of sort, not just a brand. It helps you appeal, I think, to manufacturing, um, brands, you know, those that are selling their products inside of uh, inside of Best Buy. How do you think about retail media? Um, so that we can kind of get past just the, the bucket or the label that people, uh, put on it.

Speaker A: Yeah, so I, I think partnership, marketing and then especially creators, it's this authentic incremental channel. It benefits our customers, product discovery and then also our retail media partners. So like the, the vendor partners that would sell their products through Best Buy, it's a huge benefit for them to, to tap into this network that we've created. Uh, when I first started working on the channel, I was struck the granularity of the reporting, the performance outcomes, the ability to reach a new audience. Like all of those are perfect fits for retail media. Like, that's the type of performance our vendor partners want to see and understand. And um, I just think there was this really strong link just waiting there for us to take advantage of. And I think there's a, there's a lot of opportunity in this space.

Speaker C: Excellent. Excellent. All right, finally, as we wrap up this episode, just wanted to ask one last question. What would you say to brands that are hesitant to invest meaningfully in partnerships right now?

Speaker A: So I would say partnerships is going to be this foundational element to like your, what you think of as your marketing mix today. And it's not going to be this bolt on channel. Um, even if you're giving up a little bit of control, I think you'd be doing that anyway with just how AI is evolving. So I would just encourage them, lean in. Uh, you're going to make mistakes. That's totally okay. Get your adjacent partners aligned internally. Accept that you don't know everything, but that you're working in the best interest of the company or your specific business. And this is the future and you're going to look back and regret it if you didn't build it out.

Speaker C: Seth, this has been an incredibly insightful conversation. Uh, really appreciate you taking time to kind of, uh, go through it with us. I learned a lot. I know our audience learned a lot. But, um, just want to thank you so much for joining the pod today.

Speaker A: Yeah, I really appreciate the opportunity, Dave, and it, uh, was, it was fun chatting with you on this.

Speaker B: That was a truly insightful conversation with Seth and I was impressed by how grounded and strategic his perspective is on of where partnership marketing is headed. Three insights really resonated with me. First, the mindset shift from control to influence. Seth put it perfectly. Brands have to get comfortable letting partners represent their story and their value proposition. Whether it's creators, review sites or financial institution partners, these are the voices your customers already trust. And in a world where media is increasing incredibly fragmented and niche audiences are harder to reach through traditional channels, that network of trusted partners becomes your most powerful asset. Second, Seth's view of partnerships as an evergreen marketing growth lever, not as a bolt on tactic. He made a really important distinction. In paid search you scale by spending more, but in partnerships you scale by investing in the network itself. Nurturing, nurturing relationships, listening to partner feedback, aligning your program with business priorities across the organization. That long term relationship first approach is what builds compounding value and it's what also earns you trust with your internal stakeholders from finance to leadership. And third, the convergence that lies ahead. Seth sees a future where the lines between performance marketing, partnerships, retail media and AI driven discovery all blur together. And he believes partnerships will be the connective tissue across all of it. When you consider that LLMs are already pulling from third party content and partner sites to generate their answers. The brands investing in this ecosystem now are, uh, the ones that will be visible in the next era of product discovery. I also want to highlight cessadva advice for brands that are still on the fence when it comes to partnerships. Lean in, accept that you won't get everything right, align your internal partners and start building. Because as he put it, you're going to look back and regret it if you didn't. A big thank you to Seth for sharing his experience and perspective and thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Partnership Economy podcast.