E-commerce & Branding

[Zach]

Hey all,

I've got a lot of experience in various paid traffic sources (mostly FB/Adwords/Native networks) but have been sending all my traffic and hard work elsewhere for a CPA agreement.

I'm looking to take my skills and start pouring everything into a project or funnel I own. I would like to create a brand or asset worth selling some day or as a stable brand in the market that I know will stick around instead of disappearing overnight.

I've already read through the Digital Strategy Crash Course. Great ofcourse.

Though 2 main questions keep coming up for me regarding a lot of the business models out there.

1. E-commerce - how do you really brand yourself? What do I sell? Well..uhh..I just sell other brands. I don't really do anything special, I just feature other people's stuff on my site.
^ This essentially is a lot of ecommerce's value props. None. They are just powered by good marketers that know how to generate paid & organic traffic or just make it work out of pure sweat and blood. Any strategies of how to get around this "lack" of branding in E-commerce?

2. Amazon is killing brick & mortar retail. But they're also killing e-commerce too. Why would somebody buy a widget from your site when Amazon has more trust, their CC info already, better shipping, 1-click ordering, reviews, and Prime. Is e-commerce a marginal/losing model in the coming years?

Anyways, been toiling on these 2 aspects the past few days. I think if you can answer #1 well, #2 becomes irrelevant. Either way I haven't been able to arrive at a conclusion I feel good about.

Thoughts? Comments? How do you brand your ecommerce store? Does it even matter?

 

[CCarter]

If you approach life in a defeatist manner it cannot be a wonder you aren't winning.

"When looking at a problem a young man sees all the potential opportunities, an old man sees all the potential problems" - Sea Carter of The Mine's Watch

Are you looking at life through a young man's eyes or an old mans? Even if you are young you could have gotten an old mans eyes cause of past failures and defeats. I sometimes catch myself thinking about all the headaches before all the potential opportunities when going into a venture. But I like to think myself as young forever - so I'll re-risk it all once again, and keep doing it for as long as I'm in this realm.

Amazon is killing brick & mortar retail. But they're also killing e-commerce too.

So let's get down to brass task - Amazon, you say Amazon is squeezing the brick and mortars out of business and you potentially cannot compete? Really? Because 10-15 years ago the same exact thing was said of Walmart:

- "Walmart is squeezing the brick and mortar stores out of business"
- "the mom and pop stores of the world are dying cause of Walmart".

The reality is the mom and pop stores are 9 out of 10 times pretty bad at customer service and most of the time the owners are checked out. They are comfortable with where they are at and slowly descend into obsoletion as newer competitors that are more aggressive with their marketing and tactics come into their industry.

If a mom and pop was good they would have loyal local customers that constantly rotate in and out of their stores. If a mom and pop was exceptional they'll grow into a franchise and eventually a large corporation cause they've got a winning formula. ALL large corporate entities started out as small one-man operations. No company just appeared over night with thousands of locations, they had to grow.

Don't use the excuse of "mom and pop" stores being squeezed by Amazon to see your journey through an old man's eyes, cause at the beginning of this century the same story was being said about Walmart - who now find themselves losing.

So how did Amazon kill Walmart? By offering a better selection, an easier experience. It's why I harp in on customer service.

Walmart's main angle was cheaper prices, but when they attempted to go to Asia they got slapped out of there cause in places like Japan cheaper prices are seen as inferior (Coming to Asia: Wal-Mart’s Blunders in Japan). Walmart and many other stores tried to go to Asia but that market rejected them. So Amazon comes in with a bigger selection and a marketplace that allows people to sell their goods - they are the best at it and therefore customers go to them.

However it doesn't necessarily mean that they are the end-all. There is a HUGE segment of the population that wouldn't be caught dead in a Walmart store cause they aren't looking for cheaper prices they are looking for higher quality goods.

There is a story of 2 men that each buy different pairs of work boots. The cheap guy buys the $20 boots that he has to replace every 3 months. The quality guy buys the $100 pair of boots that he has to replace every 5 years. In the course of just 3 years - the cheap guy has spent $240 on 12 pairs of boots while the quality guy has spent $100 and still has 2 years if not more on his single pair of boots.

Are you the cheap guy or the quality guy? Are your customer the cheap customers or quality customers? Who would you prefer having as customers? In the short term is sounds like the cheap guy will make you more money as the boot seller, but not necessarily - the quality guy may send you more customers from referral due to your customer service level. The cheap guy may also curse your boots for being so cheap and they'll eventually look for another "cheap pair of boots" that somehow are "higher quality". That cheap guy will move on from you.

I prefer the higher quality customer/client. The one that can see a good pair of boots and understand the long term benefits. They are also better on my bottom-line - and I get less headaches than servicing the cheap guy that's constantly complaining about pricing.

So with that in mind - why not sell a higher quality product? Give better customer service? That can be your unique selling proposition that puts you ahead of the competition. I talk about this a bit in my thread about perceived value: Setting The Price - Customer Perceived Value vs Pricing

E-commerce - how do you really brand yourself?

If you want to be a marketplace yes, but that's not necessarily smart since you are trying to compete with Amazon and other people with serious funding backing them.

What do I sell?

You can sell your own product OR sell a product from a vendor that's NOT ONLINE. I know it sounds crazy but there are huge operations that still do not have an internet presence. I know this cause at my marketing agency we ran into this situation 10-20 times A WEEK - for 4 years. If you want to get creative drive down to a local flea market or business zone and take a note of all the goods being sold locally. Then go home and Google the demand for the products (or services being sold). Talk to the people that run the shops and operations and inquire about whether they sell online or not. You will be surprised as to how many simply do not "get it".

Talk to a ton of owners and eventually you'll get a feel for the people you would like to do business with and the type of people to avoid. Then strike a deal to sell their goods online for them for a percentage of online sales. If through your market research you saw there was demand online, but nothing really fulfilled to a great degree, and you can get a nice profit margin - then you've got yourself a gem. Do business and see what happens.

When it fails, find another operation and reshape your approach. I say "When" instead of "IF" is because it's going to be a learning experience and FAILURE is a key ingredient to success. Be willing to fail over and over and over towards success. Every venture I went in eventually failed in the end, but it left me at a better financial and mental position than I was in before.

Think of your failures and successes as training. Learn your lesson and move on, but be willing to move on. Even with all my failures I can confidently say I'll never have to work for another man in my life - the days of working paycheck to paycheck as an employee are long gone cause I've seen the massive opportunities that even taking a leap of faith into the abyss gains you.

Eventually you'll find your Moby Dick - "The Whale" - the opportunity of a lifetime that all your training, past failures and successes have trained you for.

But perhaps you won't find your Moby Dick, I don't know whether I have found mine yet or not, but I'm working on some exciting things that might be mine, but I know till the end of my days I'll be in my boat fishing for opportunities on them thar waters. I might grow old but hopefully my eyes stay young forever.

This essentially is a lot of ecommerce's value props.

Well this is a bit generalized - they are not. The best successes are powered by exceptional customer service. Apple is great cause they copied Ritz Carlton's level of customer service. I buy Apple products, which I know are more expensive - with the knowledge that if my stuff breaks and it's Apple's fault they'll replace it for free. They gave me a free next generation Macbook Pro when my last one broke cause it was their fault. They gave me another iPhone cause it was their fault - ALL out of warranty (Apple Care). Yes I'm a fanboy cause realistically I cannot say that about "Dell" or "Microsoft" products cause of all my horrible past bad experiences.

So to use Apple, the most valuable company in the world, as an example - it's not just superior marketing - underneath is an attention to detail and a customer service level not touched by any other company in their market. Now I guarantee you if a new competitor comes in and gives a far superior customer experience and better technology Apple will be knocked out.

The law of the universe stands true - "What is born must die". When people think "Apple will be here forever", they distort that universal truth. It wasn't long ago the world was stating "Microsoft will be here forever". Same with Walmart, same with Sears - same with a lot of the "old giants" that no one cares about anymore.

To give you an e-commerce angle I'm trying out a Viking Blade razor that I got from Amazon. If they offer me exceptional quality and support I'll probably go directly to their website. How do they do that? Newsletter is the default example, but if they were smart in all the Amazon shipping they would send out something extra that incentivizes into buying directly from them - what? I dunno, extra blades, shaving oil, or added benefit like partnering up with a towel distributor for sample wash clothes. All they have to do is think outside the box and they'll have a customer for life in their database that will keep buying razors for them for the rest of my life - until the day a competitor comes along and steals me cause of a superior product or service level.

Does it even matter?

Like I said at the beginning if you approach your problems with a defeatist view you'll never see the opportunities. Example I thought mobile gaming was retarded until I tried it, then I learned of a whole world of micro-transactions where there are players spending $1000s PER MONTH purchasing packages and online currency to increase their levels in the video game. It's insane.

I originally approached it with an old man's eyes, but when I logged in and looked at the chat, these people "LIVE" this game (Game of Thrones Conquest - a clone of Clash of the Clans). There are people "rage spending" - meaning they want to level up bad cause others are head of them and they spend $700 in one day of purchases to level up their castle/keep. $100 or $700+ in a single month from a customer is HUGELY phenomenal in terms of ROI - in a single night, jeez.

To give you an example Buffer.com's average revenue per user per month is $18.38. (Source: Buffer's Revenue Dashboard). These mobile video games are making 10x to 700x times that on single purchases. HBO is not making that much money from service subscriptions on a monthly basis versus their video game. $700 in a single night would take years to get that same revenue from an HBO subscription from that same user - so yeah - there is Gold in them thar hills, but you have to approach it with a young man's eyes.

 

[Zach]

Thanks for the great response. Great analogy with the young man's eyes.

Market research usually results in me painting myself into a corner.

I think to shortcut this tendency I may just buy some already working business instead of building one from scratch. I am good at advertising, analyzing competitors' traffic portfolio - so perhaps just skip the analysis paralysis/market research phase and dive right into scaling something that is already working.