The Retail Podcast - DeathGround | Marketing and Small Business Advice

This episode I speak to my business partner and wife, about her new venture 'Stories like ours'. Stories Like ours is a wedding stationary business that offers a high end product but without the price tag. Using a range of available templates that are updated as trends change, Rachel's business provides the full service including printing; utilising the lower print costs the company benefits from, due to pre-established networks.

Rachel's background is in graphic design, while her sister Becky her business partner is a copywriter. Together they have begun to build a lifestyle business with the focus on supplementing their income and expanding beyond.

I talk today about the importance of building a social presence in an intelligent way, as well as coming up with ideas to enable them to capitalise on what is a global audience for this product. 

Hashtags are things that as consumers we whack on, but for businesses, monitoring them correctly and having an alternative approach for using them in your own content, is generally forgotten.

If you have a small business and are trying to grow your audience, then this discussion over our sunday cheese and biscuits (munching has been edited out.) will be really helpful. It's Rachel's first time she has helped me with a podcast so we haven't often spoken about what her venture should be doing, which made this so much more genuine. My takeaway is that I should probably help her a bit more!

If you enjoyed the show, please share it on to one person today :)

Check out our website www.theMOBshow.com or twitter and Insta: @the_mobshow

Just Podding along - the ramblings of a man in business. This episode on my journey to and from the office I am touching on business ethics, how we cope as a society with big companies and how to handle reviews online and offline.

Reviews are the modern day word of mouth and it's incredibly easy to pick up a negative one, very hard to grab a good one, even when you are good 95% of the time.

I'm covering some simple tips to pick up good reviews and how to consider the negative ones. Documenting the pitfalls you have to face no matter how big your company gets I feel is a truer reflection of SMEs startups and mid-size companies than you ever get from Instagram unreality.

I use Instagram as it's an important business tool, but my social commitment to it is pretty low. As I say, just because you don't like something, doesn't mean you should be so blindly foolish as to ignorant it for your own business.

I'm talking Nike, Amazon and even white privilege. How's that for a diverse chat?

Check out this Latest episode of The Retail Podcast - MOB Show - Small Business Advice

Welcome to the Startup podcast, I'm Mason on business. We are preparing today for our first outside interviewee, Jonathan Pfahl. CEO of Rockstar Group, he's an entrepreneur, a mentor and has seen the rough with the smooth. While waiting for that we are setting up our Twitch channel.

If you haven't heard of Twitch, then imagine you could be on Youtube 7 years ago, then this is the gaming version of that. No-one quite knows what it will be just yet, but its growing fast and is another avenue to build your profile with the customers of tomorrow.

If you want to find out a bit more about Twitch then this episode is for you. Thanks for listening and stay tuned this weekend for our interview with a rockstar. Episode titled Jonathan Pfahl.

Get rich quick schemes seem to never go away. From MLM schemes that sell health supplements to some now landing in the Cannabis market. Why do people sign up to them and what's the benefits to those who do?

We all want a piece of the entrepreneurial lifestyle but sadly, predator companies are preying on this. (BTW, most of what you see on iG hides those posters' own unhappiness.)

As a retailer of multi-branded products, our staff are able to offer customers the most appropriate advice for their varying needs and not just limited to one brand only. Our brand. A decade ago, banks were forced to disclose in a lot more detail if they were an agent of a product they were promoting, for good reason. Retail should be no different. If you are able to build a customer base through your own hard work, and based on people's trust in you; then do the right thing for them and for you. Offer them a wide range of products than one MLM brands' and you will realise you have an actual business. By sourcing your own products, you will also capitalise on larger margins and be able to have faith in you as a service. You won't have to be a recruitment agent as well.

That's the podcast today in a nutshell, check it out for yourself and excuse the heavy breathing, I was walking home in the freezing cold :)

If you enjoyed this podcast or if you have any suggestions on what we should talk about next time, fire them over to me on twitter @the_mobshow

www.theMOBshow.com

How to win at Amazon, when all about you are losing theirs. Okay, I have kind of b*stardised someone else's quote there. But, this - 'How to win at Amazon', is my cheeky getting your own back tip, to boost your own brand awareness while using Amazon. Promise me one thing please - if this is of value to you, share it on to three people you think will appreciate it to. Go on ;)

What does 'winning at Amazon' mean? I mean, operating an e-commerce business, but also using Amazon, not about making money on the site, but about connecting with potential future customers of your own site. 

I break down in this podcast how to do this. This is one of those tips, I simply have never heard someone mention in their tell all books, or 'how to be an e-commerce entrepreneur guides'. I don't charge for this gem.

Did you ever think the word ecommerce is so much easier to type than e-commerce. But if you don't stick a hyphen in on your text, it shows up that annoying red spelling error line. I am distracting you - HOW TO WIN AT AMAZON!

Amazon is a curse but can be a blessing for online or offline retailers. This is a 7 minute podcast max that you literally have to listen to and I am not selling snake oil. The only pleasure I get out of this, is seeing those listener numbers go up. If it's a good idea in your eyes, be a doll, and share it on. That's the only payment I ask of you.

You will see shed loads of MLM systems being touted online and FBA seminars, particularly right now on Insta advert feeds, they are there to make money for the trainers. They are not true businesses in the sense of the word and if you get involved in them, remember that you are offering no extra value that I or others can't also offer. Importantly, Amazon can do it better as well. Once Amazon sees that a product is doing well, they stock it and then sell it themselves and then it's game over for that segment or SKU.

This is why I believe it's vital that you create a brand that is unique and is backed by a level of customer service or localised specialty that Amazon can't compete with as it's too micro. Do this and use the growth hacking tip I give on today's podcast about to how to use Amazon to grow your own website business.

Don't fall for the Fulfillment by Amazon training seminars etc, or MLM schemes out there. They make money for very few people and divert your energy away from doing something that you uniquely love doing which could be your own project for decades to come. Selling 'kids neon torches' from Shenzhen for a couple of months because you have found an out of stock area on Amazon that's led to a surge in sales on the marketplace, is not a sustainable or a long term model. 

That's me for today, check out the podcast the real juicy info is in the show. That's how to win at Amazon and growth hack your ecommerce business.

How to get genuine engaged followers on social media and some tools we are using to make life easier. 

We are documenting the launch of a new CBD shop business and today's podcast talks about what we are doing to begin cementing our brand and helping it grow.

I have used a couple of apps lately, Lumen5, Twiends and Sprizzy. I tell you what they do, and give a little feedback on their effectiveness. Getting yourself established on social media is fundemental to grow your brand and build a longer lasting business with roots and fans, not just customers.

Growing a brand is fundamental to longevity in any business. Brand wins every day. Here's an example, an Amazon seller, is only winning for as long as they are cheap and offer free shipping. THEN, a rival shop undercuts them by a penny and the race to the bottom continues.

If you have a brand, then you control the price it goes out to market at, and you control distribution. Brand wins everyday.

So if you are looking for some tips to get you motoring, plug in to today's podcast on setting up social media in the right way.

If you have any feedback, hit me up on Twitter @the_mobshow or via our website, home of startup advice www.theMOBshow.com

Save the pangolin

Content Hacking Tip for guerilla marketers coming up in today's bitesize podcast. 

Finding great content for a blog can be a chore at times and even more so if you are new to the industry you have jumped into. I've been there, I know the difficulty. You want to find content that will be well ranked and will be uniquely written so you don't get down marked by Google, Bing etc. So how do you get that content?

Super cheap, super simple and super sneaky. Jump onto Youtube, search for videos uploaded in the last 7 days, or 30 days within your sector. See what is ranked the highest and you will be able to see what people are actively hunting out and absorbing in droves. Grab those titles and throw them into Google. Check if much has been written on this topic and importantly, see how long down the page before random unrelated topics show up. This tells you how under reported it has been in written format.

This is your window of opportunity. This is your chance to rank well, using SEO friendly copy and land yourself some extra traffic to your site organically. If there are tons of articles written already, move on, if there hasn't been, then you're in business. Make sense?

If you just want content and don't care about SEO scoring, then of course you can use this strategy to get an idea on what to write without linking to someone else's site also.

This is one of the simplest content idea hacks we ever came up with and it was born out of necessity as we didn't always get sent new products first for our online vape shop, Vape and Juice. We used this to be able to write reviews and then link them into the product pages on our ecommerce site and score well. This would almost certainly land us extra hits when employed correctly. The best part about it, its free. 

So if you want some tips on how to find quality blog content then check out our guerilla marketing tip on the podcast "Content Hacking".

If you want to start a business and are interested to follow our journey on starting our offline and online CBD shop, CBD Star, you can follow us on our Instagram @localCBDshop. Thanks for listening and send us your comments at www.themobshow.com