Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - 2020 E-commerce & Shopify Marketing Playbook

Episode Date: December 3, 2019

In this episode of the Radical Company podcast, Ryan breaks down the definitive playbook for E-commerce success in 2020. It's way more than "build it and they will come". Tons of tips, apps, and short cuts to getting your store selling in 2020 and beyond. Links to suggestions in this episode: Klayviyo - https://www.klaviyo.com/ Neil Patel Ubersuggest - https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/ SMS Bump - https://apps.shopify.com/smsbump If you enjoy this episode please check out the rest of our episodes on our channel. Please share, review, and subscribe! Radical Podcast is always looking forward to meeting both aspiring, and grounded professionals across the country! Feel like you have something to say? Slide us a Dm on Instagram and let's make it happen! @radical_results @ryanalford www.radical.company If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Really excited about today's podcast. I break down the 2020 e-commerce playbook. A lot of suggestions for Shopify. If you're thinking about building an e-commerce store or transitioning one, this is a great podcast for you. Really excited. A lot of content in a hurry. Really that playbook that you need to consider for really being successful with your e-commerce store in 2020.

Hope you enjoy it. Hey guys, this is Ryan Alford, the host of the Radical Company podcast. Welcome to today's episode. excited. It's just solo me today. I'm going to start doing a few more of these, you know, at least a couple of month, trying to get into the habit, I guess, as we make it, of doing both guests and overall kind of marketing tips. We're going to get a little bit more down to the ground, really specific recommendations that we have for companies, brands, small, big, medium, large. There's going to be takeaway.

from today, I think across the gamut, probably more in the small to medium business realm, someone just getting started perhaps in the e-commerce space. Today we'll be talking about the 2020 definitive e-commerce playbook and specifically looking at Shopify. It's a platform. We're a Shopify partner here at Radical. And it's a platform that we recommend unless you're getting into just a ton of product variation. I'll talk about that more in future podcasts for where you might need a e-commerce solution that's more technically based or just more robust in the number and variations.

If you're talking hundreds, hundreds of variations of your products or thousands of products. But Shopify really fills the void of both small, medium, and large businesses in a lot. I mean, some of the largest, you know, fastest growing like makeup brands, highly gender, all that stuff is all built on like Shopify Plus. So there's a lot of capability there and so many integrations. But today it's really about, okay, having the playbook for 2020, if you're starting a Shopify store, e-commerce, or moving, you know, maybe from one platform to the next,

this is kind of that definitive guide of things that you've got to do. And don't get me wrong whenever you do this. kind of playbook, especially in the podcast format. I mean, I could do three hours on this topic. I want to cover the big hitters. I'm breaking this down into what I call the basics. Then we get into brand. Then we get into the secret sauce and then we finish with the gasoline. Those will all make sense as we get into it. So let's get started. Number one for Shopify is really about picking out a really good looking theme. If you go into Shopify and they have a wonderful both app store as well as theme store where you can pick out both free and paid for themes there's also a little a

side secret here something called what store theme dot com if you find a shopify store that you really like that you really like to look the flow you can actually find out what theme that is by going to that website entering in the URL and you will be able to see what theme it is you can go buy it it might be free it probably is a purchased one uh if it looks as good as uh as many as you're making you want it. But again, it's a low cost and don't skip on the theme. It gives your brand, gives your visibility, gives your whole product lineup. This is going to be something the foundation of your company. Don't skimp here and really start with that theme as the starting block for your brand and your company. So you start there. I'm going to shortcut it a little bit.

the next key thing in that playbook is setting up everything so you can be found on Google. I just say Google, we can say SEO, yes, a lot of Windows computers still have Bing, and you've got other Internet Explorer isn't completely dead, though practically. But let's focus from a Google perspective, and that's really making sure that your site is indexed properly and that you're showing up in those search results. It's all about setting your metadata, your titles, your keywords up. So I have a couple little, again, shortcuts here. Neil Patel, a really trusted source for marketing information,

and really an SEO guru, if not a marketing guru, has a software online that you can use, or just a website, I should say. I think everything's software, but web-based now. It's called Uber Suggest. That's UBER, like the ride-sharing service. Uber suggest. Free. Amazing capability.

We'll tell you the monthly searches that terms get and will give you a lot of keyword research and suggestions. It has a lot of other things. Don't want to be a commercial for them, but a great place to start when filling out your metadata, making sure that you're differentiated and showing up in search results. Also, we want to make sure that you get manually Google indexed. You can Google that.

Just Google it again. We want this to be brief. want this to be the shortcuts. I want to get you started, but you go to just Google Google indexing, and it will give you all the instructions there. Search console, a couple other places you can do that, but you want to get your site scraped so that you show up in those search results. But first, on your store, get all your metadata, all the keywords that you want to do for all of your pages. You can do all of that within the back end of Shopify. Third, product photography, something called a softbox. If you have products, you have clothes, supplements, T-shirts, items and merchandise that are, you know, call it two feet overall size or smaller, it's something called a soft box.

You can literally use your iPhone. That'll allow you to take photos on a white backdrop. These are inexpensive. Google Softbox on Amazon, less than 50 bucks. You can shoot all of your stuff on a white background. You can actually pull out renders from those products. You have to have beautiful photography now on your e-commerce site. Photography and videos sell.

Another key tip here. You can embed videos in your product description photos. So when you go to a product, you click on it, and you'll find images for each one. You want to have your beautiful images. You want to have user-generated content. We're going to cover that in a second. but you can also put videos that are right there and can be played in there. Go to the App Store, video embed in products, and in the Shopify App Store, a number of services there.

You want to do that. It drives engagement. It drives sales. Great product photography, great videos, all within each product feed. Really Uber important. Now, moving on to what I really call the brand. and building trust. So you've got your theme picked out.

You've got all your products loaded. You've got beautiful photography. You have video that you've taken, even with your smartphone, take a great 4K smartphone video, put it on a tripod, and talk about your products. And or if you're a small to medium business, then hire an agency and get some great video content. It's 2020. Video sells. Content is king, which breeds me to trust in building brand over.

all. There's a lot of ways to do this. It starts with a great blog, a podcast, and user-generated content. We need to build trust. This is not a set-it-it-and-forget it. There's so many companies, it's funny. We have people that come, you know, and see us at radical solopreneurs, as I would call them. We have medium-sized companies that are wanting to get into selling their products online. Maybe they've been a brick-and-mortar. Maybe they have a larger product footprint and wanting to sell more. Everyone thinks, set it and forget it. I build an e-commerce store.

I put it out there. I get my metadata. They understand. Most people understand the SEO side and the Google side. We're going to start selling product. Wrong. Thousands of stores. Unless you're selling something that no one else is,

a lot of things are commoditized. Supplements are commoditized. T-shirts are commoditized. There's a million people selling a million things, but that doesn't mean you can't be. successful but you have to build trust and you have to build your brand we tell companies of all sizes this every day everyone thinks again no matter the business that if you start selling something people will come you've got to build trust you've got to make people think feel and act a certain

way and that is what branding is and key to it okay so what does that look like blog content yes blogs are not dead in 2020 you need to do weekly content helps with SEO Also establishes trust and credibility that you know what you're talking about. You know the category that you're selling in. Uber important. And speaking of Uber, you're looking for blog content ideas. Go back to Uber Suggest. Look up keywords in your category, whether that's clothing, whether that's Cologne,

whether that's jewelry, household items, whatever it is. Go to Uber Suggest, do keyword research. Look where the most searched items or words are in your category and do blog content accordingly. Make sure that you have a lot of those keywords in the blog. But then you've done a blog, do a podcast, start one. We did it radical. Everyone's doing it. It is one of the fastest growing mediums now.

You can build credibility. Talk about your products. Talk about suggestions. Talk about the category. You can level up in a lot of different ways to build your credibility and trust. and your brand for why someone should do business with you. Also, if you start with a podcast, it would allow you to then transcribe it into a blog, which then you can take and use for copy in other places.

I call this atomization of content. You're building all of this book of content. You've got written word. You've got the listened word, sound. You've got video, take a video like this of your podcast. And you can atomize all of that content across your mediums. Post it on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. Post the blog, post links to the blog,

backlink on other ask people that you may talk about in the blog content or the podcast to then post it as well. So you get those really important backlinks back to your site. Atomize the content. Look for ways to take one piece of content and make it 10 or 20 or 30 or 30. This is a great way to get and build trust while also doing it in a reasonably efficient way. No matter if you're a team of 1, 2, 10, 20, 100, all of these tactics are important in really building brand trust and giving people a reason to want to do business with you. Now it's time for the secret sauce.

So there's a few apps. I'm going to name them here. I'll link to them as well within the blog posts that we'll have for this. SMS bump. So everyone, when you check out, you're used to getting email confirmations, all this stuff's built in. I'm going to talk a little bit more about email shortly. But SMS bump is one of many, many SMS platforms that's built into Shopify. It's within the app store.

And yes, these have costs, but they will pay for themselves over time. This will allow all of your customer communication to happen over SMS, order confirmations, flows, marketing flows, reminders, upsells. But SMS is growing. It's a big trend. It's happening. People are getting more comfortable with sharing their number, sharing their content,

and allowing people to kind of step into that text message box where five to six years ago, seven, ten years ago, it was around SMS messaging is not new, but it's definitely becoming a more accepted and a more common way as another communication channel where you can give that, contact and keep that flow and communication with your customers in a format that they're always getting.

And that's right in the text inbox. You don't have to worry about different email platforms or different social media platforms. The text inbox is a very powerful way. SMS bump. Second, clavio. One of my favorite softwares, another online web-based platform. it is really like customer relationship management on steroids. It links really well with Shopify.

It allows you to send shipping confirmations. You can actually, there's templated stuff through Shopify, but if you turn on Clavio, you can have them do these automations and these flows with your customers. Allows for shopping cart abandonment emails when someone's gone on your site, add stuff to the cart. You'll send them a reminder. you also give them other suggestions, just a really powerful way.

You can also just send your general newsletter content through this platform. All of the, everything from discount codes to just the entire platform and all of your products integrates really well with the platform. Highly recommended. Again, I can probably talk an hour on Clavio, but really important. Another thing I love for repeat purchase type things is renewal products, be it vitamins, things that you ultimately have usage that's going to be repeated,

either month to month or quarter to quarter. Bold subscriptions allows you to add a checkout box for someone to subscribe to your product. Super powerful, super great for repeat revenue. So bold subscriptions, clavio, and SMS bump. Three of my favorite kind of secret sauce apps for Shopify, highly recommend you look up those and do more research. So finally, the gasoline. That is really, well, I think of this is, okay, you've got a great store, you're doing branding, you've got great product, great photography, you've set up all these apps.

You've got the motor work and the engine is running. But how do we pour gas on it? And it's really leveraging ambassadors and what has been known is the quote unquote affiliate marketing. This is how you get other people selling. It's really like hiring a sales force without having to hire them. There are a lot of apps. One of my favorites is Refersion. that's R-E-F-E-R-S-I-O-N.

It's really turned key. It allows you to set up individual discounts on each product. It allows you to set up commission structures for your ambassadors. So, you hear me say supplements a lot. We're helping a lot of those brands with the content that we do as well as beauty. So I'll come back to that. So if you found a group of influencers or ambassadors that you want to work with, It gives them a turnkey way to sign up, manage their commission structure, manage their

discount codes, and you can manage all of that through one platform. Super turnkey, super great for community management and ambassador management. And this is really gasoline on the fire. Again, you've got the store, you've got product, you've got all of these things turned on, and how do we again spread this out? And really, that's a sales force. and that's really what we're talking about with ambassadors. Tons of ways to create community with them.

A lot of them through some things we talked about content. I really love using the ambassador community to create user-generated content that you use and share across channels. It gets them engaged, it gets them pumped up about your brand and selling your product and getting behind you as a company. And it's just a great way to pour gasoline on the fire of the e-commerce store. those are the main playbook items for Shopify and e-commerce in general a lot of this is Shopify specific but a lot of these tactics and recommendations relate to e-commerce in general and so

as you get started if you're thinking about a transfer from one platform to another or you're just trying to wade into the e-commerce waters so to speak this should be a great start we're going to have this is a blog post at radical.companney our website and it's also going to be a video that we'll share around and this is your 2020 e-commerce playbook we'll talk soon