2020 E-commerce & Shopify Marketing Playbook

 really excited about today's podcast. I break down the 2020 e-commerce playbook. A lot of
 suggestions for Shopify if you're thinking about building an e-commerce store transitioning one.
 This is a great podcast for you. Really excited. A lot of content in a hurry. Really that playbook
 that you need to consider for really being successful with your e-commerce store in 2020. Hope you
 enjoy it. Hey guys, this is Ryan Offer, the host of the Radical Company podcast. Welcome to today's
 episode. Excited. It's just solo me today and start doing a few more of these. You know, at least a
 couple of months trying to get into the habit, I guess, as we make it of doing both guests and overall
 kind of marketing tips. We're going to get a little bit bored down to the ground. Really specific
 recommendations that we have for companies, brands, small, big, medium, large. There's going to be
 takeaways from today, I think, across the gamut. Probably more in the small to medium business realm,
 someone just getting started perhaps in the e-commerce space today. We'll be talking about the 2020
 definitive e-commerce playbook and specifically looking at Shopify. It's a platform where a Shopify
 partner here at Radical and it's platform that we recommend unless you're getting into just a ton
 of product variation. I'll talk about that more in future podcasts for where you might need a
 e-commerce solution that's more technically based or just more robust in the number and variations
 if you're talking hundreds of variations of your products or thousands of products. But Shopify
 really fills the void of both small, medium, and large businesses in a lot. I mean, some of the
 largest fastest growing like makeup brands, highly gender, all that stuff is all built on like
 Shopify Plus. So there's a lot of capability there in so many integrations, but today it's really
 about okay, having the playbook for 2020 if you're starting a Shopify store e-commerce or moving,
 you know, maybe from one platform to the next, but this is kind of that definitive guide of things
 that you've got to do. And don't get me wrong whenever you do this kind of playbook, especially in
 the podcast format. I mean, I could do three hours on this topic. I want to cover the big hitters.
 I'm breaking this down into what I call the basics. Then we get into brand. Then we get into the
 secret sauce and then we finish with the gasoline. Those will all make sense as we get into it. So
 let's get started. Number one for Shopify is really about picking out a really good looking theme.
 If you go into Shopify and they have a wonderful both app store, as well as theme store,
 where you can pick out both free and paid for themes. There's also a little a little side secret
 here, something called whatstoretheme.com. If you find a Shopify store that you really like,
 that you really like to look the flow, you can actually find out what theme that is by going to
 that website, entering in the URL, and you will be able to see what theme it is. You can go buy it.
 It might be free. It probably is a purchased one if it looks as good as making you want it.
 But again, it's a low cost and don't skip on the theme. It gives your brand, gives your visibility,
 gives your whole product line up. This is going to be something to foundation of your company.
 Don't skimp here and really start with that theme as the starting block for your brand and your
 company. So you start there. I'm going to shortcut it a little bit. The next key thing in that
 playbook is setting up everything so you can be found on Google. I just say Google. We can say
 SEO. Yes, a lot of Windows computers still have Bing and you've got other Internet Explorer,
 isn't completely dead, though practically. But let's focus from a Google perspective and that's
 really making sure that your site is indexed properly and that you're searching, showing up in
 those search results. It's all about setting your metadata, your titles, your keywords up.
 So I have a couple of little, again, shortcuts here. Neil Patel, a really trusted source for
 marketing information and really an SEO guru, if not a marketing guru, has a software online
 that you can use or just a website should say. I think everything is software but web-based now.
 It's called Uber Suggest. That's U-B-E-R like the ride sharing service. Uber Suggest.
 Free. Amazing capability. We'll tell you the monthly searches that terms get and we'll give you
 a lot of keyword research and suggestions. It has a lot of other things. Don't want to be a
 commercial for them, but a great place to start when filling out your metadata, making sure that
 you're differentiated and showing up in search results. Also, we want to make sure that you get
 manually Google indexed. You can Google that. Just Google it again. We want this to be brief.
 I want this to be the shortcuts. I want to get you started, but you go to just Google
 Google indexing and it will give you all the instructions there. Search Console. A couple of
 other places you can do that. But you want to get your site scraped so that you show up in those
 search results. But first, on your store, get all your metadata, all the keywords that you want to
 do for all of your pages. You can do all of that within the back end of Shopify. Third, product
 photography. Something called a softbox. If you have products, you have clothes, supplements,
 t-shirts, items and merchandise that are, you know, call it two feet overall size or smaller.
 Get something called a softbox. You can literally use your iPhone. That'll allow you to take photos
 on a white backdrop. These are inexpensive. You know, Google softbox on Amazon, less than 50 bucks.
 You can shoot your, all of your stuff on a white background. Use, you can actually pull out
 renders from those products. You have to have beautiful photography now on your e-commerce site.
 Photography and videos sell. Another key tip here. You can embed videos in your product description.
 Photos. So when you go to a photo, when you go to a product, you click on it and you'll find
 images for each one. You want to have your beautiful images. You want to have user-generated
 content. We're going to cover that in a second. But you can also put videos that are right there.
 You can be played in there. Go to the App Store, video embed in products and in the Shopify
 App Store. A number of services there. You want to do that. It drives engagement. It drives sales.
 Great product photography. Great videos. All within each product feed. Really,
 Uber important. Now, moving on to what I really call the brand and building trust. So you've got
 your theme picked out. You've got all your products loaded. You've got beautiful photography.
 You have video that you've taken even with your smartphone. Take a great 4K smartphone video.
 Put it on a tripod and talk about your products. Or if you're a small to medium business,
 then hire an agency and get some great video content. It's 2020. Video sells.
 Content is king, which breeds me to trust and building brand overall.
 There's a lot of ways to do this. It starts with a great blog, a podcast, and user-generated
 content. We need to build trust. This is not a set it and forget it. There's so many companies.
 It's funny. We have people that come and see us at radical solo pernures, as I would call them.
 We have medium-sized companies that are wanting to get into selling their products online.
 Maybe they've been a brick and mortar. Maybe they have a larger product footprint and wanting to
 sell more. Everyone thinks, set it and forget it. I built an e-commerce store. I put it out there.
 I get my metadata to understand. Most people understand the SEO side and the Google side.
 We're going to start selling product. Wrong. Thousands of stores. Unless you're selling something
 that no one else is, a lot of things are commoditized. Supplements are commoditized.
 T-shirts are commoditized. There's a million people selling a million things, but that doesn't
 mean you can't be successful, but you have to build trust and you have to build your brand.
 We tell companies of all sizes this every day. Everyone thinks again, no matter the business,
 if you start selling something, people will come. You've got to build trust. You've got to make
 people think, feel an act a certain way. That is what branding is and key to it. What does that
 look like? Blog content. Yes, blogs are not dead in 2020. You need to do weekly content. Helps with
 SEO also establishes trust and credibility that you know what you're talking about. You know the
 category that you're selling in. Uber important. Speaking of Uber, you're looking for blog content
 ideas. Go back to Uber. Suggest. Look up keywords in your category. Whether that's clothing, whether
 that's cologne, whether that's jewelry, household items, whatever it is. Go to Uber. Suggest. Do keyword
 research. Look where the most searched items or words are in your category and do blog content
 accordingly. Make sure that you have a lot of those keywords in the blog. But then you've done a
 blog. Do a podcast. Start one. We did it radical. Everyone's doing it. It is one of the fastest growing
 mediums now. You can build credibility. Talk about your products. Talk about suggestions. Talk
 about the category. You can level up in a lot of different ways to build your credibility and trust
 and your brand for why someone should do business with you. Also, if you start with a podcast,
 it would allow you to then transcribe it into a blog, which then you can take and use for copy
 in other places. I call this atomization of content. You're building all of this book of content.
 You've got written word. You've got the listened word sound. You've got video. Take a video like
 this of your podcast. And you can atomize all of that content across your mediums. Post it on
 Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. Post the blog. Post links to the blog. Blog. Backlink on other
 asks people that you may talk about in the blog content or the podcast to then post it as well.
 So you get those really important backlinks back to your site.
 Atomize the content. Look for ways to take one piece of content and make it 10 or 20 or 30.
 This is a great way to get and build trust while also doing it in a reasonably efficient way.
 No matter if you're a team of 1, 2, 10, 20, 100, all of these tactics are important in really
 building brand trust and giving people a reason to want to do business with you.
 Now it's time for the secret sauce. So there's a few apps. I'm going to name them here. I'll link
 to them as well within the blog post that we'll have for this SMS bump. So everyone, when you
 check out, you're used to getting e-mail confirmations, all this stuff's built in. Talk a little bit
 more about e-mail shortly. But SMS bump is one of many, many SMS platforms that's built in to
 Shopify. It's within the app store and yes, these have costs, but they will pay for themselves
 over time. This will allow all of your customer communication to happen over SMS, order confirmations,
 flows, marketing flows, reminders, upsells, but SMS is growing. It's a big trend. It's happening.
 People are getting more comfortable with sharing their number, sharing their content, and allowing
 people to kind of step into that text message box where five to six years ago, seven, 10 years ago,
 it was around SMS messaging is not new, but it's definitely becoming a more accepted and a more
 common way as another communication channel where you can give that contact and keep that
 flow and communication with your customers in a format that they're always getting. That's
 right in the text inbox. You don't have to worry about different e-mail platforms or different
 social media platforms. The text in-blocks is a very powerful way. SMS bump. Second,
 Clavier. One of my favorite softwares, another online web-based platform. It's really like
 customer relationship management on steroids. It links really well with Shopify. It allows you to
 send shipping confirmations. You can actually, there's templated stuff through Shopify, but if
 you turn on Clavier, you can have them do these automations and these flows with your customers,
 allows for shopping cart abandonment emails when someone's gone on your side, add stuff to the
 cart. You'll send them a reminder. You'll also get them other suggestions. Just a really powerful
 way. You can also just send your general newsletter content through this platform. All of the
 everything from discount codes to just the entire platform and all of your products
 integrates really well with the platform. Highly recommended. More than, again, I can probably talk
 an hour on Clavier, but really important. Another thing I love for repeat purchase type things is
 renewal products, be it vitamins, be it things that are, you ultimately have usage that's going
 to be repeated either month to month or quarter to quarter. Bold subscriptions allows you to add
 a checkout box for someone to subscribe to your product. Super powerful, super great for repeat
 revenue. So bold subscriptions, Clavier and SMS bump. Three of my favorite kind of secret sauce apps
 for Shopify. Highly recommend you look up those and do more research. So finally, the gasoline.
 That is really, well, I think of this as, okay, you've got a great store. You're doing branding,
 you've got great product, great photography. You've set up all these apps. You've got the motorwork
 and the engine's running. But how do we pour gas on it? And it's really leveraging ambassadors
 and what has been known as the quote unquote affiliate marketing. This is how you get other people
 selling. It's really like hiring a sales force without having to hire them. There are a lot
 of apps. My first one of my favorites is Reversion. That's R E F E R S I O N. It's really turned
 key. It allows you to set up individual discounts on each product. It allows you to set up
 commission structures for your ambassadors. So you hear me say supplements a lot. We're helping a
 lot of those brands with the content that we do as well as beauty. So I'll come back to that.
 So if you've found a group of influencers or ambassadors that you want to work with,
 it gives them a turn key way to sign up, manage their commission structure, manage their discount
 codes. And you can manage all of that through one platform, super turn key, super great for
 community management and ambassador management. And this is really gasoline on the fire. Again,
 you've got the store, you've got product, you've got all of these things turned on. And how do we
 how do we again spread this out? And really that's a sales force. And that's really what we're
 talking about with ambassadors. Tons of ways to create community with them. A lot of them through
 some things we talked about content. I really love using the ambassador community to create
 user generated content that you use and share across channels. It gets them engaged. It gets them
 pumped up about your brand and selling your product and getting behind you as a company. And it's
 just a great way to pour gasoline on the fire of the e-commerce store. Those are the main
 playbook items for Shopify and e-commerce in general. A lot of this is Shopify specific. But a lot
 of these tactics and recommendations relate to e-commerce in general. And so as you get started,
 if you're thinking about a transfer from one platform to another or you're just trying to
 to wade into the e-commerce waters. So to speak, this should be a great start. We're going to have
 this as a blog post at radical.com. Our website. And it's also going to be a video that will share
 around. And this is your 2020 e-commerce playbook. We'll talk soon.