[Inaudible]. Welcome to the E-Commerce Alley podcast, where we believe that great brands are built on passionate leadership, smart operations, and powerful marketing. I am your host, Josh coffee, and I couldn't be more grateful that you're listening or watching right now. This podcast has one mission to help e-commerce business leaders expand their vision, their
team, and their profits. Today, I'm going to introduce you to the marketing operating will unlock limitless growth within your business, let's do this. [Inaudible]. We've made it three and a half months of planning and preparation with our team, uh, building this wonderful set that if you're listening right now, um, just so you know, we have an actual, uh, video set that we built. I'm sitting in an alley right
now. That is just amazing. Uh, shout out to Katie foster for all her hard work over the last many months. And we finally made it to this point. And this podcast is definitely a combination of blood, sweat, and tears, probably not blood, but more sweat and tears, I would say from the entire process of building it and figuring out all kinds of different components of how this whole a deal is going to operate. So all of that said, thank you for listening or thank you for watching this.
You can always go to Alli podcast.com to get a lot of additional content. Uh, if you want to watch it and you're listening or you want to listen and you're watching, you'll get links to all that good stuff there. So who's this crazy fellow talking to you right now, or that you're watching right now. My name is Josh coffee. I started my journey as an entrepreneur about 10 years ago. And I actually got into the online, uh, online education space before it was even
a thing. I actually had a studio, uh, not as cool as this one that I'm in right now, but we had a studio and we did all my drumming education lessons. And in doing that, I learned so much about marketing. And while I don't own that business anymore, two years later, I ended up founding flight media, which is the marketing and design agency that I own. And that I operate right now that we help our clients generate tens of millions of dollars in revenue every year through digital marketing.
And that's kind of brought us to where we are right now. We work with e-commerce brands. We specialize in e-commerce we live, eat, breathe, sleep. E-commerce, we're absolutely obsessed with it. And so, because of that, we decided there is no better thing we could probably do then deliver the most top-notch content that we can to interview people and interview our clients, people that are doing this live and people
that are absolutely crushing it. Uh, so that, that way we can give you insights and ideas that you won't find anywhere else. Now, in this episode, what I'm going to do is I'm going to introduce you to marketing operating system or the MOS we use this daily, not only in our businesses, but we use it in all of our client's businesses as well, because the reality is it works. It really truly works.
And if you follow the process, if you stick to it, you will undoubtedly shatter any revenue ceilings that you're currently getting stuck at in your business. But the key is you have to commit, you have to commit you can't just try this or try one part of it and then give up, you have to follow this process.
And this has been a combination of work that we've pieced together over the last eight years as an agency, because one of the main questions we get all the time, and I think I still, I still get this all the time is what do I need to fix next in my marketing? There's so many things going on all over the place that you can be very scattered. There's a new social media coming on the market every six months. And so what we decided to do was build a simplified
system. We call it the MOS, a marketing operating system that will allow you to predictably, identify bottlenecks and fix them in your marketing so that you can grow your revenue. Every successful business has systems that they operate within for key components of their business. And by doing that, it allows you to experience growth. And I like to think of it like this right now. If you're listening, you can't see this, but right now I have my Mac sitting in front of me and my Mac has an
operating system dos, right? So my Mac has an operating system, but if you're probably like me, then what happens is you get this little reminder that pops up every so often when it wants you to update your max operating system and wants you to update it pops up. But what do we all do? We all hit the little remind me later. And you might say, remind me this afternoon, or remind me tomorrow, or just remind me in an hour.
But the problem is by hitting that over and over and over again, eventually your programs on your computer begin to get outdated or certain things start to not work the way they were supposed to work. Or sometimes you end up shutting your computer down in the M in Mac, apple forces you to do that update. It forces the update.
I like to think of the marketing operating system or the MOS very similarly, because you might be operating on a crappy, outdated incompatible version with your marketing, but instead of updating to a new operating system, you keep hitting. Remind me later, remind me later, remind me later. And I'm here to tell you right now, you should stop hitting. Remind me later, this is that wake up call and I'm going to force. I'm not going to force it.
I can't force anything. Uh, but I want you to force yourself to update your marketing operating system and, uh, to give a good example of this. It let's say you are a retail store 30 years ago, and I'm going to, I'm going to go back 30 years before e-commerce was really a thing, right?
Let's say we go back to retail and back then, if you're in retail, billboards or billboards is still valid today, I guess, but billboards and newspaper were really valid, profitable advertising networks or advertising mediums. And so if you a retail store 30 years ago, and you were running newspaper ads, newspaper ads, and you're driving all
this foot traffic into your store. Well, if you are trying to operate today and profitably grow and you didn't update that program, or in this case, that marketing program, if you didn't update that and you kept doing the same thing over and over, and you kept hitting, remind me later from my emulator, remind me later, one of two things is going to happen.
You are going to see a massive decline in revenue and growth, or you're going to have to shut your doors because you weren't able to profitably generate customers. And so the marketing operating system works the same way, but maybe you've said something like this, maybe a marketing strategy comes on the market, which is very frequently. It seems so let's say you read about a new marketing tactic. You see something on bot messenger or pay-per-click or email or whatever that
is. And you see something. And then you just say, I don't have time for marketing, or maybe you're saying XYZ strategy. Doesn't work in my industry. My customers aren't there. Or every agency I've ever hired has bled me dry or produced zero results, whatever that might be. And it might be valid. I'm not saying it's not, it might be valid. Uh, but you're really pressing remind me later because you're not taking the time to figure it out. You're not taking the time to update your programs.
And sometimes you have to get rid of old programs. So you can have ones that are compatible with your marketing operating system. So markets change, tactics, change methods of communication change seems like every other day in social media and search engines, realistically change their algorithms every single day, which is why it's important to have an MOS or a marketing operating system that doesn't change. But rather the programs or the marketing tactics just need updated or removed as needed.
[Inaudible]. An e-commerce email. Marketing must represent 30 to 50% of your revenue, or at least that's what we see in the highest performing e-commerce businesses that we've worked with. And if you've not used Klayvio, you absolutely need to. We've been in this business for so many.
Now that we've tried about every tool from HubSpot to MailChimp, to a Weber, to constant contact, to get response to claim, but we've used almost every tool that you can probably list off in your mind or that you might be using. And we have never found anything to be as valuable as Klayvio for both email and SMS for our campaign and our automations.
If you've never used Klayvio we highly recommend you try it, go to Allie podcast.com/klayvio, which is K L a V I Y IO to get your trial started today. [Inaudible]. Okay. So the goal of the marketing operating system is very simple. It really, really is. Uh, there's one primary goal in India is to allow you to identify bottlenecks within your marketing and fix them. That's it.
We want to quickly look at your business at all as a whole, and the marketing that you're doing and identify, Hey, this is what's stopping our growth. And then this is what we need to do to fix it. So before I go into the MOS, I'm going to break it down for you in just a moment. I want it.
I want to take it back to 1943. And so I want to think back to 1943, where there was this brilliant guy named Abraham Maslow, and you may have heard of this and it's called Maslow's laws, but it's the five levels of human needs. And with the five levels of human needs, you have to envision a pyramid. If you've never heard of this, it's a pyramid. And there are five different levels of the pyramid starting at the bottom. And what Mazzo is states is that starting at the bottom,
we have psychological needs. This is the need for food, water, warmth, rest. These are the basic level of human needs. And so we have to have that met. There's a basic need in order to ascend to the next level, which is safety needs and the need for security in a home. And so you have safety needs. And if you have those met you ascend to the third level, which is belongingness, and this includes intimate relationships and your friendships because people
need to feel a sense. Humans need a sense of belonging. And then above that we have esteem needs. And then it ends at the highest level, which is self actualization. And this is realizing the full potential of yourself, of your life, that feeling of purpose. And so those are the five levels of human needs that Maslow stated. And when he stated is we start at the bottom and we ascend upward. And so as a need is met, we will send through the five levels.
But as a need is required, we will revert to the lowest level of need. Now, let me give you an example. Let's say all five levels are being met all the way up to the point where you have self-actualization you realize your full potential, you feel fulfillment in life. You have greatest team, you have, uh, your spouse and you have friends in the safety and psychological needs. Let's say you have all of this, right?
You have all of these things. Well, and then you're out with friends, which is belonging, that's level three, and you're hanging out with your friends. You're having dinner. All of your needs are met. You feel wonderful. But then as you're eating that, uh, that prime T-bone steak, uh, a piece breaks off and you start choking, this is probably not a great analogy, uh, but it breaks off and
you start choking. Well, what's going to happen is none of the needs matter, except the lowest need, which is the psychological need for air, right? We have to breathe to survive. So it's going to drop, self-actualization goes out the window, esteem needs, goes out the window security. You don't even give a crap. You need to breathe, or you're not going to live. And so, as we ascend as needs are met, we will ascend through the five
levels. And as Anita arises, we will descend to the lowest level of need. So I read that and I've known about it for years. And then I read it in a book, uh, a couple of years ago. And as I read in a book, it started to click started to make sense because marketing works very similarly. If we want to ascend through marketing, to achieve brand omnipresence in market leadership, we want to achieve some of these highest levels.
We need to ascend from the base and start working up through key components. So after many, many moons of studying and planning and building philosophy and testing this, not only on ourselves and our clients over and over and over again, as well as our students, uh, we've established what we call the three levels of the marketing operating system. The three levels of MOS is what we call it. And so what I want you to do is picture
a pyramid. And on the first level, this is that foundational level. You have your website and instead of psychological, I mean, really your website is the psychological needs of your business. It sells your products, no products, no sales, no business. And so your website and e-commerce is that lowest level.
It's the level one. If you don't have your website, you're not going to be able to ascend or really do much because you can't drive traffic to a dead website or a website that's not existing, right? So that's the very, very first level. And within website, we have messaging, we have design, we have conversion rate optimization. There are different components in that.
And I'm not going to dive by the way, crazy deep in each one of these levels, because the first few episodes, we're going to be diving deeper into these, to give you more understanding and more explanation of what they are, some basic components, and then some more advanced components based on where you're at in your business journey. So the first level is your website. And so after we have a website it's operational, it's functioning, it's working we to the second level.
And the second level is what we call funnels and communication. And this is where we convert and nurture our database of both customers and subscribers and subscribers are people that have not yet purchased from us yet. So funnels and communication. We're going to send people to a funnel that converts people, and then we're going to nurture them through communication, which could be SMS. It could be email, et cetera.
And it's going to nurture them to the point of making new purchases for us, with us, or repeat purchases with us. So funnels, convert traffic into customers and subscribers, communication nurture is your customers and subscribers to place orders with you. And so we do this through funnels, uh, automation, whether it's emails and SMS campaigns, uh, whether it's email or SMS, you get the idea. So that's the second level, which is funnels and communication.
And the third level as we ascend, once we have funnels and we have communication established, the third level is kind of like the gasoline on the fire. And this is the traffic. So level three of the MOS is traffic. And this grows your database because you're driving traffic to those funnels that allow you to then grow your database.
And this can come in the form of word of mouth, just client, uh, not clients, customers loving your products and just referring them to other people and sending them to other people, word of mouth is the strongest form of traffic that you can drive. The conversion rate is really, really high, but the problem is you can't predictably generate word of mouth.
And so traffic is level three. And then you also have within that, you have word of mouth, you have organic methodology, and then you also have paid strategies that you can incorporate. Now, one thing I do want to note that, although we have three levels, right, we have the website, we have funnels and communication, and we have traffic. It's important to note that each level will never be never be 100% satisfied. Marketing is a long term
game. It's not short term, it's a lifelong process in your business of optimization. In learning. We really have to think as scientists that's I call our whole team. I tell our team, like we were literally just scientists. We have to test a versus B. We need to see what works and what doesn't work. And then we're going to take what works. And we're going to shift that. And we're going to say, okay, can we beat the thing that was working last time with a new thing?
And whether that's an angle or a product or a funnel or whatever that might be. There's so many things in marketing you can deal. And so your goal is to think like a scientist to be in this ongoing process of optimization and ascending through these three levels. But if you operate within the system, if you operate within the system, there's good news. You'll always know how to identify where you need to put your next marketing dollar with
marketing. There is no Senate. There's no set it and forget it, which I, I hear that a lot. Hey, once we get our Facebook ads off the ground or our Google campaigns going, we can just set it and kind of cruise on that. Right? And the answer is for a short while. Yes. For a little bit, you might be able to, but with real marketing, with powerful marketing, it takes work. It takes patience.
If you skip steps or you avoid change and you'll avoid updating your, your, your tactics or your programs within the marketing operating system, you're going to find yourself right back where you started. And that is with an outdated operating system. Now, once, once you you've kind of grasped this once, you know, this is the marketing operating system, this is the MOS. We have the three tiers, right? We have our website, we have funnels and communication and we have traffic.
The next question becomes, okay, Josh, well, what do I do? Um, I'm doing a little bit of social media. Maybe you're doing a little bit of blogging. Maybe, uh, Maybe you're, you've tried Facebook ads, but it hasn't worked in the past before. Uh, your website is operational, but it's not where you want it to be. And there are all these questions, right? Cause there's so many things that you can focus, focus on. Well, I like to do a quick five minute evaluation and it's six, really,
really basic questions. And this is more if you're, if you're getting started, uh, this is a wonderful place to begin. And in the coming episodes, I'm going to dive deep into more advanced strategies, but here are six questions you need to ask yourself related to each one of those levels. The first question is, do I have a website that is functioning? Well, doesn't look like it was built in 2005 and is currently able to take orders.
If the answer is, yes, you can put a check mark by that for right now. And we're going to send to the next level. There are more things within the website that I'm going to again, talk about later that are more advanced, but for right now, do you have a website? Is it taking orders? Are you getting orders? Is it functioning? And does it not look like it was built 15 or 20 years ago? And the answer is, yes. We're going to go ahead and, uh, send you to the next level.
Second question you need to ask regarding funnels and communication is do I have a core product page that I drive traffic to as an entry point for people becoming a customer, the first funnel, the first funnel that we recommend is finding a product, a product that is a bestseller, maybe of a bestseller right now, or you have a product that is a core product for you. That is a great entry point for your customers because you have, you can't run traffic to every product.
Let's say you have 120 products or some clients we work with have 12,000 products. You can't equally run traffic to everything. It doesn't make sense. You have to find what we call our core product or products in. Those will become our initial funnels. We're going to drive traffic to them with the goal of acquiring purchases. So that's the first question. Do I have a core product page that I can drive product traffic to as an entry point for becoming a
customer? The third question is, do I communicate weekly with my database? And your communication can look different. It might be email, which is the most common. Uh, it might be SMS, or maybe it is you send snail mail, snail mail letters, uh, to your customers and your subscribers via direct mail.
I highly doubt you do that. I'm just being a little absurd here, but do you communicate Kate weekly, at least weekly with your database, if not leave that box open because that's something that you need to fix a good, I'm going to give you a story. Actually, we had a client start with us and 5% of the revenue was coming from email. And when we asked them, how often are you emailing your list? They said once per month or whenever
they get to it. So as you know, and if you're doing that right now, it might be once per month. But in reality, it's like once every five weeks or six or seven weeks. And because there's no plan behind it, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. And so you have to send at least a weekly communication. And so this client 5% of the
revenue was coming from email. Uh, right after that, we said, you need to start sending at least a weekly email to weeks of doing that email represented 25% of their entire store's revenue. It was that easy. And we got an email from them saying, oh my goodness, we had no idea. This is how powerful email really is and how powerful weekly communication
is. So all that to say, if you're not communicating weekly, you have to communicate with your database customers and subscribers, at least once per week. The fourth question, do I have basic email or SMS automation setup, and this will be cart abandonment in a new customer welcome series. When somebody buys from you, are you indoctrinating them to your brand?
Are you sending them a series of 5, 10, 15, 20 emails that are indoctrinating them, getting them to know who you are, what you represent, why you do what you do, and also positioning other products in front of them. So do you have basic levels of email or SMS automations set up? And those are the three questions for funnels and communication. Two more questions. Question number five is, do I post on social media three to five times per week?
And this is the reason this is the question is because that very first entry point of organic marketing. Social media is pretty easy. You're probably doing it right now, but are you posting at least three to five times a week minimum to check that baseline box? If so, check that. And we're going to move on to the final question. And that is, am I profitably advertising on a single paid ad network like Facebook or Google and profitably is the key.
You have to know if you're profitable or not, and I'm going to be teaching you some, uh, I'm going to be teaching you in another episode, the three rules of profitable marketing and how we apply it to every component of the MOS in a future episode. But you have to ask, am I profitably advertising on a single paid ad network like Google or Facebook? So those are the six questions it's going to cover your website, your funnels and communication and your traffic.
If you have not checked those boxes, then you know, is where I need to fix. This is what I need to fix next. And they're simple questions that will get you started. So if you've answered, no, that's where you need to start. If you've answered yes to all of these, then you need to continue listening because we're going to be deep diving into each one of those three components of the MOS and future episodes, as well as walking through our three rules to profitable
marketing. So to close up here, I want to recap the three levels of the marketing operating system. The first level we have your website that sells your products. The second level, we have funnels and communication, this converts and nurtures your database of both customers and subscribers. And the third highest level of your MOS is traffic. And this expands and grows your database predictably. Now, what I want to do is issue
you a challenge. I want to, I want to issue a challenge for you to commit to the MOS for the next 90 days. I want to challenge you to commit, to following the process for the next 90 days, to using that framework, to identify where your bottlenecks are and what you need to fix next. So if you're in, I want you to do one thing. I want you to go to your email. I want you to email me@joshatalliepodcast.com with the subject line I'm in as a sign of your commitment.
And then that way I can follow along and share you on during your first 90 days of implementing the MOS, you've been listening to the e-commerce Alli podcast. You can find the show notes for this podcast@allipodcast.com as well as other resources on the MLS. If you want to visually see what it looks like, you can go find all that information and please, please, please drop a review of this podcast and whatever app that you're listening in on, on behalf of the entire team of
flight media. I want to say, thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast and thank you for doing what you do. Thank you for making the world a better place with your products. We'll see you soon. [Inaudible].