What to Know: Navigating the New Tariff Landscape

The economic landscape is shifting fast, and at Rockerbox we are seeing firsthand how e-commerce brands like yours are caught in a challenging position. You're trying to protect your margins while figuring out what these tariffs mean for how your customers shop and buy. We’ve seen similar uncertainty in recent years, including both COVID and interest rate changes, and Rockerbox has been a key partner in helping brands navigate these situations.  

In the face of uncertainty, it’s difficult to both plan and maintain a stable strategy as the macroenvironment shifts unpredictably. The numbers are pretty stark - IAB research shows 94% of advertisers are worried about budget cuts, with most expecting to trim 6-10% from their spending. But it's not just about tightening belts. The real challenge I'm hearing from our customers is understanding how quickly consumer behavior is changing in response to these pressures.

Rockerbox is here to help you navigate these shifts with data-driven strategies to maintain performance even as the rules of the game change. 

Understanding the Impact on Consumer Behavior

We are anticipating the following key themes related to changing consumer behavior: 

1. Extended Customer Journeys & Consideration Periods

One of the most significant shifts we expect is a change in consumer’s consideration period: 

• Pre-Tariffs: Expedited Purchasing Decisions: The anticipation of price increases could pull up demand, as consumers want to purchase needed goods before potential price changes. With any shortening of time to convert, both having media in market and a clear view of current performance will be more important than ever as you may need to make more frequent optimizations temporarily 
• Post-Tariffs: Delayed Purchasing Decisions: Increased prices, especially in non-essential goods, will cause consumers to delay purchases or opt for lower-cost alternatives. This means you should expect changes to your time to convert, which can be monitored Rockerbox’s Marketing Paths view
• Reduced Impulse Buying, with Increased Research: Higher prices will lead consumers to focus more on essential, well-considered purchases rather than impulse-driven spending. This could lead to a longer time from first touch to purchase, as consumers research and deliberate buying decisions 

With a longer time to convert, you should expect this to impact your top of funnel channel performance, as it takes users longer to convert after their initial touchpoint. Consider looking at other metrics (i.e., site visits, PDP views) to gauge initial success of top of funnel spend. You may also want to consider extending your standard lookback window for reporting to capture any upper funnel impact for consumers taking longer to convert. 

2. Increased Price Sensitivity

As consumers become more deliberate in their purchasing decisions, we anticipate seeing:

• Downgrading Behavior: Consumers moving toward lower-cost alternatives, with price-sensitive customers downgrading purchases. 
  • This could be a great opportunity to test out discounted bundling options (getting some learnings that can be applied to holiday season!)
  • If you are a brand that offers a lower priced option, you should consider engaging in a conquesting strategy to win customers from your competitors 
• Delayed Replacement Cycles: Consumers will focus on extending the life of existing products rather than upgrading. You should plan for potential impact to customer LTV and repeat customer volume, with a need to get creative on how you drive repeat purchases 
• Heightened Discount Seeking: Consumers will have increased responsiveness to promotions and deals. This could impact performance of coupon-based affiliate programs, as you see more customers seeking a deal, and should also shape how you think about your promo calendar for the rest of 25’ 

3. Channel Performance Shifts

We anticipate these changes in consumer behavior may impact the performance of your marketing across channels in the following ways:

• Paid Search: As brands re-focus budgets on bottom of funnel activities, competition will intensify for high-converting keywords
• Paid Social: With declining impulsive purchasing behavior, you may see reduced conversion rates for discovery and awareness focused campaigns, which predominantly impacts paid social
• Affiliate Marketing: Value-focused affiliate content is likely to gain traction as consumers seek third-party validation on purchasing decisions as a part of a more deliberate research process. While coupon-focused affiliates may see a boost from an increase in consumers with price sensitivity looking for a discount. 
• Email Marketing: Owned channels will likely deliver higher ROI as brands shift away from increasingly expensive acquisition channels, getting strategy right here is key to drive repeat purchases and tap into your existing customer base effectively 

Leveraging Rockerbox to Navigate the New Landscape

In the current environment, accurate attribution and measurement is more critical than ever. Here are some tips on how to use Rockerbox to adapt your strategy:

1. Identify Your Most Efficient Channels

With marketing budgets under pressure, leverage Rockerbox to identify where you can cut spend and drive efficiency: 

• Analyze Channel Efficiency: Our Cross-Channel Attribution view in our MTA product helps you identify in real time which channels are maintaining performance despite changing consumer behavior and where you might be seeing unexpected diminishing returns 
• Uncover New Patterns: Compare pre-tariff and post-tariff customer journeys to spot emerging trends related to time to convert using our Marketing Paths view available with our MTA product
• Identify Upper funnel impact: In an environment where final purchases may be delayed, track engagement metrics that indicate future purchase intent such as View Product or Email Signup. Consider incrementality testing as an alternative to identifying the value of a specific channel or tactic  
• Consider creative testing: With consumer research and deliberation increasing, we recommend testing out new value based creative. Leverage Rockerbox’s granular MTA reporting to measure any impact from a change in messaging

2. Optimize Your Budget Allocation

When every marketing dollar must work harder, Rockerbox's insights can guide strategic reallocation:

• Use Media Mix Modeling: Understand the relationship between your marketing investments and business outcomes as consumer behavior shifts
  • Rockerbox’s MMM product takes into account macro factors to help piece out impact of marketing spend vs baseline in changing business outcomes 
• Implement Incrementality Testing: Determine which channels are truly driving incremental revenue versus those capturing demand from other sources. 
  • We would also recommend re-testing into channels you’ve tested previously, as with user behavior shifts, it is possible incrementality has also changed. For example, affiliate incrementality may increase with the consumer focus on discounting
  • Rockerbox can help you step by step through this process with our testing offering

3. Refine Targeting Strategies

As consumer segments respond differently to economic pressures, precision targeting becomes even more valuable:

• Segment Performance Analysis: Use Rockerbox user level data in your warehouse to identify which customer segments are most resilient to price increases
• Geographic Insights: Understand regional variations in response to tariff impacts leveraging Rockerbox’s data warehousing solution or professional services 
• Custom Conversion Windows: Adjust your lookback window with your CSM to account for longer consideration cycles, to ensure you give each channel the credit it deserves 

4. Understand retention drivers

With customer acquisition costs potentially rising due to longer consideration cycles, focus on maximizing lifetime value and driving repeat customers:

• Analyze your marketing mix through the lens of customer retention, using Rockerbox’s new vs repeat reporting 
• Use Rockerbox to understand the impact of owned channels (Email, SMS) in your path to conversion, which channels do they overlap with and how does this change time to convert 

5. Explore Channel Diversification

As traditional performance channels face potential efficiency challenges:

• Experiment with new ad platforms that may have lower costs and less competition
  • If your competitors are pulling back spend in the market this opens an opportunity for you to move into the media space they have left. For example, if they are no longer bidding on certain nonbrand terms, you can increase your bidding and capture this traffic 
• Increase investment in organic content that builds long-term traffic
• Test direct mail and other offline channels that may perform differently in this environment

Rockerbox has integrations with 100+ vendors that can support your testing efforts, unlocking the ability to diversify your spending with confidence. 

The brands that will thrive during this period of economic adjustment are those that adapt most quickly to changing consumer behavior with data-driven strategies. 

To learn more about how Rockerbox can help your brand navigate these challenges, reach out to your CSM or if you don’t work with Rockerbox yet, book a demo with someone from our team here!