Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Radical E-commerce - From Performance Marketing to Branding and the best platforms in 2020

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

Host Ryan Alford and producer Reiley Clark share practical steps to build an e-commerce strategy in 2020.Ryan leverages his 20 years or marketing and digital experience in sharing examples and steps every brand should consider. In this episode, he highlights some of the most unique strategies he's seen, talks about how to build a better strategy, and offers practical advice on everything from platform choice to leveraging branding and performance marketing. Get ready for another episode with Ryan and Reiley as they get into Radical's perspective on e-commerce!Follow The Radcast for more radical business and marketing content, advice, and strategies | To learn more about Radical Company, check out Radical here | Follow our host, Ryan Alford on Instagram! | Do you enjoy the podcast? -- Like, subscribe and leave us a review! | See you next time! 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. 

Hey guys, Ryan Offord, your host of the Radcast. Before we get to 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 from a marketing perspective, we'd love to help you and you can reach me directly by text message at 864-729-3680. 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. You can learn more about Radical at 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. What's up? A little bit of roles reversed here. I know. On the other side of the mic. Just felt like it was appropriate in scheduling out this series. We're going 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. 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, that we do a lot of these things daily. We like to bring on others to give their perspective, but you know, it's important for us to share our point of view too, 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 just the general e-com background that you've been in, that kind of thing. What's it look like for you?

Well, I've been in the business for 20 years, so the old guy in the room. And in marketing and agency world, and I've been a CMO a couple different places, so the client side and primarily on the agency side. the client side and primarily on the agency side. And the last 10 years, though, have been, the first 10 years were more traditional media, traditional branding, and working with large brands. I did a spell five years in New York and worked at some of the largest agencies in the world

on some of the 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-comm. 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 2013. It was called iDrive 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 it an e-commerce transaction, but a lot of it was auction networks. We allowed people to custom purchase the used car that they want. They could come and tell us, I want a silver BMW 325. This was 2013, 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, Mannheim and others and then we facilitated the entire transaction online for the most part and so um carvana has now made it mainstream i was just about to ask but we were doing it it was a different way because carvana is doing what most dealers do and what we kind of learned was the difficulty. If you don't own the inventory, it can be difficult to source exactly what you need. We were able to do it at a niche level. I mean, 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 and the whole market, it's a really messy, complicated industry. But learned a lot in that space, at least online. That was in 2013. in that space, at least online. That was in 2013. Before that, working with brands like Verizon in their app and other space. We worked with their retailers.

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, just to name a few, and helping them transition into online buying and things like that. 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, you know, my learning in digital and in 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.

having the jobs and the positions that I've had and learning from others. So pretty deep background across categories in both the 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 a marketing standpoint. I think it's kind of a good segue in a way. I think it's kind of a good segue in a way. 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 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 SKUs, but the complexity of that, the variations of SKUs 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 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. 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 their stuff, so we're working with them. But 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, and it's air quotes for anyone watching, free. I can verify that. You don't have to pay for the platform like you do with a Shopify or the monthly. Right. 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 uh platform endless possibilities very complex uh 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 trusted system um and now with adobe

evolve the huge company behind it yeah and then there's other ones, players, BigCommerce, Wix, in the more self-serve. It's really important, though, for companies making the right choice at the start. We actually have 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. 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. And then there's others. There's like Big Cartel, which is mainly for like the creator space. It's kind of a spinoff like an Etsy seller or something like that.

Okay. But Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, 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? That ends up being the decision at any point. We help a lot of companies making that depending on the factors of their business. Okay, okay. I Magento. That ends up being the decision at any point. We help with a lot of companies making that depending on the factors of their business. So. Okay. Okay. I get that. That makes sense. Uh, Oh, okay. So has there been something that you like to use as a dedicated marketing e-commerce kind of playbook? Well, there is, and you know, it's, there's like the nuts and bolts for any business. And then there's, um, 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've worked with supplement companies. Right. We've worked with fabric companies. We've worked with furniture companies. We've worked with a lot of verticals. 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 brick-and-mortar store and you have an email list where you can transition those customers from brick-and-mortar to online, it's very expensive to acquire customers 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? How fast can I get my list, and that's email list, to do email marketing, which is definitely part of the playbook. to do email marketing, which is definitely 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. I'm a little bit more pragmatic in my thought process about that. I do think that people care that companies have a purpose.

Right. But there are a lot of products where it's about convenience. It's about need. That pack of gum in the line, I have no idea if they just sent 50 pairs of shoes to an orphanage or not. I don't know. I just know right now I need a piece of clothing. Right now I need that pack of gum. I'm on Amazon shopping for socks, and there's some T-shirts over in the right corner because they know what I'm looking for. And I don't have any clue where they were. 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 they read about you or they see your content, you want there to be a purpose, and that's important. Right. They see your content. You want there to be a purpose, and that's important. 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 matters less. And it's just category to category. Right. So it should depend just kind of like where a company is coming from, what they're necessarily selling, how they transition. And, you know, there's a million techniques, you know, within that. Like, okay, 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. gets banged on these days, between them and Google, you can reach your customer one way or another. Whether that's pay-per-click ads for someone that's searching for vitamin D and you sell vitamin D and you need to be in that Google shopping list or have that first ad that's pay-per-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 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.

That's kind of the reveal. It's like people want, well, I can do this one thing, and it's gonna, I'm just gonna run Facebook product ads, and our store is going to take off. Yeah, but there's a million pre-workout supplements on the market. 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 cosmetics and supplements and other things, and it does have to be more deep than that. You have to have great reviews, social kind of what I call equity, 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, and 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 Facebook, like, what people are going to see what their face, what people are actually saying. Is it actually getting spread? What's the social proof?

Those are going to be the kinds of things that I feel like anymore that's a consumer trend, I think that's safe to say. But I think it's interesting just, 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. I think you meant it both ways with the social proof part. High expectations, high demand customers. 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.

and they've made it both really easy and really hard for other businesses. 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. I can buy something in Amazon. I could do it while I'm talking right now, probably not even looking at the screen. Right, screen. And so you have to get that right. And that's some of the things that gets lost. It's like, we've got a great product and we'll get it out there. We'll run some Facebook ads and we'll run some Google ads and we'll do this cool video for our Facebook page. That's all great stuff. That's all great. But then you get to the site. It takes seven seconds to load.

It takes three minutes to load, it takes three minutes to get your credit card loaded in because there's nothing saved and you don't have the saved engine that brings up their credit cards or linkage to other systems. And this is why we push people to Shopify because they have a lot of this already worked out.

But people, it gets lost in the sauce sometimes if people fall in love with their own products. you know people get fall in love with their own products but they need to fall in love with the customer yeah that was good that should be a little tagline somewhere exactly exactly so i mean like you know when you're like a small to medium size 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 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 much. It's kind of the fear of missing out. Like everyone sees what anyone else is doing. They go, oh, I've got to have that. I've got to have that. There's so many bells and whistles. Like they're going to do these things.

Then suddenly a small business that can only 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. So we have a functional problem with the site. Okay, well, we need to look at the technology. 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 how we want people to think, feel, and act.

And that's a branding. That's not technology. That's branding. So there's so many layers to it as a company that e-commerce is the technology and where the sale happens all encompassing. And that's the interesting thing about e-commerce is it's all in one. I think people in businesses before, when you have brick-and-mortar stores and you have marketing and you have branding, there was an easier delineation in your mind for these channels and these things. Okay, we're building brand.

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. E-commerce gets this lump sum thing, and it somehow now encompasses the entire business. Right.

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 or 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 I 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 then versus branding? Because I think that segues really nicely into what you just said, and I kind of break that down a little bit. 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 that's, wow, these are really nice yoga pants and their 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 okay but we get michelle obama wearing those yoga pants.

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 like that, 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 bungees, yoga pants,

whatever they are. And she tells that story. That's brand. And that can drive sales. But the balance there is, unless you have a product that is solving a problem that no one, Uber, like 10 years ago, whatever, 10, 12, however long Uber's been around, immediate problem solver, no one else is 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 biggest learning curve in that is the lifetime value of the customer loyalty of 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 yeah and it's and it's expensive and so the answer to to that balance is you need to do both and what happens today though especially for anyone any of these you know venture-backed brands yeah it's like 80 performance 20 brand and then 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. They're like, why isn't this working? But what's our brand? Well, we don't really have one.

There's your problem. There's your problem. And so the companies that are finding that balance, and again, category specific, it can be 80-20 brand versus performance in certain sense. It could be 50-50. It could be 50-50. It could be 60-40. There's not a perfect formula, but brand and why people should buy from you beyond the product itself is really key.

It's getting mired and lost as more and more people are worried about ROI on day one. This is a long-term proposition. If 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. Oh, I'm running out of money. Well, you know what?

You need to have two businesses and two companies going. I mean, because it's just, it's a long game. Yeah. I got you. 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. Like, well well you know i'm gonna plug our own our own series here a little bit but it's actually the truth and it's you know it's lions not sheep so sean whalen's company um you know they're building you know his goal is to be doing a million dollars a month they're doing several hundred thousand dollars a month now with a pretty damn uh limited product like

they sell like 10 products. You know, I'm sure it's more than that. Someone's going, no, they have 14. Now they have 20. You know, like, but they're selling like water bottles, seven different t-shirts. The variations of women's and kids and all that, I'm sure the SKUs are more.

Right, 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. Right. And he's living the lions, not sheep brand. Yeah. 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, of, of e-commerce. Right. Like everything we're talking about.

Like there's like, there's the mousetrap of e-commerce. Right. You know, you got the Shopify site. It lookscommerce. You've 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 later on top, the purpose and the built-in audience that he brings every day. He brings that built-in audience. 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 someone might ask, well, I'm not Sean Whalen, and I'm not bold and talking all that. It still can be reverse engineered because you do need to have a brand and a reason i think that gets to your bigger point of branding in general because that's sean's brand right yeah 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 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 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,

otherwise you've got a bigger problem. And so you need to leverage their stories. 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, and how do you maximize that to then

sell more on e-commerce? I hear you. And then I guess to then sell more on e-commerce. Right, right, right. I hear you, I hear you. 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, then it's all about maximizing your list. I mean, we've talked about this. If you already have customers, you know, it's a little late to start to be trying to gain it gets really expensive the ads the ads go up in price even though they've been down a little bit because facebook and some of the the boycotts that have gone on but you know it's it's it's real expensive to be acquiring customers in the middle of it so So two suggestions. One, lean on your customers, be good to them,

have your messages in order effectively for your 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. Put your best offer out there. I'm not saying give away the farm. And I think it's real dangerous to 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 put your best foot out there so that you can acquire the customer via your product, but also the deal that they're getting. And I see companies and we've worked with companies that toil with this like, oh, we'll do 10%. No, we'll do 15. We'll go 15. If your margins are like 150%, then you need to do 30.

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 list. 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 us. Because if you've got sight coming to your traffic,

you need to be doing dynamic retargeting so that they see. 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. I'm not annoyed. And sometimes I'm 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, 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 other people are like, yeah. But, you know, it's relevant. You know, like if you were shopping for it, you're probably interested in it. And so have your retargeting 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, 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 I think 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 think I was that talking now. When's the next guest? Next week, oh, thank God. He doesn't think I was that talking now. 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.rad.cast. 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. 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 theradcast.com. Or follow our host at Ryan Alford on Instagram. Thanks for tuning in.