¶ Introduction and welcome
Welcome to the e-Commerce podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. Now this is a show all about helping you deliver e-commerce. Wow. And to do that today I'm chatting with a fellow Brit Tony Conte from Brave Agency, and we are gonna be talking about marketing everything to do with e-commerce marketing, which I know is a topic we're all interesting 'cause why would we not be right? Uh, we all want to know how to market our businesses. Better. So make sure you stay tuned for that.
Grab your notebooks, grab your pens. 'cause you're definitely gonna want them. Now whilst you are doing that, if you haven't done so already, make sure you sign up for our newsletter. Yes. 'cause every week we are sending out some amazing stuff. I. Tips and tricks from the podcast with some of the bits and bobs as well. But all the show notes, all the links, they're also in there. Uh, and so you just get it straight to your inbox totally for free.
So you can get a hold of that at ecommercepodcast.net. So make sure you do, and I will see you over there. Now, before we get into the conversation, I just want to give a little bit of a shout out to my mate, Darren Hickey, uh, who connects us from Fellowship. If you don't, if you're a regular to the show, you may recognize the name. Darren was on it back in November. Uh, and we talked about WooCommerce. He's a bit of a WooCommerce expert. Uh, and so Darren introduced both Tony and myself.
And so Tony is here because of Darren? Yes, he is. So just say thanks to Darren 'cause Darren's a legend. Thanks Darren. Uh, there you go. Thanks Darren. Uh, let's meet, uh, Tony, the founder of Brave Agency, a digital pioneer in brand. Marketing and e-commerce since the mid nineties did a decade evens exist? We don't know, do we? Uh, in 2000, he launched Brave from his garage with zero clients and a big vision, an integrated agency where creativity, tech, and strategy unite for client success.
Today, brave turns clicks into loyal customers and helps ambitious brands push boundaries and thrive.
¶ Tony shares his background as a digital pioneer since the mid-90s
And you know what, Tony, the thing that I love is, you've been doing this since the mid. Nineties now. I started my little journey around 1997, about a year before I got married. Um, ah, and so, and I started in e-commerce in 2002. So, uh, I often referred to myself as an e-commerce dinosaur. I. No,
not at all. I don't The dinosaur we Not the dinosaur. We were, we were the pioneers. That's true. If it wasn't for us, then uh, there would be no internet. No, not no internet, but commerce,
no. I'm gonna take the internet. If it wasn't for me and you tiny, there would be no internet. Everybody. You're, you're welcome. Yeah. That's all I can say.
We've both, we've both seen the.com bubble, haven't we?
We saw it. We saw it burst. We did. It came and it went really quickly and everyone's like, what is going on? Uh, uh, to be fair, we've seen everything. I mean, there was no mob mobile phones. You didn't have to worry about mobile commerce. There was basically, you just had a website and you can, it took us a while to even figure out email marketing, you know? Exactly. It's like what? Yeah. Google just seemed to pick you up because it did.
Yeah. And then it was a few years later, Google AdWords came in. So, I mean, all these things, you've sort of seen them come and a lot of things you've seen come and go, really? So it's, it is cool that you've been around, you know, a, a, a, uh, as they say, and you, you've obviously, you must have enjoyed it.
Yes, it's, has its ups and downs. Um, been a lot of changes, a lot of challenges along the way. Mm-hmm. Um, but the way that everything, I'd say just the way that people interact with, you know, online channels, uh, just has changed so much over the years. Yeah. Um, but that means that you have to be kind of thinking about what the next way, shape, or form of, of a, of a website should be, or in terms of how they're gonna in interact with that, that, um, advert, et cetera.
Um, the fundamentals are still there. You've gotta attract, engage, and per, you know, effectively
¶ Matt and Tony reflect on being eCommerce pioneers since the mid-90s
persuade them to purchase. It's just that the, the, the, the speed at which now we can develop. Um. Marketing in general. Online is, uh, is just a, you know, it is just, it, it, it literally, it is too quick. Yeah. For, I think, I think the actual techno, I think we're finding that the technology is, although it's helping us to kind of speed up the processes and the analytics et et cetera, it, it's, it's even faster now.
And obviously with ai it's, it's, yeah, it's balloons now to a, a crazy level. So, um, yeah, it's exciting. It's certainly, um. I'd say it's not for the faint hearted, for sure. Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, it's, it's been enjoyable. He says, says
secret gr. Yeah. It's funny, isn't it? Because I, as I'm talking, I'm getting all nostalgic now, but as I'm, as we're talking Tony, I'm kind of thinking, you know what, when, when I launched my first website back in 2002, marketing was literally launching the website, right. And search engines. Managed to pick it up. And there was ma there weren't that many, uh, websites back then. So you, you tended to get on page one. Mm-hmm.
And people were, were sort of, they would buy it and then they would call to make sure you were legitimate because they, you know, they felt twitchy about giving you their credit card details. But marketing, um, in some respects, as we know it now, didn't exist that whole, you know, the whole realm of digital marketing. But what did exist was the fundamentals, as you say, so of old school principles.
The website had to attract people, it had to make sense, you know, uh, you had to deliver a great service. For those people to come back and buy again. These things have always been sort of timeless, haven't they? Even sort of pre-internet. Yeah. And uh, one of the things that sort of strikes me about a lot of e-commerce entrepreneurs, a lot of conversations I have in essence I can summarize in a single statement, is that a lot of people are looking for the silver bullet.
Like, if I just pull this one lever, like if I spend 10 grand on Facebook ads or if I do TikTok or whatever it is, you know, whatever the latest thing is, I'm gonna pull that lever and it's gonna make me a millionaire. Right. Do you, do you get a lot of these inquiries?
Uh, yeah. A hell of a lot. Um, we get a, yeah. I think generally speaking, they think one channel will save it all. And, and, um, the reality of it is, is that it's, it. There's gotta be, there's, there's gotta be about 10 channels. You could, there's 10 levers you can pull. That's just, you know, um, but each one works. In its own way, but has contributes to each one, basically.
Yeah. You can't run, as you know, you can run paid advertising, that's fine, but if you put your ads in one basket, then your e-commerce brand, it is only as worth as much as a paid ad campaign. Yeah. If you're not generating content or social proofing, SEO, et cetera, you know, I personally wouldn't buy. An e-commerce brand, if they didn't have organic traffic sales attribution attributed to SEO. Mm-hmm. Because anybody could, any, anybody can throw money at it.
Yeah. So. We, they'll come in and say, okay, we, we need to do TikTok. Well, yeah, you need to do TikTok, but where's the brand? Mm-hmm. Where's the positioning? Where's the social proof? And is the product fit for fit for the audience? You know, so there's, I think it's become, yeah. I dunno if that answers a question, but Yes. Lots of times. Can we just do SEO No, you can't just do seo or can you do, you know, can, can we just do, um, TikTok shop and forget about any, anything else?
Kind of, it's possible, but there's a ceiling on that as well. So, um, I think it's just got a lot more, um, uh, mixed. You know, it's now on, you know, multi-channel, I'd say. Yeah. Yeah. You can't, you know, you, that's most of the conversations now are, we're running five channels.
¶ Why there's no "silver bullet" in marketing and the importance of prioritisation
We think one or two are potentially not working, or we're leaving money on the table. Um, and that's where, you know, we would get involved and say, okay, let's look at the numbers. Let's look at the audience. Let's look at the, the attribution, make sure everything's, you know, fir on all cylinders. Um, but normally you can't. There's no silver, no silver bullet. Now there's no silver bullet.
No, I, I, I would agree. I think you, you get to a stage where you hear stories of a somebody on YouTube who managed to pull off a miracle and then they do a YouTube video about it.
Yeah.
Um, but I, I think for most people, I. Actually, you are right. That that digital marketing now is, is, is evolved and is evolving to such an extent that Yeah, it is impossible, I think for, for a solo entrepreneur who is doing e-commerce to keep up with what the changes are and to keep it with a, like if I was just running my e-commerce business, we have a team of people.
¶ The challenge of managing multiple marketing channels as a solo entrepreneur
Yeah, but how would I find the time to. Do the SEO to do the blogs, the content, the social media, make the videos, um, do the, run the paid ads, make sure my email marketing campaigns are up to date. Do the abandoned cart flows. Do you know what I mean? Uh, do my silly dance on TikTok. I appreciate that's not just TikTok. Now I'm being facetious. I've done, we've all done them to be fair, but do you know what I mean? There's so much going on.
Yeah. Um, that it is, I think it's almost impossible now to try and to try and. To, to keep up with it as a, as a solo entrepreneur, you, you, you genuinely need help. I think.
I think, um, the key is prioritization because you could just go at all of those, you know? Mm. All 20 elements that you just mentioned, but it's prioritizing and putting it in an order. You know, I think that's the key really. 'cause there's two, you know, and, and looking at every single channel and reviewing actually what's, what's the potential return on investment from that channel? And can I put the investment from that channel into the next channel? Mm-hmm.
Or, you know, and then dial everything up. That's where, that's where I've seen most e-commerce businesses that are thriving, is that they've, they've had a clear, um, analysis of all the channels, all the tactics. Then gone with quite, quite a methodical path there. Yeah. In terms of how they reinvest, et cetera. I mean, some of our early clients from sort of from 2000, 2005, they're really early and they went from mail order, you know, ordering stuff in magazines.
Cutting all the magazine spend and saying, right, what's the internet all about, Tony? And they said, oh, I was thinking, oh God. Okay. So basically it's an online catalog, you know? Um, and okay, well how do I, I'm number one in all the magazines 'cause I'm spending, you know, 20,000 pounds on a, on a, every single month. And mags then was quite, quite, quite significant.
Yeah. Um. The ones that kind of not, I'm not saying like they listened, but the ones that actually started thinking about this is, this is, this looks like a potential. This, this is where my mail order's gonna go. Yeah. They literally, they literally launched their websites in a catalog online point of view. It wasn't actually commerce at that point necessarily. It was all about getting online. And they would get the phone calls, get, keep getting phone calls from it.
Um, and they soon realized that the more they put into paid ads, it was like. The more exposure they were getting in magazines. It's the same principle.
Yeah.
Um, that, that, that worked. And, and don't forget, uh, Google ad PPC then was impression based from 2000 to 2000 and it was cheap. Yeah, exactly. And it, yeah. Not like it is now, but yeah. I mean, the whole, the, the whole kind of click, you know, pay per click. Yeah. Didn't really, I don't think it came in until about two. I think it was something like 2002, 2004, maybe, something like that. But it was all impression based before then. Um. But I think it's, it's, it's the fundamentals.
I keep saying it, you know, to to, to various kind of
¶ The key to sustainable growth: prioritising your marketing efforts
brands that come on board, especially challenger brands. Fundamentals of advertising hasn't really changed. It's just the channel by channel. Mm-hmm. And prioritizing. And prioritizing the numbers as well. So
let's talk about that. Um, how would you go about prioritizing? So here I am, I'm, I'm an overworked, uh oh, overwhelmed is probably a better word. Um, e-commerce. Founder. Mm-hmm. Um, it's all, it's, it's okay. But, you know, I feel like my life is non-existent in, in many ways. How do I prioritize, how do I look at what I'm doing and going right. This is, this is the best way to prioritize my marketing.
I, I guess, I guess obviously, you know, we can't control the operational side of a business. We can, we can, we can forecast sales increases so they don't buckle under the, under the load. That's one element. But in terms of prioritizing, you know, there's quite a few that we've met, you know, that are seven days a week, they're in the business. Mm-hmm. They've got, you know, mm-hmm. Um, they've got maybe 10, maybe 20 staff, something like that. They're constantly in the business all the time.
Um, introducing automation when it comes to, um, a lot of their activities is, is key. Yeah. Um, and helping them, helping them through. I mean the tech, there's the technical sides of a website, so you automate a lot of the activity as well. You know, email automation is one. Mm-hmm. So they don't have to do anything manually there. Um, we take away a lot of the stress in terms of, um, whether it's content, you know, to content strategy and actually delivering that, that strategy for them.
So the key is to kind of work out what their strengths are. And work alongside their them or their existing Yeah. Um, teams really. Um, 'cause it is tough to kind of pull away and give everything to an agency. And we never say that to a client. We never say, I don't think anybody should say like, here's everything crack on. I think it's the kind of understanding what they should
¶ Why content remains king and how to leverage it effectively
and shouldn't be doing in house. Yeah. At that given moment in time, I'm, and I'm always one for actually having the conversation to say like, we wanna get you to the X level. We want you to be in the position where you can actually. Get your own team to do X, Y, and Z. We still wanna be here, we still wanna be helping you run the, the strategy and the real technical pieces.
But we see you kind of growing your content team because I think the, the, the, and I, it's a slightly off tangent, but content has always been king for many, many years before I was born. You know, it's always been about. Um, that's where advertising and engagement comes from. The, the, the creativity, the content, and it still is to this present day. Um, and brands need to bring a lot of that in-house. Um, comes an overhead.
I. But the control of that, it makes our lives easier as agencies as well, that we run the strategy. We, we will share that, that tactic with them and, and come up with a content strategy. But everything comes from that content. SEO comes from content, paid ads comes from, from content as well, meta, et cetera. Um, digital pr, it's all content driven. Um, we see a lot of brands bringing that in-house, and I, I applaud that. I'd say I'd encourage it more and more so, um.
But there's no silver bullet when it comes to, you know, how do we, how do we de-stress a, an e-commerce entrepreneur? Well, they, they're either surviving. Mm-hmm. Because they, they, some of them, well, a lot of them have launched post covid thinking they can mm-hmm. Sustain that level of revenue.
Yeah.
Um, and that's where we give 'em a bit of a reality check in terms of, okay, you're wasting time in that area. That's, that's not that, that, that's not focus on that area. Let's go for the, uh. Low hanging fruit, as they say. Um, and the quick wins. Yeah. And I, I dare say that, but there are quick wins. Mm-hmm. There are quick, there still are quick wins. And that's a, that comes back down to prioritization.
Mm-hmm.
¶ Fundamentals of advertising haven't changed despite new channels
Yeah. I
find that actually that, um. Depending on who you talk to, depends on where the quick wins are. Yeah. So there's no, I can't write a book and say, these are your top 10 quick wins, because it, every business is different, right? Yeah. Every business is unique. Um, but I, I could, I could quite easily write a book, go, these are the principles of marketing. Read through this and the quick wins will become obvious. That, that kind of thing.
It's, um, which I, I, I, I think is, is probably a, a more successful route forward. Um. But I like how you, you talked about, figure out what your strengths are because I, I have this, um, I have a manifesto, Tony, because I like manifestos. Actually, it's just a fancy name for a bit of, a bit of writing that I did once. Um, where I, I liken most e-commerce entrepreneurs, I call them digital Davids, you know, the David and Goliath story.
Mm-hmm. And I, I, I paint Amazon and Walmart as the Goliath because, you know, I, I can and make them the bad guy.
¶ Playing to your strengths: how smaller brands can compete with giants like Amazon
And David won the battle with Goliath. 'cause he played to his own strengths. Yeah. And, and, and one of the questions I get asked, you know, a lot, and I'm, I I, I appreciate on the podcast, I use this for, I get asked a lot of questions and you can you, but this one I do get asked a lot is like, how do I, how do I beat Amazon? Right? Um, and I think actually you've gotta play to your strengths is is the answer. You know, you've gotta, you've got, 'cause the one thing Amazon can't be is you.
No, they can't be you and your brand. Hmm. They can't be your, your positioning. They can't be your brand. Uh, what you stand for and, and all that sort of thing. They can't, they, they don't have your values, they don't have your tone of voice. They don't have your ability to tell a story. Yeah. You know, they're just a big machine which sells stuff. Yeah. But you've got stuff that's got a story and so how do you, how do you bring that out?
Um, and so I like what you say, you know, play to your strengths and, and. Everyone has to think about content, um,
and brand, you're just hitting nail on the head as well. Is the, is I I, I've, I've seen a lot of e-commerce brands now build, building their brand more so than ever before. So building the personality, getting that personality in the forefront. A huge amount of kind of brands that, um, I'd say 90% of them have come to us and actually they've come to us thinking, oh, I need. Paid ads, I need meta, et cetera. Mm-hmm. And we've like, no, you need to get your story.
Yeah. Actually above, I'll call it above the fold. 'cause that was a thing. Yeah. But you know, it's not in, you know, they're not selling their story and Yeah. Um, there's so much more kind of engagement, um, when it comes to, uh, consumers these days. Customers these days that they want us, they wanna know about the founder of a Yeah. X brand that Yeah. Is, yeah.
That came from such and such fashion brand originally, and they stand for X, Y, and Z. Um, a lot of this information is hidden on websites sometimes, especially with the independent brands. They don't think that actually I need to bring that to the, to the, to the top, um, as a story. So, so once you've bought into it. You are kind of, you're, you're bought into their story. You bought into them, you're bought into the brand.
You bought into the product, and you, you've basically bought something.
Yeah.
In the checkout. Out the checkout. Yeah.
No, no. It's totally true. I'm, I'm with you all the way, and I think, you know, I, I see a lot of websites which are cookie cutters, you know that Yeah. They're a carbon copy of somebody else's in their market because they feel this is what I need to do. Yeah. I mean, we were joking before we recorded. Can you know, can you build me a bango website for. Five grand or whatever. It's like no, just no. Yeah. Um, but you kind of have this sense as what my website should be.
Website, uh, website should be Sorry, kids. The bad ones. Yeah. Yeah. They're the bad ones. Yeah. Yeah. But at, at the same time, this, this tension of brand of your voice of. Telling your story? Well, I think I became more aware of it when, um, Toms became a thing. Oh yeah, yeah. Do you know what I mean? And you, and you looked at that and you thought, wow, blind me.
They, they've, they've managed to use this brand, this story so well, um, that it kind of threw the world upside down a little bit, uh, at that point. And, and I know that there were other brands around at the time, but that was the one that stood out for me. I don't know what stood out for you. So many can't think now. Actually, you put me on the spot. Nah, this is what we do. This is what we Well, let's, um, uh, take you off that spot.
Let's talk about this report that you guys have put together. 2020 x. Tell me about that.
Yeah, so last year we, we, um, reached out to, um, CMOs, e-commerce, brand managers, et cetera, and ask 'em to fill out a, a, a survey around their challenges, what they see next, et cetera. And, um. What they see as, yeah, basically what they see as the next big thing and, and really what they're doing and what they're not doing, et cetera. So we collated all this, um, this information together and
¶ Insights from Brave Agency's marketing report: the crucial importance of CX
the, the general consensus was that everything, everything seems to be coming from a central piece of work that they're not doing. Enough of, but they're aware of, and it's, it's looking after the, the customer journey and the customer experience what on whatever platform and the website. So everyone thinks like customer experience or CX is just the website, but it's not, it's every single platform basically.
Yeah. And pretty much everybody knows that they, they knew they need to increase the customer experience to increase the conversion. But they were focused so much on short term wins rather than looking at the long term strategy, et cetera. Yeah. But they know they need to do that, and I think that's the pressure that, that, that brands, um, are under, you know, within the report it kind of goes on about what sort of, what their biggest challenges are. Where it's, it's, it's.
It's the fragmented of data. So they're so stuck in data. They've, they're spending more time in all knee deep in the data and actually not thinking about the customer experience, where in actual fact it's, so, it's, it's equally as important. I, I get data's important, don't get me wrong. We, we live by it with, with the campaigns that we run.
But that was, that was one fundamental, uh, challenge that they need to, they know they need to resolve, but they're not, they're not, they, they're, they're. They're admitting that they're not doing it fast enough. Yeah. They're just not reacting. Um, so, you know, and game changing kind of insights that they were thinking of. You know, the likes of obviously TikTok shop, they, uh, live shopping as well. Yeah. It's something that came up as well. Yeah. I believe that as well.
You know, in terms of, I, I agree with that. I think, um, certain countries out there. Then China, uh, uh, sort of smashing it from that point of view, it is coming here. Mm-hmm. And it is, you know, basically QVC on steroids online. It is, yeah. Yeah. And I think, um, it's gonna bounce quite high, um, when, when it really takes off in this, I know it's already here, but it's, it's, I don't think we've seen, you know, enough of it. And I think it's coming and that's the area. No,
I, I'm, I'm always surprised at how little it's been done here, considering the success of QVC.
Yeah.
And considering the success of live shopping in, in, certainly in Asia, like you say. Yeah. Um, and I was always surprised that Instagram never figured out that if it did live streams, you could, it could have a buy now button on on. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? And, and you could integrate that somehow with social selling, which TikTok obviously, you know, they, they, they've done that. So there's a few, there's a lot of questions I have, like, why is this not taken off?
But I, I'm with you in the sense that live shopping, I think. Is gonna become one of those things, which is more and more of a bigger deal to the point where I've been talking to the guys in our team, um, like, can we carve out space in the warehouse to create a studio, like a live TV studio?
¶ The emerging opportunity of live shopping and its potential for retail
It doesn't have to be big.
No.
Um, we have pod, a podcast studio, obviously down there. Yeah. Um, and I'm in the podcast studio at my house. But having a podcast studio and a live TV studio, I think those two things are fast becoming like non-negotiables. Yeah. If that makes sense. Yeah. Um, but so I'm intrigued that you mentioned that.
Well, the other aspect as well is if we're, we're, if we wanna see, um, I. A survival of retail, um, independent retailers. Let's just take them for an example. As an example. I see no reason why on their slow days, you know, whether it's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever, that they shouldn't have a popup in their shop of a live. I. Piece. Mm-hmm. You know, out, out the back, et cetera. That tho those, that those, they can, they can create that, that commerce mm-hmm.
On those days with their live feeds. 'cause all we're doing with the live feeds is we're pushing ads to the live feeds. It's, isn't it, you know, it's as simple as that.
Mm-hmm.
Get a live feed, get an agency, or if you can do it yourself and promote the hell out of that. Live feed to that audience, which we know we can get you in front of. Mm-hmm. It's a no-brainer. Um, and for me, if, if it's an independent retail, it's thinking, okay, these days are really slow. We had to get that many sales on, on Mondays, well turn it into a, turn it into a live shop day and just get a, get a cube. And get filming or get a counter, whatever it is.
It doesn't matter if you sell ice cream or not ice cream, but you know, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if, no, I'm gonna sell ice
cream and start doing live show and I'm gonna use it as an excuse for my wife that I have to go and eat ice cream. Exactly. Exactly.
Exactly. But I think that's, that's an opportunity I think, you know, for independent, and it doesn't, it wouldn't cost them that much to kind of get set up. No. Especially like you say,
if they've already got a store. Yeah. Whereas I don't have a store for my e-comm sites, it's just a boring warehouse. I have to build a studio. Yeah. You're right. I, I think for the, for a lot of people, they don't actually have to do that. Yeah. And, um, you can, you can use what you've got.
¶ The power of authentic, raw content over polished production
You don't, I mean, you know, you don't need the fancy. I was watching a guy who set up a, a a, a YouTube studio. Spent like quarter of a million quid on the studio. You're just like, holy moly. Um, you know, I think you can do everything on your iPhone these days.
I think that's, that's, that's a really good point 'cause I think some of the best raw kind of footage that you see these days that goes via Royal is off an iPhone anyway. So
it's interesting, isn't it, how this sort of, and what works well on TikTok shop and what works user generated content works well. It's not polished, it's not like the po I mean these are just, and you get that best off your iPhone rather than the 7,000 pound Sony camera.
Yeah. It's almost as if it's authentic 'cause you've kind of, it's a bit raw and it's a bit. Yeah. It, it definitely is that, and we've, we've, we've had a lot of success, um, from, uh, user-generated content. Um, def it's, yeah. It, it really works. It, the, the RO the better.
Mm-hmm.
Because it just looks like it's not, it's, it's natural. Yeah. Um, it's authentic as such.
Yeah. I mean, how long that trend lasts for, I have no idea. But while it's there, use it because you've, chances are you've got the capacity to do it in your pocket. Right, exactly. So get get on it. Exactly. What, um, what other things did your report bring out that were interesting?
Um, well, I, I'll be honest with you. Everything was it, you know, everything seems to, it kept pointing, um, to CX really? Mm. Um, I think, you know that, that it pretty much. Cemented, you know, that, um, everyone was aware that lack of content was key. Yeah. They need to bring content in-house to, to, um, yeah. To, to, to get the kind of. To get the control, I'd say. Yeah. That was, and the brand
voice, isn't it? The story, the, the tone and all that sort of things, which you can't outsource.
Yeah, that was, that was really key. The, the need, like I said, knee deep in, um, data was, uh, stifling them.
Mm-hmm.
Um, that was another area as well. Um, just trying to think off the top of my head actually. The, the, um, but the, the. I think the customer experience is everything and they just, they, I think they were Oh, massively. Yeah. All sounded like gutted basically. That they weren't on top of it. Yeah. On top of the customer thinking out, you know, I think the big thing is it was that the fact that they know they need to be thinking further ahead for, um, longevity. Yeah. And sustainability.
That's, that I think is key, especially for a brand, you know, that. Is trying to compete in a, in a saturated market as well. The only way of doing that is thinking ahead and, um, you know, showing that, you know, the, the showing that the brand and the, the, the personality is there. I think, I think off the top of my head is that, you know, I think it was, but it was about 60%, um, said that, you know, customer experience really matters to them the most.
But only about, I think there's only 30% are actually doing anything about it. Which is fascinating,
isn't it? Yeah. But that's, I think that's a common trait amongst, um, business people, certainly in e-commerce. Yeah. I know what I'm supposed to do. Are you doing it? No. Well, I'm busy, isn't I? Yeah. Is, is a, is a reality of it all, you know, and it
comes from the top as well. If you've got a financial, um, whoever's in charge of finance, you know, if you've got the FD breathing down your neck and like, gotta get more, et cetera, et cetera, and, and they're trying to fix cash flow with paid media. Yeah. That's generally the, but paid media is going up. So had you have thought about the customer experience and the, maybe the content, et cetera. Back back a year ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It'll be reaping its rewards now.
Yeah. And that's something that people, that's so true. You can't, you, you don't, you don't get that taken away from you. 'cause once you've got built the brand and built your authority mm-hmm. Then you've got that stability, then it's about protecting and growing there again. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas with paid, just throwing money at paid isn't always just, uh, you know, it's not the silver bullet as such. It's a bit, it is a bit risky, but don't get me wrong, it, it absolutely works.
But. You know, you can't control what Google wants to charge you for a click.
No. And it, and you're right, it's only gonna go up. Yeah. It's never, I, I've never ever gone into it and gone, oh, we're paying less to Google. How nice that, that just doesn't, that just doesn't compute really. Um, but I, I, I totally get what you're saying around the customer experience and, and just making, 'cause again, this is where I think you differentiate yourself. This is where, um, you.
Become different to Amazon, you become different to your competitors, is actually that customer experience.
Yeah.
Um, I mean, I've told the story before on the, on the podcast, and if you're new you won't have heard the story. If you're old, you, well, here's a friendly reminder, but um, I remember when we actually, we had a beauty company, which I sold a few years ago, but we had a beauty company.
¶ A case study in customer experience: how small packaging changes dramatically increased repeat purchases
And we were sitting down and we were looking at, we wanted to understand why customers bought, you know, the average order value was like 75 quid on beauty products. Now, of course, I'm a fell, I'm the wrong target market in, in many ways. I, you know, I spend four pound 50 and think I've been overcharged on beauty, as you can tell, right? So, so the fact that people were spending like 75, 80 quid just astounded me in many ways. And, and that was the average and.
We quickly realized that the customer was buying themselves a gift, a treat. It wasn't just skincare. It was like, this is self-care. This is, um, a, a gift for myself. This was. And so we thought, well, wouldn't it be interesting? And we bought products from all of our competitors to see how they would, how they turned up. Every single one of them came in a Jiffy bag, you know, um, the paled envelopes for those of you who dunno what a jiffy bag is outside of the uk.
Um, so the, the boxes around the skincare were all bashed up. Not that I cared because I'm taking the skincare outta the box and putting it in the bin. So we, we put the skincare in a box. I. To protect it. Um, we stopped wrapping it up in the, you know, the, the air bubble things. Um, and we started to use popcorn. 'cause a brand, we wanted to be fun. We wanted to be seen as eco. Wow. So we, we thought, well, let's do popcorn. Took us a while to figure that out.
We wrapped the whole thing in tissue paper. So it felt like when you opened the box, you, you were opening a gift. Do you know what I mean? We added a bit of extra stuff to the box. The whole exercise meant that every parcel cost me another two pence to send out. But that's when return purchase rates started going through the roof. Right. And it was just, it was just crazy.
And so we were like, well, this is interesting, you know, because it worked well, because we thought about the customer experience. Yeah. As in what, what, what do they experience? What, what do we need to help them feel more of? Yeah. For them to really, you know, connect with our brand. And I,
and I think whether, you know, if you're, if you're an e-commerce brand and you're running. All, all the main channels. Um, I think if you ask each channel, each channel, um, head and say what, you know, understand the, if you, if you're understanding the customer experience and you, and you are in SEO, you have to, you have to. And I think if everybody understands what that customer experience is for that brand, then everybody can work in Unity. And it all has this compounding, um, effect.
I think because, you know. Anybody working in SEO, anybody working in paid anyone working in social, they should understand right now that there's an increasing competition all the time. Mm-hmm. So understand the customer, 'cause that's gonna win you more hearts. Yeah. You know, um, it's, you know, the rising cost of, of acquiring sales is getting more, but you know, and again, you can counter that to a degree by. Customer experience conversion on our website. Mm-hmm.
You know, if we can increase that, that's gonna help. Um, making sure that the customer realizes the customer all the time, it's the customer in the middle. But, uh, creating the differentiation as well with your brand as well. Is it different? Is, if it's not, then what's the point? Um, and yes, you can drive new customers. You have to be, be really good at customer experience. 'cause you wanna drive those repeat sales back again.
Yeah. Yeah. And it's all about sustainable, efficient, you know, efficient growth. And that comes back down to knowing the numbers, really efficient growth. Um, and the FD at the top then is gonna be happy. Because, and they can, you can for, you can start to forecast at least when can't repeat customers, can't you? Yeah. You can get a pattern, whereas with no. If you can't forecast, the fts gonna be like pulling their hair out.
Well, once you've got the pattern, then you've, you've created value for the business, right? Yeah. So I, I go out, I dunno if you do this to me, but I go and acquire other econ businesses. Right? Right. So I, I do, I I do that and I'm, I'm, I'm a equity partner in a number of businesses now.
¶ The economic reality: acquiring new customers costs 5-25 times more than retaining existing ones
Um. We're always looking at, once I get involved, I'm like, how can I increase the value of this business? Mm-hmm. Right? So if it was sold to whoever from private equity down to, to whoever, um, how do we maximize the value? And that predictable cash flow is quite extraordinary. So if I took a business. As just a standalone business that sold one-offs, widgets. It would be worth probably at the moment, if I'm being totally honest, maybe two or three times ebit. Right?
Yeah. It's just that's how you would value a business. At the moment, it's not what it was at all. Um, but if I took those same customers, made the same profit, but did it on a subscription business. Yeah. As opposed to a one-time purchase business. Well, I'm starting to get multiples instead of two and three, I'm starting to get multiples of four and five. Do you see what I mean?
Yeah. So I've doubled the business with, or doubled the value of the business without really massively increasing anything else because of that predictable income. Yeah. Um, and so no, you, you're totally right. That whole value side is interesting.
¶ How to connect with Tony and access the report
I mean, I think, I think I read somewhere that acquiring a new customer pretty much costs cost you anything for five to, I think five to 25 times more than retaining the current one. Yeah. So why would you not invest some time in terms of understanding your existing customers and trying to flog to them? Again, I. And again. No, you totally would. And again and again, I think it's com I think it's common sense.
You go into a, you used to go into a shop, you'd get a customer, you get a good customer experience, you'd go back. It's just, 'cause it's online doesn't mean it's any different.
Yeah. Yep. No, that's very true. Very true. Tony, listen, but I'm aware of time. Oh. And it is fast approaching, uh, at the end of our recording session. So, uh, let me ask you if people wanna reach out, if they want to connect with you. I think actually people need to go download this report, um, yeah. Which is on your website, so maybe tell people how to do that.
Yeah, sure. If, um, well, to, to reach out probably the easiest way is, um, LinkedIn, uh, just punch in Tony Conte brave agency. Uh, be able to see my, my profile. I've got a little lion next to my name because the lions are brave. I.
Is that what it is? Little Leo. The lions nice
and broken. That's, that's it. Yeah. Um, our, our report is, um, you can download the report at um, uh, I won't even bother with the www dot 'cause that's old school, isn't it? It is, but you've done it now.
So
yeah.
Brave agency. There you go. It is funny actually, when it comes to using these non-US domains like agency do digital, I feel the need to put www just to make it really clear to the person in front of me that I'm talking about a website. Yeah, that's So if it was brave agency.com, you would never do it, but because it's brave.agency like Yeah. I, I just feel I need to say www. Just to clarify, it's a website, just in case you don't know that agency is a website.
I wonder if some people actually know what WWW stands for. Do you know what I mean? We should probably do a, certainly with, uh, I should ask my kids, kids. What does www stand for? I've, I've half of them don't know. When was the last time you typed in www dot a search browser? No. I just don't even remember.
When was the last time you used the internet there? A website. Now there's a scary thought.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a whole, whole nother topic of a whole nother podcast. It's right there. It but Tony, man, listen, it's been great to connect and great to meet with you. Thanks for coming on and, uh, enjoyed the conversation and going down, uh, memory lane a little bit. Cheers. Uh, with a, another e-commerce dinosaur. No, pioneer. But there we go. What a fantastic conversation. Huge round of applause. Let's do this. Yes. Massive round of applause to Tony for. That's enough applause.
Uh, massive round of applause to Tony for joining me today. Now, be sure to follow the e-commerce podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we've got some more great conversations lined up. And I don't want you to miss any of them. And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first. You are awesome. Yes, you are created. Awesome. It's just a burden you've got to bear. Tony's gotta bear it. I've gotta bear it. You've got a bear it as well. Oh yes.
Now the E-Commerce podcast is produced by Pod Junction. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. The theme song was written by Josh Edmondson, and as I mentioned, if you'd like to read the transcript, the show notes, all that good stuff, they're available on our website@ecommercepodcast.net. No www required. Uh, and instantly you can also sign up to the newsletter. But that's it from me. That's it from Tony. Thank you so much for joining us.
Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I will see you next time. Bye.