What Are You Taking From 2020 into 2021 (Part 2)

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Introduction to the episode
hello and welcome to the ecommerce podcast with me your host matt edmondson this is a show
all about how to grow your own online business yes every week i get to talk to amazing
people from the world of e-commerce i get to ask them all kinds of questions about
what they know and how it's going to help us develop online because like you i run my own
e-commerce business and so i definitely definitely want to know how that's going to work out for us right now
historically we've had one guest per show okay but this being the end of and the
start of we have been doing something a bit different and if you're regular to the show you will know we have been doing mashup
episodes where we've had guests from the last months come back onto the show and we've asked them a
whole bunch of questions and put them together in some mashup episodes now today we're talking about
lessons that they have learned from that they are taking forward into and how those lessons can help
us grow our own online businesses our own business resilience in now in today's show we've got
part two of some great tips from jesse shobo good to have him back on the show al mccann's
back as is tim hughes we've got brad weyland we've got joanna steele we've got simon
driscoll and kath pay i mean this is so jam-packed you are absolutely not
going to want to miss this so make sure whatever you use to take your notes you've got it available but of course if you cannot take notes
you'll be pleased to know that all of the notes from today's show will be available as a free download
just head on over to our website which is ecommercepodcast.net forward slash and you will be able to
download them this is episode number so ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
so let's start the show let's kick off in good fashion shall we uh by bringing in the
amazing jesse schoeberg now i spoke to jesse back in episode number about outsourcing
your uh e-commerce business how do i outsource stuff so you can build your e-commerce business right
at the time jesse was living in the philippines doing the digital nomad thing so i was curious to know how jesse was
doing and also well basically where in the world he now was what are your plans for next year
Jesse Schoberg, CEO at DropInBlog
what are you what are your big aims for next year yeah our main focus for next year is
building out integrations with as many platforms as possible because we found that our while while we
work with anything more or less or custom coded stuff that people made in node or whatever
react uh those kind of things but we found that the the real sweet
spot here is these integrations with these platforms so using the thinkific example right as you mentioned everybody's making courses now
they actually just got a huge uh load of funding uh recently as well because it's
this online course thing is just going crazy and but yeah of course people need a blog and then in this case
for them having a blog is just a thorn in the side right it's like they want to have a teaching platform with the subscription
service they don't care about making you a content platform so we kind of pull that thorn out of their side and
can work as a partnership there and that works really well so yeah we've got as i mentioned about
that we're targeting different platforms and kind of just like i preach content
content content so for us we've done really well with organic and and cranking out the content
so this year is going to be the you know we're at that point where like our product
we're working on our product and you know trying to work out the fine details but you know
we're past the we're not in the beta stage anymore this is a this is a very solid product that that
is being used widely now so now we're in that growth phase of like okay how do we get this to the most
people and and that kind of thing and it's it's through these partnerships of the the integration so yeah we're going to
be cranking out content we've got a content marketing plan pretty much for the whole next year that's going to be our main
let me just clarify you you've defined your content marketing plan already for
yep wow and i mean it's long play but you know for us we have it's basically integrating all
these platforms so we're going to have tutorials on every single platform and we have this now but only on a handful i think we maybe have
six or eight platforms to find and some of them we need to actually build an integration module like some sort of
an app or something but most of them it's just copy and paste our code and wherever it needs to go in the builder
or the platform and so but by creating a how to put a blog on x platform then that starts to get us that
traffic and then you know we build out a lot of content around how to use our product with the platform and that kind of thing and then
so that's kind of our main focus for the year is is building out content related to as many of those platforms as we can
and just going after it hard with the content yep and so you've you've got a team to do
that you're saying yeah yeah so uh we've got uh
you know we've got a couple of writers uh we've got some more technical and and some more kind of topical i guess
and there's a different you know our content plan has a we have some technical stuff and then we have some more kind of
uh less technical kind of fluffy pieces that that are more the lead magnet stuff
and yeah so we've got a couple of people doing that and then editor and then
that's kind of it for the content team i guess and then the the rest is kind of dev
side and we're we're working on adding a few new things to the platform from the dev side
and uh you know always just trying to make it faster and and make it uh you know as
clean as possible so that the integrations are really tight and everything looks really great when you
first drop it in because sometimes there might be a css conflict or something and so we're always trying to
work out those things so there's this little extra work to do and you're literally like five minutes away from
like a beautiful looking blog platform and so that comes with some challenges when you're integrating with all of
these yeah can you imagine geez yeah yeah so i guess let me ask you a a question i
think i know what your answer is going to be but um and it's not it's not necessarily related to christmas or new year but my
question is this if someone's listening to the show that hasn't really done any content marketing
to this point are they and they're sitting there thinking well the content marketing thing that's kind of set
it's kind of saturated the content marketing thing's kind of saturated is it too late to get going um
i mean it's obviously never too late to add more quality content to the internet and
that's kind of the thing uh you know especially if it can be daunting as if you're in a
niche that's very competitive you know that's where it can get tough if there's already a lot of big players
doing content in your category that that it's gonna make it really hard to rank uh
but in that case i generally say niche down a little bit you know it's like oh you don't just do
blankets you know you do red camping blankets or you know this kind of stuff and you start targeting
stuff that way there's a lot of great tools out there that can be without like if if uh like ahrefs is probably the
the biggest one and that that we use and and you know then you can see the keyword competition related to these things so
if you're just getting started i i suggest using some uh something like ahrefs where you can
kind of put in some of the keywords that are relevant to your products and then kind of see what the
what the competition is and then go after stuff that's lower competition since you're you're just getting started and then as
your site gets a higher uh domain rank then you'll be able to play
a little bit more with the big boys and some of those tougher keywords but yeah go for the low-hanging fruit and you know you'd be surprised
i mean we have some customers and that are in very like small niches that you
think even when you check some of the keyword tools and the amount of traffic and you think you know searches a month or whatever
like who cares why go after it well if nobody answers that question correctly
or has the right product on that result and you can get become the first result because there's not a relevant one
now you just sold things you know and so every single month and you're just
printing that cash and so that's uh i think people often overlook going after the these
more long tail uh phrases and starting there because that's where there's always there's always room there
and hey maybe you're not gonna make a million dollars off of that but you know those add up and then yeah
also that's a good way to get your feet wet and kind of feel some reward from okay cool we're ranking on this we're getting some traffic we've got some
sales and now every month we're selling of that thing that we weren't selling any of before and the great thing about organic
is it it just keeps coming you know fantastic and if you want to know i will link to
er hrefs in the show notes as well as jess's dropping blog you can check all that information
out jesse what's some of the best content marketing strategies you've seen this year
what what are some of the ones that have really stood out to you yeah i think the best ones are have have
been probably this uh longer tail stuff as i was just mentioning uh because
there's been content marketing has been really big for a few years kind of as you had asked or mentioned before is like is it too
late kind of thing and you know the big players they're they're doing great and they're doing a
lot of good content and the the high competition stuff it's hard and but you know where i've seen a lot
of as people have been shifting to online more and all these new players coming in and i've definitely seen the most success in this longer
tail stuff and uh a big kind of drive there as well as quality quality quality
you know it used to be there's a lot of guys with these like amazon affiliate sites who are just pumping out crap content
trying to rank everyone and it was kind of like working and then but then some people actually build some
real content and google's getting really good at telling what's actually really good
quality content and so it's try not to shortcut on that and and make really good content and
it's you know it's better to to make one really really good article that's in depth and really answers those
questions than it is to make a bunch of thin articles that no one cares about and that kind of
thing and google they did a smart thing how they can tell if if you the person actually stays on
your your site versus going back to the search results so they check that like you know if you search for red camping
blanket and they click on yours and they go there and it
doesn't see what they don't find something useful they go back to google and they click on the next thing so
google sees like oh they click this and then they click this so obviously yours didn't answer the question right but if you have a really in-depth like
word article about the best camping blankets and the person spends minutes on the site
and or never goes back to google then google says oh well that we delivered the right result because
the person didn't come back and click on the next one so it's just a kind of a high level talk
there about quality quality quality is really important and google
rewards you for that and i've seen sites that have lower domain rank and not a lot of google reputation in
general outrank some stronger sites because they had the better answer the better article you
know so that's a good way to get started that's really fascinating so you think a trend
going forward then the way to win content marketing is just do the smaller the niche the
long tail keywords but do it really super well yep
and another thing with those tools is you can see what they'll show you what who else is
ranking which obviously you can just search it but they'll show you as well the the current search results and so
you can kind of see okay like how how big are those articles and uh you know what what do they look like
and what is my competition and you where you kind of know you hit the jackpot is if you find a keyword
that is related to something that you sell that there's just not really good
content there and so you know if you go to google and you search it and you click on the first five results
and none of them are really helpful then you kind of know okay that's the one i want to go after because that's the one
i can write a good informative article on that google will recognize hopefully and
you will uh you know reward get rewarded for that and then you know because in theory like
google wants the consumer to get the relevant content right so you wanna create quality stuff and and
uh but yeah those smaller niches it's it's good and then the other thing is it's a little bit
people care less about trying to push you off this mountain or in this case the hill of these small terms right
because it's just then the next guy's doing exactly what i just said he does the research he says you have this amazing word article that's winning it's
kind of like ah well it's a small keyword it's not a lot of traffic it's not really worth it for me to put my time into there
and so then that can keep that yeah right if you're on really strong
competition keyword you know iphone cases or some super high competition
you know it's like everyone's just you know now it's a ten thousand word article and now they got a hundred
backlinks to that now they got a thousand backlinks to that like it just it's a very tough competition so yeah if
you're getting started it's best to keep it on the longer tail stuff yeah fantastic hey jesse listen thanks
for taking the time to talk to us always great to reconnect always great to see whereabouts you are in the world so
thank you so much for that and uh merry christmas and a happy new year thanks a lot matt and
thanks for taking the time to catch up and uh good talking to you and your audience
it's always fun to catch up with jesse now if you enjoyed that as much as i did then you'll be pleased to know
that the links to jesse and today's show notes are available at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
now next up is ellie uh who has been on the show a
couple of times now l is a resident shopify expert and has always got great tips to share so again grab your
notebooks especially if you're into shopify as we are going to get to listen into l a little bit more and get some more
really great stuff with everything that has happened in
Elle McCann, Shopify Expert
right um and we're going into what are you taking from this year to
next year what are you taking from into yeah so for me uh i'm a huge planner so
i started the year you know with all these plans my word for the year was consistent
i feel like just laughed at it oh that's cute you have planned you have new plans now um we've
changed all your plans so i honestly feel like halfway through the year i was like okay my new word for
is flexible the opposite of consistent in some respects
exactly like you have to just roll with it but i've seen so many different businesses and you
know sadly we're hearing all these stories i live in the us about small businesses that are really suffering or going out of business
and i feel like the ones that are kind of making it through it or even thriving throughout this process are the
ones that are pivoting so being flexible and going okay yes i had these other plans but how can i make it
work now how can i pivot and give a new angle or a new spin to it and i think that's really what i'm going
to be taking in with my business moving forward because i will admit like i've been in business for years and i'm a
pretty like rigid planner um and i learned some pretty
good life lessons this year of like you just got to roll with the punches and just go you know what it is what it is
now let's move on let's pivot do what we need to do to get it done yeah very good very very good it helps
with resilience doesn't it i think the the ability to to take a punch um
and and and not crumple is um the flexibility required is is yeah i liked your little analogy
just left at my word for the year oh yeah it just totally laughed where do you where do you get your words for the
year from do you just at the start of the year just it just comes to you is it something that is like a goal for you how do you
achieve that word yeah so i always start kind of planning for the year ahead in like
qof the existing year and i just really start thinking about what i'm wanting to accomplish in the year ahead
and then kind of my overall theme um in my business and then from that i kind of come up with a word
for how i'm going to actually achieve that so like this past year it was for my business youtube growth and for
that my biggest thing was okay i need to be consistently posting i need to deliver consistent you know high quality
production value and that's kind of how i came up with that word um but yeah i think
now it's just going to be like well how how is the year going so far and and definitely who knows
what's what's going to happen now so just being a little bit more flexible i think is going to be good for me i've learned to laugh
at situations more where i used to try and like control them now i'm just laughing and i'm like it'll be fine
it'll be fine it'll be what it'll be that's fine it'll be good uh big thanks
to elle again as always uh you get some great stuff from eldon always brings top value and you can find
all of the notes and links to our conversation uh with her on the website at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
next up is the fab tim hughes we met in episode as we
talked about how social selling can grow your online business which i i genuinely love so i grabbed
the chance to talk to uh the ceo of dla ignite uh and ask him some more questions about that
and how it's gonna work in here we go we have just gone through the most
Tim Hughes, Co Founder and CEO at DLA Ignite
extraordinary year right we'll be we'll be in our diaries for a long time and we're heading into
what are the things that you're taking from into what's some of the
things that you've learned that you think actually for next year this is just gold
um i think it's probably changed the way
i think it's changed the way that we do business let me talk about business for a second
you know i live in london um i think that there was an expectation
you know if there was going to be a course in singapore i'd have to get on the plane and fly to singapore i now don't think that is expected
and for me that's a great thing yeah um i like i love singapore but um going to
singapore just to speak for an hour and then coming home again doesn't it feel like a good use of my time even going into
london for meetings i think has changed yeah um and what used to happen would be
you'd say when you're next in london and then it'll be like three weeks away but whereas now you can have a call with somebody and it
will be tomorrow or the day after and so the speed of business is actually picked up yeah um
so um from so those things so so from my perspective
um i've gained two hours a day because if i was commuting into london
it would if i get to the city even though it's only minutes into waterloo by the time i got to the city
it's an hour yeah an hour back again sitting on a train um so um i'm doing all kinds of things
like um i've um i'm training again i'm doing a meditation course um
so all kinds of stuff and i think i'm getting and i think what it's done is
it's i think it's connected to us everybody is slowed down and i think what's happened is i think it's
connected everybody to realize that there's actually more important things in life than just
going to work work is important because it provides us with the money to enable us to buy the things that we
want or to do the things that we want but i i guess get the feeling that we've we've kind of all slowed down a bit
yeah um and there's a certain amount of reconnection going on with um you know i've not been able to
see my father um he's um he has dementia he's doubly incontinent he has park you
know he could he could die tomorrow yeah um and i know there's a lot of people that
have actually not even been able to connect with the people and go into the hospital where their their loved ones have died
and that must be a terrible thing yeah um and i think that there's a there's a kind of a
there's a kind of uh a sympathy in the world or an empathy that these things are happening and
actually we need to we need to do things differently that's really interesting so you don't want me
no i do totally and i think i think you're right i think covert has caused everybody to sort of reframe life a little bit hasn't it and
and go hang on a minute yes um let me let me just rethink and re-examine a whole bunch of stuff here which is why
um you know you can't buy jimmy home gym equipment for loving the money online you know and bikes sold out everyone was
like well it's summer i'll just go out on my bike i'm gonna do stuff that i've not done in years right my mom who is um let's just say she's
older than me obviously i'm not gonna divorce your age but she's older than me bought a bike for the first time in what
years this year and couldn't get a leg over the frame but she's got the bike right
and it's that it's that re-examination which i think has been quite fascinating so for you if i'm hearing
you right you're talking about gaining this extra two hours a day where you were just sitting on a train beforehand assuming you could sit of
course um yeah and you're using that time uh to do meditation to do
exercise um to sort of invest in you as opposed to just
do work is that what i'm hearing yeah i mean you could do work but but what i'm doing is i i want to be
able to come out of this of this situation and be able to say that i used the time to do this this
this and this um so um my partner's um year old for example he's just moved
to to barcelona um and you know he he went to his his the company that he works for and he
said look i can work just as much in barcelona as i can in london why can't i go there and they said yeah
okay off we go and he's actually again using the time um he's always wanting to
work abroad so he's actually using the time it is putting his time to good use i i mentioned that because he said
he said have you seen this calm app no i've not seen it so um um i downloaded it anyway it's got this
it's got a -day meditation course yeah so i'm basically working my way through
through that um so i come out of or we or we we go into with new skills
um with different outlooks and reflections on life
but also making sure that we are um we're also making sure that my i want to
make sure that my network kind of comes with me if you see what i mean you know there's um there's people
that i know that have lost their jobs um that are um all lost all of their
work their freelance and they've lost all their work and i and i think it's um
it's my duty to do something about it yeah i might not be able to solve the problem
but if we all think that okay if we have a network of people if we all look at that people
and say i can do one thing for that and we all do it then that's actually there's million people in the uk
that's you know there's an awful lot of people helping each other out and i think that's the thing that we
i think that's the thing that we we should be taking into yeah and actually um the british spirit
has always been that i just i think when we when we get to these points of crisis we we start doing that
an awful lot more which is um which is quite fascinating so you're going to carry this on in
right if covid stops and life returns back to normal or when it returns back to normal let's be hopeful um
it starts to return back to normal maybe next year at some point do you go back to being on the train two
hours a day do you go back to flying to singapore or are you kind of keeping
this level of thinking in what you're doing um i think we could debate about what
level of normality that we're going to go back to i think we're living with with gobed and and i think you know if it had been
if we all said let's use zoom over the weekend um you know nobody would have done it but um
everybody's now used to it and i and and the level of you know it is the new normal um and
having meetings online i think and doing presentations online i think is seen as being the normal will
it go back to it i think um talking to some people
they're predicting that will happen is that in the past we had percent of the people in the office of the people were either remote
or traveling and what we're going to do is we're going to go to of the people in the office
because some people need to be there because they're single um they may not have the ability to work
from home there may be a vulnerability um of them working from home um but eighty percent of the people
will be working from home and we'll see that switch yeah i think that'll become normal that's good that's interesting yeah the
hrule so what do you see um i mean apart from
those kind of changes do you do you see anything else in any you know your predictions
blog if you like what what what's in there what else is in there
um i i mean i've just seen a an article from um from gartner that
they they expect people to accelerate the move to digital
and in in the past um what would happen if we take sales as
an example um what you would do is that you would go and have meetings with people
um it's highly unlikely that a company if it has an office will actually allow external people to come
and visit because it's going to be a difficulty enough keeping um covid from um that
you're existing employees from spreading it around so the fact if you're letting people
that you you don't even know to basically come into the office and probably give everybody covert it's not
gonna happen so there has to be a fundamental change in terms of the way that we do virtual
or remote selling um the days of face-to-face selling are over
um and i think that you know we're going to see teams and zoom and um there's a couple of products that
we're seeing um coming through um that um that will be the norm
yeah i mean that's how we will we will work and i think there's a there's a big there's a big debate going on in sales
that probably no one is having it it's kind of the elephant in the room which is today what we've had is
face-to-face sales people and we've had um sdrs or sales development people which
generally would start a conversation they'd make a cold call they'd have a conversation and they would hand it to the face-to-face
and and what would we're now in the situation is okay so what are we going to do about sales
because that model doesn't work anymore yeah and nobody is um
nobody is actually standing up and saying okay that the new model is something um and and as you know
my my belief is that we're all fed up with all the old marketing techniques of sending emails and
advertising and um cold calling anyway um and we're going to see a faster
switch and transition over i mean the figures that were coming from gartner was that they reckon that um everybody
is accelerating their programs and they will see the switch in five years rather than ten years
wow yeah now that and that makes a lot of sense right that that totally makes a
lot of sense and do you think then going forward i mean for the sales
side of things actually if you're interested in selling you you're not too late now is a good
time make the year where you actually learn how to do this digitally well
um yeah we're having a lot of people come to us i mean i we've just signed a whole
flurry of people um because what they're saying to us is
we need to be you know is a right off um you know it is what it is um you know
if a sales person doesn't make the number you know we'll let it go but we've got basically we've got it we've got to
be active um and we've got a claw the money that we were going to get back
and therefore what we need to do over the next three or four months is actually become uh digitally active
so i mean i've had some people say yeah but it's qand it's like uh well yeah but you know q's qyou mean
you know the deals that you've got you know the pipeline you know you're gonna close and you know what you're not gonna close
um and um around that the business needs to be digitally savvy
and you could either do it this quarter or you're going to wait until when you when you're going to do it yeah this
quarter is is is a good enough time if you wait until um qof you're
going to be in catch up because you're going to actually be starting in in analog mode
and everybody that's coming to us saying you know we entered lockdown analog we're going to come out of this digital
um and that's the i mean we're hearing that from leader after leader after leader that we're
talking to um and i think that's the big change that we're seeing and i think that the
what we're seeing people are now we so so one of the things that amazed
me and i'm so apologies for um for talking about this because i'm biased but one of the things that you got to
remember that um when when we built the the art the programs that we generated
for helping people to sell on social they they're a bit like my children you know that i've nurtured them and
i've created them and and so i want them to do well in the world sure um and
um and actually what we've found is that with our clients their ability to generate business
um and leads and meetings has gone up in the pandemic not down um and while that may sound
well yeah he will say that because he sells those programs um it's the thing that's
interesting to me is that i think there has been a complete shift to people being online yeah i'm seeing
more people active on linkedin they're not doing the right things they're generally doing the wrong things but there's a there's a there's an
activity and that's because we're sitting at home in our pajamas um
and we're um and because when we're not in the office so what are we gonna do we're gonna go online that's when we're
spending our time and that's and i still think the shift that's taking place i don't know if you've seen
the the the um the research recently from mckinsey that said that that showed that there was
um e-commerce uptake um there was the amount of e-commerce
uptake in the last three months was the same as what we'd have for the last years yeah yeah so we've had years worth of
digital transformation in the last three months and i still think looking back we don't realize
how much transformation has actually taken place because we're generally thinking about the here and now and worrying about
whether we're going to see our dad or stuff like that rather than actually seeing and looking around and seeing the transformation there's been so much
of people getting used to buying stuff online um and the change i think is it's is
massive love that did you catch that tim said the change is going to be massive yes it is tim i i absolutely
agree with it uh his greatest need tim and of course you can find the notes for my conversation and links to tim and his social media uh
in the show notes at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash now before i bring on
Kurious Digital (Sponsor)
the next guest let me just take a minute to thank this week's show sponsor
let me give a big shout out to one of our show sponsors curious digital you know what i love
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and it can be incredibly expensive and the thing for me that i love about
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[Music]
okay let's bring on my next guest brad wayland now brad was a recent guest
actually he was on the show in episode where we had an amazing conversation talking about how to sell your ecommerce
business that's right i got so many takeaways from that show i don't know about you so here is some more fab stuff from brad
Brad Wayland, Quiet Light Brokerage
what do you see for what are you taking into the the new year and some of the trends that you're seeing and some
of just some of the things that you're in your brain that you want to be aware of
in terms of brokerage uh anything whether it's just e-commerce the the sort of yeah selling the
business or what what do you see are some of the trends well we have this theory that is
going to be a really crazy year for selling and the reason is because
covid has helped more businesses than it's hurt
in terms of online online businesses have been inordinately uh big gainers
yeah so we have this theory that we're gonna be overwhelmed with work in
because people are gonna say hey in march i got this new uptick and so when they get to march of next year
they're going to say hey i've got a year's worth of history now my business is worth a lot more than what it's always on the trail in months
okay and so we have this theory that it's going to be busy um you know now there's so much
uncertainty i mean just you know in the u.s it's just it's election cycle and it's just there's unrest in the streets it's you
know you've probably seen that yeah our cities are being burned down and monuments and everything else it's
pretty crazy time um and so um i think there's kind of an air
of caution kind of going around in the air too but that's one of the things for is that we really feel like a lot of these
sellers are going to try to capitalize and uh the other thing we're seeing is didn't get to talk about it today
but private equity is running into e-commerce at an alarming speed right now yeah i
can imagine there's a company called thoracio out of boston that has bought
a bunch of amazon based businesses and in less than two years they've amassed a over one billion dollar valuation whoa
and um i have had i think we have tracked that we have had over phone
calls with firms that are trying to replicate what they're doing
and i've actually sold businesses to two firms that are trying to replicate what they're doing
i think our company has sold businesses to ten firms that are trying to replicate what they're doing
and so what we think is happening is we think that thracio has opened up private equity to
e-commerce yeah and we think that multiples are starting to grow already we've seen them
tick up a little bit this year and so it's interesting when you think about it because
the safe haven in the united states for your money has been commercial real estate
for as long as i can remember yeah and it's definitely not now now nobody wants it but nobody wants to
go to the office right so everyone's bailing it's a massive thing the flight to safety is e-commerce yeah
it's a total flip-flop yeah so i think that could be a year where
i think what we've done with pandemic it's just a general rule i think that we have pushed a fast forward button yeah
i think we were gonna get there eventually anyway but i think that everybody like just even i don't know what it's like in
the uk but i mean just even food like
i'm looking at i go to chipotle for lunch you have chipotle in the uk yeah yeah yep so i go to chipotle for lunch today and
you know you can sit at the tables now they have like one seat available at every six person table and every other
one says don't sit here so you can have one person can sit i think maybe two people can sit next to each other
um but but then when you hear the numbers
like it made no sense to me chipotle like beat their estimates wow you know they sold more
you know uh there's a popular like chain i'm not a big chain guy in terms of like sit down restaurants or
anything i'm pretty we pretty local but there's a big chain called chili's in the united states
but there's like maybe locations and i heard the ceo
on cnbc say a few weeks ago that in july they were flat compared to last july
and i was suddenly thinking about that i'm like how does that work are half full how could you be flat
how's that even possible yeah so it has something to do probably with stimulus checks and things like that but i'm just saying that to me this fast
forward button that's happening it's going to crush traditional retail faster it's going to
help internet businesses faster and so we're getting not only a flood of people that are going to potentially want to
sell but you're also going to get a flood of people who potentially want to participate yeah and so i really feel like it's
already happening but i feel like could be a real banner year in terms of just
seeing electronic commerce kind of continue to squash out
the kind of old guard that's a really interesting comment i mean when covid hit
um after the first month and we were seeing what was going on certainly with our own sales i was like i
i don't know what to say here but i'm the lucky one because my my business is it felt like
it doubled in value overnight because of a virus that was you know horrendous to a lot of the
world but everyone everyone flocked to do stuff online and it's like all my businesses
are online businesses my jeremy and it was like a whole holy cow and so i've never worked as hard
actually um than the last few months i had one business
that did worse that like did noticeably worse and it was a guy that sells accessories
for cruisers okay he he saw his business go down by
plus percent because the cruise ship stopped operating yeah um but
everybody else that i talked to i mean pretty much it's just been a lift yeah
almost across the board yeah i had a guy that sold some prom stuff prom's like a i don't know big prom in
the uk yeah people know what it is because of the movies yeah
guy's old prom stuff his trends got hurt but he's still able to sell and did pretty well on the sale yeah
yeah it's interesting i i i don't know about you but i noticed actually when kobet hit sales i mean was
crazy and then the the month or two after that they kind of dipped like everyone that rushed to buy um but
certainly on jersey everyone that rushed to buy face cream had like three months of face cream jeremy and it's like i don't need some next month and it seems
to and so it kind of dipped now it's picking back up again it kind of went crazy
and don't get me wrong the dip was still good but jeremy kind of it sort of has done that i've seen that exact trend
really intriguing i'm curious to see what happens in the run-up to christmas now thanks brad now if you want to know more
about brad if you want to connect with him if you are thinking about selling your e-commerce business then make sure
you do check uh check out the fab podcast with brad but also the links to that and
to brad will be found in the show notes from today at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash now without further
ado let me bring back joanna steele onto the show now joanna's been on the show a couple of times
and we've always had fab conversations and let me tell you this one doesn't disappoint either so
here we go for you what are the things from that have happened in the lessons the
Joanna Steele, Digital Marketing and eCommerce Expert
ideologies the whatever language we want to use but what's happened in that you go
i am taking that forward into um i mean
personally i can say that um you know don't put off
until tomorrow what you can do today so i'm not sure if you're aware but um this time last year actually i began
a six month sabbatical where i travelled south america southeast asia and west i remember that yeah yeah and to think
one year on you know traveling is really difficult at the moment you must be so glad you did it actually
at that point yeah yeah i'm not i did so and and i was i'm annoying about it for a little while and actually
you know it was a friend of mine who said come on johnny do it um and so that's a real example of you know
when you want to do something you know if you can so just go for it you know try not to hesitate because
you never know when that opportunity might be taken away from you and so there's that um but if you're
thinking more from an e-commerce digital marketing perspective um i think for me
um understanding sort of ugcc i think this year has proven that
cgc user generated content customer generated content is here to stay right
um it's not going anywhere um and you know with the sort of increasing usage of tick tock
particularly sort of among the gen z generation and we're seeing sort of user-generated content just
literally you know just taken over um and so if anyone was thinking that
you know the facebooks the instagrams or twitters were sort of going away i think this has proven that they're here to stay and there's going
to be some new new platforms sort of in the midst and that you know they're competing against bringing out new
features and really trying to compete to keep customers and to keep consumers on their platforms
um and using them more and more and in innovative ways so um definitely feel that you know if
anyone is still i'm in an arring about having a digital presence or doing more online or doing
more on social media doing more in the user generated content space you know no time to hesitate you have to
you have to sort of grab the opportunities by both hands how do you see um user generated content cgc
there that whole side of things how do you see that changing i mean you've hinted a little bit i suppose with tick tock but
how do you see that changing in so i think um in what we're going
to see a lot more of um is brands and particularly some of the bigger
brands um sort of using user-generated content in their above-the-line campaigns
so i think um you know i think we'll see a shift away from
maybe the budget spent on videos um you know photography and actually
putting that budget into strategies which encourage and reward customers for creating
content um and then using that user generated content as almost like the
the sort of the main um i suppose bulk of of the content on of the content
for a particular campaign so we'll see a lot more of that um i think what there's a concept that's
coming out around remix um cgc remix ugc and
that basically is when um a user or a customer in effect sort of remixes
already existing brand content so um so essentially it's something that
actually beyonce's recently done with her ivy park adidas um full collection launch where she
um sent out her products not just to influencers but to fans and customers as
well um and also sent a sort of a backdrop
for them to do their own photo shoot so it was the same backdrop that she used for you know for her own campaign and so
she sent that to fans she sent that to influencers alongside the products and there they sort of did their own
photo shoots put their own sort of um you know their own twist um using
the authenticity of themselves and using their own twist to create their own photo shoots but then you had the kind of consistency
in the look and feel because they were using the same flower so there's going to be a lot more of that
um and so where sort of you know the customers influencers will be
given i suppose some some pointers or at least given some given some content and then
if the the onus will be on them to sort of remix it and put their own sort of their own sort of um spin on it um and
then the brand will then use that and push and push that out so i think there's going to be a lot more of
that i know people were sort of saying that influencer marketing is dead it's not it's just changing so i think
brands are sort of moving away from quality sorry quantity and focusing
on quality quality um and perhaps a moving away from the people with millions and
millions of followers and really focusing on micro influences so people that have you know you know one to k followers but have a
really engaged audience yeah um so there's going to be a lot more of that but i also feel like aside from the influence of
marketing brands are really going to leverage and tap into using their customers a lot more um
in their advertising and above the line campaigns thanks joanna now if you want to connect with joanna then as you
should know by now all of her info the links to joanna will be in the show notes at
ecommercepodcast.net forward slash that's how you access them they're there for you for free and just
have at it and connect with all of the guests tonight now it's time for our pen ultimate guest
of the show simon driscoll now simon is actually growing his own e-commerce business it's
a beauty business i always enjoy my conversations with him so i'm looking forward to seeing
uh this this whole thing what's he taking from into from his point of view here's that
conversation so what are you taking simon from into i mean has been a
Simon Driscoll, Owner and Formulator at UXB Natural Skincare
hell of a year um what what are some of the key lessons that you've learned this year that you're taking through the for your
your business um well the thing i've learned is that um once you
sell one thing you can probably sell another thing to the to the same person so i've got um
i've just been testing a post purchase upsell that kind of that kind of thing so with the new
products i'm going to have i'll have a full capsule range so um hopefully i'll be able to sell
more stuff to the same people is one thing the next thing that um has kind of worked for me is
uh content marketing so um i've got some some nice videos on youtube and um
some some blog posts that are getting some traction so i'm gonna invest a bit more in um in content and if you look at any of
the big beauty companies like um they have huge kind of social media and content marketing teams or agencies
working for them just to create a bit of buzz around the brand um yeah
so that's kind of what i'm going to do next year so i've got it's all in train now in order to hit
the ground running next year fantastic so the two big things for you are going to be upsells and content marketing
yeah i think you are right i mean with upsells you can add as much as percent to your bottom line
if you've got a good upsell you know and a good up style system so it is worth definitely investing in that
because it is easy pickings they're already buying from you so let's increase their average order
value from us it makes an awful lot of sense exactly they're over that psychological hurdle they're in the buying frame of
mind why not why not get them to buy something else and you know if you if you can put the right offer together
um then it cost me no extra in postage to send out that extra thing and it's just
you know it's it's money for nothing really so yeah i've got four more products coming
out early next year oh wow out with testers now so and and the feedback's really really good
so what are the products that are coming out i've got three serums yeah yeah i've got three serums um so
i've got rice milk and niacinamide um i've got a retinol and avocado oil and i've got
strawberry and vitamin c serum and then i've got a moisturizer which is a really rich
it's oat and avocado butter moisturizer again that's got niacinamide and
allantoin and loads of other kind of anti-aging ingredients in it and so that's that i'm getting really good
feedback from that so very soon they'll be going off for testing and
hopefully i've got the packet packaging so i can launch those quite quickly next year fantastic and why have you
decided to throw three serums into the mix i'm just asking because funnily enough we're going to launch a serum um in the next few weeks and so
i'm i'm i'm curious about this it's it's to do well it's to do with
providing that complete range that complete package um so our kind of um usp is around
providing skin care for your skin type so we've got four cleansers that target four skin types
um obviously niacinamide vitamin c and retinol they all uh treat skin conditions so
they're kind of anti-aging or moisturizing or you know they they brighten the skin so
it's it's being able to have something for everyone and be able to upsell them to the right
people so i'm also working on a kind of kind of lead magnet which is a
a skin analyzer where you kind of you answer a few questions about your skin we we kind of analyze the results and
recommend you a regime and all of these products fit into that um skin analyzer so that's that's been
something i've been working over over the summer on it's quite complicated a lot of content behind it a
lot of value though there'll be a lot of value behind it yeah and and i'll have a product for every single kind of skin type
plus skin condition so you want to you know improve the brightness of your complexion i've got vitamin c if you
want an anti-aging thing i've got retinol you want you know problems with moisture then i've got nice cinnamon
and a moisturizer so yeah that's it so it's all kind of interlinked the content the products the
the kind of offers i can i can put together that's that's the kind of plan fantastic
fantastic so you're excited for yeah i mean it's it's uh everything because
i'm an outsider to the skincare industry so it's taking me a lot longer to learn um the ins and out of the industry and
what people want from the products but i think i'm in a place now where i kind of i mean
i can go faster now i think i think i understand what people want and when they want it
and how they want it delivered that includes packaging marketing that kind of thing so i think
it's all coming together big thanks to simon always great to hear tales of his growing online business
if you want to check out simon's site then we will of course put links to the site and simon in the show notes at
ecommercepodcast.net forward slash now it's time for our final guest
of the final part of the mashup series so closing out this whole mashup series
uh is the fabulous cathpay and as i said uh in episode when she was on the
show uh kath was also on the show in episode and we talked about email marketing and
i have to admit that i was more than a little jealous of cast location as we had this uh conversation as we recorded this
because it was not cold damp britain let me tell you so here's my conversation with kath
Kath Pay, Founder and CEO at Holistic Email Marketing
has been well it's been the most extraordinary of years hasn't it so what are you taking from into
what's the learning that you're carrying forward okay my learning
not life learning but um marketing learning i'm assuming that's what you're asking you can answer that question either way
well i'll i'll answer both then so life lifewise it's like make the most of the
here and the now because you don't know what's ahead right i think everyone's been learning that
appreciate what you've got and um and you know see if you can
improve it see if you can improve other people's lives as well because you know i'm i've been incredibly
fortunate and i have not suffered hardship at all and i know i'm not the norm i know
there's a lot of other people who are suffering um on a day-to-day basis so yeah
and this is kind of bringing me into the next one because the life learning also is
is show empathy right in your day-to-day as a human as a
person with other people don't be quick to to scold don't be quick to
you know critique or anything like that because you know other people are not in
necessarily a good place so be understanding we can carry that same empathy
over to our email marketing and i think that i've been saying that right from the very beginning because
i've also been talking about this for years anyhow that it's the more customer centric start of
marketing and i think it's really come to the forefront during i think
the brands that have recognized that from early on and understand and they are becoming
more customer-centric they're becoming more what i call helpful marketing and that's
what it is going back to that two sides of the same point all you're doing is you're helping them
you understand them show some empathy and and just try and and yeah be as
as as helpful and considerate as you can and i think
it will definitely pay off it will pay off in the short run but also pay off in the long run because people
will remember that people will note that you are a brand that stood out from the crowd you know in the push
push sale sale you know you know marketing that we currently do
so um yeah that's that's my life and marketing all rolled into one i like
it that's great so a big thanks to kath you see what i mean about the location
Close
it looks lovely doesn't it now since we've recorded this interview kath has released her brand new book
which i've mentioned before called holistic email marketing available where all good books are so
definitely check it out if you want to know more about email marketing it is recommended reading that's for
sure so a big thanks to all of my guests for being on the mashup episodes it was great to catch up with
all of you but i also need to say a big thanks to the team here who let me tell you have spent many
painstaking hours editing and putting the episodes together to be honest i got the easy job which
was basically talk to the fab folks but sadaf tim and josh basic
well they had to do the real work right they had to edit and put all this stuff together so a huge thanks to them uh really
appreciate all the hard work so that's the end of the mashup series this is the end of season four
next year we will start season five season fives season five of the ecommerce podcast
we've got some great guests coming on the show we're going to talk about amazon we're going to talk about google ads we've got
marketing tips to name but a few things all designed to help us grow our ecommerce businesses
this time in season we will be live streaming not just on facebook as we record the interviews
but also on youtube that's right i love to live stream the interviews as i actually do them with our guests
those live streams then get edited become the podcast which always comes out a couple of weeks later if you would like to sort of join us on
the live streams you get to ask the guest the questions as you listen to it make sure you connect with us
on youtube and facebook as we do live stream on those of course more information can be found out about
that on our website just head over to ecommerce podcast forward slash so i hope you've got some great
stuff out of this show out of this mashup series out of season four if you did then i would appreciate it if
you could rate the show on itunes and even share it out with friends that you think would benefit
from what we talk about it's always great to get more listeners to the show connect with more people around the world
as i said at the start all of the notes links and transcripts to the guests and to everything that we talked about
today uh is available online you can get them free at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
all that is left for me to say is merry christmas and a happy new year i don't know when
you're going to be listening to this if christmas has already happened i hope it was good if it hasn't happened i hope
you have a fantastic christmas and a very happy new year thanks for listening and come back next
time as we get to interview some more great guests on how to grow our own online businesses
bye for now
you've been listening to the e-commerce podcast with matt edmondson join us next time for more interviews
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