Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Ecommerce ft. Robbie Fitzwater

Episode Date: September 9, 2020

Ryan and Robbie t-off The Radcast's eCommerce series by highlighting what critical digital actions your business needs to take now.Be sure to tune in for the rest of the series.Episodes release Tuesday's at noon, EST. Follow Robbie on LinkedIn | Connect with our host, Ryan Alford | Check out our account for all our radical updates! 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.

You're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Ryan Alford. Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. And the first in an e-commerce series that we're just starting. And we thought, you know, who else?

I mean, I can't think of anyone else, Robbie, that I would rather have on for the start of the e-commerce series than Robbie Fitzwater. Good to have you. Robbie. It's good to be here. And I can't think of anybody else. I don't want to have on for the start of the e-commerce series. I'm kidding.

I'm kidding. Yeah, it's a blast to be back. I always love this. And yeah, get a talk shop about marketing. Like, there's nothing better. Yeah. Well, Robbie is a professor at Clemson in digital marketing. He's been on the episode a lot.

He's been a mainstay. It will be a mainstay for us. As a wealth of knowledge, he consults and is kind of our go-to, strategist for e-commerce and all things digital marketing. So, you know, I'm going to fluff you up, Rob, Robbie. And because, hey, you deserve it, man. You know what, Ryan, I'm going to come out of here. Somebody, somebody after this is going to have to take me down a peg or two.

Like somebody, like my ego is going to be way up here when it needs to be like casually down here, down here. But I appreciate it. It's a, again, working with good people and had on fun projects. So it's always a fun thing. And marketing is like solving puzzles. It's always something new. I know exactly.

So the state of the state of e-commerce and really, you know, I think we talked pre-episode making this a really functional and tactical discussion and strategic. It's not just tactics, but about what brands and companies that might be listening can really take away as we lead into the holidays. And the key opportunities for brands within e-commerce, you know, using your perspective, on a lot of kind of current projects, stuff that we're doing here at Radical Together and some other projects that I have going on, but wanted to really just, you know, kind of dive in from a real day-to-day standpoint of things that people can be looking at. So just glad to have you on. Yeah, it should be, it should be fun. And like, again, kicking around ideas, that's what I'm here for.

And again, you guys probably are seeing it too, just, kind of like that kind of weird lead up to the holidays. Everybody is kind of thinking about what they're going to do because it's going to be different than most other years. And for a lot of organizations, if they have a brick and mortar location and an e-commerce presence, they may be wondering how they can transfer more their revenue and more their volume into the e-commerce space

because they may be projecting a little bit lighter sales on the brick-and-mortar side. and trying to plan for that, it's probably better to start right now than in October or November, because September's already here and we're going to be halfway through September soon. So a lot of things thinking about is like how do you get ahead of a lot of that work and really think strategically about how am I going to plan for the holidays where we're going to have something really effective and seamless and smooth during the holidays, but also for the e-commerce presence,

but also how do we take what we do on the brick and mortar side that kind of differentiates us? And how do we bring it into that e-commerce space where we can use what people look at it as our core value as a great differentiator, even in the digital space? So how do we take our in-person shopping experience where we may have great salespeople who help you with like style consultations, with like application of makeup, all of those things? How do we take all that great knowledge that we have in? in-house and bring it to them in a digital experience because we're not going to necessarily have them visiting in person the same way they may have in the past. And thinking about that ahead of time where you can plan a strategy where you're not spending a lot of money on ads right in the middle of the holidays when you are when ad costs are going way up and trying to get

ahead of that audience building. So like kind of like three phases of it that I've thought about and kind of work through with groups is how do you think about that first transition from more from where you were at brick and on the brick and mortar side to more volume on the e-commerce side and kind of going back to where what makes you unique and what makes you valuable like offering opportunities for scheduling consultations for high high ticket items and giving people the chance to purchase those items and get like the high the high touch hand holding and the like expert consultations they need for those high high dollar transactions. And that's like taking where you would normally have the in person to like, how do you

schedule a private Zoom with one of our sales team, schedule a private Zoom with one of our style consultants. And I feel like the groups that are doing that and starting to think and get ahead of that are going to be the ones that are going to be able to win a lot of those holiday purchases because people don't want to go into store, but they still want to have that same empowering experience. And to that end, I literally was reading this morning, Ulta, their revenues down 95% year over year,

but their e-commerce sales are up 200%. And you said make a perfect example and of that exact scenario you're laying out, built their business on brick and mortar for the most part. They have e-com there. that's been in the background, not a terrible experience, but they need to be doing exactly what you're saying because, again, they got to write that shift.

I mean, it's compensating for the major loss that they're getting in store. But also it gives them an opportunity to kind of scale that experience. Like, take your rock star, like, who is, like, the best person at Alta? How do you take that rock star and, like, put them, like, give them a spotlight to shine and really allow them to kind of scale that experience

in so many ways? and then allow people to dive deeper into like this really intimate experience in the store, they would normally get in the store on a Zoom call. And you're going to have less people just sitting around kind of waiting for what, waiting for something to do because you're going to have people queued up like kind of wanting more and wanting more insight. That's where kind of that real magic is going to happen. And then you can understand what products you're working with them that you think they would

enjoy, what products they made, what products are going to fit for them, what products are not. And maybe if your company's sophisticated enough, you're putting that into a CRM where you can keep track of, hey, you were looking at this, you liked this, and then follow up with them afterwards. So there's lots of easy opportunities that opens up, but it kind of allows those businesses to transition from where they were so dependent on brick and mortar to where they have a lot more differentiated, differentiated positioning in the market. And they're probably a lot, a lot stronger and being able to handle, they can weather a larger storm now next time something like this may come around.

Do you think the brick and mortar thing, I mean, you know, while we're kind of down that rabbit hole, it just strikes me that I don't want to say 2020's loss for brick and mortar, but I just don't see, you know, with COVID still around enough, whether, no matter how you fall politically or anything else. And the election all the way in November, you know, like, I don't think we're going to suddenly, no matter what happens, whether it's politically motivated, it's obviously a real pandemic and other things happening. I feel like the brick and mortar comeback isn't going to happen this year.

No. No. And like 2022, the golden age for brick and mortar. But right now it's not. like not plan and planning for it and like planning and hoping it's going to be is like you can hope but like that's that's not a strategy and like controlling what you can control and what what you can improve on is probably going to set those groups up for success later on too because great you have a great brick and mortar presence but how do how is your e-commerce presence and how does that transition

so you're doing the work you'd already be doing you're just doing it five years ahead of time and right now again like we've talked about in previous episodes of this this just has accelerated so many things that you've just got to prepare for this. And the same way you were working on getting an e-commerce presence in March, this is the way you're planning on handling your holiday shopping in September for the holidays. And I love that idea that you had with finding your rock stores, because I could literally see, you know, the experience in e-com being like, and not just one rock star, but think about, you know, we'll use Alta as the examples,

but, you know, they set up like their 10 rock stars that, that cover a lot of demographics and segments, you know, and they become your, not just your digital sales reps, but kind of your just digital personalities, you know, that you leverage on site in social media. You have, you know, some kind of interactive chatting that takes place, whether it's Zoom calls, whether it's within the platform if you have that set up. Again, leverage technology that's out there and on the shelf, if you need to make the holiday happen and think about it long term as within one app, one experience.

But again, how do you tee up those segments and those rock stars across the stores and the brick and mortar? I think that could be huge for a lot of different segments. So, like, there's suddenly tastemakers. They're suddenly, like, you suddenly have a group of influencers working for you with your business who you've got you've given a platform and empowered like that's a win win win for everybody and the people that love doing that like they're going to love doing that and getting to say hey you may not be helping 10 people a day in the store but you're going to

help hundreds of people thousands of people outside that you may not never even realize like millions of people potentially like like especially in the cosmetic space like those the views of those that content it goes so astronomically high. But those are so easy to do because they're just extending kind of what they do in person to a digital space. And hopefully they have fun with it just as much. Those are the people that really kind of care about it and passionate about it that just love helping people. And it doesn't matter if it's face to face or online. So those are where some really opportunities are.

And especially during the holidays, like doing that early. So everybody's going to be doing a lot more sales-related messaging during the holidays. you need a lot more content to break that up. So you don't just seem like a used car a lot like sale, sale, sale, sale, sale, sale. You need some content to kind of have in between. So it doesn't, it's not so heavy handed that you just kind of burn out your audiences. It's kind of, that's going to be another piece. It's like finding a balance because you really can't just say all sales messaging on like the

holiday weekend like Black Friday, Cyber Monday weekend, there is going to be more messaging than you probably ever normally have during during the year. But you can't go sales, sales, sale heavy when you don't have any content to kind of break it up because everybody just gets overwhelmed by that flood. And when you're the person that can have like some sales messaging, add some value, sales messaging, add value, that's a group that's going to win because they're not so heavy-handed and they're kind of still building a relationship while still kind of extending that communication and relationship with the brand. So like planning for more content around that time because you need it.

And your holiday gift guides, those are great to use around that time. And like again, on the email side, I do this with a lot of groups is like planning for lots of stuff that we're going to be able to use and probably recycle even around that time. But you need a strong base of content to consistently be messaging with because everybody, everybody's going to get so burnt out by Friday afternoon with sales messaging, by Saturday morning, you better be leading with content because that's what's going to break through the noise at that point in time and how you can differentiate yourself by not just being so happy-handed. Yep. And you know, how many times that having, you know, been experienced this at different levels,

either directly working in retail, working with retail clients or larger brands. I can count, I mean, I can't even count on two hands. How many times they've stressed over the ability to scale their best people in their best stores? Because, you know, Sam, who does awesome at the XX location, I wish I had 100 of them. Well, here's your opportunity to scale. You know, it's like, it's it. You know, this is how you, again, like you said, can I serve 10 or 20 customers in a store? How do you leverage Sam to now sell, you know, hundreds, you know, independent on the brand.

And this isn't just exclusive to makeup and Ulta. This could be in any company and any vertical, you know, for leveraging your best people. So I like, I like makeup and cosmetics as an example, though, because makeups and cosmetics is like this. Experience. The experience is so amazing. And the lifetime value of those customers is so high. And that's so much where some amazing innovations happening. Like I'm a man. I don't wear makeup, but I follow makeup companies because they're doing so many amazing things. Like glossier, like don't even get me started. I will go on a glossier, like rampage. My wife's using glossier now because like I talk about it so much. Because they're amazing. And I'm like, I'm like, send me their emails. Send me their emails. And they're brilliant.

Like it's awesome. It's human. It's interactive. And everything they do is just spot on amazing. But that's where so much of innovation is happening because it's a dog fight for that high lifetime value purchaser who wants to want something really unique, really kind of speaks to them as a person. But they're hard to win over. So you've got to set up, you've got to consistently elevate your game as far as experience goes. And you have so many other players that are doing it well that are, have deep pockets that want to do it kind of that same level.

And I think that's where kind of it drives in so much innovation in that industry. Same thing in supplements, you know, I mean, and just in supplements. It's very similar. It's, it's like, I love the business wars podcast. I listen to Business Sports Podcasts a lot because like Pepsi needs a Coke needs a Pepsi to make it better. Like Nike needs an Adidas to make them better. And those industries that are pushing themselves really far are the ones that are really innovative and doing great things. And that's kind of where I think a lot of people can learn something from like where do you take a non-relevant industry to your particular case?

And how do you borrow some of the magic that they're having in marketing and bring it into your own? because that's where those, like, real wins are going to come from, not from looking at your competition and seeing what they're doing. And even in one of my classes for, like, digital audits, I have them pull in different accounts or different businesses that they can use as inspiration in a non-parallel industry that they can use for inspiration for improving a given business that they're focusing on. Yeah, I love it.

So transitioning a bit to, and we've, we're kind of blending things in here. But there are things that you would, you know, recommend as we're coming up on the holidays. Obviously, with the brick and mortar overlay, we just talked about. But any tactical advice, you know, for companies or people listening,

like, you know, as the holidays are here, you need to be preparing, you know, where would you, where would you counsel people kind of listening as how to really maximize the holidays are coming up? Given the client, I mean, there's so many kind of variables going on.

You've got the election. You've got the COVID client. You've got other things. And none of those are crutches. But, you know, with all of that in play, what's your counsel to people as they kind of think about ramping up for the holidays on the e-commerce side? Build your lists. Get your lists ready to go. And that's like that's your email list, email list, your SMS list, your retargeting lists.

Those lists are going to be your best friend come November. because you don't want to be getting, you don't want to be paying for new people coming in the door for the first time during the holidays. Your ad prices are going to be so high and astronomical. You can't rely on that first time purchaser. So how do you take your current lists really serving your email audience and really make them, get them on board with what you're doing? And again, get them ready to purchase because they're probably going to be making their,

they're kind of like share of wallet decisions early. So be messaging around the holidays and get, getting them to opt in early and making sure you're taking care of your repeat customers, like they're your best customers because they are. And getting your list ready. So tactically trying to build a VIP list ahead of time. So starting in early November messaging and saying, hey, we are kind of like, we know everybody's preparing for the holidays.

We wanted to offer this as an opportunity. sign up here for our VIP, for our VIP holiday list for an extra discount on addition to the holiday savings you're going to get and early access to all of our holiday savings. So like to both those things in conjunction, making them really feel like rock stars, but you also have your opt-in audience who are playing like, hey, I already have like this much of my budget that I'm going to spend. I'm going to allot 25% to hear. And I'm making that decision way early on because I know that that's going to be an easy case.

I'm going to get the most savings and most value from that. Because, again, you kind of have to play the discount game. I try not to play the discount game during the most of the year. But this is the time of year that that's kind of what you need to do. Again, in the States, we've trained everybody to expect high discounts around that time of year. And that's when they make purchases. But for those discounts, you're also going to be losing margin.

And that's when you don't want to be paying that high acquisition cost when you're on a low margin sale. So for the business case, it doesn't make a lot of sense. And when you can get those people opted in early, you can build your pre-order list. And by the time you actually send in their codes, they're ready to go and they're going to be, like, again, purchasing right away. So getting those lists built early and building a VIP list ahead of time, messaging your customers with like what you're going to have available, what you're really going to, what's going to make your holiday event unique. and that could be a bigger discount or that could just be kind of a free gift to loyal customers around that time. So taking care of your best customers and then finding a way to get them to purchase afterwards.

So like I'll take Clavio, build a bounceback flow where they, if they purchase once within the Black Friday Cyber Monday window, you have a flow that basically serves them an email right afterward two days after Cyber Monday that says, hey, just in case you missed anything during all of the holiday madness, here's a discount for, like, again, probably five to 10 percent less than your deepest Black Friday discount. But here's a discount just in case you need to get anything extra. So you can possibly get an extra sale out of that. So there's a lot of tactical things you can do. And then planning on for your audience lists, get your audiences built early, use content to get people to your site who you can possibly retarget.

during the holidays, because those retargeting lists are going to be a lot cheaper than paying for the straight-up acquisition on something else. So your retargeting list is going to be your best friend around that time. Even if somebody hasn't purchased, that's still going to be a more profitable transaction for you than a bloated acquisition cost of a new purchaser. I got a good one for you. Okay, I'm a company, and I've got a great social following. but I haven't been doing a great job of getting my list together.

I'm behind on my CRM tactics, but I've got thousands of followers on Facebook and Instagram. How do I transition followers into my list? Okay. And that here's the- I'm coming up, I'm teaming you up because, you know, we're dealing with this with some brands.

I think that's a common challenge for brands that are a little behind with building their customer list, even though they feel like, you know, they're on those rented platforms, as we always call them, you know. You're renting space. You don't own it. Yeah. So taking those lists and bringing them over. Granted, a big follower count is, and how long that follower count has been around, like,

that doesn't, those are going to be large variables to play into it. But again, you should hopefully be able to transition probably half of your actual. active audience right now, and I'm saying half of your active audience being like people that comment, like, comment, share, engage with your brands continuously. You should be able to transition a large portion of them. Like, you're naturally not going to have like your whole audience subscribe to your email list. But transitioning as many as you can over. Around the holidays, like planning on it early, how do you give them the same incentive? Like offer them, offer to treat them like your best customers because they've been part of your community

saying, hey, we know this sounds, we don't want to be, we don't want to be too forward and we don't want to be too presumptuous, but we think you're some of our best customers. Like, how do we, how do we kind of get them over saying like, hey, here's an extra discount on top of what we're already going to be doing for our, for our consistent holiday sale, because they probably come to your holiday sales before. So offering them a higher level of incentive is going to offer for them a reason to get into an opt-in list. And again, again, we've kind of been trained. You don't have to bribe them, but get them over with some kind of incentive.

That could be just like early, early access to holiday discounts, not like a higher level discount, but giving them some high level of incentive that's going to give them kind of a financial reason or some level of exclusivity that's going to make it unique enough for them. maybe saying like, hey, I'm part of the, like the, the, we'll take, we're talking about soap club. Like, I'm part of the soap club, BIP list. Like, I am going to have, like, access to the most exclusive soaps this holiday season

because I opted into this list. So if you give them kind of some reason for a financial benefit or some reason for exclusivity, that's enough incentive to pull them over. Don't be doing a ton of sales messaging when you're trying to do that. that's a conversion in itself, getting them from one channel to the other. But find a way to sort of mix that into your content mix where it's like the Gary v. Jab, jab, jab, right hook. Like that's what you're asking for in terms of a conversion because when you're planning

on using your social channels to convert a ton, you're not going to get the return you'd really like because if you're two sales heavy, you're going to have people disengage. You're not going to have an active fan base or active. active community, but if you were able to kind of do it judiciously, get them over to an email list and then try and get them to convert, it's a lot more accurate way of like taking them down the customer journey that they're going to understand because it's like building a relationship. You've got to kind of, you got to go on your first date, you got to go on a second date, you got to have a first kiss, you got to do all those things.

Like just look at it in the same pace. But planning on building that into your marketing cadence after the holidays too. So you're continually building your list and treating them like the rock stars they are because like again, the service industry like has known this for years. Like your best customers, you take care of them because they're your best customers and they bring in so much revenue for your business. So how do you rule out the red carpet for them from social to email to conversion? Love it. Good. Good. And again, I used to be a, again, I still am a very big proponent for social. Like I, I, I have bounded, I have bounded rationality around social right now because I email is closer to the value chain than social is in a lot of cases.

I spent the majority of my career in social, but the same rules apply. It's just one step closer to the value chain. It's like, how do you get people to come back and purchase again? Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it's so funny, you use the relationship comparison, but it's true. How many brands want to get married on day one with their customers? And, you know, hey, you got to date. You got to have that first kiss, you know? And if somebody wants to get married on day one, like, like, what advice would you give your friend? Like, hey, somebody wants to get married on day one.

Slow down. Hey, run for the hills. That person is crazy. Like that's probably the case. But again, not thinking about everything is like a value transaction, like earn, earn credibility, earn trust, earn respect and be able to like build it over time because it's probably a slower game for some of some people. And some people, like if they're bottom of the funnel, like if they just need to make a transaction, that's great. You served a purpose. You had a transaction on Google shopping. But if you're able to kind of build that over time and earn those.

earn that revenue, they're probably going to come back and they're probably going to come back again and they're probably going to tell their friends. And where your 80-20 rule kind of plays into this, like that 20% is going to be your 80% later on. So if you can turn more, more people into that 20%, that base row is a lot bigger. And I'm just a believer in that. Yeah. So, you know, I know we've both dealt with some transition and conversions from different platforms and as you know as e-commerce goes you know and being a podcast that tries to show no preferential treatment but i think we've both learned that making some decisions on the front end for brands or as an agency working on behalf of a brand is just vital

in the platform they choose based on the goals just based on the realities um And both kind of, you know, us being, you know, is being a Shopify partner now. I don't mind, you know, you know, touting them and the growth they've seen and had and the integrations and everything else. But having dealt with a little bit of a painful, not painful, it's been successful, but maybe painful for the brand you're working on. Love to get your perspective on that.

So, so yeah, I was, again, before the show, we were talking about kind of transitioning in migrations and recently had a group move over from a big commerce site to Shopify. And was a really exciting example of what happens when things work smoothly, work consistently, and kind of how it raises the level of every other bit of their marketing. So again, you could have a great marketing. You could have great marketing on the organic side,

on the email side, on the paid side. But if you're bringing everybody into a subpar experience, they're probably still going to convert, but if you can give them a great experience, they're going to convert at twice at the level, that's a real win for everybody. And building your operations on a stable platform is huge. So that's like where Shopify is growing and expanding. That's kind of one of your biggest advantages is like you may not have that like personal touch

with every Shopify rep. And they do do a lot to work to scale. that. But they've solved so many problems already, and they know kind of what problems, retailers and merchants fall into. And they're able to solve that so quickly because they have basically a solution system at scale. And when you're on a system that's meant for high level conversions, high level of interactivity, basically you can focus on what's going to make your business the best as opposed to the nuts and bolts, the nuts and bolts systems of a, of, a system that may not necessarily work as efficiently.

So like from big commerce to Shopify, like I will never look at big commerce the same way. It's just like like big commerce is like very, very far down in my books right now, relative to Shopify because it's just so much better than everything else. It's like we talked to like you're driving a, you're driving a, your big commerce site may look beautiful and it's and like kind of gorgeous. But it's under the hood, it's like a golf cart engine. and doesn't necessarily work the same way as it's something you really want to. So, like, if you're driving across the country, you don't want to be driving a golf cart.

You want to be driving at least a sedan or a sedan you can improve on and make a little bit better and make a little bit more comfortable. You don't want to trick it out too much because that'll blow and float on the site. But, like, you get my analogy, it's trying to find a way to find a way to have something that's going to scale with you that's going to serve the function you want to. And, like, going from a big commerce site to seeing a Shopify site convert twice. the level. It's exciting. And like, again, the next, the next fun problem you get to solve is, like, how do we scale our warehouse suddenly? And like, we can't, we can't get enough, we can't

get stuff out the door fast enough, and which is, again, a good problem to have. But it's a, it's a situation that having a stable platform makes a big difference. And having a platform that converts at a high level, it just makes everything better. Yeah. Like from the, sorry, go for it. Yeah, the comparison to, like you said, when you sign up for these, no matter what size you are as a brand. It means one thing for a small business that has very little resources,

much less a medium to large brand. But having to worry about when you sign up for these platforms, is my sights be good, is my shopping cart functioning properly, am I converting, you know, like getting hung up from cart to checkout to shipping? Like, if you're having to worry about that on your platform, it is just so contrary.

to the nuts and bolts that you should be focusing on, which was product, plate, you know, price, promotion, that's what you need to be focused on, not the, you know, checkout system of the platform. That's what you're paying for, you know, to get that. You should never be searching for bugs. And when you're searching for bugs, that's when things are a problem because you're trying to find out,

you're trying to dissect what's going on that's not working on your site because your conversion rates fall into the tubes. And like I've seen like had this happen where like they're like big commerce analytics would just poop out for a week or two and not come back for a little while. And it suddenly came back up. And again, why did that happen and kind of got a little bit radio silence from the other end? But having a system that's going to be more stable and more secure for you is going to make a huge difference.

And again, I'm sorry for the big commerce crew that it's on the other other side of this. like just cursing my name right now, but it's just, it's a tough position. And when, when Shopify is coming in with a platform that can do it so much easier and so much better, it's just the, the solution that I look for because you, you do focus on the things that make you great and you get to do marketing again. And when you're not thinking about like how to, how to like make the system work, you can make your marketing better and you can make your operations better and you can make your user experience better. And that's what's going to kind of differentiate those brands because like getting having a system and a cart that

check out having a checkout system that works, that's table stakes. Like nobody cares about that. It's the things that you have to go kind of above and beyond to do that are going to be the separate, it's going to be what separates you from others in that industry. Yeah, exactly. And I don't know. We've gone through migrations from a square space size to an e-commerce. I don't even talk to about square space, but commerce might be, it's probably better than square space.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just for anyone listening and you're, you're just moving into e-commerce, choose wisely on the front end because it's twice as painful and costly to redo it the second time. And, and again, with any migration, like you're going to lose. Like if you're a big site and you've had you, the bigger you get on the organic side, the more organic traffic and the more the larger portion of your revenue that's coming from organic, the more painful it's going to be because you're going to have some drop in organic with any major migration because the site, Google is going to index you differently.

So the earlier you do it, the more financially viable is for your business because you're not going to be worrying about like recovering all that organic revenue afterwards. And in this case, like, this is a case where we saw no organic drop really because the site was performing so much better that it's head and shoulders above where it was in the past. So really no drop in organic revenue in this case. But normally you're going to have some drop. And it's always kind of a crapshoot to try and make those work out smoothly. I had, again, in a previous career, in a previous life, as a director of marketing for large e-com, had some gray hairs from a large migration, but when you get it done right and you get it done early,

it's going to be really helpful for you in the long run. And you're not going to be trying to fix small things all the time. It's going to be wasting your time and effort and it's kind of spreading your team thin where it doesn't need to be. It's kind of a final segment here. Anything, you know, on the platform side or, you know, I don't want to say new bells and whistles, but, you know, whether it's Facebook or Instagram or, you know, the things they're doing with shopping.

Anything, you know, news and noteworthy just from maybe a tech or platform or digital marketing standpoint? So, like, I'm always, if there's a, if, like, again, as a marketer and I'm always kind of a believer in the, like, like, you need to go where the attention's going. like you need to not be in love with you need to not be in love with the platform you need to be in love with the attention that the platform drives and like if people are spending two or three hours a day on a platform understanding how to understanding why they're there and what's keeping them there is always important so again thinking about that from that from the technology standpoint like the shopping side of things like there's huge opportunities in like the instagram shopping the instagram shopping as an opportunity for a business because like you already have such a

large audience, spending time there, engaging there. If you can make that shopping experience native to the platform, they're already spending two hours a day on, for anybody in that certain demographic window that's there, that's a huge, huge opportunity. So, like, not going in, like, full steam ahead with, like, trying to go in, like, first touch, like, try and open up some subtlety with, like, a first touch that's a little bit more brand focused as opposed like shopping focused, but once you can kind of open up the door for a shopping focus experience there on the second third touch, those open up a huge door for opportunities and allow people to kind of shop in a native experience that's going to be similar to what they're getting anyways.

And the seamless use of that, I think I'm kind of excited to see more groups kind of jumping on board with and experimenting with. And if nothing else, just the experimentation side of things, because if it's a new ad unit, it's probably going to be undervalued. It's not going to be probably weighted as heavily as some others. And going into some more like retail, like some more high, not high ticket items,

but items that are a little bit more aesthetically pleasing, I feel like will be kind of fit into that area really well. Like apparel, again, cosmetics probably fits into that category really well too. All of those things that you're trying to dissect what's going on. and the groups that can do a great job on the creative side too and trying to make that experience on that Instagram shopping good and smooth and seamless are going to be the ones that are going to be the ones winning there too.

So probably underserved ad unit right now as terms of pricing goes, so maybe a little bit cheaper or undervalued. And then kind of exciting because it's something new that's going to be native to the platform that people are already spending all their time on. Yeah, love it. Well, man, I always appreciate

your insights. I know everyone listening does. And, you know, let's keep fighting the good fight for Shopify. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, yeah, I wouldn't, like, I was like in full of transparency. I owed stock in Shopify. I'm like, I don't say that. I don't, nobody's going to, like, who are not making financial decisions off off my advice. If they are, they are. But it's a, it's, yeah, putting my dogs in that fight right now, again, have a lot more faith in Shopify. But everybody's trying to figure this out. It's still the Wild Wild West. Yeah. And we just had a bunch of new people coming to town on the e-commerce side. So the wild, wild list got a little bit wilder. I know. Focus on your lists. Get ready for a holiday.

Make the right platform choices. Experiment. Great insight, man. Really appreciate you. Hey, appreciate you. This is always fun. There's always a pleasure. Get to talk to a really brilliant marketing mind. But what's kind of what's the biggest thing in your radar right now, though, Brian? Like you've been asking me questions. What's the biggest thing on your radar right now? Honestly, it's kind of, I've tried to stay out of the, not negativity, but the political and, you know, socioeconomic outcome of COVID combined with, you know, movements,

canymus stuff. I'm kind of like ready for some, it's so, I think, distracting for people right now that, you know, I think everybody's kind of searching for, you know, we talked about the new normal and next normal and all that kind of stuff. You know, I think I'm ready, you know, to see the plane land a bit on whatever normal looks like, you know, in in the, in the consumer space of all that that's impacting, you know, like I feel like there's just still so many, like you felt like there was going to be some planes landed by now. And I still feel like there's just a lot of things dangling. And in some ways, that doesn't necessarily impact business and marketing. But I feel like it is right now a little bit because I think it's hitting the mindset of brands

and marketers because they're not, I don't think they have the, they're not as, committed to one path or another right now. They don't have the confidence. I feel like there's a lack of confidence right now because there's a lack of consumer behavior that might be typical. Yes, things have moved to e-commerce. Yes, brick and mortar is struggling with COVID.

And so my mind is like wrapping my head around where all of these paths go and the impact that they're going to have on all of these marketing channels as we move forward. You know, and so again, we're doing a lot of tactical day-to-day work for brands and companies. We're doing a ton of, you know, we probably have 10 e-commerce builds going on right now for clients, which is big for us, you know.

And so we're in the tactical everyday nuts and bolts of getting brands up to speed on e-commerce, optimizing list creation. All of that's going on, but I think my heads are a little bit more in the clouds right now of kind of thinking and observing on where this is going to make the best recommendations for clients kind of moving forward, if that makes sense. Yeah. And how do you, how do you, like, is an agency, you're not, again, not the one just doing like the nuts and bolts tactical things.

Like you're the one kind of advising the director of marketing. you're advising those groups on how to position their business for success long term. And kind of like that's as marketers, like that's, we need to be focusing on those things too, not just the nuts and bolts tactics. Because again, if you're in your business, you can't always see everything at a 10,000 foot view. And that's what you have your partners for.

So I think I've had my heads more in the clouds lately, not playing in the clouds and being aloof. but more kind of keeping my, my ear to the ground, kind of seeing where things are going next and trying to build what's, you know, what's first quarter 2021 look like?

What's, you know, not because we don't need to make hay with holiday, but, you know, what is that going to look like and how do we best position? And,

you know, obviously if you're brand building, you need to always be building brand. You know, we practice and preach content development and purpose driven marketing. all those things. But, you know, it's just such a powder keg right now for, like, everything's so black and white,

like there's no acceptance of gray. And so I think it's kind of a dangerous position that I want to see is kind of get out of. I want to see more grays and painting with that brush a little bit more. So it's interesting times. But, you know, I'm also excited by it because I do know that, you know, You know, as marketing changes, the world changes, everything's changing. And like you said, there's always a puzzle to solve. It keeps us young and it keeps us, it keeps us entertained and engaged.

And again, maybe we live in interesting times. Yeah, exactly. That's a good insight. That's, again, thinking about thinking down the line six months from now, it's not easy to do, but it needs, it's, as a marketer, we need to be thinking about those things. So, yeah, good on you. Yeah. And, you know, my last takeaway is, you know, helping B2B brands think more like B2C.

That's on my mind right now as we're working with many and a lot of them are taking that space. But I still feel like that is the biggest white space area in marketing is B2B thinking like B2C, B2B moving to eCom. you know, yes, I know there's 10 decision makers and not one when you're buying toothpaste, but like, you know, I'm going to keep beating that drum with the brands that we're working with and kind of moving down that channel. People consume content as people already. Why don't they consume content as a business? They're going to, they're the same person when they're at home or when they're at work.

And even if there's like they're a little more buttoned up, how do you take that same approach and communicate the way people want to be communicated with? I think that's that's an area. You're spot on there. That's an area that's just under underrepresented right now. Yeah. And we're working together with, you know, several companies projects that are right down that path, you know, so we get to practice what we preach.

And it's fun getting to see them kind of like come to life in those areas because like those are where some big wins are available. And yeah, for so many of them, that that future is right there for them to be for them to be had and it's just kind of whoever's going to move first in that industry is going to gain that competitive foothold in wherever that that vertical is yeah cool man well hey guys really appreciate everyone listening today's episode go follow robbie fitzwater on linkedin you'll see a lot of Robbie's content lots of great insights and lots of good book recommendations and podcast recommendations which i appreciate

from time to time. Always something new. Always trying to come up with something new and having fun. And you're on the other end with great content yourself. So we got to practice. We preach around here, you know. Cool, man. Really appreciate it.

And thanks for everyone for listening. You can follow along for all of the episodes. All of our episodes are at the radcast.com. Or you can follow us on Instagram at the. dot rad. You can follow on with any of my stuff. Look me up Ryan Offord on LinkedIn and you'll see Robbie and I

going back and forth on lots of stuff. There's lots of old episodes for things that Robbie and I have covered. Robbie gives a lot of great tactical advice on ecom and digital marketing. All right, Robbie, I guess we'll see everyone next time. See you guys around. And yeah, tune into this e-commerce series. There's some cool things in the pipeline.

Don't worry. I'm the appetizer. The real meal is coming next. Oh, that's not true. true. We're having steak the entire series. Just different flavors. Thanks, man. Yeah. Just to your way next time. Hey. To listen to full episodes or to contact us, visit us on the web at the radcast.com or follow our host at Ryan Alford on Instagram. Thanks for tuning in.