THE ROAD TO ONLINE RETAIL PODCAST EPISODE 6

Miranda Bond’s Five-Pointed Star Strategy to build your online business (continued)

This is the second part of our interview with digital marketing expert Miranda Bond. If you haven’t already listened to Podcast #5 – go and do it now. It features the first two points of Miranda’s amazingly useful digital marketing strategy – her five-pointed star marketing strategy to raise awareness of any online business.

 In part one, Miranda covered Search Engine Optimisation and Digital Marketing Platforms.

 This week, Miranda covers points three to five:

 3. Electronic Direct Mail (eDMs) – contrary to popular opinion, email is not dead! In fact, Miranda explains how she uses it to basically print money for her clients.

 4. Conversion optimisation – there’s no point getting a ton of traffic to your site if you can’t convert it into sales. Here Miranda explains some of the common pitfalls and how to dramatically increase your conversion rates.

 5. Retargeting strategies – even after reaching your shopping cart, not all visitors will continue through to the final sale. In this last point of the Five Pointed Star, Miranda explains how you convert more sales using retargeting strategies.

 So if you’re looking for simple, practical, economic and very, very effective steps you can take to build the awareness of your online offering, then this is the podcast for you. 

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THE ROAD TO RETAIL PODCAST EXPERTS

KEVIN MOORE

Kevin Moore is a shopper marketing expert. His expertise is in developing a compelling shopper experience in both the physical and online space.

With over 30 years experience working with global and local brands in both the physical and digital retail world, his insights are unique.

NIGEL MILLER

Nigel Miller has over 30 years experience as a producer/director creating content for TV and major corporates.

Nigel is Co-Founder of The Road to Retail. 

Nigel's role is the production of the course content. He also hosts our podcast.

MIRANDA BOND

Miranda possesses over 25 years’ experience in digital strategy and marketing, starting her career in the early 1990’s as Multimedia Evangelist for the BBC in London.

Miranda has worked for blue chip clients around the world in addition to scaling multiple start ups into global businesses.

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THE ROAD TO RETAIL PODCAST

EPISODE 6 TRANSCRIPTION
4th August 2020

 TRANSCRIPTION

 

The Road to Online Retail Podcast 6 – Raising Awareness Part 2 with Miranda Bond

4th August 2020

 

Nigel Miller: Welcome to The Road to Online Retail. I’m Nigel Miller.

 

This episode is part two of our focus on how to raise awareness of your online offering. We again, have on the line our special digital marketing guest, Miranda Bond. In the last episode, she took us through the first two points of her five pointed star strategy for raising awareness.

 

The first two points she focused on were search engine optimization and how to use online marketing platforms, such as Facebook. If you haven’t heard that episode, I strongly recommend you do so before listening on. Today we’ll be covering points three to five, electronic direct mail – EDMs – conversion optimization, and retargeting strategies.

 

Now can I just say that having started working with Miranda on some of these strategies for our own business, The Road to Retail, this stuff is gold. If you only follow a fraction of her suggestions, I’m certain you’ll still see a huge improvement in awareness of your online business. Now, as usual I have with me, international shopper experience expert, Kevin Moore.

 

Welcome Kevin. 

 

Kevin Moore: Thanks Nige. It feels like it’s getting less international cause none of us can get on airplanes but we are shopping internationally online.

Nigel Miller:
Yes. Now last week I took a trip from Greater Sydney up to not so sunny Queensland. Now, I know I live in Greater Sydney because now I couldn’t get back to Queensland if I wanted due to them shutting us down. Now I went up to visit Kevin and to film the last few pieces we needed for our new online retail shopper experience course. Kevin, thank you for looking after me. So well. 

 

Kevin Moore: Pleasure. It’s always good. Nige rocks up. He brings a mobile studio. We end up with lights, cameras, green screens.

 

It’s unbelievable. So it was nice to, to pick up where we left off a year ago. So we’ve been building the course for over a year and as I mentioned, quite clearly, it is a lot of work. This is not, you know, knocked up together in a shed overnight. This is a lot of thought, a lot of editing, a lot of story-lining and structure to make sure that, you know, it is a learning process and people can get genuine value they can apply to their businesses from the courses.

 

Nigel Miller: Yeah. And I think, I think we’re getting there. It’s going to be very soon that we can launch this thing and get it out there. 

 

Now while I was up there, we obviously had quite a few conversations over the odd glass or two of wine. And there are a few things that we talked about that I thought it’d be really good share with our listeners before we dive into part two with Miranda. 

 

Now, the first was to pick up on the conversation we were having about how dramatically COVID is affecting physical retail and how it’s fast tracking the observation that we basically started these podcasts with, which is that we’re now well and truly into the second age of online retail.

 

Can you just share some of those points with us, Kevin? 

 

Kevin Moore: Yeah. I mean, there are some of the big ones. Yeah. That, that we look at in,    some of the, large, concentrated markets. So the UK, and the last quarter, 33.4% of all sales, all purchases in the country were online. So 33.4% of every pound spent in that country was spent online.

There’s a, an amazing deck, which is, PowerPoint deck, which is circulating the world by the CEO of HubSpot. So those of you who run online businesses know HubSpot and Brian Harrigan, sent this email out to, a few people, the normal part of HubSpot’s communication with the, with the customers and it went viral and I just reviewed it today with my advisory board who run businesses, down the Eastern seaboard of Australia, and some of the things are so prescient and they’re, they’re, they’re genuine, they’re so real. 

 

The changes we see, the amount of behavioral change where, forget government, I mean Nige, you couldn’t come to see me now because our state governments have decided who can and can’t cross borders. But absent any government regulation, people’s behaviours are changing and they’re not going back.

And the next, the last slide on Brian Harrigan’s deck, and he can find on the internet, I’m the new normal. The second to last slide is a, is a graph of, of the change. And basically it shows the significant behavioural change as everything moves online. And the fact that isn’t going back. There’ll be a little dip, but we’re not going back to where we were.

 

That’s why it’s so important. And we said this right from the get go. You know, I have thousands of people that I know around the world in retail and the jobs are going and they need to be able to take those skills and take them online. And the evidence of, of the numbers that we’re seeing, we’re seeing phenomenal growth.

I mean, Amazon today, announced its results. Apple announced their results. Nobody foresaw two assuming, you know, mature businesses. The rate of growth in their business has been phenomenal. Apple hasn’t had a store open really around the world for three months and they’ve increased their sales.

I mean, massive increase in, in iPhone sales. So this isn’t going away. There’s stats after stats. I looked at Temple and Webster, Kogan in Australia. I mean their increases in revenue, their increase in profitability over a 90 day period has been unbelievable. It will drop a little bit, but it’s not going back. It’s not going back.

 

Nigel Miller: Yeah, it’s amazing isn’t it! I mean, it’s such a fast change, but as you said, it was happening anyway, this has just accelerated at all.

Now carrying on from there. I did ask you a few episodes ago, what you thought was going to happen to physical retail in the future. And I asked specifically, what was it going to look like?

 

And at the time you sort of fobbed me off and said, “well, I can’t tell you that”, but actually last week you showed me tell. The listeners about our warehouse visit. 

 

Kevin Moore: Yeah. So around the world, we’ve seen the, they’re called REITs, they’re the real estate investment trusts have been having to write down the value of their assets.

 

Now to put it into perspective, a real estate interest trust is a very big pot of money, which invests in, in big buildings and the value of the fund and the buildings are based on the amount of rent that those buildings will generate. Now around the world, people are walking away from retail leases and retail stores are shutting.

 

So they’re having to write down the value of those, those funds and they’re significant write downs. At the same time as that’s happening in one half of the real estate economy, if you will, the value of warehousing is growing by double digits in a 90 day period. So I made an investment. I tell people I’ve said it before here, I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. I’ve never had an original idea in my life, but I do follow trends. I like to think of myself as being quite a fast follower. I’m not a fast follower, but I’m quite a fast follower. So I saw it was happening in, in warehousing and online businesses so I bought a warehouse.

And the warehouse is a small warehouse. It’s perfect for online retail. It’s about 150 square metres. And which, I don’t know what it is old money, America, I’m sorry, but 150 square metres, a hundred square metres of warehousing space and 50 square metres of office space above you get about a hundred, $120,000 worth of stock in that warehouse.

 

Turn it sort of eight to 10 times a year, which is what an online retailer should do. They’re high stock turns. Turn that stock eight to ten times a year, and you’ve got a great business. Now, Nigel and I went to this place and we filmed it and we talked to various people. There are 18 units in this warehouse complex. It’s got broadband going into it. It’s got a full strata set up, so it is properly maintained with gardens and things. We’re talking about a warehouse here. It’s got gardens and the gardens are maintained. All but one’s gone. And that’s off the plan. So basically 17 of the 18 have been sold before, effectively the development’s finished. Now that’s in marked contrast to what’s happening in the land of physical retail.

 

Nigel Miller: It’s amazing. And I have to say they were very impressive. I mean, they just looked like a nice place to work. If you’re a small business and you know, you’ve got stock to turn. So, yeah, very impressive. For anyone that’s interested, I’ll post the video I shot with Kevin during that visit onto the podcast page of our website.

 

Just go to theroadtoretail.com and find the podcast six page, assuming you’re not on it already. 

Now the final thing I wanted to touch on was the statistic you’d found about the growth of Shopify and particularly your observation about how important shopper experience is if you build your online business on one of those platforms.

 

Kevin Moore: Yeah. And it’s, it’s again, echoed in Brian Harrigan’s. It’s very easy to set up a website, it’s very low cost to set up a website. It’s very low cost to set up all the merchant structure so that we can, we can trade on an online people. We can collect people’s money in different formats and it’s all so good and so easy that it’s become vanilla.

 

So in the US Shopify now, amazing Canadian company, big fan, 31% of all eCommerce sites in the US are Shopify sites. Now Shopify offer 100 common themes. So the layout of the website, 100 common themes. They’re free or paid for. You’ve got a hundred themes you can choose. We know that through Pareto, so the 80/20 rule, we know that 80% of people will choose 20% of those themes. So, one third of all eCommerce sites in America operate Shopify sites and of those sites, 80% of them use the same 20 layouts. Now that’s an awful lot of vanilla in one market. 


The point about retail is right from the Dawn of retail, we need retail-point-of-difference. We need things to feel different, look different. We do that through shopper experience in the physical world, we have different store layouts. We differentiate ourselves in malls, when the malls all look the same. It’s the same thing online. Big fan of Shopify but please differentiate yourself. Make sure that you’ve got people around you or you do courses like this that give examples of what good shopper experience is. I was doing a review with a great business that has online wine sales, alcohol sales world wide that are high online, and I just, I said, I love what you’ve done, you’ve moved over to a new piece of software called Neto. Great software, but you’ve lost the soul! You used to have videos of you and your kids and the dogs running around the winery, running around the vineyards, running around amongst the grapes, the lines of grapes. And it’s gone. She went, yeah, I’ve been so focused on making sure that it transacts properly, that the basket is easy to use, that we feel like we’ve lost our soul. So she’s going back and actually digging out, cause the video’s good, digging out the video and just putting it up on the site. Retail point of difference really matters.

 

You have to differentiate yourself. You know, don’t differentiate yourself with fantastic infrastructure and fantastic software that just works. But do absolutely differentiate yourself with the look and the feel of the site, the shopper experience.

 

Nigel Miller: So, and I think that’s actually neatly goes onto the other point that we discovered when we’re doing our research last week is there’s a ton of courses and everything on the technical side of the Shopify’s and everything, but there’s really nothing on the creative side, how to stand out, how to do the rest, which hopefully is the hole that we’re going to fill with our new online course.

 

Kevin Moore: I know, and I find it, I find it bizarre Nige. So I, you and I did that totally unprompted and just jumped on, said, okay, let’s look at the look, look at who we’re up against. You know, who is doing shopper experience online. Nobody! We couldn’t find any. But we did find was, was reams and reams, you know, sites and sites of acronyms which are all the technical aspects. n fact, I’ll rephrase that. The technology aspects of running websites. So there’s a great thing that Brian Harrigan talks about the difference between technology savvy and technical, and this was all about the technology, lots of people doing left brain stuff, which is the whole domain, if you’ll excuse the pun of online retailing.

 

So we have to differentiate. So if your a business owner, the guys and girls in techland, they’ve done that work for you. We have to find that way to engage your right brain and create amazing experiences that bring shoppers to you and keep them coming back. 

 

Nigel Miller: And boy, do we have a course for you to help you with that, but anyway, enough pushing of our own stuff.

I think it’s time that we returned to our chat with Miranda.

Miranda, welcome back.

 

Miranda Bond: Thank you so much.

 

Nigel Miller: Now Miranda, let’s start by just reminding everybody about you and your five point star.

Miranda Bond: Okay. Well, my name is Miranda Bond and I run up a digital agency called Mdigital and for my sins have been working in the digital arena for 25 years, which is way too long, no I’m only joking. I love it. And what I do is I help businesses to scale and grow, using digital means. And we’ve been talking about my five point star, which is really what I consider to be five of the most important things that you need to be taking care of to have a really fantastic digital strategy.

And those points are number one is SEO. And number two is digital marketing and both of those points we covered in our last conversation. And what we’re going to cover in this session is we’re going to be having a look at electronic direct marketing. So I’m talking there about those newsletters, and various other strategies that you can use to send digital communications to people.

And we’re also going to look today at conversion optimization. So what, what can you be doing on your web pages that will really help convert people to actual customers? And lastly, we’re going to be looking at retargeting, which I have to say is one of my favorite areas, because that’s where you can really get a fantastic return.

 

And that’s where we really help turn sort of warm leads into actual customers.

 

Nigel Miller: Brilliant. Well, okay. Let’s kick off then. Point three, EDMs. Where do we begin?

 

Miranda Bond: Okay. So this is an area that we actually really need to focus on in business. And it’s one of these things that I often hear people say, ‘Oh, email doesn’t return anymore. And you know, people’s inboxes are getting so crowded and no one ever responds to newsletters anymore’. It’s simply not true. I can tell you that with all of my clients, every time they send out a newsletter, it returns income full stop. So electronic direct communication is super important still today. And I would say to people who are a little bit nervous, just try it and see, I think every business with a reasonable database should be sending out at least one newsletter a week, if not two. So that’s my belief. And let’s, let’s just pick that apart a little bit and start talking about what kind of EDMs and newsletters you should be sending.

 

Nigel Miller: Kevin with Toys R Us, you’re doing that sort of stuff with obviously the different hobby categories aren’t you?

 

Kevin Moore: Yes but also as Miranda talks about, we have themes. So, we had 10 days  of play and each day we would feed out games. We’d feed out things to do at home. We did the toilet roll challenge with empty toilet rolls to be creative and, and use them in craft. But as Miranda says, it’s a series of things that are interesting, it’s engaging.

 

So this is where we go from the awareness to the engagement. It’s engaging for me as a mom at home with toddlers or youngsters to be able to say how can I keep them entertained? It’s the engagement that’s crucial. 

One of the things about EDMs we’ve found Miranda is that we also have access, we have a very large database, a very live database so the great thing about being involved in toys and babies and hobbies is it’s a very engaged category where people do, because it’s a great thing to give and to receive and to invest your own time in a hobby.

 

But we also have a large number of mobile phone numbers. And we are very, very respectful of the mobile phone. So we will use a text three times a year and it will be a very compelling offer in a key season. And I sincerely hope that that, that remains. I have a feeling that as you described with some of the larger markets, it’s getting less, less respectful and we are getting bombarded, but certainly we’re very respectful of people’s texts because it is a more personal thing.

 

Miranda Bond: Yeah. And the other thing that I’d say with that, Kevin, is that I’m finding it’s much more respectful in Australia. So it’s much less widely used in Australia than it is in America. And, it’s something which is a little sad to see, because I, I agree with your strategy. I think if you are going to do SMS marketing, you do it very carefully and thoughtfully.

 

Nigel Miller: As a slight aside on that one, the other thing I’ve noticed is when you have given your info to a database, so I was down at a winery a few months ago, and they  would normally call up and say, Hey, do you want to order another box of wine? but what they’re now doing is they’re emailing beforehand saying “we’re going call you” because obviously, so few people would pick up a phone from a number they don’t recognize, and they’re actually listing a number they’re going to call you from. Now that’s an interesting sign of the times, too.

 

Miranda Bond: I look I’m the same. I don’t, I don’t take a call, just anyone. So I prefer to know who’s calling and when they’re calling.

 

Nigel Miller: So just going back quickly to EDMs, so we’ve talked about running a promotion every six weeks, and you’ve also mentioned doing newsletter every one to two weeks. What should be in your newsletters?

 

Miranda Bond: Yep. Absolutely. So what I generally do is I’ll focus on a particular product, or category of products, each newsletter that I send. If I have a new product, that’s going to be front and centre, that’s going to be the number one thing that I talk about. So new products, particular product category, or a specific product to focus on for that newsletter.

 

And hugely important is reviews. So if you have any reviews from customers about your product or service, you want to include that onto your newsletter. Make sure when you’re putting this information on there, that you are using really clear calls to action on each of those different little sections.

So you could include a buy now button and then it would jump the person back into your website. Or you could be putting links to where your review is hosted. You also need to make sure that you’ve got all of your social channels and the links to your social channels on that EDM as well. 

So they’re the sort of things I would suggest that you focus on.

 

And then as I said earlier, you know, a promotion every six to eight weeks and that, that newsletter that’s going to cover that promotion is going to be all about that particular offer.

 

Nigel Miller: So Kevin, anything else from your perspective that you’ve seen over the years with the businesses you’ve been working on.

 

Kevin Moore: No Nigel, you might notice and listeners might notice that I’m being quiet. I’m in awe of what Miranda’s done. I love this, the structure to it. The detail to it is incredible. It is the backbone and layers and system and process, if you like, to create a consistent shopper experience that makes people linger longer, you know, spend more money and come back and tell their friends all about it.

 

So this is absolutely perfect.

 

Nigel Miller: Just another quick thing on EDMs though. What about open rates? How important are they? What should you be looking at? Any, any sort of quick guides on that area?

 

Miranda Bond: Yep. Yep. So look open rates are generally very low. Okay. So, so this is something that I want to, I do want to talk to people about, because sometimes people go into EDMs with a really unrealistic expectation. You know, they feel that they’re going to get an open rate of 60% or 70% this just forget it, that’s not going to happen. But here’s the reality. You only need an open rate of, you know, 15% or something like that to still have a meaningful impact on your bottom line, obviously, depending on the size of your database. But if you’re getting an open rate anywhere from sort of 15% to 30%, then you are in the sort of average category of open rates and that’s, and that’s good.

 

If you will then getting a click-through rate that something anywhere from sort of 2% to 5%, that’s also in a decent realm. And I know these figures sound, really tiny to people, but that can still, depending on the size of your database, equate to a really good income and well worth the return of putting the effort in to do that newsletter.

 

Nigel Miller: And how much experimenting do you do with your communication in newsletters and stuff.

 

Miranda Bond: You do a lot of experimentation with it. And what I really advise people to do is to track their data, every single newsletter. So what I do is a very simple spreadsheet in Excel. And I would have on there the title of their EDM so what I’m writing specifically there is the subject line because how you craft a good subject line is going to be the answer as to whether you get a great open rate or you do not.

So that subject line is hugely important. So I will keep track of what was that subject line then I will keep track of, okay, what was my open rate? What was my click-through rate? What was my conversion rate? And I always note the time of day and the day that I sent it. And then I will experiment. So I’ll say, okay, I got that result on a sort of Tuesday at seven o’clock, what if I change it to a Wednesday at 9:00am? How does that affect my results? And I will try a bunch of different things until I settle on “ah right, I see that Tuesday at 7:00pm is the best time for me to be sending these EDMs.” And when I do that and I craft a compelling subject line, then I can be pretty assured of this sort of percentage click-through and this sort of return on my  newsletter.

So tracking is really important.

 

Nigel Miller: And as you’ve done all the hard work Miranda. So what time do we send emails out?

 

Miranda Bond: Well, again, it depends on the type of business because if you are a service-based business, so if you are selling something that somebody who is a working person is likely to engage in, then you are better to send your EDMs in the morning between 9 to 11:00 AM, but not on a Monday. Okay. So that’s, if you’re a service-based business. If you are selling fashion items or if you’re selling products, which is sort of more of a, a luxury item, let’s say, then either a Tuesday around seven o’clock, or sent on the weekend, you can get some fantastic results at the weekend, but if you’re doing EDMs at the weekend, go for Sunday, not Saturday unless you are trying to drive traffic to your physical stores, in which case you would do it at about 8:00am Saturday morning. And that’s giving all my secrets away Nigel!

 

Nigel Miller: And look how much time we’ve saved our listeners.

 

Kevin Moore: I think the other, I think the other important thing to say about this is most people when they get to their website where they’ve got a 3% conversion rate, so a hundred people, and we talk about this, a hundred people come to the site, three tend to buy. You know, sub a thousand dollars, that tends to be it.

But what people forget about is exactly what you’re saying. The conversion rates tend to be fairly consistent. Three, two, three, 4%, 2.5, 3.1. They’re all in that area. What people forget is they do need to drive that traffic. And as you’re describing Miranda, when you drive the traffic from 1,000 to 10,000 to a 100,000, in the case of some of the things we’re doing where, you know, we’ve got three, four, 500,000 at a time.

 

That’s what makes the massive difference. So your conversion rates tend to be about there. Shoppers, you know, we talk about in, in America, we talk about going into a car, lots to buy a car. They don’t come to the car lots to get out the rain. They come to the car lot to buy a car. People arrive on your website because they wanted to buy something. They’ve made the effort to become aware of you, and they’ve engaged with you. And that’s why driving that volume, making more people aware of you can only ever drive up your sales.  It’s a very important point that people forget.

 

Nigel Miller: Yeah. Excellent. Okay. Well then let’s move on to point number four of our five point star, where are we up to Miranda?

 

Miranda Bond: Point four is conversion rate optimization. And what we’re talking about here, Nigel is what are the things that you can do on your website, particularly on your product pages which really encourage people to become customers. So how do we get them to convert? And there are some real specifics that are techniques here that will make all the difference in turning a prospect into an actual customer.

 

They’re all, they’re all things that you need to do on your webpage to help maximize your conversions and just to give you a very, very basic example of that is that people really respond to reviews. You know, that trust factor is hugely important in the decision to make a purchase.

 

So one of the things that I would be looking at in terms of conversion optimization is I’d been looking at the web page or the product page. And I’d be saying, has this page got enough to make me want to buy? So it needs to have social proof or reviews, preferably it’s going to have some video content on there. The way that the page is laid out is going to be important. If you’re talking about a sort of standard Ecommerce product page, you know, what is in that buy box at the top is, is hugely important. 

 

If you were offering things like free shipping over a certain amount, it needs to say that, you know, if you’re lovingly made in Australia, you need to be saying that, you know, there’s a number of things that you can do on that page or on that, on that product page, which will help it convert.

 

So they’re the sorts of things that I’m talking about when I mean conversion optimization. 

 

And so the last thing, with my five pointed  star is retargeting strategies. Now we’ve already spoken a little bit about that when we talked about automations, because you will have people who will abandon products in their cart, and we’ve talked about strategies that you can use, which will re-target those customers. 

But you can also do really, really cool things with Facebook and Instagram and Google, and I’m sure everybody has noticed this, you go and visit a website, you don’t make a purchase, and then all of a sudden for the next week or two, you’re seeing that brand or that product all over social media.

In fact, you might be on YouTube and it pops up as an ad. You might be on Google and it pops up as an ad. And you’re thinking there’s that company again? Well, they are stalking you and it is called retargeting and it is a very, very highly successful strategy that you can use in e-commerce. So you want to be retargeting people over all of those digital platforms that I’ve just mentioned, and that is going to be your best return on investment in all of the strategies that you can use in online marketing.

 

Nigel Miller: And how’d you do it physically? Is it literally just tick a box when you’re putting the ads in?

 

Miranda Bond: No. So what it is is you need to make sure that you have connected what’s called a Facebook pixel, and between Facebook and your website. Now that’s a little bit technical and, you know, people just starting out may need to get a bit of help getting that going in the first instance. For some people it’s fairly straightforward. But if, if technology is something that scares the bejesus out of you, then that’s something that you may need a little bit of help with. But all it is is a snippet of code. And what you’re doing is you are effectively opening a line of communication between your website and Facebook. And obviously because Facebook own Instagram, that that sort of powers you through to the Instagram platform as well.

 

And what it means is that basically, Facebook will then know and understand actions that are being taken on your website. So one of the sort of strategies that you can use, one of the objectives that you can use when you do your Facebook advertising is conversions. So you can actually come on and create an ad campaign for your business on Facebook saying to Facebook, I am going to pay you for conversions on my website. 

 

Now within the pixel communication between Facebook and your website, it’s going to give you a list of different conversions that you can track. For example, you could track purchases. Or you could track adds to cart, or you could just track view content and there’s some others as well, but, principally you would determine then the conversion optimization event that you’re going to go after, but you need to make sure that you’ve connected your Facebook pixel to your website if you want to retarget on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Nigel Miller: And Google has a pixel too? How does Google work?

 

Miranda Bond: So with Google, it’s a little bit different and, and again, we’re getting into a bit more sort of technology here because it depends what strategies you’re using over Google as well, because, let’s say for example, that you are doing Google shopping ads then you need to be supplying Google with a feed of products so that it can sort of understand and read those products.

 

So, little bit more technical, a little bit more complicated, perhaps the subject of a different conversation Nigel.

 

Nigel Miller: Yeah, certainly. So in summary then, so we’ve now covered all five points of your star ass that the ideal content to focus on, to get awareness and engagement, through to your website. If you’ve only got a limited budget, you’re just starting out, what are you going to have to spend to get any traffic at all?

 

Miranda Bond: First and foremost, the search engine optimization is free because you’re going to do it yourself. Sending electronic direct mails and newsletters and doing the sort of automations that I talked about, if you’re only just starting out a lot of the plugins and apps that I’ve mentioned, particularly Klaviyo, have a free account when you are just starting out.

 

Or, you know, they, they grow and they increase the more people you add to your database. So to begin with, it’s incredibly cheap to use things like Klaviyo to do your, your, electronic direct mail. A lot of those automations that we talked about and all those conversion optimization things that we talked about, that’s all free because you do it all yourself.

 

You may pay a little bit for some apps, like, for example, if you were doing SEO Rank,  there may be a little bit of cost involved in that. 

Pretty much everything that I just talked about apart from the marketing, the actual advertising side of it, is free. Okay. Or very, very little cost. So the only thing that you need to bother about really from a sort of spend perspective, rather than a time perspective, is what you are going to spend on Facebook or Instagram or Google or YouTube or whatever it is, the channel that’s most relevant to your customers.

 

That’s where you need to be spending your money. Now, the thing in terms of how to make the right decision really depends on your personas, your customers. And I’m talking here about the fact that you should be dividing your potential customers into different avatars or different personas.

 

Nigel Miller: So, so Miranda, I think this is such a key topic, we’re going to have another chat with you about avatars. Because I think it’s, you know, and Kevin you’re well across this stuff as well, so it’s a vital thing for people to focus on. So I think we’re going to pop this one into a later podcast, but just very, very quickly tell us what you’re talking about.

 

Miranda Bond: Okay. So what I’m talking about that is you need to match your customer to the right channel. So there’s no good you advertising on Instagram if that’s not where your customers are. It’s no good you advertising on YouTube if that’s not where your customers are. So you need to, you need to have a little bit of an idea where you think you’re going to find your different personas or your different customers to choose the right channels to advertise on.

Now, if I was to start with just two things, I would do a Facebook slash Instagram. I’d count that as one, because my budget’s going to be across both of them. So I do Facebook and Instagram and secondly, I would do Google. So they’re the two sort of core foundational elements for me and that is where I would be spending my initial marketing budget.

 

Nigel Miller: Okay, so I think our future podcasts will be on avatars and campaigns – how to get started and durations, like how quickly are you going to get a return? Cause they’re, they’re big things, and just, I mean, on that one, just tell us quick story about your advertising on Facebook for your own website.

Miranda Bond: Yeah. So the key thing to remember there is, you know, Kevin talked a little bit before about artificial intelligence. What you’ve got to understand is that the Facebook entire platform runs on artificial intelligence. So, the more that it knows your customers and the more that it knows your brand and the more that it knows what results you want, the better it’s going to get.

 

So it’s like, it’s like training something, you know, you, you’ve got to train that pixel to understand who are your customers and what results you want. So when you first start off with a typical campaign, like if you were, if you were a relatively small business, let’s say that you’re starting off with, I don’t know, $250 or $350 on your first campaign. Now you may only get, to begin with, between two to four sales for that amount of money, but six months later, you spend that same amount of money, and because of that pixel now understands you and your customers so well, you could be making, you know, 12 to 30 sales on, on that same spend. So it is something that builds with time.

 

Nigel Miller: Yep. So don’t get disillusioned instantly, I think is the key point in there.

 

Miranda Bond: Absolutely.

 

Nigel Miller: Okay, well, look, Miranda, it’s been absolute gold. There is so much great content, and seriously, if listeners you’re finding this compelling, let us know, and we will create a course for it because I haven’t heard a lot of this stuff as clearly and honestly. There’s a lot of stuff out there that is confusing, but the clarity you bring Miranda is fantastic. So thank you so much for your time on it.

 

Miranda Bond: Thank you. It’s a bit. Yeah. Thanks, Kevin.

 

Nigel Miller: Some Miranda people actually want to see what you’re doing in action. They can obviously can have a look at your website. Is there a client website as well? They could have a look at that would actually help get a feel for how this works.

 

Miranda Bond: Absolutely. One of my key clients that I’ve been working with now, for the last three or four years, actually, and we have seen the most incredible growth you can imagine is Carolina. So, I’m not sure  if people are familiar with the Carolina lifestyle brand in Australia. But the website URL there is carolina.net.au.

That’s carolina.net.au. And you’ll see a lot of the strategies that I’ve been talking about here, come to life. And you can also look at my own business, which is Pumayana.com. It’s difficult to spell there, but it’s Puma, P-U-M-A, Yana, Y-A-N-A pumayana.com and that is my own business that I have with a business partner who’s an amazing artist. And you also see a lot of the strategies that we’ve talked about today adopted there.

 

Nigel Miller: Brilliant. Well, that is superb. Thank you so much again, Miranda. we will definitely be talking to you again on another episode very, very  soon.

 

Kevin Moore: So Miranda, thank you. I love the fact that we’re talking to somebody who doesn’t just preach it has done it. And if you look at everybody who’s successful over the last 22 years in the online business, it’s because they’ve done it. Bezos has done it, you know, Zuckerberg has done it. The guy who set up Ruslan Kogan has done it.

 

Anybody’s listening, if you, if you, haven’t been jotting down notes, as I’ve been doing you’re crazy! Listen to the podcast again. If it’s your business, there is gold there, but the goal comes with hard work. I think that’s a key thing for me, Miranda, that the gold comes with hard work. And I think you emphasise that.

So thank you for sharing your knowledge. Your experience in 53 minutes, we’ve had 20 years of experience.

 

Miranda Bond: Thank you so much, Kevin.

 

Nigel Miller: Well, that’s all from us for this episode. If you can please give us a review and a rating on your favourite podcast app, it would really help us raise our awareness. Whilst I was staying with Kevin last week, we sat out on his lovely veranda, overlooking the water and recorded our next podcast episode. An episode I’m sure you’ll find fascinating as we dig into Kevin’s journey into online retail and the lessons he’s learned along the way. And more specifically, we dive into how important the focus on the shopper experience was to securing the digital rights here in Australia to Toys R Us a business that is growing phenomenally.

 

It’s a fascinating story and a very clear example of the power of the shopper experience. As always to find out more about this podcast and our range of online retail marketing and sales courses, go to our website, theroadtoretail.com. That’s the road to retail. com. And finally, if you want to learn how to improve the shopper experience for your online retail business, then as I mentioned earlier, we’re just putting the final touches on to our first course dedicated to the online shopper experience.

 

It will be launching very, very soon. So go to the website to sign up for our soon to expire early bird discount and to find out more. 

Until next time, thank you for listening.  

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