Despite the fact that ecommerce has grown 20% year over year, the ecommerce "gravy train" will be coming to a halt very soon for many ecommerce companies. If you want to keep riding then it's time to start investing in better experiences that provide value before asking for it. Sam Mallikarjunan is the Head of HubSpot Labs and the author of the book "How To Sell Better Than Amazon". HubSpot is an all-in-one inbound marketing and sales platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads...
Mar 05, 2015•47 min
We can think of very few things more important for an ecommerce business owner than determining what a customer is worth to an organization over their business lifetime, and there is no one better in the world at calculating customer lifetime value than Peter Fader. Peter Fader is Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage . His expertise centers around the analysis of ...
Feb 26, 2015•48 min
With costs always on the rise, and the "highs" from marginal success being short-lived, ecommerce companies need to moderate (maybe even eliminate) the pay per click addiction that could sink their business. Tom Schwab is founder and owner of Goodbye Crutches, the largest online distributor of direct to patient Durable Medical Equipment focused on serving those who can’t bear weight and can’t bear crutches. He definitely knows how to build an online business with an Inbound Strategy. Tom led the...
Feb 19, 2015•41 min
Customer comparison shopping is inevitable online. With the likes of Amazon and other major retailers doing everything they can to steal your customers through pricing-cutting and comparison shopping you need to pull out all the stops to keep them loyal. T. J. Gentle and Andrew Scarbrough are co-founders of PriceWaiter, a tool that allows ecommerce companies to keep more customers by providing simple and private price negotiations for online stores. Personalization in all aspects of the online b...
Feb 12, 2015•38 min
"According to leading neuroscientists, 95 percent of thoughts, emotions, and learning occur before we're ever aware of it. Yet, most marketing efforts forgo the vast subconscious and instead target the rational, conscious mind. If you want to get ahead of your competition stop selling to the 5% of your customers brains...when you understand how your customers' brains work, you can appeal to the powerful subconscious - and get better results for less money." (Brainfluence, 2012) Roger Dooley is a...
Feb 05, 2015•41 min
The reality is, nobody cares about your product. That may sound harsh, but your customers and prospects only care about themselves. In this episode David Meerman Scott teaches us what to do about that and what the Grateful Dead can teach you about marketing so you can reach your buyers directly to drive more revenue. David is an internationally acclaimed strategist whose books and blog are must-reads for professionals seeking to generate attention in ways that grow their business. His 2007 book ...
Jan 29, 2015•30 min
23 million out of 28 million companies that do less than $25 million in revenue are operating check to check, which means it's very likely that you are one of the the struggling 82%. Fortunately, there is a simple system you can implement to turn your business from a cash-eating monster into a profit-generating machine to ensure you're permanently profitable. Mike Michalowicz (mi-CAL-oh-wits) founded and sold two multi-million dollar companies by the time he turned 35. Confident that he had the ...
Jan 22, 2015•41 min
Quality ecommerce copy and product descriptions can increase ecommerce conversion rates anywhere from 30% to 100%. Writing subpar copy for your website is the equivalent of hiring a subpar, unqualified sales staff for a brick and mortar shop, and sales will suffer. Joanna Wiebe is a co-founder and copywriter at Copyhackers, a company that helps you use copy to boost your conversions while enhancing your brand, even if you don’t like writing or you’re scared of the blank white page. She’s been co...
Jan 15, 2015•1 hr 7 min
Abraham Lincoln once said, "If I had 8 hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend 6 hours sharpening my ax," and this episode is all about sharpening your ax for 2015. Join us for this quick 15 minute episode as we review the planning process that made our 2014 so successful, how we're improving it for 2015, and how you can use all or parts of our planning process to make 2015 your best year ever. Key Takeaways from the Show How we build our company's vision What we're doing to improve it for 2015 How...
Jan 08, 2015•20 min
The company that is willing to spend the most to acquire a customer will win, and Ryan Deiss teaches you how to win by optimizing your customer acquisition with his 5 step Customer Value Optimization System. Ryan Deiss is the founder of a number of online media/publishing businesses, most notably DigitalMarketer.com. He is considered the “King of Conversion” and is the creator of the funnel models used by 90% of today's “A” list online marketers, like Neil Patel of Quicksprout and Kissmetrics. H...
Jan 01, 2015•55 min
Implementing truly data driven email marketing in your ecommerce business is no easy task...until now. Ed Hallen helps ecommerce companies easily implement data driven email marketing that actually works through his platform, Klaviyo. He is co-founder of Klaviyo, an ecommerce-focused email service provider that provides you with better email through data-drive personalization and targeting. From powerful A/B testing to automatic analysis of conversions, Klaviyo helps you maximize the impact of y...
Dec 25, 2014•45 min
Oli Gardner has seen more landing pages than anyone on the planet. As a result he has identified and mastered the 7 most important principles of conversion centered design to help you convert more visitors into paying customers. He is the co-founder of Unbounce, an industry-leading landing page platform that allows marketers to build, publish and a/b test landing pages without IT. With 17 years working in the field of interactive web design and development his career has taken him from small sta...
Dec 18, 2014•41 min
Dane Golden is Vice President of Marketing and Client Services at Octoly, a YouTube brand management company where his mission is to enhance your web video ecosystem, YouTube channel, network videos. For the last six years he has marketed, distributed, promoted, and produced online videos on platforms across the social video spectrum, creating millions of dollars in advertising and branding revenue. Dane says that competition for your audience's time is simply too great, and says that you need t...
Dec 11, 2014•40 min
Google Adwords for ecommerce can be extremely profitable...or extremely wasteful, it just depends on what you're doing. Check out this episode with Mike Rhodes, one of the world's best Adwords experts, and improve your adwords campaigns or save a sinking ship. Mike Rhodes is the founder of WebSavvy the largest independent AdWords-only agency in Australia. They use data, not guesswork, to grow company profits, and if you qualify for an Adwords Account Audit, Websavvy guarantee a profit increase. ...
Dec 04, 2014•44 min
It's no secret. Financial intelligence in ecommerce is a prerequisite for success. The question, though, is are you a pro or an amateur? And how do you know? This is an episode for both the seasoned pro and the amateur. Joe Knight, Founder and Senior Consultant with the Business Literacy Institute, is a highly regarded finance and business literacy keynote speaker and trainer. He trains managers and leaders at Fortune 500 companies such as GE, Comcast-NBCUniversal, Boeing, CVS Caremark, American...
Nov 27, 2014•48 min
Jon makes it clear, Facebook's not trying to screw you when it comes to ecommerce Facebook marketing. You might be screwing yourself, though, and he teaches you how to fix it and make it an extremely profitable channel. Jon Loomer runs the most complete online resource of advanced Facebook marketing tips and tutorials, and his site is updated on nearly a daily basis. His site was recognized as one of Social Media Examiner's Top 10 Social Media Blogs of 2013, and in 2014 he was again named to the...
Nov 20, 2014•44 min
While online world has been spending more and more money on pay per click and other means of driving traffic, SEO for ecommerce is still responsible for a significant, if not a bigger, majority of revenue and it can't be ignored. Todd Malicoat has over 10 years of SEO consulting experience, consulting to enterprise companies like PBS.org, Thomas Industrial, and many others. He is a renowned international speaker, speaking at conference like SES, PubCon, and Dreamforce, and more, and he’s SEO fac...
Nov 13, 2014•30 min
For any online business owner that is hesitating to make their ecommrce email funnel a high priority, this $10,000 dollar per day email funnel case study with Tim Paige should light a fire. Tim is host of the extremely popular online business podcast “ConversionCast, the only podcast that gets to the heart of the metrics”. He is also the conversion educator over at leadpages.net, a dynamic software company that creates simple and beautiful software and web apps that allow businesses to grow larg...
Nov 06, 2014•38 min
The attributes of your buyer persona are not why a customer buys, it's the situation they currently find themselves in and need your product to complete a "job." Scrap the buyer persona and apply the jobs to be done framework to your ecommerce store. Chris Spiek is a Partner and Co-Founder at The Re-Wired Group, where he helps companies use the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework to enable people to develop products that consumers love to buy and use. He’s a technology executive with a background i...
Oct 30, 2014•22 min
If you own the ecosystem and the ecommerce customer experience, you'll be able to withstand the onslaught of changes on rented land like Google Adwords and Facebook. Ken Johnson founded Manpacks with business partner Andrew Draper in 2009, and he attributes most of their success to a relentless focus on owning the ecommerce customer experience. Manpacks is considered the first American subscription ecommerce service offering men's essentials, shipping men’s basic needs like socks, underwear, raz...
Oct 23, 20140
Ecommerce conversion optimization is tough, time-consuming, and confusing, but our conversation with Peep Laja of ConverionXL will make it easier for you. Peep (his unusual name, to most people, is actually pronounced ‘Pep Laya’) currently runs a unique ecommerce conversion optimization marketing agency called Markitekt where they make existing sites better, and build new conversion optimized websites for clients. He’s been featured in numerous popular marketing and online business publications ...
Oct 16, 2014•30 min
Trying to hire the best growth consultant for your company can be an arduous task, but it doesn't have to be according to Graham Hunter. Graham is Head Instructor of Growth at Tradecraft where they train smart people to succeed in traction roles at high-growth companies. He’s been a marketing consultant at Intuit, among other brands, he’s started an agency, he’s worked at larger agencies, and he has been the first employee at a few ecommerce and software startups. Graham has done a whole lot of ...
Oct 09, 2014•39 min
In a mostly me-only world, Andrew Davis explains that creating partnerships with other brands is not only important, but necessary and extremely profitable for those who do it right. Andrew got his start in the media business at a young age appearing in television commercials and voicing over radio spots for brands like Chevrolet, Six Flags, and McDonalds, and has also managed workshop production for Muppets From Space, Sesame Street, Bear in the Big Blue House and Elmo in Grouchland. In 2001, A...
Oct 02, 2014•39 min
If Steve Jobs' favorite book was written by the thought leader for this way of thinking, then you may want to eliminate your buyer persona and replace it with the jobs to be done framework. In an our efforts to provide more insight into creating buyer personas for ecommerce websites, we stumbled on to an interesting couple of posts that argue that buyer personas may no longer be relevant to your business and that the jobs to be done framework (aka JTBD) might suit you better. According to one of...
Sep 30, 2014•27 min
Justin Winter grew his company to $20 million in 36 months through a few different ecommerce growth channels, and yet he still has one big regret. He is the Co-founder & CEO at Diamond Candles, a bootstrapped, vertically integrated online home fragrance brand that hit a $12 million run rate in 18 months and is now well on it’s way to $20million in 36 months. Diamond Candles was also recognized by InternetRetailer.com in 2013 as one of the 'Hot 100', which profiles select e-commerce sites tha...
Sep 25, 2014•54 min
The most successful ecommerce companies know how to retain their most profitable customers, and in this episode we give you the steps to create a best customer retention marketing plan for ecommerce. We touched on this topic briefly in " Why Email Marketing Fails ", and we felt that this topic deserved it's own episode because, according to Harvard Business Review, a 5% increase in customer retention or loyalty can boost profits by 25%-85%. And out of the top 4 reasons customers never return to ...
Sep 23, 2014•34 min
Alex Ikonn is the founder of Luxy Hair, a 7-figure ecommerce business that was built entirely through YouTube Marketing, making them one of Shopify’s Top 10 eCommerce Stores by Revenue in 2011 and 2012. Luxy Hair is a customer-centric hair extensions ecommerce retailer. The business was born when his wife Mimi was looking for hair extensions for their wedding, but wasn’t able to find what she was looking for. When they realized how hard it was to find good hair extensions, they knew they had stu...
Sep 18, 2014•53 min
If you want to sell more products online, then you'll need to make your ecommerce copywriting sell to your prospects. Ecommerce companies tend to think that because they only have to sit behind a screen, drive traffic, capture leads, and sell cool products they don't have to put in the extra time and effort into writing great, persuasive website copy and product descriptions that actually try to sell the customer. According to KISSmetrics, quality ecommerce copywriting and product descriptions c...
Sep 16, 2014•29 min
Statistics show that website visitors are 64% more likely to buy a product on an ecommerce site after watching an online video, and if you don't currently use video to acquire more ecommerce customers then you're going to be left behind. James Wedmore is one of the top video marketing experts in the business and is the founder of Video Traffic Academy: an online YouTube Marketing Training Program that has enrolled over 10,000 business owners and entrepreneurs all over the country. He has been fe...
Sep 11, 2014•48 min
In this Strategy Session we'll be talking about buyer psychology, the three types of buyers, and how to sell to them. Here are the three main types of buyers identified by neuroeconomics experts: 15% - Spendthrifts 24% - Tightwads 61% - Average Spenders The psychology behind each type is fascinating, and understanding each one's "buying mindset" will help you get closer to your customers, speak their language, and make more sales. 40% of people fall into wildly “irrational” categories, i.e. the ...
Sep 09, 2014•31 min
