eCommerce impacts our day-to-day life because it’s how we find new products and get them delivered to our front door. But it’s not just Amazon anymore! Social media is changing the game by getting involved in online shopping, not to mention the small shops that have all the tools at their disposal to set up their own eCommerce site. Iestyn Mullins joins us to talk about the state of eCommerce marketing.

Learn more about Fujisan Marketing here or email your questions/comments to contact@fujisanmarketing.com.

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Full episode transcript:

Preston Parshall  00:15

Welcome to the digital marketers guide podcast where we break down digital marketing topics into bite sized episodes that can help make your marketing program and you a little better. I’m Preston Parshall, the founder and CEO Fujisan marketing. We’re here today with Iestyn Mullins to discuss e commerce and PPC. Welcome to the show Iestyn.

Iestyn Mullins 00:33

Thank you. Nice to be here.

Preston Parshall  00:36

So yes, then what current trends in eCommerce should we know about, we’re

Iestyn Mullins 00:41

Seeing an increase in shopping opportunities spread globally, once it was dominated by major brands, now we’re seeing other forms of media offering opportunities for individuals to build their own sites, add a shopping cart, and sell their own personalized hobbies in this case, I would say. So we’re seeing the growth spread too small to individuals who may not be part of a company. But added to this, the major part is social media, social media has chosen to jump into the shopping market space, and is offered the opportunity to put a shopping cart and a product on their media page, they attract millions of users. And these users now get to see these products added to that they’re able to match their demographics, against the shopping products, these products that are produced online and easily find customers because they are able to match the two quite comfortably without doing much research.

Preston Parshall  01:38

And so why would you say shopping is dominating media platforms right now

Iestyn Mullins 01:43

We were seeing the growth of shopping online as predicted when the internet came on came online. It was only a matter of time before the casual shopper moved from the local local store to online because it was easier. So from that we’re seeing more individuals more companies taking up the option of creating a shopping store or cite it. It’s not in any one particular area that is owning the market space. But we’ve seen particular engines become larger and larger. COVID brought us the expansion of Amazon, which was a big deal. Amazon had been a good performing company prior to that. But when we couldn’t go outside, we had no choice but to go online. Amazon became the shopping place of choice from that we’ve seen other engines, sites, in particular, improve their marketing techniques. To go with that Amazon model. There’s more offers more value shopper type deals, you know, becoming a prime customer exalt as an example. So we’re seeing the spread of shopping across all platforms. It’s not now just dominated by Google. It’s everywhere.

Preston Parshall  02:57

Yeah, the pandemic definitely changed users buying behaviors, especially online. Yes,

Iestyn Mullins 03:02

The pandemic changed our habits. If we can’t go outside, we have to stay in and do it online. I’ll just go to Amazon. Now. Amazon is catchphrase much like googling it is so yeah, that’s That’s why shopping is dominating media platforms, partly because what they’re seeing going on at Amazon. Amazon’s been doing it for two, two and a half decades now. So they’ve got the background, they know what they’re doing. So why not copy that? Their processes and do it for yourself?

Preston Parshall  03:30

So studies show that 90% of ecommerce companies fail in their first year. What common mistakes do they make that contribute to this?

Iestyn Mullins 03:37

The the early failures of companies when the internet was was evolving was fairly straightforward. They’d overextend themselves over employment, not really understand who their target customer was, or what type of customer was going to buy their product online, and went full force and potentially a lot of them went to went to DIRECTV media and ended up costing them millions. pets.com was an example I could come up with at home when it was Yahoo. Just now overextension of budget and no real idea of who their customer was. Large amounts of money thrown at a platform that was not generating any interest. Today’s platforms, it boils down to the same problem. You’ve got a product that sells but if no one knows who you are, how you going to market it, understanding who’s going to buy it first. And then building from there will allow you to grow too many companies want to grow tomorrow they they it’s there’s a belief that if I just build a store that they will come and that’s not true. You there’s a lot more work into developing how to get customers to come to their store.

Preston Parshall  04:44

Yeah, I would tag on to this. So we’ve seen a lot of companies come through brand new ecommerce companies and the first thing is, well, we’ll have someone come to us and you know, they’ll want to sell something but they know absolutely nothing about marketing and They also know absolutely nothing about digital marketing. And so, without a brand, or brand presence, it’s going to be difficult for us to market your products online. But on top of that, you have to have all the other trappings that go with a good ecommerce campaign, right? You have to have a good landing page that establishes credibility, we have to have a good checkout experience where people are getting what they want, when they want. And we need to have a good email, you know, cycle setup afterwards as well. So there’s just so many ways to fail.

Iestyn Mullins 05:33

Yes, I agree. A new company usually requires employees to come in and help you build your your vision. There are many agencies out there and independent contractors and of the like associates that have an inordinate amount of experience in this field that could help build that platform. They have the knowledge to show you where you need to look and how to begin and start and remarket yourself. So yes, the the opportunity, the individuals are there to do the work. It’s a case of how much you want to invest in their trust.

Preston Parshall  06:06

Yeah, and you’ve you’ve built some e commerce companies almost single handedly, right? Can you tell me about one? That’s very kind of you.

Iestyn Mullins 06:15

I can say that there was an industrial company, I spent many years with working on that. Pretty much their marketing platform, although I was brought in for their paid media, I ended up being their marketing voice. The marketing ideas were bounced off of me, and that they were doing well. When I went in, I enjoyed every minute of those early years. But we slowly grew through the implementation of other marketing practices, we spread, we went ecommerce, we went display, we used other engines, we started to test pricing, changes, sales, and so forth. And we just built and grew eventually, that it needed more effort on the back end of the company and on the SEO side of it to to really improve the company, its platform within search, because a lot of the stuff wasn’t much of the content wasn’t being populated well on the search on the results page. So SEO was a big, big bonus to us. Once SEO was in place, I felt that the other attributes that they had was shopping and search. Even social media, to an extent started to perform even better, though, yeah, we stayed the course. And it doesn’t happen overnight. It just takes time and consistency to get you to where you need to be. And you have to believe in the tools that are available and trust in the people that are using those tools to give you what you want.

Preston Parshall  07:39

Speaking of shipping, I mean, that could be a whole conversation just by itself. What do you feel are some of the strongest calls to action when you’re running shopping campaigns,

Iestyn Mullins 07:48

Free shipping, off the bat, if you can offer anything with free shipping, nailed it. Thank you, what else, you can offer a a percentage free shipping, so you could offer a free shipping on dollars off. So if you were to spend, say, if your average order value was around 50 bucks, then you could say we’ll get free shipping at $50 or $60. So you’re seeing some return, but you’re getting the customer, you don’t want to give free shipping, where the average order is dropping your shipping costs you want to ensure that you are covering yourself. And of course free shipping brings up the whole prime conversation around hammers and do their business. You know, Prime was not a money direct was not a generator in the early days, it takes time to build that you need a base of support. Once you have that base. And you’re charging a monthly fee for a prime shopping, you can now start doing what you like you can even dictate how the shipping works, which is what we’re seeing from Amazon. So

Preston Parshall  08:47

We talked about a few. But what would you say are some other best practices that contribute to success in eCommerce?

Iestyn Mullins 08:54

Says some of the areas, some of the best practices that have contributed to my success and others around me in e Commerce has been not not afraid to ask questions. Not afraid to look outside of where you’re working. Use the resources that are available for you. Google provides them, Microsoft ads, provide them, get a rep, and then call your friends up. Get online, get onto LinkedIn, ask those questions laid out what you’re seeing what you’re finding out and pose the question. You’ll be surprised you may get a lot more answers back than you expect. People want to help. So my recommendation would be to ask what to step outside of your comfort zone from where you work and going all somebody away from where you are and ask if you can get some examples and ask for it. And then do your research online. Go and look at somebody, a merchant similar to yourself. Go and look on social media. Use social media examples for creative to help you with your ecommerce. And if you’re not sure how to sell a product, go and find out where that product sells there, there are so many locations to review it. Look at how Amazon lists it. Look at how Walmart lists their products and look at your product, see where you could match it against a similar product and say, Yes, that’s who we are. That’s where you should be mining towards. So I think stepping away from what you think you know about the business, you you’ve got that part, go look outside.

Preston Parshall  10:24

Any tips in Google ads? Yes.

Iestyn Mullins 10:27

One’s got other days where we used to segment down to the minute keyword in segmentation is still good, don’t trust me Don’t, don’t change that. But you have to work with Google’s recommendations when they tell you, you need to put broad match keywords in this campaign, you need to run a test and test it, you’ve got multiple ad groups, run a test 30 days, see how it performs. Choose the ad groups where the performance is at the level you want to see and activate it, you don’t have to activate all of them, just the ones that are performing. This way you’re adding more content that you are being asked to add. So use the recommendations that are provided available to you. And again, use your research. There’s plenty of sem companies that provide news and data on all the latest releases, get out there, find them and use them. Where

Preston Parshall  11:22

Does online shopping headed? What trends should we know about? I’ve

Iestyn Mullins 11:26

Seen online shopping change. During the pandemic, I saw more and more individuals shop online. Partly because they had to, there was no choice. So we’ve seen the advent of companies grow from this experience. The second stage now is to is we’re going to see more companies like Amazon where they do offer prime shopping opportunities. It’s always been around, it’s never been a it’s not a new thing to offer somebody to be part of the club. And if you become part of that club, pay us X for the year and we’ll give you free shipping, we’re going to see that spread amongst more companies because companies want to get more loyal customers with into their base, they can remark it to them. I’ve also seen the shift in shopping at Google. Prior to around COVID. We were moving from shopping to smart based shopping, which was sort of better, maybe it didn’t see the results were comparable. But we were going to we were told we are moving over to p max and there was no choice performance Max, what performance Max has done has said the shopping that we do in Google is now in totally incorporated into your sem program. It is going to incorporate search display, and video, you’re going to need the assets to support it. The fear was that, okay, I’m just going to spend lots of money on display. And I’m not going to see any sales and Google’s going to, it’s going to leave me high and dry. The truth of the fact is, yes, we did see decreases in revenue profit, but not to the extent we expected, what we did see was we saw revenues increase exponentially, I would say double. So we saw twice as many sales may not have had the returns as where we wanted it to be. But we were not far off. And we continue seeing it growing today. And this is because they’re able to retarget to a larger base of customers. They’ve tied shopping to search and display. They’ve used video, they’ve got YouTube, which is an existential channel as a TV channel on its own. So I believe we all need to be aware that you know, shopping is not just it’s a product no more. It’s not it’s it’s really your program. If you’ve got a product, it’s going to grow everything you do around search. And

Preston Parshall  13:50

What’s the last thing you bought online because of an ad.

Iestyn Mullins 13:55

I bought two things. I bought a wallet, which came from Australia, which is bizarre. And that was because of an ad that I was scrolling through on a new site on the ferry home. And then the only other thing I bought from an ad was a pair of a pair of shoes, but that’s because I was looking for them. And over over about a three or four week period, I kept seeing this ad for these particular shoes I was looking for. And I said I’ve got to buy them, so I bought them. So I would say when I say ads, these are display ads, not search ads. These were from display. So super impressive.

Preston Parshall  14:30

Yeah, I was a sucker for Facebook shopping ads during the pandemic as well. But a lot of terrible T shirts that have been thrown away.

Iestyn Mullins 14:37

are important. Facebook has got a different dilemma than shopping because people that are shopping or shopping. users on Facebook tend to be browsing. I think Instagram is going to be their shopping driver because it’s driven by image.

Preston Parshall  14:51

Have you bought anything off Instagram?

Iestyn Mullins 14:52

No, I have not. But I see plenty of opportunities with Instagram. I’ve used Instagram for one of my clients that We put up a reel for the wall, we’re going to put up a reel for that brand name. And it will be posted on Instagram, which will go to Facebook. And it will be my job to monitor it, see how we perform, see what audiences are coming back what demographics are intrigued by what we created.

Preston Parshall  15:15

So how a voice search effects shopping campaigns?

Iestyn Mullins 15:18

That’s a great question. There’s been some research around how users shop on their phones. And one of the questions raised was, can we do voice search? Well, of course, yes, we can do voice search. We already knew Alexa and Siri will answer that question for you. But can we do shopping? Voice purchase? It’s not here yet. It is being tested. There are sites that have made it available. I don’t have one of them. Any of them are available in front of me at the moment. But there are shopping sites where you can do a shopping search and check out through your voice. So I see that having a major impact on shopping in the next two or three years.

Preston Parshall  16:01

Well, thanks, Iestyn. And thanks for listening to the digital marketers guide podcast. Be sure to subscribe to stay up to date when a new episode is released. If you have any feedback or topics you’d like to see covered, email us at contact at Fujisan marketing.com. Or learn more about us at voodoo Sun marketing.com See you next time.