Right About Now with Ryan Alford - 2020 E-commerce & Shopify Marketing Playbook

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 months, trying to get into the habit, I guess, as we make it, of doing both guests and overall kind of marketing tips.

Starting point is 00:00:49 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 takeaways from today, I 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. 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 an e-commerce solution that's more technically based or just more robust in the number and variations. If

Starting point is 00:01:47 you're talking hundreds, hundreds of variations of your products, um, or thousands of products, but, but Shopify really fills the void, uh, 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 in 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, but this is kind of that definitive guide of things that you've got to do.

Starting point is 00:02:27 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. 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

Starting point is 00:02:52 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 side secret here, something called whatstoretheme.com. If you find a Shopify store that you really like, that you really like the 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 if it looks as good as making you want it. But again, it's a low cost

Starting point is 00:03:31 and don't skimp 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

Starting point is 00:03:43 as the starting block for your brand and 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.

Starting point is 00:04:22 It's all about setting your metadata, your titles, your keywords up. So I have a couple of 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 Ubersuggest. That's U-B-E-R, like the ride-sharing service. Ubersuggest, free, amazing capability. We'll tell you the monthly searches that terms get, and we'll 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

Starting point is 00:05:14 manually Google indexed. You can Google that, just Google it again. We want this to be brief. I 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, get something called a softbox. You can literally use your iPhone. That'll allow you to take photos on a white backdrop. These are inexpensive.

Starting point is 00:06:11 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. 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

Starting point is 00:06:50 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, 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.

Starting point is 00:07:18 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 brings me to trust in building brand overall. 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 and forget it. There's so many companies. It's funny. We have people that

Starting point is 00:08:00 come and see us as radical solopopreneurs 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. Most people understand the SEO side and the Google

Starting point is 00:08:25 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,

Starting point is 00:09:05 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 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 at Radical. Everyone's doing

Starting point is 00:10:00 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.

Starting point is 00:10:41 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 a 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. This is a great way to get and build trust while also doing it in an

Starting point is 00:11:18 a reasonably efficient way. No matter if you're a team of one, two, 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 gonna name them here. I'll link to them as well within the blog post

Starting point is 00:11:43 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

Starting point is 00:12:23 kind of step into that text message box where five to six years ago, seven, 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. It's 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

Starting point is 00:12:51 platforms or different social media platforms. The text inbox is a very powerful way. SMS bump. Second, Klaviyo. One of my favorite softwares, another online web-based platform. It's really like customer relationship management on steroids. It links really well with Shopify. It allows you to send shipping confirmations. There's templated stuff through Shopify, but if you turn on Klaviyo, 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.

Starting point is 00:13:35 You'll send them a reminder. You'll also give them other suggestions. Just a really powerful way. You can also just send your general newsletter content through this platform. 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. More than, again, I could probably talk an hour on Klaviyo, but really important. Another thing I love for repeat purchase type things is renewal products, be it vitamins, be it things that are, 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.

Starting point is 00:14:20 Super powerful, super great for repeat revenue. So Bold Subscriptions, Klaviyo, 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 what I think of this as, 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's running, but how do we pour gas on it?

Starting point is 00:14:49 And it's really leveraging ambassadors and what has been known as 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. My first, one of my favorites is refersion. That's R E F E R S I O N. It's really turnkey allows you to set up individual discounts on each product. It allows you to set up commission structures for your ambassadors. So you know, you hear me say supplements a lot. We're helping a lot of those brands, uh, 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, uh, 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

Starting point is 00:15:42 all of that through one platform, 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, how do we again, spread this out? And really, that's, you know, a Salesforce. 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

Starting point is 00:16:21 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 as a blog post at radical.company, 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. We the ones We the ones We the ones

Starting point is 00:17:25 We the ones

Right About Now with Ryan Alford - 2020 E-commerce & Shopify Marketing Playbook

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