Can you massively increase perceived value or is it just American Hype | Norman Farrar

MarketingGrowth

17 Nov

Today’s Guest: Norman Farrar

Norman Farrar is an entrepreneur who provides online marketing and managed eCommerce solutions for brands. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies such as Coca-Cola, Mercedes-Benz and 20th Century Fox. Since the early 1990s, Norman has focused on helping entrepreneurs optimize their operations and unlock their business’s potential. Presently, he is the host of the popular Amazon podcast, Lunch with Norm.

Here’s a summary of the great stuff that we cover in this show:

Perceived Value is the customers' evaluation of the merits of a product or service, and its ability to meet their needs and expectations, especially in comparison with its peers. It is the overall customer experience from the second that they're typing what they're looking for into a search field.
With any business venture, you need to have the resilience and become the authority figure to really succeed and grow. But you also need to build your brand’s perceived value so that people want to keep coming back to your brand and your products.
It begins with competitor research and finding out what you can do to make your product stand out and what makes your product more value adding for the customer every single time and just doing it consistently.

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Matt Edmundson: Welcome to the eCommerce podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. The eCommerce podcast is all about helping you deliver eCommerce wow. And to help us do just that. I am chatting with my very special guest today, Norm Farrar from the Lunch with Norm Podcast about perceived value. Is it all just American hype or is there something to it?
We're gonna get into that. Uh, if this is your first time here, a warm welcome to you here, the eCommerce podcast. Uh, you can find the notes, the transcript, everything for free on our website, ecommercepodcast.net. And while you're there, you can sign up for our newsletter, and each week we will email you, uh, the links, the notes, the transcript from the conversation.
You can get that totally to your inbox, totally free. Totally amazing. Love that technology. So make sure you sign up for that. This episode is brought to you by the e-commerce cohort, uh, which helps you to deliver e-commerce Wow to your customers. Now, I was on a podcast earlier on Norm, and they said to me, You know, some of the biggest lessons that you've learned, I said, Well, one of the most expensive mistakes was when I got siloed in e-commerce.
In other words, I just worked on one or tw areas of my business and I missed the bigger picture. Well enter e-commerce cohort to solve this problem. It is a membership group, uh, with guided monthly sprints that cycle through all the key areas of e-commerce. So the sole purpose of cohort is to provide you with clear actionable jobs to be done so you'll know what to work on as well as get the support you need to get it done.
So whether you are just starting out in e-commerce or if like me, Well, a well established eCommercer, I would encourage you to definitely check it out. ecommercecohort.com is the website. Uh, more information is available, uh, on the site. Explains it in much better vernacular than I've just used. But go ahead, check it out ecommercecohort.com. If you're involved in e-commerce, you'll probably want to join, so head on over there.
Let's chat with Mr. Norman Farrar. He is an entrepervert. An entrepervert, or an entrepreneur. Take your pick. We don't mind. who provides online marketing and managed e-commerce solutions for brands.
Check this out, folks. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies such as Coca-Cola, Mercedes-Benz, and 20th Century Fox, uh, since the early 1990s, Norm focused on helping entrepreneurs optimize their operations and unlock their business potential. Presently, he is the host of the popular Amazon Podcast Lunch With Norm.
I actually have been on Norm's podcast. That's how we met. We had a great time and a great conversation, and I knew actually following on from that conversation, we needed to get you onto the eCommerce podcast cause I thought. You've got some great value to add to what we do here, so thank you for coming on.
Great to, great to see you again. How are we doing?
Norm Farrar: Uh, it's the first time I've ever been called an entrepervert.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm not sure if I, how I would feel about that. Uh, so I'm sorry about that.
You can put that on your business cards going forward.
Norm Farrar: Exactly.
Matt Edmundson: Now, if you are listening to the podcast, the one thing that you won't know about Norm, uh, is Norm has the most incredible beard you have ever seen. Right? And so, uh, and actually in all your branding is obviously, you know, the beard is a, is a big feature Norm. It's something that you are remembered by. So how long have you done the beard thing?
I'm curious.
Norm Farrar: Well, uh, I've done it. About five years. I've burnt it off right down the middle. Cooking hamburgers one night. So I looked like you and it took about two and a half years to grow back. Yeah. That portion of it. But, uh, yeah, it's, yeah, it's been growing for a long time.
Matt Edmundson: Wow. Well, it's great, man. I, I have beard envy, I'm not gonna lie.
Uh, it's, uh, it's an awesome, it's an awesome piece of it. So, whereabouts in the world are you, Let's tell the good folks a bit about you. Whereabouts are you?
Norm Farrar: I live in a very small town about two hours north of Toronto.
Matt Edmundson: Okay. And so is it colder for you than it is for me? You must be quite far north, right?
Norm Farrar: Uh, don't even bring that up.
I had a foot of snow last night. Oh.
Matt Edmundson: It's definitely colder for you than it is for me. That's impressive. Foot of snow. Yeah.
Norm Farrar: Not happy.
Matt Edmundson: No. Well, you know, uh, it's, it's always nice speaking to people that maybe have slightly colder weather than what we have here in England. I, I feel slightly better about myself.
Uh, it doesn't happen often, . So how did you, how did you get started with, um, let's start with the podcast. What kick started that? The lunch with Norm podcast?
That's
Norm Farrar: a covid thing. I had my kids back, so I had to, my three boys, we were outside, two of us were smoking cigars and uh, anyways, uh, we were just talking and phone rang and started helping out somebody.
And then phone rang again. Somebody had a problem. Phone rang three times while we were having the cigar. And my one son. You know, you should do a podcast or something. And I, anybody who knows me, especially back then, I'm scared to death talking. I don't like public speaking. I don't, Oh really? I would never, ever have done a podcast.
I don't like it. Um, now, It's different. Uh, I've done it enough that, uh, you know, I'm okay. But back then it was, I couldn't even watch, like the first time we did it, our guest showed up late. So people position dropped to the floor not knowing what to say, you know, just, just feeling sick, like, oh, he was like, pure, you know, that you're just kind of pulling myself back up to the chair.
But, uh, that's how I got started. It was the guys, my boys, and then we tried to find different angles. So, uh, we, you know, we wanted it to sound, uh, professional. So my son is a musician. He put every, everything together, the graphics Kelsey did. Then we came up with this thing called Wheel of Kelsey, and. It's a giveaway that we give out every, every, every episode.
You saw that And, yeah. Yeah. This kind of people know us now for, you know, information and also this Wheel of Kelsey thing.
Matt Edmundson: It's brilliant because your podcast is, is live, right? It's an interactive live podcast. And so people get to comment, they go on this, uh, Wheel of Kelsey and you pick out a winner and the winner will usually win something.
Uh, I thought it was all good fun and obviously you, you draw in an audience, but you are prolific, right? This is not like once a month you are doing this. This is, this is quite a regular podcast, right?
Norm Farrar: Three times a week. Yep. Live at noon, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. It's, it's a bit of work.
Matt Edmundson: Does it, does it suck the life out of you, or do you find an energy in it now?
Norm Farrar: Oh. It's like I own a variety of different businesses. I find good people. I can, I can oversee the larger picture, but they run the business for me. And that's the same thing with lunch with Norm. When I go and sit down with somebody, I get the, uh, the facts or the bio or the information about who I'm interviewing, about five to 10 minutes before I get in, and I, I talk.
So everything is done where we've got a VA sending out and looking out, like outreach to try to find people. Uh, we have back and forth, you saw probably the, uh, emails that went back and forth mm-hm, uh, to try to get the information. Uh, and then, uh, Kelsey comes on and he takes care of, you know, all the back and forth.
So we have a producer, which is him, and then one other person that does the outreach. And then we do have, we spend a lot of time and money on, um, social media. So we have another person doing that as well. Mm-hmm. . But, uh, yeah, my, my role in this, I, because I, I can't spend hours doing it every day. Uh, mine is sit down Monday, Wednesday, Friday for an hour, and I'm, I get prepped about 10 minutes beforehand.
Matt Edmundson: That's fantastic. And, and you do, you just have these conversations with people, don't you? And it, it's really intriguing where it goes.
Norm Farrar: It's just what we didn't want it to be is like, uh, we, we just wanted a casual, um, Very casual interview and, uh, I used to have this other pod, like I told you before, I hated podcasts.
Well, we didn't launch one, We launched two. That's the sign behind me. Uh, it's called, I Know This Guy. And all it was, was talking about the, uh, the, the person's, uh, their backstory, but I called it failure to Succeed. What it takes, Like what was your failure that brought you to where you are right now. Yeah, and it's kind of interesting that that happened.
It was just so casual. We were bringing out all this information and. We just kind of applied it over to lunch with Norm. It's just sit back, relax, we go down a ton of different rabbit holes. And at the end of the day, you know, uh, we've got a really great community that, uh, that is very engaging. So we know a lot of people by name.
We know where they live. We, you know, it's, it's a, it's a really engaged community.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, it is. It is. And so, um, who, who's the podcast aimed at?
Norm Farrar: Well, we're, we're trying to mix it up. So originally it was Amazon FBA sellers. Yeah. Uh, however, the bigger audience and where people are going. So it's evolved, especially over covid.
What we're finding is the people who have been on Amazon, uh, they're tired of being a one-legged stool. Mm-hmm. , Amazon can come and they. You know, close their account down or they can make it tougher. Put inventory restrictions on so they needed to spread out. Okay. What's the next step? Okay. Walmart, Shopify.
Uh, today we had a really great guest, Steve Lieberman on about SEO content marketing. Mm-hmm. so, um, Anyways, uh, we are, we are still targeting Amazon. Our audience is made up a third a third a third. People who know very little are just coming off of a course, the intermediate and then the advance we've got.
Mm-hmm. , I know for a fact we've got some sellers that are a million dollars a month. Uh, I know one person that's there who, um, has had over a billion dollars in sales. Actually, there's a couple people. A billion dollars in sales. And um, you know, I've sat down, I like, after I heard about them because we interview some of our brands sometimes that, that are listeners and to hear their stories and you're sitting there going, Oh my gosh.
First of all, you gotta become on the podcast. You gotta tell me your story and tell me what I need to know because yeah, I can learn so much from all these other people.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Yeah. And in interviewing people that have turned, you know, sold a billion dollars of products through Amazon, uh, what are some of the lessons that you've learned?
Norm Farrar: Resilience, number one. So, you know, I always say, uh, when you, and it doesn't have to be Amazon, it could be with licensing, it could be with any business venture that you get into that you have to become that authority figure. Because authority figures, uh, build trust, but the resilience factor comes in is when you get hit between the legs and you drop to your knees and you think it's over for me.
And to be able to stand up and do it again. Yeah. And you know, a hundred times over when you say, Please kick me between the legs, um, you know, . But that's it. What I found is that first of all, It's being resilient. Second of all, it's being the authority. Yeah. Authority equals trust equals sales and jumping on opportunities.
So don't say no, you don't have to go after every shiny object. Mm-hmm. . But you have a system in place, systems standard operating, uh, systems so you can automate and scale your business. Mm-hmm. . And then at the end of the. You just wanna make sure that you have what we'll be talking about in a bit, building a brand, building perceived value, that people want to come back based on a customer experience.
That's, that's everybody I've talked to is basically the same.
Matt Edmundson: Well, that's, It's a mic drop moment, isn't it? I don't have a mic in my hand, but it's that kind of. It's, it's funny, isn't it? How, um, when you talk to people who were mega successful, um, and you are kind of curious as to how they did it. It's, it's not, it's not rocket science.
There's just consistency. Like you say, there's resilience right place, right time. Um, there's, there's no real silver bullet. Is there, Uh, I dunno if you've, if you've sort of found this, . But there is something quite inspiring, usually about the person that you are talking to. There's usually some massive obstacle they've had to overcome.
Yeah. Uh, and you, and you think, Wow, okay. That's maybe why you are where you are at. Right. .
Norm Farrar: Yeah. Um, and the other part to this is I think every major seller or every major business person I've ever met is in that give to get. So they share. So they're either mentoring people or they're starting out and they're looking for mentor, they're going to campaigns, they're trying to become excellent in whatever they're doing, and they're not afraid to share that information.
Matt Edmundson: Mm. Yeah, that's a very good point actually. That is a very good point. Um, uh, thank you for bringing that up. So let's talk then about, um, perceived value. I said to you, I said, Norm, we need to get you on the show. Uh, we decided to get you to come on the show without any idea of what we're gonna talk about.
I just knew we'd have a great conversation. Uh, and you said, Well, let's talk about perceived value, uh, and how to double your profits in a month on Amazon, and is it all American hype which I thought was great. So hence the reason why I brought that at the start. Um, so let, What do you mean when you talk about perceived value?
Norm Farrar: I'm talking about the overall customer experience from the second that they're typing what they're looking for into a search field, seeing the products, and look, when you're going on to Amazon, I'll just, and I'm gonna use Amazon, but it could be any platform. It could be Walmart, it could be on Google, it could be anything.
But when you, when you have the search results, Which one are you gonna click on? Mm-hmm. . It doesn't have to be the reviews. The very first thing you're gonna be looking at is either there's something different in that image. So either it's going left or right, and everybody else is going right to left. Uh, you know, something that brings out a, could be color, it could be the quality of the overall, um, image.
It's usually that the one that stands out is the person that split test that image. Against three or four other images that they may have had in product photos. Does it have, is it doing, The customer research is going left to right, Right to left. Is it filling the frame? Is it Sometimes every one of the products is filling the frame, so you make it a little bit smaller.
That's really bizarre cuz everybody says, Oh, you gotta fill the frame. Mm-hmm. . Try making a bit smaller to draw your attention. It might be all, all the boxes are black. Well make it with a one with a yellow stripe. Something to grab the eye. Yeah. The other thing is some are just great with just having the product, others with the packaging, some with having the cap off or cap on.
Uh, it's, it's, it's just the perfect, uh, product photo. That's where I start. And within the product photo. There's other things. So on Amazon, if you think about it, or Shopify, you have a storyboard. So it's a slide deck and a lot of people just throw it up there. Mm-hmm. , a lot of people will put a book up there, like you're reading a book and you've seen it.
It's a book. Nobody's gonna read your book. That's over for like, that's. on the bullet points, what you do is you highlight information, but like Burt's Bees does this real uh, uh, uh, really does this well. Yeah. Where they have a chocolate or a honey, uh, Burt's beeswax, Right. Or uh, you know, the lip balm.
Yeah. They don't anything. Except high, high, high quality graphics that bring out, like you want to eat the picture, you know, the chocolate or whatever illustration that they have. Well, it's the same thing here. It's being able to bring across that storyboard where, okay, what is the benefit? Why am I buying, What pain point am I solving that a lot of people put out the features?
Well, okay, that's nice, but make that a second or third, or third or fourth pitch. Yeah. Lifestyle pictures. Showing somebody that you've solved their problem, that they're happy. A lot of the times I see the people that have used user generated content, and it's like grumpy old men, like , Why? Why did you put that picture up there?
Yeah. Yeah. Make sense? And then a video. Uh, everything is video nowadays, so you wanna make sure that you have, it doesn't have to be a Hollywood production. There's tons and tons of really good, uh, video, uh, content out there that you, or video apps that you can get very inexpensive. And Amazon has their own video creator right now, which is new, that you can go in there, put in some slides, make it into a gif or gif, whatever you wanna call it, and put, you know, The bullet points there, so everything's pointing that way.
But the next step with this, and you don't have to do it right off the bat, I do, when I do my product research, I know that if I'm gonna buy a thousand or something, I wanna be the best out there. I know I can get sales right off the bat because I'm gonna do that research, I'm gonna do the slides, the slide deck properly, and I'm gonna spend the time to be different.
And let me, let me use a case study. I just, That'd be amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Beforehand, but there's, there's actually two that are really crazy, but the first one is every single search, every single search that you look at on Amazon, you'll see that people enter into three different price points. You've got.
Usually the Chinese manufacturers who just are remming it through at the lowest price, they don't care about images. They, everything is the lowest. Yeah. And sometimes you'll see that people are using the same manufacturer's pictures, which is kind of funny. But, um, Dead Sea Mud is one that I took a look at just recently.
Dead Sea Mud enter, the entry point is $6 and 78 cents around a $14 range. Mm-hmm. , that's your first price. Tier eight ounce to 16 ounce. The next tier up is 24 to 44. And the same thing, 16 ounce. But what you'll notice is those pictures, and if you click into those listings, they're much better research.
They've got better quality design, and the packaging is starting to take, uh, it's not just in a, uh, an ugly white plastic jar. Yeah. Then the highest one, and this was unbelievable, $78 to $95. And the $95 brand was 3.5 ounces. Wow. But it was really, it looked great. It was just in, in a frosted glass, um, container.
It looked really high end. It was everything about the listing and everything about the images were high perceived value. Now, there's a trick here. If your images are and you have great perception, then that's great. You'll end up with a very high, um, user or uh, uh, customer experience. If you have really great pictures and your product is terrible, expect one star reviews all the way, people are gonna be very upset.
Yeah. And then at the end, you're doing yourself a disservice if you're coming in at price level two or one with really crappy images and you've got a really great product. If you're going in, That's why I say you have to go in at the tier level that you wanna achieve. Yeah. Now perceived value. Everything.
Every time I look at it comes down to the brand. Is the brand consistent? If I go in and coffee mug rise of the micro brands, that's what we are on Amazon. Everybody is a micro brand. They're not a huge brand. Nobody knows you. What are they gonna do? They're gonna search you on Google. Mm-hmm.. Okay. If you come up and you're not consistent, if, if you've got certain colors and now.
If they're completely different or using 10 different fonts or you don't have a great message out there, people are looking for red flags. And if you don't become the authority or if you don't become trustworthy. So authority equals trust equals sales people will click off very quickly, so you don't have to have an expensive website, one pager.
Just make it look nice. Yeah, you don't have to have a ton of social media. Pick one. Make it look nice, Do a press release, write a bit of content, become the authority. So once people see that and they go back, now they wanna make sure, okay, it looks great. The packaging, the overall like, Like let's say there's an outside package and an outer package, that's gonna be a lot.
Most people don't, especially in the beauty category, don't even put package. It costs pennies to create a really beautiful package. And I'll give you an example about that one. So, uh, I was working with a knife company and they came in a, just a plastic clam shell. Cost of the knife was 16 bucks. Mm-hmm, he was selling it at $49.
He was making money. Mm-hmm. However, I looked at it and I said, Why don't we put it in a different package? Let's make it a rigid box. People, when they open it up, it kind of unveils the, the product. Mm-hmm. , and then there's a nice message there. You have a sheath. Um, but it's just everything is, is a nicer look.
And we improved the images. Well, we, we were able to take that from $49 up to $124. Wow. And the traffic didn't drop. It was, it was very low decrease. So this guy went from 49 to 124, and then I said, like, I, I knew the manufacturer. I said, This is the same knife at $16. Why don't we hammer it instead of have these 67 layers of steel, why don't we hammer it and put it into a wood container and see what we can do with it?
So, Hammered the steel and it looked like it was completely different. It was still $16 and we, we brought it out at $224. Wow. That's perceived value. The wood case cost us a couple of bucks. It was like, I think it was $3 with all the packaging included for an extra a hundred on top of the a hundred.
That's incredible. Yeah. And those are the things that you're, you're looking at. So if you took a look at this, what did the what? What did the message like when the customer received it, it comes down now to building the brand to do it for every product that you have with that brand. So, The person received this outer box, which looked like an iPhone box.
It had a silhouette of, uh, the knife on the one side, and then it had a full color. Uh, it, it looked like a full color knife on the other side. When they opened it up, there was a, it was a black package with yellow, so it stood out. Every other knife was in a black package. We just put a yellow strip on it, so, Oh, yep.
There's a, it, your eye is drawn to it and it's magnetic glass. You open it up. People love the customer experience. And then we had an insert in there that drove them over to a 52, uh, week meal plan, and we took, we went to culinary schools with it, and we gave them all these students. One condition that they give us recipes and they hold up the knife.
And so now we started to get, and all these young guy, I'm an old guy, everybody's on social media tagging each other with these knives, sharing these recipes, and he was able to take those recipes with permission. Put them on Amazon for his user generated content and in Amazon Post, which is Amazon Social Media.
Mm-hmm, which he had one image that had 200,000 impressions. Wow. What did that do for his sales? Mm-hmm. So I'm not gonna go down the, like, that's something else that is really cool, but you get lots of, um, you can convert very easily using these Amazon sales, uh, the way that Amazon set it up. But because he built in this customer experience because, Instead of the knife, just in a plastic container, you put Eva foam around it.
So it's a dye cut with an area for your finger to go in to pop up the knife to make sure that it had this really beautiful sheath. Now what did he do? He came out with a multipurpose knife, a paring knife, a bread knife. Now the whole, every single one is consistent with the brand. He's got thousands and thousands and thousands of emails every time he wants to, uh, sell another.
It's a no brainer. He can sell it for 10%, send it out there, 10% off, and he's got a ton of people with his launch because people know the brand. It's consistent. So that's a few things. Now the other thing is safety, so, or the little things I call it. So I own a soap company. Mm-hmm. And one of the little things that we do is we write an individual note to every person that buys the soap.
There's lots of soap. Mm-hmm. there's thousands and thousands of orders coming in. How do you do it? We don't. We order them from China. We order our notes and there's, we, they're all generic notes. Mm-hmm. Oh, thanks so much for your soap. Enjoy your day. Okay. 20,000 of those come in at a time and you know, it costs us pennies.
Mm-hmm. we put them in each order and guess what? On our reviews. Oh. It's such, such a nice personal touch that this company gave us a personalized note. Yeah. You know, making sure, And this is psychological. Shampoo. You wanna talk about perceived value again, somebody goes and they, I, I don't know about you, but you're reaching for shampoo.
Now, don't make any jokes about hair . I have to wash my beard. So you're, you got your shampoo and it's got the same cap as your conditioner, or they're in the same bottle. Well make one cap different or make the color of the bottle a little bit different. So, you know. Oh, that's the conditioner. That's the shampoo.
Yeah. Yeah. Psychological thing. Shrink wrap. You know, just, uh, especially like supplements. I don't know about you, but nowadays if you don't see that seal or if you don't see the shrink wrap, you get nervous. Yeah. Yeah. You get nervous. So all these little things add up and then, Pricing optimization. Mm-hmm.
you, you have to play with that at launch. I have a trick. I take a look at that second tier level, and there's lots in between. Mm-hmm. , the first and the second, and the second and the third. But let's say it's that 24 to $44 level. Is it a second? Is the second row? Mm-hmm. I give a coupon that shows my, my mine is in the upper side, so let's say it's $124 that I'm selling it for, and it has dropped to 99, so it's 99 to 124.
I'll give a 20 or $30 coupon that could drop it down to the second. So people look at it and they go, Wow, I can get this high perceived. So this first tier product, And it's only gonna cost me in that second tier. Mm-hmm. it's, it's a psychological thing, but if you go back to the Dead Sea, let's say I can get that $95, uh, Dead Sea Mud for $48, I would do it.
Yeah. You know, you see the big slash It's 50% off now. Yeah. With the knives, it's not that much, it's not that big a dramatic difference. With Dead Sea mud it is.
Matt Edmundson: That's really interesting, Norm. So I, I feel like I could listen to your stories all day long. Um, you're in essence taking products, which people are selling on Amazon and going, How can I add value to this?
So the knife was in effect, the same, The, the Dead Sea Mud is in fact the same mud in all of the, the, the products. But the way you've, the way you've charged it, the way you do it is you're asking yourself, Well, how can I improve it? How can I modify it? How can I increase the perceived value of this? And there's a lot of lessons I think to learn here, uh, on that, whether it's Amazon or whether it's across eCommerce.
It's like, um, how can I reinvent this product or what can I add to it? And I love that example that you talked about with a knife. You know, this one's got a sheath and a nicer box. This one's got a wooden box and we've smacked it a little bit with a hammer. Um, it's just, it's. It's really fascinating. So is, is it the way your brain works?
Do you just see something on Amazon and instantly know I can increase value here despite dot, dot, dot?
Norm Farrar: I think it's the time we take on doing competitive analysis and asking our manufacturer, we, we had no idea that, What the heck is a hammered Damascus knife? Yeah. I, I've never, you know, heard of it. We asked them, what can we do different?
And they just happened to have this, Oh, well we have this knife and we have this knife. Yeah. Other same price. Um, I, this is, um, this is another quick one that I absolutely love. We had a person approach and say that they, over 18 months, they sold 1000 box. This was toe fungus remover. That's sexy.. Okay. Toe fungus.
Wow. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, I got excited. Uh. So why wasn't it moving anyways? Well, I knew why it wasn't moving because the box was powder blue. Imagine this a powder blue box. With a yellow, It was a yellow circle with a foot with toe fungus. Okay. Yellow and underneath it were two yellow drops that looked like it was oozing out of the toe fungus and the logo, you could not read, you couldn't read it if you wanted to.
You couldn't even read what this was for. So it. Then when you opened it up in a cheap tuck box, like a cart stock tuck box, these two bottles popped out. They were brown and they had sort of the same look on these bottles. They were ugly. They were absolutely, nobody would buy them. So we said, Okay, this really looks like it's medicinal.
You know, it looks ugly. It looks like you gotta put your head between your knees and kinda walk in or head down into a pharmacy. No, let's turn. When we did the product research, we found out that the same solution helps strengthen and beautify your nails. So now we said, Well, let's make this a wellness and health product.
So we did it, we turned it around and we put it in a white box. Greens, blues, no feet on it. Mm-hmm. We put the logo on it and we, you know, and loud and proud. It was a toe fungus remover, but, uh, everything was about beauty. Everything was about be beautiful nails, and it was a sideline being this toe fungus remover.
The first month we brought it out and they were in green bottles. By the way, this time, like really, it was, it looked really beautiful and when you opened it up, the, the bottle, the, the, We went from top opening up and kind of shaking it out to opening it up from the side and unveiling the product. Mm-hmm.
So there was a message there from the manufacturer, you know, talking about beautiful nails and how you can. Uh, you know, strengthen these nails on day to day usage. So that just increased cuz day to day usage is not just when you have to toenail fungus. We went the very first month we launched it, it went, uh, to $1,600.
The second month went to 28, the third month went to 68. 67 68, we topped off at $124,000 a month. Wow. And then it ran out of inventory. And this is all 100% because we just changed the perception of the product. Yeah. And it went from the, the, the guy, uh, the manufacturer or the brand, owner refused to allow me to put the price up.
He said, Nobody's going to get over $9.99. Well, yeah, the product looked great. If you wanna swim with this horrible looking competitors, go for it. We went from like, the average price was 9.99. We took it 24.99. Oh wow. And. The guy made a, a ton of money.
Matt Edmundson: That's really, Yeah. Fantastic. And yet another story. No.
Uh, of this whole idea of perceived value. And I can, I, I can, I know what people are thinking cuz I'm thinking the same thing. I'm thinking, Oh, I've got some products. How do I, how do I increase the value of this? Now you talked about doing competitor research. Is that where you start? Do you start looking around and go, Right, well I've got this product here, let me see what everybody else is doing and figure out how I can make this better?
Norm Farrar: Yes, absolutely. So it's not just on Amazon. Amazon's a good place to take a look, but, and to make, to look for different products too. Don't forget, you've got all these crowdfunding sites. You've got Shark Tank, you've got Dragons Den. Then you've got, uh, Kickstarter, you've got Indiegogo. You can check those out for really cool products and then improve on them.
And again, go back and ask the manufacturer or if you've got a plastic shoe stretcher that everybody else has, figure out how you can first, if is it a good product? Mm-hmm. . So if not competitors, see what, what their images are. See what the competitors are saying. What are the good things? What are the bad things?
What are the good things and bad things are they saying about your product? And try to improve on them. And that's one thing a lot of people forget every time you put in an. You should be improving. You should be evolving the product to be a little bit better each time. Is it on the packaging? Oh, the QR code.
Can I do something to grab an email address somehow? Uh, you know, and that's a, that's such an easy way to grab and maintain a customer. Getting a new customer is really tough. Repeat customers are uber easy. When you say, when you have a, when you drive them over to your website and it's a, a PDF on something stupid, um, are you gonna, will people nowadays give up their email or their phone number?
You have to make it something of either an added value, something that's gonna solve a problem, uh, like. The knife guy. Two recipe books that were rock solid. Uh, um, a weekly meal plan that gets sent to the person every week. And oh, by the way, this is what's happening. Oh, here's a recipe. It's just Now if we would've just with this, we could have done, uh, an extended warranty.
Mm-hmm. that's okay. But if you can find something that people want, In exchange for their email address. Man, that's where, I think the stats are. 40-44% of your sales can come from repeat customers just on email campaigns.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, that would be, I, I think it would depend on the industry, but yeah, I'd totally agree with you.
That would be my experience. Um, yeah. And you can grow more if you look after that customer well. Yeah, definitely. Oh. Yeah, totally. I mean, we saw our repeat customer rates go through the roof with one of the, with my beauty company that we sold last year. We saw the repeat order rates go go significantly higher when we took out of the boxes, you know, the big plastic bubbles and like the plastic pillows, we took those out because we realized people were a bit more sustainably minded and they were buying a gift for themselves. So we, we wrapped the whole, the whole order in tissue paper, but the packaging material, we took out the plastic bubbles and we put in popcorn.
Uh, and it was phenomenal. Uh, and the repeat rates went through, The people were posting pictures all on social media just because it had a much more interesting story. And so, um, I, I get the, the value of this perceived value Norm, you've, you've got my, um, you've got my gray matter. Uh, whatever the official term is.
Now Norm, listen, uh, one of the things that we touched on before the podcast that I really, I wanted to dig into for at least a couple of minutes, cause I'm aware of time here, but, um, you've got this mad influencer challenge, uh, going on and, um, just tell the good folks what, what this is, what your son's challenged you to.
Right. There seems to be a lot of stories Norm in your life where your son said you should do this, and you, you kind of go and do it.
Norm Farrar: I, I know, I gotta stop listening to them. So, on the Amazon side, I would consider myself somewhat of an influencer. Not the biggest, not the small kind of, you know, Goldilocks right in between.
Mm-hmm.. So I've got a really great following over there, but as a buyer, I don't have a single, not a single one follower, not one. So that's a problem. They told me about becoming an influencer and I said, There's no way that I can do just like the podcast. It was like, I'm not gonna do a podcast. And then I ended up doing it.
I ended up liking it. One of the things we were talking about is how influencers or this whole influencer side of things. Using influencers. How do you find them? Where do you find them? How do you communicate with them is very difficult or it looks like it's very difficult. Mm. I wanna end that. I want to go on TikTok.
It hasn't even started yet, by the way. Mm-hmm. . But I want go on TikTok. I wanna do a video diary just telling people this is what I did today, this is what I'm doing the next day. This is, and just keep going. 365 days showing people exactly what I did, how I did it, and to grow the base. But while I'm doing that, this is the stupid part.
I am becoming an influencer with no following. I am going out there doing the video diary and saying, Hey, if you wanna become an influencer, everybody's becoming an influencer. Everybody's got a podcast. All right, so now on the influencer side. It was tough to get an Amazon or affiliate account. It was confusing.
Maybe it's just cuz I'm old, but then the influencer side and you know, getting, getting to be approved. What did I need? What did I not need? What was the equipment that I needed? I had to build a studio just right over there. Um, that's different than the broadcast studio. Uh, what do we need for that? All the problems, all the hurdles that are happening and, alright, so they challenged me to go from zero to a hundred thousand followers.
So what I need to do is I need, I took the challenge up and I said like, I got nothing else to do.. Yeah, I'm going to become an Amazon influencer. I'm gonna go on TikTok, I'm gonna do Facebook, I'm gonna do YouTube, and I need product. Anybody, include anybody who's listening if you want free of charge. So I'm waiving set of fees.
I'm not doing this. I'm doing it more of a challenge. Set up fees, video production fees, uh, photo fees. If I write content, it's all waived. It's free. We're just doing it, and I'm just doing it all like every, every night or on the weekend, I'm just doing videos and videos and videos and hopefully people like what I'm doing and they see the products and they give me a follow, or they put me into a group that want to get deals and I, you know, pick up some followers that way.
Yeah, that's my challenge. So it's called Lunch with Norm deals, uh, you'll be seeing it more the, the web, the actual website is gonna be launching probably next week. Okay. I just started going on to Amazon Live and we're planning the TikTok video journal, uh, probably starting next week.
Matt Edmundson: Wow. So by the time this podcast comes out, that will in theory be all live and so people can go and follow you and connect with you and, and see what the hell's going on.
Norm Farrar: Yeah. And oh, I should mention the only thing. So it is not like there's a, a string attached, but we are charging if there, it's all performance based. So if you get no sales and you just get, you know, a video out of it, that's fine. But if you do get sales, we charge 10%. And the reason we're absorbing all the charges for any paid advertising, any, anything.
So my focus is building up this challenge. We're not, and this isn't a course. It's, This is strictly a challenge that I'm trying to do to see if I can, I can do it. That's it.
Matt Edmundson: Sounds fantastic. I'm, I'm gonna be following along. Norm, I'll be one of your followers. Uh, I'll be, I'll be commenting in there. No problem.
All right, great. That sounds great. So, Norm, listen, you know, uh, this show is sponsored by the eCommerce cohort, right? Which is all about using coaching and peer mentoring to deliver eCommerce Wow. So I want you to imagine you are stood in a room full of cohorters. You've just delivered your. speech, you've show, you've told your stories, you've shown photographs of the Dead Sea mud and the knives and all that sort of stuff.
The Crowd is giving you a standing ovation. It's going wild. Yeah. Go Norm. Uh, and you're, you're up there and you go, Well actually, uh, I'm here thankfully because of dot, dot, dot. And so you get a chance to thank, uh, those folks who have had a big impact on your life. You know, family, mentors, authors, software, podcasters, et cetera.
I'm curious to know who is on the list of people you are thanking and why?
Norm Farrar: Probably outside of family, probably the number one, and I highly recommend this. Always trying to improve. So the biggest improvement, the biggest group of people that I can think is something called EO. It's an association that I, 27 years ago I got involved with.
They're still around. They're a big organization where you have a monthly meeting, but then you have a forum group, our forum group still meets 27 years later. Wow. And it's like your board of advisors. So if something comes up, if you have a problem, they will help you out. Um, and also just the absolute knowledge and meeting people.
They have universities, they call universities that you go to different cities and you learn, uh, from other business people. Um, just how to operate your business and run your business properly. So that's, that's. That's one. But within the group, I mean, just there's so many people, so many individuals that I've been able to, to meet and talk to and expand.
You are who you hang around with, you know? Absolutely. People talk together and I got to meet so many people. So the, that's probably my number one. If I was gonna thank anybody, it's, uh, entrepreneurial organization. It's called EO.
Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. Yeah, I love those sort of coaching mentoring groups that have been around for a while and you know each other well.
Uh, and you know, each other's got your back. That's just brilliant. That's fantastic. Listen, Norm, it's been an absolute pleasure. Honestly, I've loved hearing your stories. I feel like I've got, you know, a thousand more questions. I'd love to pick your brains on it some more, some time. But for now, uh, because of time, how do people reach you?
How do people connect with you if they want to do so?
Norm Farrar: Well, uh, I'll make it really easy. Norm@amz.club, not.com or that would be going to Amazon, so.
Matt Edmundson: AMZ.Club. And of course if you're from the uk, that's AM Zed dot Club. True which is how the Queen would say it, Well, had, sorry. That's how she would've said it. That's probably slightly disrespectful now being the Queen's English. So Norm, thank you so much for joining. As we will of course put Norm's email in the show notes along with a link to his podcast, uh, which you can get for free, along with a transcript, ecommercepodcast.net, or if you'll subscribe to the email, it will come direct to your inbox, uh, at some point this week.
Yes, it will. So, uh, Norm, listen seriously, man, really appreciate it. It's been great getting to know you, uh, to connect both on your podcast and on this one. It's been an absolute treat and an absolute pleasure. Thank you so, so much for coming onto the show.
Norm Farrar: Oh, you're very welcome. And we gotta get you back on lunch with Norm.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, well, we'll be doing this again. I'm sure we'll be going back and forth. It won't be the first time or the last time rather. Uh, so there you have it. What a phenomenal conversation. Again, huge thanks to Norm for joining me today, and also a big shout out to today's show sponsor the e-commerce cohort.
Do head over to ecommercecohort.com for more information about this new type of e-commerce community you can join, Be sure to follow the e-commerce podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we've got yet more great shows, more great conversations lined up, and I definitely don't want you to miss any of them.
And in case, dear listener, no one has told you yet today, you are awesome. Yes you are. It's just a burden you have to bear. Norm has to bear it. I have to bear it. You've gotta bear it. We may as well just suck it up and get on with it. Uh, the eCommerce podcast is produced by Aurion Media. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app.
The team that makes this show possible is Sadaf Beynon, Josh Catchpole, Estella Robin and Tim Johnson. Our theme song is written by Josh Edmundson and My Good Self. And as I mentioned, if you would like to read the transcript or show notes, head over to the website ecommercepodcast.net where you can also sign up for the weekly newsletter and get all of this good stuff direct your inbox totally for free.
That is it from me and that is it from Norm for this week. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world, I'll see you next time. Bye for now.
Norm Farrar: Thank you.