eCommerce Evolution

What do six-packs, successful pilots and 2020 have in common?  No, it’s not a drinking game.  We’re talking data here people! Do you know your data…like really know your data?  Do you have a feel for it?  Do you look at the right numbers daily?  

Let’s talk pilots for just a second. If you’ve ever seen a cockpit, it looks kinda like most eCommerce dashboards - an overwhelming amount of buttons, data, dials, and meters.  But pilots actually focus mostly on just a few key instruments.  The rest is there to help if there’s trouble.  The same should be true for the dashboards you use to run your business.  

I absolutely loved this interview with Dan LeBlanc at Daasity.  We cover some really important topics to help you really get a handle on managing your business.  Here’s a quick rundown:

• Is your data accurate?  Seems like an easy question.  Not always an easy answer.  
• Do you know what your metrics mean?  It’s all in the definition.  If you don’t have the right definition, you can’t make good decisions.  
• How you should look at your Lifetime Value (LTV) and why Cohorts matter
• Why contribution margin is super important plus an easy way to calculate it
• Knowing your RFM - Recency, frequency, and monetary value.  Here’s how to look at this and why it matters.

There are two different types of sponsored YouTube influencer videos:

1. An integrated sponsored video and 
2. Stand-alone sponsored video.

Stand-alone sponsored influencer videos are what most brands use and what most people think of when they hear “YouTube influencer marketing.” Stand-alone videos are typically an influencer providing a quick review or endorsement about a particular product.  So the video is titled “Widget 12 Pro Unboxing and review.”

An integrated sponsored influencer videos is an ad put inside of video on a separate topic.  The video might be about fortnite or camping, or whatever, but inside the video is a 30 second ad, read by the creator, for your product. These integrated video ads are Ridge Wallets secret sauce. 

Here’s a quick look at what we uncover on the show:

• Why integrated sponsored videos are so great and why they scale better than stand alone influencer videos. 
• How to approach influencers
• Why subscribers on YouTube is largely a vanity metric
• How to spot a dead channel vs. an active channel
• How to measure the impact of your influencer videos 
• What to pay influencers and how to think about CPMs (cost per thousand)
• How to achieve scale in your outreach and deployment of influencer videos
• Plus more!

During a pandemic, marketing for a travel company isn’t easy.  Kevin Urrutia and team at Chester Travel are getting creative and hustling to drive sales now and set themselves up for success in the future.  In this episode, we talk about the perfect combination of short term and long term growth strategies.  Using influencer marketing for short term growth and SEO for long term traffic and growth has proved to be a winning combination for Chester Travel and their line of modern luggage.  

Here’s a look at what we cover in this episode:

• Leveraging returns and unsold inventory for influencer marketing.
• Understanding the value of your product in influencer marketing.
• Simple outreach for influencer marketing….you’re probably overthinking it.  Try this one sentence approach.
• How a solid Instagram account is a necessary prerequisite for influencer marketing.
• Leveraging your homepage to rank your blog posts
• Combining remarketing and SEO to drive sales.

In a word, Chris Lynch is cool.  So is his brand Everyday California.  It’s not a surprise then, that what started as an adventure tour company also became a super popular apparel line.  But Chris and the Everyday Cali team didn’t stop there… The brand has now grown to include flip flops, beer, CBD and even a line of sunscreen.  So what separates a solid business move into new products vs. an unhealthy distraction?  When should you partner, license, go on your own, or scrap an idea?  Here’s what we dive into on this episode: 

• When to lawyer up and why it’s sooo worth it
• Be patient - speed in some instances almost guarantees that you land on your face.
• One of the best questions to ask about adding a new product is “does it feel right?”  
• How Chris and team partnered with a brewery on a California IPA and a CBD company to make a CBD product all while strengthening their core brand offering.
• Lessons learned from a few license deals
• How and why Everyday Cali is launching a brand new sunscreen - if you’re considering a line extension, you’ll love Chris’ advice. 

Mission meats is just a few years old, but it’s gobbling up market share in the red-hot meat snack category.  Peter Awad is a long time eCommerce pro.  He started selling auto parts on eBay in 2000.  Now he and his co-founder Nick have built a meat snack store with a mission.  They’re using profits from eCommerce to help fight deforestation, educate children in Africa, and support homeless women and children.  

But they don’t just have big hearts, they have some serious marketing chops too.  

In this episode, we explore the challenges and opportunities of marketing a product that could literally appeal to anyone.  We also explore how to maintain the balancing act of growing your own store AND growing on Amazon. 

• How to treat Amazon from a merchandising perspective. 
• Prospecting for new customers - Is this and Amazon first or Shopify first strategy
• How to increase repeat purchases in a fun way
• How pride or ego can limit growth with any paid ad channel
• Crazy CRO tests and the practice of asking “what if the opposite were true?”
• Important mindset issues that help fuel successful entrepreneurs

CPAs that suddenly double overnight. Skyrocketing CPMs. Winning ads that suddenly turn into losers. Data changes that impact how ads are being run now. The list of potential issues, potholes, loopholes, and blackholes for online advertising goes on and on. So what’s an eComm store owner or media buyer to do? Call in Molly Pittman and John Grimshaw from Smart Marketer.   These are two of my favorite people to interview and today I have them both with me for the same episode. And it’s a doozy. Here’s a look at what we cover:

• How to have the right mindset for navigating volatility (this is more important than you think)
• What to do when ad performance tanks
• Where you should tinker to improve performance and where you shouldn’t
• Why this is still the greatest time in history to be a marketer - volatility and all.
• 3 Spot checks to make sure you are ready to scale traffic
• The impact of the California Consumer Privacy Act and new changes coming to iOS 14….the good, the bad, and the scary. 

This year’s online holiday shopping season will be one for the record books. Most people say they’ll shop more online or exclusively online this year.  And online shopping will also start earlier this year, indicated by Google study results where 69% of holiday shoppers say they will shop earlier this year to avoid items being out of stock.

To dominate the Cyber 5 this year you need to:

• Get the most from your remarketing efforts,
• Cover any gaps you have in your search and shopping efforts,
• Run compelling offers and ads that compliment your brand, and
• Get your Top of Funnel efforts dialed in.

Check out our latest blog outlining these helpful tips and the video replay from our recent webinar with Google, and be on the lookout for the audio version in this week's episode of eCommerce Evolution.

Amazon Advertising has exploded in recent years.  In fact, Amazon is now the 3rd largest online advertising platform behind only Facebook and Google.  Pretty impressive for a company who’s a retailer first, cloud computing 2nd, and online advertising 3rd.  

In this episode, I wanted to bring on the sharpest mind in Amazon Advertising that I know - OMG’s very own Chris Tyler.  I brought him on so we could deep dive into the two hottest trends in Amazon Advertising right now - Sponsored Brand Video (formerly Video in Search ads) and Amazon DSP.  Here’s a look at what we cover:

• What is Amazon DSP and how can sellers use it to reach shoppers on an off Amazon?
• How to target people actively shopping for your competitor's products who haven’t purchased yet.
• How Sponsored Brand Video (SBV) ads are outperforming ALL other ad types for most of our clients.
• 5 keys to a great Sponsored Brand Video Ad
• How you can test SBV without spending a fortune on video production
• Plus more!

Is something broken in your business?  Not reaching your growth goals like you’d hoped?  Then you likely have a systems or delegation problem.  

My guest today is Trent Dyrsmid.  Trent is the host of the Bright Ideas podcast as well as the founder of an Amazon reseller business that just ranked #254 on the Inc. 5000 list. He is also the co-founder of Flowster.app a premier workflow management tool for eCommerce businesses.  He knows a thing or two about systems, delegation, and growth.  He’s now fully delegated himself out of his Amazon reseller business as it continues to scale rapidly.  

How does he do it?  Clear systemization and delegation.  On the show, we talk about one of his favorite quotes from the Honorary Chairman of Toyota -

“We get brilliant results from average people managing brilliant processes – while our competitors get average or worse results from brilliant people managing broken processes”

~ Fujio Cho, Honorary Chairman of Toyota Motor Corporation

In this episode we cover:

• What to systematize first - a 2-pronged test
• When you have a systems problem vs. a people problem
• What to delegate vs. what to do yourself
• Why and when you should delegate something you’re really good at
• The difference between process management and project management
• How Flowster helps eCommerce companies with process management
• Plus more!

Michael Jamin knows a thing or two about telling a good story.  He’s written for popular sitcoms like King of the Hill, Rules of Engagement, Tacoma FD, and Beavis & Butthead to name a few.  More importantly, for our purposes, he’s also the Co-Founder of Twirly Girl - an eComm brand that features some truly magical storytelling ads.  I wanted to have Michael on the show so we could learn some of his secrets….and because I knew it would be a ton of FUN.  He delivered.  Here’s a quick look at what we cover:

• Using setup and punchline to deliver features and benefits in a truly fun, funny and memorable way
• If customers focus on price, it’s your fault and how to fix it
• How some powerful tweak in FB ads dropped their cost per share from $178 to just $1.16
• When Michael combined what he knew about TV script writing and eComm Twirly Girl grew 30.6%
• Why people aren’t really buying stuff, but rather relationships and magic
• A few powerful “story makeovers”
• Plus more