I’ve had some serious “sandwich generation” time this week, as you’ll hear in the podcast, so apologies for getting this edition of the Frank Online Marketing Show out a bit late. When a loved one is in intensive care, the only metric that matters is their health.

In the online marketing world, though, I think today’s interviewee, Poul (pronounced Paul) Mark, owner of Transcend Coffee, was bang on when he said:

“The only metric we really care about, in all honesty, is conversions” P. Mark, Transcend Coffee (click to tweet this)

They are clearly doing a lot right, as this year their online sales will be about 25% of their revenues. 

Key Online Marketing Lessons

 

1. Mark up the product, not the shipping

Transcend Coffee learned that coffee fans will pay for high-quality coffee, but like just about everybody else, they don’t want to pay for shipping.

2. Use a .ca domain if selling to Canadians

In user testing they discovered that even when people searched the term “best coffee in Canada” they didn’t click on the Transcend coffee link if the domain had a .com extension; shoppers figured  it must be an American company. So if you want to sell to Canadians, have a .ca version of your website. You don’t need to maintain two separate websites; you can “point” one to the other.

3. Product sampling helps sell food and drinks

There’s a reason you can fill your belly on the food samples at Costco: they know that product sampling works! Transcend Coffee has a much easier time selling its premium coffee beans to people who have already tasted their coffee. So if you are selling food or drinks, try to find a way to offer product samples. (This approach also worked for (Now renamed to LibreNaturals), which sells nut-free granola bars. I wrote about No Nuttin’s sampling program in 2006, and the company is still going strong!)

Are there other online metrics that you think are as important as conversion rates?

Please add your thoughts below.

While the Big Retailers Struggle Fast Movers Can Win Big

I just spent a few days in Toronto at the Retail Council of Canada’s annual Store conference, and I’m more convinced than ever that we are at a critical point in Canadian retail. Why?

* The big American players, like Target and Nordstrom, are invading, and opening lots of stores with lots of money and great online experiences to match. The big Canadian retailers have good reason to be scared. They’ve never faced such tough competition before.

* Nimble online upstarts are challenging the biggies from below. Canadian online retailers like Frank & Oak, eLuxe, Beyond the Rack (interview coming soon), and today’s featured interviewee, Canadian Icons (canadianicons.ca) are growing quickly, and more of them are coming.

It was clear at the conference that most of the major Canadian retailers are still struggling to figure out how to deal with the online world. They are panicking about showrooming (customers checking on their phones for better prices on a product while they are standing in front of it in your store), and afraid to pull money out of print flyers to free it up for online marketing.

If you are a small or mid-sized retailer, this is good news for you. While they are struggling to figure out how to change their systems to cope with this new world, you can be nimble and grab a chunk of the fast-growing online market.

From $0 to over $1,000,000 in 10 months

Like Frank & Oak and eLuxe, CanadianIcons.ca is using great content to sell products. Founder Aron Slipacoff is a history grad who has lived in Northern Canada and is eager to share his knowledge of Canadian history, craft and traditions. So when you visit his site, you get the history and the stories that go with the high-quality, Canadian-made products. You have a choice to “learn”, “shop” or “donate”.

The formula is working: He’s been in business for less than a year and is already a $1,000,000+ business. And according to Aron, “It’s easy!”

Online Marketing Lessons from Canadian Icons

* Tell stories in ways that are engaging, and more about the receiver of the information than about you or your business.

* Have a couple of truly unique items to grab attention. Canadian Icons has a $380,000 Emily Carr painting for sale; something that would normally only be available to art collectors at exclusive auctions.

* Offer fast, free delivery. In fact, they offer delivery in less than 90 minutes if you are within 50 km of Parliament Hill. Tourists caught unprepared by Canadian weather can pop into a coffee shop, place an online order and have their comfy Canada Goose Parka arrive by the time they’ve had the last sip. Now that’s service people will talk about!

Am I being too hard on the big Canadian retailers?

What do you think? Please comment below, and share this article with your friends.

Ethan Song, CEO and co-founder of Canadian online menswear retailer, Frank & Oak, may look like a fashionista, he may be catching the attention of venture capitalists and articles in places like the Wall Street Journal, but he sounds like a bit of a geek who likes nice clothes and had an even geekier friend (Hicham Ratnani) who agreed to try out a business idea with him.

Together they’ve hatched an exciting new business model for men’s fashion that’s taking off. Building on the “fast fashion” trend of stores like Zara, Uniqlo and H & M, they add to their clothes collection every month, and offer men an easy way to buy.

Like eLuxe (listen to that interview here) they are combining a fashion magazine approach with selling men the fashions profiled each month. But they’ve gone one better: using sophisticated analytics, they tailor their offering for each individual customer each month based on their previous buying patterns.

Key Online Marketing Lessons

1. Don’t overwhelm with choices. A lot of women may like spending hours (or days!) checking out the latest styles and deciding what to buy, but Ethan and his crew realized that men just wanted to look good without the hassles of the hunt. And frankly, even women don’t want to be overwhelmed when shopping online. That’s why offering a coordinated look, complete with matching accessories, works so well.

2. Subscription models work well online. Each month, members of their “Hunt Club” (ironic name, given that they’d rather not go hunt!) are sent four clothing items that they’ll probably like. As Ethan says, most guys won’t bother returning an item if they like the other three.

3. Eliminating middlemen makes you more responsive & profitable. It’s easier to keep the prices low and to react quickly to market trends.

Thanks to some geeky friends of mine, I discovered Google when it was a baby and was blown away by how much better it was at search than the alternatives of the day.

That left me with a soft spot for Google that made it especially sweet when one of its top Canadian executives, Chris Hodgson, not only agreed to be interviewed but also to serve on the Advisory Board for the Canadian eCommerce Challenge. (If you want to know what’s happening with the Challenge, sign up for our newsletter!)

If You Win, Google Wins

Even though its huge market power can make one a little uneasy, fundamentally its interests are aligned with ours: if an ad catches your interest, you find something you were interested in, the advertiser makes a sale and Google makes a profit. Win win win. 

Key Online Marketing Lessons from Google

(Well, from this Google interview, at least.)

* Adopt a “test and learn” mentality. One of the great things about the digital world is that it is so easy to track and test. Chris suggests that whenever you are trying something new online, test two versions of it. Once one wins test it against another variant. Wash, rinse, repeat. 

* Mobile matters. Most e-mail links are clicked from mobile phones these days, so be sure that your email and website work well on tiny mobile screens.

* Focus on profit, not just cost per click. If paying more per click gets you higher in the ad listings and results in more customers, it might be worth paying that extra. Think in terms of the lifetime value of a customer in making your calculation. It’s not just the first sale that matters; in many businesses the hardest part is getting the customer in the first place. If your average customer goes on to buy from you repeatedly, you can afford to pay a bit more up front.

If you enjoyed this interview or article, you might also enjoy our newsletter. Why not sign up now and give it a try?

What’s the best thing about Google in your mind? What’s the worst?

Please join the discussion below!

 

Social media is a great way for university alumni departments to find and reconnect with former students and potential donors. A lot of what they are learning applies to other organizations too.

Listen to this interview for ideas about how to connect with potential donors and a discussion of some of the challenges of running social media campaigns in large organizations, whether they are for-profit or not.

I first interviewed Derek Cassoff, director of communications for McGill University’s office of development and alumni relations for an article I wrote for University Affairs, Reaching out to university alumni through social media. In today’s Frank Online Marketing Show you get to hear more of what he had to say, including a description of a very cool multi-channel marketing campaign. (I also recommend reading the article, to learn about what other universities are doing.)

Key Social Media Marketing Lessons

* If you are going into social media, someone has to be responsible for it. You can’t count on people to simply “pitch in”.

* You need to be present consistently and often. If you don’t post to Facebook at least a couple of times a week, to your LinkedIn group about once a week, or to Twitter several times a day, you won’t get much benefit.

* When bad things happen to your organization, make sure your audience hears about them from you first! 

Have you connected with your university on social media?

Please comment below. (And share this post with your alma mater.)

Interviewing entrepreneurs about their businesses is always inspiring, but sometimes it is also fun to talk ideas.

Mitch Joel, CEO of marketing agency Twist Image and author of Six Pixels of Separation, is certainly a successful entrepreneur but in this interview we had a great conversation about what many companies are getting wrong in their marketing efforts in the social media era and what they should do differently.

If you don’t have time to listen to the full interview, you should at least check out the excerpts.

But if you can, listen to the whole thing. We covered a lot of ground, including some of the key ideas from his new book, Ctrl Alt Delete. These include:

* creating utility for customers, and making your useful content, apps or products easy to find and share

* the role of social recommendations vs search engine optimization

* what a mistake it is for companies to avoid user-experience testing

* differences in the marketing strategies needed for active vs passive media

I recommend his book, and I am thrilled that he not only agreed to spend so much time in conversation with me, but is also supporting the Canadian eCommerce Challenge as a member of our Advisory Board. Thanks Mitch!

Don’t have half an hour to listen to the full podcast?

Above are excerpts from my interview with Mitch Joel.

Click here for the full interview

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Janine Keogh, Vice President, Marketing Insights and Services of Mondelez International in Canada (formerly Kraft) told marketing researchers in Edmonton last week that they need to change how they see their role.

Marketing insight comes from many sources in companies, including sales staff (it is amazing how often sales and marketing staff are in completely different units and never talk to each other!) and the good folks who answer your toll-free phone lines.

Here’s an interview I did with Janine while she was in Edmonton speaking to the MRIA (Marketing Research & Intelligence Association).

Sometimes when I do these interviews I really feel like a mom. Baseer Khudayar, even though he’ll soon be a parent himself, sounds like a happy, hard-working, excited kid. He’s been working in the family’s stores since he was about 13, started Zelen Shoes at 19, and is thrilled (and even sometimes a bit surprised) by how well it is doing.

He and his brothers decided to launch a shoe store, and, being what Don Tapscott calls “digital natives”, it was obvious to them that there would be an online store too. From their base in Vancouver, they’ve been selling shoes worldwide.

Key Online Marketing Lessons

* Free shipping and exchanges are part of the price of doing business if you want to sell online.

* You can negotiate better deals with Canada Post and other shippers. Even when you are still small.

* Having a few unique products really helps.

* Your web store will always need tweaking; either hire developers on staff or cultivate some good contractors.

* SEO (search engine optimization) is essential, but word of mouth really helps!

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Alan Smith, CEO of Oprius, and his team spent a year researching, planning and designing before launching their sales and contact management software for people doing network sales. (Network salespeople are the folks selling things like Tupperware, Avon, etc.)

Since all sales people will pretend business is great, they used “the swimming pool test” to find out who the truly successful sales people were in their target industry, figuring if they could afford to own a swimming pool, they were probably doing pretty well.  They approached those folks to find out what product features would be really useful to their target market.

The great thing about this approach, is that if a top sales leader in a network marketing firm likes your product, it’s a safe bet that you will end up selling to many of the folks in their “downline” — the sales reps who work under them.

Key Online Marketing Lessons

* Do thorough market research and planning. It is a lot cheaper to change a design decision before any coding has been done than to launch and have to change later. 

* Great support breeds referrals and sales. Sounds obvious but, like the legendary Nordstrom’s department store that would take product returns even on products they knew they had never sold, helping customers solve problems even if it isn’t your software that is at fault will create incredible loyalty and inspire people to tell others about you.  

* Use a “Things To Do When I Don’t Know What To Do” list. I loved this suggestion for how to ensure you keep moving forward even in the face of an overwhelming number of things that need doing. When indecision hits, having this list beside you will help keep you focused on what’s really important. 

What tricks to you use to keep yourself moving forward in your business?