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Radical E-commerce - From Performance Marketing to Branding and the best platforms in 2020

October 13, 20200 comments♥ 0
00:01 Hey guys, Ryan Offord, your host of the Radcast. Before we get today's episode, just wanted to drop a quick note. If you've been enjoying our podcast and want to work with us directly, either with Radical or if you'd like for me to be consulting on your business for a marketing perspective, we'd love to help you, and you can reach me directly by text message at 864-7293680. That's 864-729-3680. Text me, we'll get back in touch with you. We'd love to work with you and help your business in any way that we can.
00:30 You can learn more about radical at radical. Radical.company online. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and we'll talk to you soon. You're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Welcome to the latest episode of the Radcast. This is Riley. I'm the producer and we have Ryan Alford, our host today.
01:00 What's up? A little bit of rolls reversed here. I know. On the other side of the mic. I just felt like it was appropriate in scheduling out this series. We're doing on e-commerce to give radicals perspective on what's going on in the e-commerce world, how your perspective on things. And I just felt like this episode was appropriate in this series.
01:22 It's good. Yeah. I mean, you know, we do this every day. I mean, we're an e-commerce agency. So, you know, we bring a lot of guests on because no one wants to hear me talk for 30 minutes. But in all seriousness. You know, we do a lot of these things daily. We like to bring on others to give their perspective.
01:41 But, you know, it's important for us to share our point of view, too. And to kind of give our counsel on where we're seeing things because we're knee-deep in a lot of e-commerce right now. And it's definitely one of the pillars of our agency. So I'm excited to talk about it. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's important to just kind of start off in terms of, you know, just the general e-com background that, you know, you've been in, you know, that kind of thing. Like, what's it looked like for you? Well, I've been in the business for 20 years.
02:11 Right. So the old guy in the room. And in marketing in agency world, and I've been a CMO, a couple different places. So the client side and primarily on the agency side. And the last 10 years, though, have been, first 10 years were more traditional media, traditional branding. And working with large brands. I did a spell five years. years in New York and worked at some of the largest agencies in the world on some of the
02:40 largest brands in the world. And most of that was traditional media, a lot of brick and mortar, a lot of retail, but not necessarily e-com. But we transitioned into some of that in my latter stages in New York and then definitely in my role since. Interestingly enough, the one detour that I took, I'll talk about some of the brands that I've worked on, you know, agency side on e-com. But I started with a friend in Florida, one of the first online digital car buying platforms. And so there's car buying, you know, e-commerce. This was in
03:22 2013. It was called I Drive on demand. And we had a search engine and things like that where we actually, it was as much a logistics company as it was e-commerce. We used digital marketing and the web to attract leads and we did a lot of the processing online so I still considered an e-commerce transaction but a lot of it was auction networks we would we allowed people to custom purchase the use car that they want they can come and tell us I want a silver BMW 325 you know this was 2030 so 2011 maybe like two years old and I want it with these features and we would go throughout our auction networks and do some searches manhine and others and then we facilitated the entire transaction online for the most part and so um carvana has now
04:13 made it mainstream i was just about to ask it was it related it was a different way because carvana's doing what most dealers do and what we kind of learned was the difficulty if you don't own the the inventory it can be difficult to source exactly what you need we were able to do it on at a niche level. We did seven figures in revenue within our first seven months. We were selling a lot of cars. But to scale it, if you don't own the inventory, if you aren't getting your hands on the cars and have that scale, it can be difficult. I think the model could still work potentially, but some of the wholesale stuff's gotten interesting in the whole market. It's a really messy, complicated industry. But learned a lot in that space, at least online.
05:02 online. That was in 2013. Before that, you know, working with brands like Verizon in their app and other space. We worked with their retailers. And we weren't the digital agency of record, but we worked and intertwined a lot with other of the agencies and the process of developing work that was used to their app and selling online and doing stuff on that, both on B2B and B2C. And then as an agency, we worked with brands. like Denny's Firehouse Subs. Oh, yeah. Just to name a few and helping them transition into online, you know, buying and things like that.
05:42 Obviously, that's proliferated a lot more since I've been in those roles. But had an early, you know, take there and then in the car buying side. And then I've worked at a few other agencies where both in automotive and then started Radical. and so my learning in digital and an e-com has been both organically as kind of a I consider myself a curious soul so I've self-taught the last 10 years in many ways in constant curiosity and taking courses and doing things and then real world having the jobs and the positions that I've had and learning from others so you know pretty deep background across categories in both the
06:31 nuts and bolts technology of e-commerce and in the demand generation and branding side, which is more kind of like my building blocks from marketing standpoint. I think it's kind of a good segue in a way. Like when you're a company, what options do you have as a business from a technology standpoint for your e-commerce platform? Well, the technologies have come a long way. There's a lot of what I call self-serve options and there's more custom options. We're a Shopify partner.
07:01 agency, which means we build and scale off of Shopify quite a bit. It's the first choice that I recommend for small to medium businesses and even a large scale business if they don't have a ton of complexity in their product lineup, not necessarily the number of skews, but the complexity of that, the variations of skews and things like that. Shopify just has a lot of the building blocks figured out for people. It's easy for an organization to take on. We're doing and scaling several platforms, several of these onboarding right now for what's going to be probably the largest fabric online e-commerce store. So exciting. In the world, eventually, it's starting small, but they have a really good base of customers from their brick and mortar and some of the unique sales they've done.
07:53 But then they've got the ability to scale because they have the merchandise. They have a great supply chain for how they source and get this stuff, so we're working with them. But, you know, we're real world working with a lot of companies on Shopify, Shopify Plus. And then other platforms you have, Magento is now owned by Adobe. It's a longstanding custom platform. You can actually build on it for quote unquote. It's air quotes for anyone watching free. I can verify.
08:24 You don't have to pay for the platform like you do with the Shopify with a month. Monthly. They do have paid flat. They do have a Magento Commerce now where it's a little more less self-serve as you will. You're still going to need a developer, though. That's the thing with Magento. Super highly customizable. You can have any variation. You can be big-scale, huge commerce platform. Endless possibilities, very complex. And you'll need a developer and a team to do it. And it makes sense for some complex businesses. And it's a very great, robust, trust. system and now with Adobe evolve, a huge company behind it. And then, you know, there's other ones with players, big commerce, Wix, in the more self-serve,
09:08 you know, and, you know, it's just, it's really important, though, for companies making the right choice at this start. We actually've been helping with several companies transition from the smaller self-serve platforms, like a Wix that really never made sense for them to begin with. But they were of a scale and magnitude where they should have started with a Shopify or a Magento right off the bat. So they just end up spending more money. Right. And then there's others. There's like big cartel, which is mainly for like the creator space. It's kind of a spino for like an Etsy seller or something like that.
09:46 Okay. But Shopify, Magento, Big Commerce, Wix. I'm sure I'm leaving out something. The only other thing I would throw out is WooCommerce for WordPress sites. That's the engine that drives it. It's open source as well like Magento. So you can custom code that as you need to for WordPress sites. So if you've got an existing WordPress site and you're moving to commerce, that's where you get into a decision. Am I going to stick with my WordPress site and layer on the WooCommerce engine or am I going to go to a Shopify or a Magento?
10:22 That ends up being the decision. And at any point, we help with a lot of companies making that depending on the factors of their business. Okay, okay. I get that. That makes sense. Oh, okay. So has there been something that you like to use as a dedicated marketing, e-commerce kind of playbook? Well, there is.
10:39 And, you know, it's, there's like the nuts and bolts for any business. And then there's, you know, specific to one, industry. Okay. Because we've worked with cosmetic companies. We worked with supplement companies. We worked with fabric company. We worked with furniture companies. We worked with a lot of verticals.
10:59 And so there's playbooks for each one. But specifically, like the nuts and bolts of any platform is all about acquisition of customers as inexpensively as possible. The problem with customer acquisition is if you don't have a loyalty, like if you don't have a brick and mortar store where you can, and you have a list, like an email list where you can transition those customers from brick and mortar to on. online, it's very expensive to acquire customers or, you know, just organically and new. And that's the struggle for most e-commerce brands when they get started. So your playbook really starts with how fast can I build a customer base. Okay. How fast can I get my list, and that's email list, to do email marketing, which is definitely
11:42 part of the playbook. And how fast can I start leveraging my customer base and building lifetime value with them versus acquiring new customers? And really any playbook for e-commerce is the speed with which you can do those things. And there's definitely a balance between what I'd call product marketing and brand marketing and finding that balance depending on what you do. And the key is now, and I'm kind of one of these guys. And right now one of the buzzwords is purpose-driven marketing and purpose-driven business.
12:19 I'm a little bit more pragmatic in my thought process about that. I do think that people care that companies have a purpose. But there are a lot of products where it's about convenience, it's about need. You know, that pack of gum in the line, I have no idea if they just sent 50 pairs of shoes to an orphanage or, you know. Or not. I don't know. I just need that. Now I need that pack of gum.
12:51 I'm on Amazon shopping for socks, and, you know, there's some T-shirts over in the right corner because they know what I'm looking for. And, you know, I don't have any clue where they were. So I'm probably somewhere. But I do think for certain companies that I think it's as much internal as it is external. Your internal people need to be around a purpose. Right. And they need to convey that. And yes, you want when they come to look you up or.
13:19 they read about your, they see your content. You want there to be a purpose, and that's important. Right. But I do think if you'll remove friction, you provide a need, and you fulfill that with the customer when, where, and how they need it, a lot of times some of the other stuff, you know, matters less. Okay. And it's just, it's category to category. Right. So it should depend just kind of like where companies coming from, what they're necessarily selling, how they translate.
13:48 how they transition. And you know, there's a million techniques, you know, within that, like, okay, how do you build, how do you build audience? So Facebook ads are huge. No matter how much Facebook gets, you know, banged on these days, between them and Google, you can reach your customer one way or another. Right. Whether that's paper click ads for someone that's searching for vitamin D and you sell vitamin D
14:09 and you need to be in that Google shopping list or, you know, have that first ad that's paper click, or you do SEO and have that first organic list. because you've done keyword matching on your website and you have blog content that matches it. So it's complicated. And it's amazing to me the number and it's why, you know, I somewhat rest easy at night knowing that companies need agencies and partners because of the complexities that there are in doing these things and knowing which ones to do first. And kind of there is no silver bullet though.
14:44 That's kind of the reveal. It's like people want, well, I can do this one thing. I'm going to run Facebook product ads and our store is going to take off. Yeah, but there's a million pre-workout supplements on the market. Right. And you aren't just going to stand out running a product ad with your label that looks cool. You know, there's a lot of vanity stuff in, you know, cosmetics and supplements and other things. And it does have to be more deep than that.
15:10 You have to have great reviews, social, kind of what I call, equity, you know, because you've got people talking about you, whether that's reviews and other things. There's just a lot that goes into it. Well, I was just about to say, I feel like, I mean, I can say this because I'm probably that customer as well, but I feel like, you know, we're high maintenance shoppers anymore. I mean, we want to see a brand that has credibility. Like, I'm going to go to their Instagram and see what their feed looks like, or I'm going to, you know, like, see what their face, like what people are actually saying, you know, is it actually getting spread? Like, what's the social proof? Like, those are kind of be the kinds of things that, like,
15:52 I feel like any more that's a consumer trend, I think, that's safe to say. But I think it's interesting just, you know, obviously to your point, you probably shouldn't do everything for your product because it's not actually going to be. But the word you said is key. And I think you meant it both ways with the social proof part. high expectations, high demand customers. Like people have gotten used to Amazon and how easy it is, and they've made it both really easy and really hard for other businesses. Oh, yeah.
16:25 They've given you the playbook, but it's really hard because they've made it completely self-serve. It's super easy. It's four clicks. I'm in the cart. I'm checking out. You have my payment information saved. Two days later, it's at my door. There's no friction.
16:39 Like, I can buy something in Amazon. I could do it. while I'm talking right now, probably not even looking at the screen. Right. Right. And so you have to get that right. And that's some of the things that gets lost. It's like, you know, we've got a great product and we'll get it out there.
16:52 We'll run some Facebook ads and we'll run some Google ads and, you know, we'll do this cool video for our Facebook page. And that's all great stuff. And that's all great. But then you get to the site. It takes seven seconds to load. It takes three minutes to get your credit card loaded in because there's nothing saved and you don't have the like saved engine that. brings up their credit cards or linkage to other systems. And this is why we push people to Shopify,
17:17 because they have a lot of this already worked out. And so, but people, it gets lost in the sauce sometimes if, you know, people get fall in love with their own products. Right, right,
17:27 right, they need to fall in love with the customer. Yeah. Oh, that was good. That should be a little tagline somewhere. Ding. Exactly,
17:35 exactly. So, I mean, like, you know, when you're like a small to medium-sized business and you're struggling with that initial, e-commerce, like strategy, and you're just kind of feeling overwhelmed. And I think this is timely in the
17:46 terms, I hate to say it, but in terms of COVID right now, a lot of companies, small to medium size are kind of like, okay, our e-com is either struggling or it needs a revamp of some kind. Like, where do you start? I think I like to start where I know there's problems first. Because what happens to me is there's so, it's kind of the, it's kind of the, the fear of missing out, like the, everyone sees what anyone else is doing. They go, oh, I got to have that. I got to have that. There's so many bells and whistles.
18:20 Like, they're going to do these things. Then suddenly, suddenly a small being business that can normally really afford four key tactics is trying to do 12. And focus and at least take on a partner or have someone that's working with you, identify what the issues are. That's if you're problem solving an existing e-commerce site. Okay. So we have a functional problem with the site. Okay. Well, we need to look at the technology.
18:41 We need to reverse engineer what the issue is, come up with a platform solution. If it's a content solution, if it's a story solution, then you need to work on your brand. Then you need to work on, like, what are we trying to get, how we want people to think, fill, and act. And that starts with a, that's a branding. That's not technology. That's branding. So there's so many layers to it as a company that, you know, e-commerce is the technology and this, where the sale happens, all encompassing. And that's the interesting thing about e-commerce is.
19:11 is it's all in one. I think people and businesses before, when you have brick and mortar stores and you have marketing, you have branding, there was an easier delineation in your mind for these channels and these things. Okay, we're building brand.
19:29 We're telling a story. We're working on a new content piece. We're working on a new employee program. We're doing these things. And they feel very independent and they understand that it's building towards something. Right. e-commerce gets this lump sum thing and it's the entire it somehow now encompasses the entire business
19:49 because some businesses all they do is sell online right right right and so I think you have to separate the parts separate the problems or the challenges of the opportunities and focus on what those are do I have a brand problem do I have a technology problem do I have a content problem do have a people problem yeah well okay then this kind of makes me want to ask you then what are your thoughts on the balance of performance marketing than versus branding. Because I think that segues really nicely into what you just said. And I kind of break that down a little bit.
20:17 That is the million dollar question right now in e-commerce. Those are talking about buzzwords, we're talking about purpose-driven marketing. But the demand and product-driven versus brand. And the problem is brand can drive performance. Performance marketing doesn't drive brand. For example, showing me a picture of your, yoga pants.
20:42 Wow, these are really nice yoga pants and they're a color and it looks cool. It's not really building the brand. It's trying to drive a sale. It's performance driven. Okay. So it doesn't really work in reverse. But... That makes sense.
21:00 Okay. But we get Michelle Obama wearing those yoga pants. I chose her randomly. Right, right. Saw her video the other day. And she's doing it. And she talks about how, you know, as a busy mom, and I know she's a businesswoman and whatever, but as a busy mom now, you know, and her kids are grown and everything.
21:21 But she's taking care of, you know, her businesses and all that, but she's running around in a post-COVID world. And she wears bungee's yoga pants, whatever they are. Right, right, right. And she tells that story. That's brand. Right. And that can drive sales. but the balance there is there is unless you have a product that is solving a problem that no one
21:48 Uber like 10 years ago whatever however 1012 however long Uber's been around immediate problem solver no one else was offering it unless you have that type of offering you need to be working on your brand why people should buy from you today tomorrow and the next because that's what you need you need that lifetime value and that's the big the learning curve in that is the lifetime value of the customer. The loyalty because if they aren't loyal, you are constantly going back in that acquisition loop that's very expensive. It's very expensive to acquire cold customers. No different than any other cold calling anything else. It's hard and it's expensive. And so the answer to that balance is you need to do both. And what happens today though, especially for any one, any of these, you venture-backed brands. It's like 80% performance, 20% brand.
22:43 And it works for a while because the Facebook ads work at first, and then people get tired of seeing them, and then they stop working. Like, why isn't this working? But what's our brand? Well, we don't really have one. And so there's your problem. And so the companies that are finding that balance,
22:57 and again, category specific, it can be 80, 20 brand versus performance in certain sense. It could be 50-50. It could be 60-40. There's not a perfect formula. but brand and why people should buy it from you beyond the product itself is really key. And it's getting mired and lost as more and more people are worried about ROI on day one. This is a long-term proposition.
23:25 If you're moving your line, your business, you're moving your business from offline to online and you want to be around for the next 30 years, then you need to play the long game. And you need to have a transition. I'm running out of money. Well, you know what? You need to have two businesses and two companies going. So, I mean, because it's just, it's a long game. Yeah. I got you.
23:48 I got you. What's been an interesting e-commerce strategy lately that you've seen? Is there one that's like standing out above the rest that's kind of like, you know, oh, my gosh, like that, oh, that was crazy. That was it. Well, you know, I'm going to plug our own series here a little bit, but it's actually. actually the truth, and it's, you know, it's lines not sheep. So Sean Wayland's company, you know, they're building, you know, his goal is to be doing a million dollars a month. They're doing several
24:18 $100,000 a month now with a pretty damn limited product. Like, they sell like 10 products, you know, I'm sure it's more than that. Someone's got, no, they have 14. No, they have 20. You know, like, but they're selling like water bottles, seven different T-shirts. I'm, I'm, the variations of women's and kids and all that. I'm sure the skews are more. Right, right. But they have a purpose. Sean believes in it. He's wearing it on his sleeve. He's Instagram verified and an influencer already. And so they have all the built in stuff right now, whether or not you believe in his purpose, whether or not you like what he's saying. The way he's building the brand is the way that people can build brand now. He's building brand every day by being himself.
25:05 Right. And he's living the Lions Not Sheep brand. He is the personification of it. Right. He's living it. He's breathing it. He's influencing others who have that same belief. And then they're executing the nuts and bolts of e-commerce. Right.
25:20 Like everything we're talking about. Like there's like there's the mousetrap of e-commerce. Right. You got the Shopify site. It looks good. You've got all the bells and whistles that come with it. You've got your products and all that. But the secret sauce is the brand laid it on top, the purpose and the built-in audience that
25:35 he brings every day. He brings that built-in audience that he doesn't have to go acquire it. He's spending some money on ads now just to put some gas on the fire. But he's been building this brand for his own personal brand for 10 years. I mean, he's older than that, but he's been focused on this and changing his life and doing the things that he's done. And now it's manifesting itself. And so, well, someone might ask, well, I'm not Sean Whalen and I'm not bold and talking all that. It still can be reversed engineered because you do need to have.
26:05 a brand and a reason. I think that gets to your bigger point of branding in general because that's Sean's brand, right? Your brand, not you, Ryan, but you, whoever that is saying that question, right? Their brand might be something completely different, whether that's them like, you know, they sew so they do DIY things or whatever it is. Like their brand could be completely different, but to the point of just living it out fully as a brand, you know, for all the layouts of what creates a brand, like it,
26:35 every aspect of that brand needs to be at play. And it goes into like influencer marketing, all those things. And so like if you're a company like our CEO is really boring and we don't have anyone that's the face of our company, well, you know what? I'm sure if your products are wonderful, you can get influencers. You can get people talking about your, you know, otherwise you've got a bigger problem. Right. And so you need to leverage their stories.
26:59 If it's not your own story, leverage their stories. Tell their stories through the lens of your brand. And so there's a lot of ways at this, but it's leveraging the real-time nature of social media, the fact that every eyeball is in a smartphone, like half the day. Right. And how do you maximize that to then sell more on e-commerce? Right, right, right. So. I hear you.
27:26 And then I guess, you know, we'll kind of transition into our close here a little bit. what are some e-com tactics that businesses should be taking into consideration? We're right in the middle. Well, we're about to start our holiday season, like holiday, you know, marketing, all that kind of stuff. What are some things that are important, especially in a COVID world, that needs to be taken into consideration right now? Well, it's, you know, one, if you're an existing business already,
27:57 then it's all about maximizing your list. I mean, we've talked about this. If you already have customers. Right. You know, it's a little late to start to be trying to gain. It gets really expensive. The ads go up and price, even though they've been down a little bit because Facebook and some of the boycotts that have gone on. But, you know, it's real expensive to be acquiring customers in the middle of it.
28:21 So two suggestions. One, you know, lean on your customers, be good to them. Have your messages in order effectively for your sales. sales and all those things. And if you're new or you're coming into the space and you don't have that established base, go hard. Like, go with your best, put your best offer out there. I'm not saying give away the farm. And I think it's real dangerous, the companies that are always on sale or 30% all the time. But in this time period, people are looking for a deal. And so what, put your best foot out there so that you can acquire the customer via your product, but also the deal that they're
28:57 getting. And, you know, I see companies, and we've worked with companies that toil with this, like, oh, we'll do 10%. Now, we'll do 15. We'll go 15. If your margins are like, you know, 150%, then you need to do 30. You know, like for Black Friday and all these things. Put your best deal out there, get as many customers as you can in the door, get them acquired so you start building your lists. Right. And so that then you can retarget and resell them in the holidays. Right, right, right. And if you aren't doing retargeting, then call them. us because if you've got sight coming to your traffic, you need to be doing dynamic retargeting so that they see.
29:34 And people are like, oh, I hate ads. But you know what? If I looked at a pair of shoes yesterday and I find them in my feed, I'm not bothered. Like, not annoyed. And sometimes like, you know, like before, you know, I guess 15 years ago when I was in digital marketing, maybe I was like, whoa, this is creepy. Now people are like it. But, you know, it's relevant.
29:51 You know, like if you were shopping for it, you're probably interested in it. Yeah. And so have your retargeting. marketing on, maximize your email marketing. And if you're acquiring new customers, put your best foot forward. Don't go cheap. I hear you. I think this is a great perspective.
30:07 And I'm really glad that we have this now in our e-commerce series as well. But that is it for this episode of the Radcast. It's been good. Hey, that's the most of the thing I've talked on an episode in a long time. Yeah, there you go. We'll change it up a little bit. Everyone's like, oh, thank God. He doesn't that guy's about talking now?
30:24 When's the next guest? Next week. Yeah, no, but that's it for us. You can stay tuned with everything that we do on the radcast on Instagram at the dot rad. Our website is theradcast.com. And then, of course, go follow Ryan, our host. I mean, come on at Ryan Alford. Verified, by the way, on Instagram.
30:48 Yeah, so that's it for us. And stay tuned for our next episode that will be coming out and see you next time. See you. 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.