Radical E-commerce - From Performance Marketing to Branding and the best platforms in 2020

 Hey guys Ryan offered your host of the Radcast before we get today's episode just
 wanted to drop a quick note if you've been enjoying our podcast and want to
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 You're listening to the Radcast
 If it's Radical we cover it
 Welcome to the latest episode of the Radcast this is Riley I'm the producer and we have Ryan
 Alfred our host today
 What's up?
 A little bit of roles reversed you
 I know we have a slightly mic
 I just felt like it was appropriate and scheduling out the series we're doing on
 e-commerce to give Radical's perspective on what's going on in the e-commerce world
 how your perspective on things and I just felt like this episode was
 appropriate in this series so it's good yeah
 I mean you know we do this every day I mean we're an e-commerce agency so you know
 we bring a lot of guests on because no one wants to hear me talk for 30 minutes
 but in all seriousness you know that we do a lot of these things daily we like to bring on
 others to give their perspective but you know it's important for us to share our
 point of view too and to kind of give our council on wherever seeing things because we're
 deep in a lot of e-commerce right now and it's definitely one of the pillars of our agency so
 excited to talk about it yeah absolutely I think it's important to just kind of start off in terms of
 you know just the general e-con background that you know you've been in you know that kind of thing
 yeah what's it looked like for you well I've been in the business for 20 years
 so you old guy in the room
 and in marketing in agency world and I've been a CMO a couple different places
 of the client side and primarily on the agency side and the last 10 years though have been
 first 10 years were more traditional media traditional branding and working with large brands
 I did I did a spell five years in New York and worked at some of the largest agencies in the world
 on some of the largest brands in the world and most of that was traditional media a lot of
 brick and mortar a lot of retail but not necessarily e-con but we transitioned into some of that
 in my ladder stages in New York and then definitely in my roles since interestingly enough the
 one D tour that I took I'll talk about some of the brands that I've worked on you know agency side
 on e-com but I started with a friend in Florida one of the first online digital car buying
 platforms and so there's car buying e-commerce this was in 2013 it was called iDrive on demand
 and we had a search engine and things like that where we actually it was as much a logistics
 company as it was e-commerce we used digital marketing and the web to attract leads
 and we did a lot of the processing online so I still considered an e-commerce transaction
 but a lot of it was auction networks we would we allowed people to custom purchase the used car
 that they want they come and tell us I want a silver BMW 325 you know this was 2013 so 2011 maybe
 like two years old and I want to with these features and we would go throughout our auction
 networks and do some searches manheim and others and then we facilitated the entire transaction
 online for the most part and so carvana has now made it mainstream I was just about to ask
 but we were doing it it was a different way because carvana is doing what most dealers do and what
 we kind of learned was the difficulty if you don't own the inventory it can be difficult to
 source exactly what you need we were able to do it on an niche level I mean we did seven figures
 in revenue within our first seven months and we were selling a lot of cars but to scale it if you
 don't own the inventory if you aren't you know getting your hands on the cars and have that scale
 it can be difficult I think the model could still work potentially but some of the wholesale stuff
 got an interesting in the whole market it's a really messy complicated industry but you know
 learned a lot in that space at least online that was in 2013 before that you know working with
 brands like Verizon with in their app and other space we worked with their retailers and
 we weren't the digital agency of record but we worked and intertwined a lot with of the agencies
 and the process of developing work that was used through their app and selling online
 and doing stuff on that both on B2B and B2C and then as an agency we worked with brands like
 Denny's firehouse subs just to name a few and helping them transition into online you know
 buying and things like that obviously that's proliferated a lot more since I've been in those roles
 but had an early you know take there and then in the car buying side and then have worked it
 a few other agencies where both in automotive and then started radical and so you know my learning
 in digital and in e-commerce has been both organically as kind of a I consider myself a curious
 soul so I've self-taught the last 10 years in many ways and concept curiosity and taking courses
 and doing things and then real world having the jobs and the positions that I have and learning
 from others so you know pretty deep background across categories in both the nuts and bolts
 technology v-commerce and in the demand generation and branding side which is more kind of like my
 building blocks from marketing standpoint I think it's kind of a good segue in a way like when
 you're a company what options are you know do you have as a business from a technology standpoint
 for your e-commerce platform well the technologies have come a long way you know there's a lot of
 what I call self-serve options and there's more custom options you know we're a Shopify
 partner agency which means we build and scale off of Shopify quite a bit it's the first choice
 that I recommend for small and medium businesses and even a large scale business if they don't have
 a ton of complexity in their product lineup and this is the number of skews but the complexity of
 that the variations of skews and things like that Shopify just has a lot of the building blocks
 figured out for people right it's it's easy for an organization to take on we're doing and
 scaling several platforms several of these onboarding right now for what's going to be probably the
 largest fabric online e-commerce store in the world eventually it's you know it's starting small
 but they have a really good base of customers from their brick and mortar and some of the
 unique sales they've done but then they've got the ability to scale because they have the merchandise
 they have a great supply chain for how they source and get the stuff so we'll work with them but
 you know we're rural world working with a lot of companies on Shopify Shopify Plus and then other
 platforms you have magento is now owned by Adobe it's a longstanding custom platform you can
 actually build on it for quote unquote this air quotes for anyone watching free I can verify
 you don't have to pay for the platform like you do with a Shopify with a monthly right they do
 have paid flat they do have a magento commerce now where you it's a little more less self serve
 as you know you're still going to need to develop or though that's the thing with magento super
 highly customizable you can have any variation you can be big scale huge commerce platform
 endless possibilities very complex and you'll need a developer and a team to do it and it
 makes sense for some complex businesses and it's a very great robust trusted system and now the
 Adobe evolved a huge company behind it yeah and then you know there's other ones players big
 commerce wicks in the more self serve you know and you know it's just it's really important though
 for companies making the right choice at the start we actually been helping with several companies
 transition from the smaller self serve platforms like a wicks that really never made sense for them
 to begin with they were of a scale and magnitude where they should have started with a shop of fire
 or a magento right off the bat so they just end up spending more money right and then there's
 others there's like big cartel which is mainly for like the creator space it's kind of a spin
 off like an Etsy seller or something like that but Shopify magento big commerce wicks I'm sure
 I'm leaving out something the only other thing I would throw out is is WooCommerce for WordPress
 sites that's the engine that drives it it's open source as well like magento so you can't
 custom code that as you need to for WordPress site so if you've got an existing WordPress site
 and you're moving to commerce that's where you get into a decision is it again am I going to stick
 with my WordPress site and layer on the WooCommerce engine or am I going to go to a Shopify or a
 magento that ends up being the decision at any point we help with a lot of companies making that
 depending on the factors of their business okay okay I get that that makes sense oh okay so has
 there been something that you like to use as a dedicated marketing ecommerce kind of playbook
 well there is and you know it's there's like the nuts and bolts for any business and then there's
 you know specific to one industry okay because we've worked with cosmetic companies we've worked
 with supplement companies right with fabric company we were furniture companies we've worked
 with a lot of verticals and so there's playbooks for each one but specifically like the nuts
 and bolts of any platform is all about acquisition of customers as inexpensively as possible the
 problem with customer acquisition is if you don't have a loyalty like if you don't have a brick
 and mortar store where you can and you have a list like an email list where you can transition
 those customers from brick and mortar to online it's very expensive to acquire customers or you know
 just organically and new and that's the struggle for most ecommerce brands when they get started so
 your playbook really starts with how fast can I build a customer base okay how fast can I get my
 list and that's email list for do to do email marketing which is definitely part of the playbook
 and how fast can I start leveraging my customer base and and building lifetime value with them
 versus acquiring new customers and really any playbook for ecommerce is the speed with which
 you can do those things and there's definitely a balance between what I'd call product marketing
 and brand marketing and finding that balance depending on on what you do and the key is now and
 I'm kind of one of these guys and right now one of the buzzwords is purpose driven marketing
 and purpose driven business I'm a little bit more pragmatic in my thought process about that I
 do think that people care that companies have a purpose right but there are a lot of products
 where it's about convenience it's about need right you know that that pack of gum in the
 line I have no idea if they just sent 50 pairs of shoes to an orphanage or you know or not I
 don't know I just know right now I need that pack of gum I'm on Amazon shopping for socks and
 you know there's some t-shirts over in the right corner because they know what I'm looking for
 and you know I don't have any clue where they were so I'm probably somewhere but I do think for
 certain companies that I think it's as much internal as it is external your internal people need
 to be around a purpose right and they need to convey that and yes you want when they come to look
 you up or they read about you or they see your content you you want there to be a purpose and
 that's important right but I do think if you'll remove friction you've provided need and you
 fulfill that with the customer when wearing how they need it a lot of times some of the other stuff
 you know matters less okay and it's just it's category to category right so it should depend
 just kind of like where companies coming from what they're necessarily selling yeah how they transition
 and you know that you know there's a million techniques you know within that like okay how do you
 build how do you build audience so Facebook ads her huge on the matter how how much Facebook gets
 you know banged on these days between them and Google you can reach your customer right where another
 right whether that's paper click ads for someone that's searching for vitamin D and you sell vitamin D
 and you need to be in that Google shopping list or you know have that first ad that's paper click
 or you do SEO and have that first organic list because you've done keyword matching on your website
 and you have blog content that matches it so it's complicated and it's amazing to me the number
 and it's why you know I somewhat rest easy at night knowing that companies need agencies and
 partners because of the complexities that there are in doing these things and knowing which
 ones to do first and kind of there is no silver bullet though that's kind of the reveal
 like people want well I can do this one thing and it's going to I just run Facebook product ads
 and our store is going to take off yeah but there's a million pre-workout supplements on the market
 and you aren't just going to stand out running a product ad with your label that looks cool you
 know there's a lot of vanity stuff in you know cosmetics and supplements and other things and it
 does have to be more deep than that you have to have great reviews social kind of what I call
 equity yeah you know because you've got people talking about you where that's reviews and other
 things there's just a lot that goes into it well I was just about to say I feel like um and I
 I mean I can say this because I'm probably that customer as well but I feel like you know we're
 high-maintenant shoppers anymore I mean we want to see a brand that has credibility like I
 I'm going to go to their Instagram and see what their feed looks like or I'm going to you know
 like see what their face like what people are actually saying you know is it actually getting spread
 like like what's the social proof like those don't kind of be the kinds of things that like I feel
 like anymore that's a consumer trend I think that's safe to say yeah uh but I think it's interesting
 just you know obviously to your point you probably shouldn't do everything for your product
 because the word you said is key and I think you minute both ways with the social proof part
 high high expectations high demand customers like people have gotten you
 stamazon how easy it is and they've made it they've made it both really easy and really hard
 for other businesses oh yeah they've given you the playbook but it's really hard because
 they've made it completely self-serve it's super easy it's four clicks I'm in the cart I'm checking
 out you have my payment information saved how much the fridge there's no friction right I can
 buy something in Amazon I could do it while I'm talking right now probably not even looking at
 the screen right all right and so you have to get that right and that's some of the things that
 gets lost it's like you know we've got a great product and we'll get it out there we'll run some
 Facebook ads and we'll run some Google ads and you know we'll do this cool video for our Facebook
 page and that's all great and that's all great but then you get to the site it takes seven seconds
 to load it takes three minutes to get your credit card loaded in because there's nothing saved
 and you don't have the like saved engine that brings up their credit cards or linkage to other
 systems and this is why we push people to Shopify because I have a lot of this already worked out
 and so but people it gets lost in the sauce sometimes if you know people get fall in love with
 their own products but they need to fall in love with the customer yeah it was I was good I should
 be a little tagline someone thing exactly exactly so I mean like you know when you're like a small
 to medium size business and you're struggling with that initial e-commerce like strategy and you're
 just kind of feeling overwhelmed but I think this is timely in the terms I hate to say it but in
 terms of COVID right now a lot of companies small to medium size are kind of like okay are you
 calm is either struggling or it needs a revamp of some kind like where do you start I think I like
 to start where I know there's problems first because what happens to me is there's some it's kind
 of the the fear of missing out like the everyone sees what anyone else is doing they go oh I gotta
 have that I gotta have that there's so many bills and whistles like they're gonna do these things
 then suddenly suddenly a small to medium business they can only really afford four key tactics
 is trying to do 12 and focus and at least take on a partner have someone that's working with you
 identify what the issues are and that's if your problem solving an existing e-commerce site okay
 so we have a functional problem with the site okay well we need to look at the technology we need
 to reverse engineer what the issue is come up with a platform solution if it's a content solution
 if it's a story solution then you need to work on your brand then you need to work on like what do
 what are we trying to get how we want people to think fill an act and that starts with a that's
 a branding that's not technology that's branding so there's so many layers to it as a company that
 you know e-commerce is the technology and this where the sale happens all encompassing that and
 that's the interesting thing about e-commerce is it's all in one I think people and businesses before
 when you had a when you have brick and mortar stores and you have marketing and you have branding
 there was an easier delineation in your mind for these channels and these things okay we're
 building brand we're gonna we're telling a story we're working on a new content piece we're
 new working on a new employee program we're doing these things and they feel very independent and
 they understand that it's building towards something right e-commerce gets this lump sum thing
 and it's the entire it's somehow now encompasses the entire business because some businesses all they
 do is sell online right right right and so I think you have to separate the parts separate the
 problems or the challenges of the opportunities and focus on what those are do I have a brand problem
 do I have a technology problem do I have a content problem of a people problem yeah well okay then
 this kind of makes me want to ask you then what are your thoughts on the balance performance
 marketing then versus branding because I think that segues really nicely into what you just said
 and yeah I kind of break that down a little bit that is the million dollar question right now
 in e-commerce is it those are to my buzzwords or to my purpose driven marketing but the demand
 and product driven versus brand and the problem is brand can drive performance performance
 marketing doesn't drive brand for example okay showing me a picture of your yoga pants
 that's wow these are really nice yoga pants and they're a color and it looks cool
 it's not really building the brand it's trying to drive a sale it's performance driven okay
 so it doesn't really work in reverse but that makes sense okay but we get Michelle Obama
 wearing those yoga pants chose her randomly I saw her video the other day and she's doing it and
 she talks about how you know as a busy mom and I know she's a business woman and whatever but
 as a busy mom now you know and her kids are grown everything that but she's taking care of you
 know her businesses and all that but she's running around in a post-COVID world and she wears
 bungee's uh yoga pants yeah whatever they are right right and she tells that story
 and that's brand right and that can drive sales but the balance there is there is unless you have a
 product that is solving a problem that no one uber right like 10 years ago whatever how they're
 10 12 how long uber has been around immediate problem solver no one else was offering it unless
 you have that type of offering you need to be working on your brand why people should buy from you
 today tomorrow and the next because that's what you need you need that lifetime value and that's
 the biggest learning curve in that is the lifetime value of the customer the loyalty of the brand
 the loyalty because if they aren't loyal you are constantly going back in that acquisition loop
 that's very expensive that's very expensive to acquire cold customers no different than any other
 cold calling anything else it's hard and it's expensive and so the answer to to that balance is
 you need to do both and what happens today though especially for any one any of these you know venture
 backed brands yeah it's like 80% performance 20% brand and then and it works for a while because
 the Facebook ads work at first and then people get tired of seeing them and then they stop working
 like why is it this working but what's our brand well we don't really have one and so there's your
 problem and so the companies that are finding that balance and not again category specific it can be 80
 20 brand versus performance in certain things it can be 50 50 could be 60 40 there's not a perfect
 formula but brand and why people should buy form you beyond the product itself is really key and
 it's getting mired and lost as more and more people are worried about ROI on day one this is a long-term
 proposition if you're moving your line your business you're moving your business from offline to
 online and you want to be around for the next 30 years then you need to play the long game and you
 need to have a transition well I'm running out of money well you know what you need to have two
 businesses and two companies going so I mean because it's just it's a long game yeah I got you I got
 you what's been an interesting e-commerce strategy lately that you've seen is there one that's
 like standing out above the rest that's kind of like you know oh my gosh like that oh that was
 crazy that was it like well you know I'm gonna plug our own our own series here a little bit but
 it's actually the truth and it's you know it's lines not cheap so Sean Wayland's company
 you know they're building you know his goal is to be doing a million dollars a month they're
 doing several hundred thousand dollars a month now with a pretty damn limited probably like
 they sell like ten products you know that I'm sure it's more than that so I'm just go no they have
 14 20 you know like but they're selling like water bottles seven different T shirts I'm the
 variations of women's and kids and all that I'm sure the skews are more right right but they
 have a purpose um Sean believes in it he's wearing on his sleeve he's Instagram verified
 and a an influencer already and so they have all the the built-in stuff right now whether or not
 you believe in his purpose whether or not you like what he's saying the way he's building the brand
 is the way that people can build brand now he's building brand every day about being himself
 right and he's living the lion's not cheap brand yeah he is the personification of it right he's
 living it he's breathing it he's influencing others who have that same belief and then they're
 executing the nuts and bolts of of of e-commerce right like everything we're talking about like
 there's like there's the mouse trap of e-commerce right you know you got shop plus side it looks good
 you've got all the bells and whistles that come with it you've got your products and all that
 but the secret sauce is the brand later on top the purpose and the built-in audience that he brings
 every day he brings that built-in audience that he has had to go acquired he's not he's spending
 some money on ads now just to put some gas on the fire but he's been building this brand for his own
 his own personal brand for 10 years you know he's older than that but he's been focused on this and
 changing his life and doing the things that he's done and now it's manifesting self and so
 well someone might ask well I'm not Sean Whalen and I'm not bold in talking all that it's still
 can be reversed engineered because you do need to have a brand and a reason I think that gets to
 your bigger point of branding in general because that's Sean's brand right yeah your brand not you
 Ryan but you whoever that is saying that question right their brand might be something completely
 different whether that's them like you know they they so so they do DIY things or whatever it is
 like their brand could be completely different but to the point of just living it out fully
 as a brand you know for all the layouts of what creates a brand like every aspect of that brand
 needs to be at play and it goes into like influencer marketing all those things and so like if you're
 accompanying like our CEOs really boring and we don't have anyone that's the face of our company
 well you know what I'm sure if your products are wonderful you can get influencers you can get
 people talking about your you know otherwise you got a bigger problem right and so you need to
 leverage their stories if it's not your own story leverage their stories tell their stories through
 through the lens of your brand and so there's a lot of ways at this but it's it's leveraging the real
 time nature of social media the fact that every eyeball is in a smartphone like half the day right
 and how do you maximize that to then sell more on e-commerce right right so I hear you I hear you
 and then I guess you know the kind of what kind of transition into our clothes here a little bit
 what are some e-commerce tactics that businesses should be taking into consideration we're right
 in the middle well we're about to start our holiday season like holiday you know marketing all
 that kind of stuff what are some things that are important especially in a COVID world that
 needs to be taken into consideration right now well it's you know one if you're an existing
 business already then it's all about maximizing your list I mean we've talked about this if you
 already have customers right you know it's a little late to start to be trying to gain
 he gets really expensive the ads the ads go up in price you know they've been down a little bit
 because Facebook and some of the the boycotts have gone on but you know it's it's it's real
 expensive to be acquiring customers in the middle of it so two two suggestions one you know lean
 on your customers be good to them have your messages in order effectively for your sales and all
 those things and if you're new or you're coming into the space and you don't have that established
 base go hard like go with your bet put your best offer out there yeah I'm not saying give away
 the farm and I think it's real dangerous the companies that are always on sale or 30% all the time
 but in this time period people are looking for a deal and so what put your best foot out there
 so that you can acquire the customer via your product but also the deal that they're getting
 and you know I see companies and we've worked with companies that toil with this like well what
 do 10% that what do 15 what do 15 if your margins are like you know 150% then you need to do 30
 you know like for black Friday and all these things put your best deal out there get as many
 customers as you can endure get them acquired so you start building your list right and so that
 then you can re target and resell them in the holidays right right and if you aren't doing
 re-targeting then call us because you've got sight coming to your traffic you need to be doing
 dynamic re-targeting so that they see and people are like oh I hate ads but you know what if I looked
 at a pair of shoes yesterday and I find them in my feed I'm not bothered like yeah not annoyed
 them sometimes like you know like before you know I guess 15 years ago I wasn't in digital marketing
 maybe I was like whoa this is creepy now other people I get but you know it's relevant you know
 like if you were shopping for you're probably interested in it yeah and so have your re-targeting
 on maximize your email marketing and if you're acquiring your customers put your best foot forward
 don't don't don't go cheap I hear you I think this is a great perspective and I'm really glad that
 we have this now in our e-commerce series as well but that is it for this episode of the
 Radcast yeah hey that's the most I think I've talked on it a long time yeah there we go we'll
 change it up a little bit everyone's like oh thank god he doesn't think I was that talking now
 when's the next guest next week yeah no but that's it for us you can stay tuned with everything
 that we do on the radcast on instagram at the dot rad dotcast our website is the radcast dot com
 and then of course go follow Ryan our host I mean come on at Ryan Alfred um verified by the way
 on instagram yeah so that's it for us and stay tuned for our next episode that'll be coming out
 and see you next time see you to listen to full episodes or to contact us visit us on the web
 at the radcast dot com or follow our host at Ryan Alfred on instagram thanks for tuning in