387: John Jantsch Reveals His Strategy For Ecommerce Marketing In 2022

00:00
You’re listening to the My Web Critter Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Today, I’m thrilled to have John Jantz on the show. Now, John is the longtime author of Duck Tape Marketing, which is actually a blog that I’ve read since 2009. He’s known as one of the world’s most practical small business marketing speakers and experts. And today we’re going to learn his strategy for marketing an e-commerce store in 2022 and beyond.

00:28
But before I begin, want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Always excited to talk about Klaviyo because they’re the email marketing platform that I use for my e-commerce store and I depend on them for over 30 % of my revenue. And you’re probably wondering why Klaviyo and not another provider. Well Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for e-commerce stores. And here’s why it’s so powerful. Klaviyo can track every single customer who has shopped in your store and exactly what they bought. So let’s say I want to send out an email to everyone who purchased a red handkerchief in the last week, easy.

00:56
Let’s say want to set up a special autoresponder sequence to my customers depending on what they bought piece of cake and there’s full revenue tracking on every single email sent. Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform that I’ve ever used. You can try them for free over at klaviyo.com slash my wife. That’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O dot com slash my wife. I also want to thank Postscope for sponsoring this episode. Now, if you run an e-commerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your own customer contact list. This is why I focus a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing.

01:27
Text message marketing is already a top five revenue source for my eCommerce store and I couldn’t have done it without PostScript, which is my text message provider. Now, why did I choose PostScript? It’s because they specialize in eCommerce and eCommerce is their primary focus. Not only is the tool easy to use, but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart at the push of a button. Not only that, but it’s price well too and SMS is the perfect way to engage with your customers.

01:54
So head on over to postscript.io slash Steve and try it for free. That’s P O S T S C R I P T dot I O slash Steve. And then finally, I want to mention my other podcast that I released with my partner, Tony. And unlike this one where I interviewed successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the profitable audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the profitable audience podcast on your favorite podcast app.

02:23
Now onto the show.

02:31
Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have John Jantz on the show. Now, even though John and I have never met in person, I’ve actually followed his blog, Duct Tape Marketing, for the longest time. In fact, I believe I started reading it in 2009 when I first got started blogging. And his writing was one of the reasons I was convinced that I need to learn marketing in addition to microprocessor design, which was my day job back in the day.

02:57
Anyway, John is known as one of the world’s most practical small business marketing speakers and experts. He is also a famous author with hit books like Duct Tape Marketing, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur, The Commitment Engine, and his latest book, The Ultimate Marketing Engine. And his books have been translated into 14 languages worldwide. So today, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna talk about his approach to marketing a small business, which is what he specializes in, in the face of increasing competition. And with that, welcome to show, John. How you doing?

03:25
Oh, I’m doing great. Thanks. Thanks for having me, Steve. My next career is going to be microprocessor design. So I was an electrical engineer back in the day. And if you can imagine for me, the transition from engineer to a marketing person was a big one for me. think marketing to engineering is worse, actually, possibly. Really? Okay. Yeah, possibly. I’ve never gone the other way. So I’ve followed you for some time.

03:53
But please give the audience an introduction into your background and how you became an author and speaker. Sure. So I started actually my own marketing consulting firm going on 30 years ago. Can you imagine that, Steve? We didn’t even have the Internet and we were doing marketing. I don’t even know how it’s possible today. That is crazy. I imagine the tactics have changed. Well, you know, they have, but I always tell people fundamentally what our job is. Marketers is has not changed at all. It’s to get somebody to trust us enough to give them their money. And obviously there are.

04:22
platforms and networks and all those kinds of things out there, but fundamentally not really changed that much. at any rate, I, you know, I just, like a lot of people, I jumped in and hustled work. knew I could hustle work. got big projects, little projects, big companies, little companies. Pretty soon I found I got a couple of small business clients that really wanted me to kind of take over their overall marketing, but you know, they’re really frustrating. I couldn’t figure out how to do it in a way I’d been trained. I worked for an edit agency for about five years and

04:49
It just didn’t apply the same process. So I decided what I had to do was be able to walk into a small business and say, here’s what I’m going to do. Here’s what you’re going to do. Here are the results we hope to get. And here’s what it costs. So I created essentially a product out of marketing and, but I needed to give it kind of a producty name. And so instead of just calling it my consulting system, I came up with duct tape marketing. So, so that was really the genesis of the term, uh, duct tape marketing was to describe my approach. Now.

05:15
It really resonated with small business owners so much. I I grew my practice preaching this. started writing about it. I started the blog. I spent a book podcast. I pretty much changed the name of the company to Duct Tape because it really became so foundational to what I did. 25, 30 years later, I’m now writing my seventh book and have a network of independent marketing consultants around the world that are actually installing the Duct Tape marketing system in thousands of businesses on any given day.

05:45
So I’m probably dating myself, but whenever I think of duct tape, I think of MacGyver. And does your approach have anything to do with MacGyver? Well, think it borrows from a lot of what you’re suggesting. I mean, the metaphor of simple, effective, affordable doesn’t always have to be pretty, it just has to work. I think that’s how a lot of small business owners really, especially initially, approach marketing. certainly, I’ve…

06:11
benefited that metaphor, I think is benefited from the fact that least in North America, there’s a strange affection for all things duct tape as well. So a combination of that affection and, and the metaphor, you know, for what it’s like to be in small business, I think actually made that, that that name kind of a kind of a hit. So it’s funny, just listening to your introduction, one of my pet peeves, because I teach e commerce, is when someone wants to start an online business or an e commerce business, and they tell me that they aren’t

06:40
interested in marketing, who can I just pay to do everything? And I would say probably the main thing that I learned from you back in 2009 when I was an engineer is that marketing needs to be a part of everyone’s job, right? Yeah. So true. mean, any way, and form which your business is coming into contact with a prospect or a customer, you are performing any marketing function. So that person that answers the phone, that person that sends out the invoice, that person that fulfills the order or answers a question,

07:09
that a customer has. I those are all marketing functions all across the company. so, you know, I think marketing today is really as much a culture issue as it is a tactical issue. I mean, it’s basically a part of your business that is always going to be there, even if you think you’re going to be outsourcing it. Yeah. Well, and what I tell people, I mean, there are a lot of tactics, especially today. I mean, all the social networks have gotten increasingly complex in terms of their formats and those kinds of things.

07:37
There’s a lot of things like that that you should outsource, but you cannot abdicate marketing strategy. You cannot abdicate who the customer is, what your message is, how you’re going to meet them, and the journey you’re gonna take them on. Those are all things you have to continue to own. Yeah, so John, what I was hoping to do today was to go into depth on the best way to come up with that marketing strategy as a small business owner, because actually, you know, I’ve always been curious, how come you decided to focus on small business before we get into the guts?

08:05
I think it started with, just loved working with small businesses. I had a lot of really big clients and you they go through the RFP process and you’d get paid 90 days after you sent them the invoice. In fact, I have a story that I tell all the time. I was working with a big telecom company and I did a really small, goofy project. was like $1,500 and 12, know, $1,512 or something like that, an invoice. And I got a check for $152,000 and blah, blah.

08:32
from the invoice 90 days later. And I called them up to say, hey, what do I do? And they proceeded to, first of all, scold me for what I can’t remember why, but then also give me like three forms I had to fill out in order to return the check to them. And I thought, man, there’s something really both parts gratifying and terrifying about working for somebody who is

08:59
they’re writing the check and they’re making a decision about whether to pay you or maybe to get Susie braces. And I just really said that that’s who I want to serve. Now, I will also say that at that time when we were just starting on the digital kind of front, nobody wanted to serve. Nobody had any real interest in trying to serve that market because they were very hard to reach. There was no conference, there was no one ad you could buy. And so I think I saw a real opportunity

09:26
to serve a market that was not being served. Okay, all right. So John, so a lot of the listeners here want to start an e-commerce business. And I know the type of business generally doesn’t matter, the principles apply no matter what. But let’s just hypothetically say that I have an e-commerce apparel brand or something along the lines where I’m selling something. How do I form the basis for my marketing strategy? Like what are some of the fundamental principles that you need to be thinking about? Well, the first thing I always advise people to do and

09:55
maybe they’ve come up with some great new thing that nobody’s ever heard of. But that’s rare, right? A lot of people are starting is like, hey, I think I can make money doing this. Or I like, I have a hobby, you know, doing, you know, collecting XYZ. So maybe I could figure out how to sell that knowledge. So I think the first thing you really have to understand is what problem are you trying to solve or are you available to solve or who has a problem that needs solving?

10:25
Because just putting another store out there is probably not going to address anybody’s problems necessarily. mean, you you’re competing now with Amazon, for example, if you’re just doing that. so how can you address some, some need or small, you know, itch that somebody has that for whatever reason, it’s not being served. And, and that is probably advice everybody gives. But it’s, it’s really so hyper important.

10:53
And that continues after you have customers. Cause sometimes people start something and they generate a little bit of interest and some momentum, but they kind of stall because they’re really seen as a commodity. They just happen to be a commodity that advertises or somebody found. And so they make some purchases. So you have to continue this process, always digging in and understanding why people buy from you, why they stay with you, what you do that others don’t.

11:20
So I think since I teach this stuff also, one of the biggest struggles that people have is like, if you’re selling like shirts or apparel or something like that, like what problem are you really solving? Like, do you have like a process for figuring that out? Well, we, I mean, we do a real, you know, exploratory process. I mean, it really has to do with customer discovery. So when, people have customers, we spend a lot of time interviewing those customers.

11:46
When they don’t have customers, we make some assumptions about who they think they can appeal to. And we start trying to collect information and research from those folks. Businesses that do get reviewed. So another thing we like to do is, if you’re just starting out, go find the theoretical competitors or the aspirational competitors, people that are already doing, seemingly doing what you want to do because they’re probably out there.

12:16
If they’re getting reviews, if they’re getting testimonials, a lot of times we can learn some things because people leave reviews and testimonials typically are talking about how their expectations have been exceeded or what this company does, what little things this company does that nobody else does. so you can get a lot of clues in the market, what the market cares about and what the market is really craving by looking at a lot of other people that are doing something.

12:42
similar to what you’re doing. It doesn’t have to be another shirt seller. It could be somebody that is serving maybe the same market. So you brought up something really interesting that for some reason a lot of people have an aversion to, which is actually talking to the customer. So we live in an online world today and you think that you can just sit behind a computer. So let’s say I do have a handful of customers. I’m very curious how you approach asking the customers for feedback.

13:08
Yeah, I think it is funny. One of the things about technology is, is it’s really easy to use it as a shield to automate everything. And that’s one of the beauties, right? I’m sitting up at midnight now with my side hustle because I can, you I don’t have to be there in the eight to five hours to do that. So I, so I get that. But, but I think in today’s world and this is

13:30
You know, we had this pendulum that swings back and forth. mean, I think it was really great. All this automation you could do. then it kind of was like, eh, people want a little more human touch. And I think what we’ve all gone through the last 12 months is really asking for more authenticity, more human touch. And so I really think the opportunity to literally just reach out and say, I want to understand better, you know, what we could do better. I want to understand what we do well. I want to understand what you’re not getting in your life right now. You know, once you have

14:00
customer and you’ve established some trust, I find that some percentage of them actually really like being asked for their views and their opinions. it doesn’t mean that you’re going to now go out and carry red, green, and blue because one customer said so, but what you’re really trying to get at is the stories. You’re trying to get at, when we ask people all the time, what is it that when we’re talking about a client’s clients, what is it that they do that nobody else does? we’ll always almost get

14:29
Well, they provide better service. And so that’s not very useful. What does better service look like to you? Tell me a story about a time when they provided better service. And then we start hearing themes that really show up in our core messaging, that show up in email subject lines, that really give us great blog post ideas. So it’s not just a matter of understanding your customers so you can do more with them. That’s a big part of it too.

14:57
Because once you establish that trust, there’s a good percentage of your customers would actually like to buy other stuff from you or do the premium version of what it is that you offer. that kind of ladder approach becomes much more available, I think, when you’re constantly talking to your customers. But you also get better at attracting more of the same people if you can fully understand what it is you do for them that they’re not getting elsewhere.

15:27
So are you suggesting a phone conversation here? That’s what we do. mean, if the coffee shop of options available, that’s a great one too, but you can get a lot accomplished in a phone interview. But I understand that this is part creative art. This is not research. You’re not checking boxes. asked them these five questions. They said yes or no. mean, you’re really just trying to get at, you’re trying to listen for messages that if you do six or eight of these,

15:56
I can almost guarantee that you will start hearing some things repeated. And that’s what you want to dig in on. You know, it’s funny, and my wife actually was really against this, but I used to call up all of our abandoned cart customers because they started the checkout. I have their phone number. So maybe within 10 minutes after I would call them up and say, hey, why didn’t you buy this? In a nicer way. And then I give them free product, of course. But the last time we had launched an apron line and I called them up and they were like,

16:24
The reason why I didn’t buy was I wasn’t sure if this was gonna fit my child because I listed it ages four to 10 or something like that and that was kind of ambiguous and it was like a large range of ages. So we fixed that, yeah. Yeah, and I think that’s the thing that we underestimate. If there’s a moment of confusion, particularly online, we will probably bail unless it’s a company we’ve done a lot of business with before.

16:52
And so half the time, as I’m sure you discovered, your abandoned cart was really more about confusion than it was about, oh, I don’t like this or I changed my mind. Yeah. So let’s say I’ve interviewed a bunch of people and I know I have a pretty good idea of who buys my product. What is the next step after that?

17:10
Well, again, it’s not just a matter of knowing who buys it, but knowing why they buy it and what message appealed to them. Because, you know, again, the two greatest opportunities are to do more with your existing clients and to understand, you know, who your ideal client is so thoroughly that you can go attract more of them. So we’re going to use what we learn in this research in messaging, in all the forms of messaging that we put out there.

17:38
Um, another great use of doing these interviews is you will probably have an opportunity in the right, uh, instances to generate some, uh, some content from them. Um, you know, the form of a testimonial or in the form of a review of a product or something, you start doing this outreach and you probably found this, Steve, uh, you start people are like, Oh, a real person is behind this website. And all of sudden they get more attachment.

18:04
to that company and they’re more willing to maybe talk about the good experiences they’re having in a public way. That’s certainly what you want to do, I also find that, I use an arbitrary number, but I try to help companies identify their top 20 % of their customers with the idea that some percentage of them would probably do 10 times the business with us if we gave them the opportunity or we understood where the opportunity was for them.

18:32
And some even smaller percentage might do a hundred times more business if we gave them, if we learned from them and gave them the opportunity and, and, know, scaling with your existing customers is so much more profitable generally than going out and just constantly running ads and trying to get a return on your ad spend. It’s funny you say all these things, John, because so we sell wedding hangers. I I’m pretty sure you’re not familiar with what we sell, but most people they get married just once. Right. So the chance of repeat business is not so hot, but

19:02
we were getting these customers who were buying large quantities of our handkerchiefs. And so one day we called them up and then it turns out that there’s a lot of wedding and event planners that were buying our stuff for their clients. And then that just opened my eyes. And so that’s part of our strategy today. We’re trying to find those. We call them whales at my company. And yeah. Well, the wedding, you know, the nice about the wedding industry is that’s an entire ecosystem. You know, because people go through that, like you said, only well,

19:33
only what is it 2.7 times average in their lifetime? Yeah, the divorce rate is quite high. yeah, but so so you know, there’s the flowers and the invitations and the events and the caterers and the music and I mean, so there’s just so there’s a whole strategic partner network that that you know that that industry presents. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I know you mentioned content. And I remember when I first started my blog back in the day,

20:01
can’t remember exactly what you said before because it was so long now. But I remember I was determined to just make content part of the strategy. Today, the ecosystem is a lot or the world is a lot different than it was back then. It seems like everyone and their mother is doing content now, right? Yep. Yep. So it’s a lot more competitive. what is your what are your views on content today? So my views on content have evolved from remember when we used to say content is king. Yeah. And then it became, you know, for me, it became air. Right. We decided, oh, we can’t even

20:31
play in the digital space without some focus on content. Today, I call it the voice of strategy because you’re absolutely right. There’s so much content out there, but part of the reason is so much content is being consumed. So much content is needed because of the way that people buy today. Like that’s probably the greatest thing that’s changed in marketing is not all the tactics and the platforms, but the way people choose to become customers is probably the biggest change because

20:58
the way they go out and search, what their journey looks like today. A lot of those stages are really out of our control to some extent. So I call content the voice of strategy, meaning that instead of just focusing on like so many of us did more and more more, let’s look at the stages of our customer journey. And we can talk about this in greater depth if you want to, but we have for a long time, use something we call the marketing hourglass as our customer journey tool. And our marketing hourglass,

21:28
Of if you think about the hourglass shape, it borrows from the funnel, but a lot of people, that’s where marketing stops is sort of when somebody drops out of the funnel as a customer. And for us, that’s where the opportunity really expands. And so if you think about the upside down funnel or the bottom half of the hourglass is to me, that’s where the real opportunity and focus should be. So our seven stages are no like trust, try by, repeat and refer.

21:55
And I use those terms because I think they reflect the behavior that our customers or any customer really wants to participate in with the companies that they do business with. And you can use your own kind of buying experience to sort of validate that idea. And our job as marketers is, you know, what if we thought about the fact that our customers questions and objectives and process for research, you know, changes.

22:23
at each of those stages. So when I don’t know about somebody who can solve my problem, I’m just out looking for who’s out there. You who’s got what I’m looking for, who can solve my problem. But as I move further and start finding some people, now my questions change to, will this work for me? Or can I trust this company? So if we thought about our content as not as a dumping ground for more and more and more, but as a tool to drive every one of those stages.

22:51
we start looking at what content do I need to know when some, or what content do I need to produce to get somebody to know me? What content is going to make them say, okay, I like what I’m hearing here. What content do I need to produce to get somebody to trust? What content do I need when somebody wants to try me out in some fashion? What content do I need when they buy? And that includes like orientation and onboarding content.

23:16
What content when I want them to repeat? And then finally, what content will I need to help generate referrals? And I think that if we take that focus, it allows you to actually produce less content, but be far more focused on the usefulness of that content in guiding the customer journey.

23:34
If you sell on Amazon or run any online business for that matter, the most important aspect of your long-term success will be your brand. And this is why I work with Steven Weigler and his team from Emerge Council to protect my brand over at Bumblebee Linens. Now what’s unique about Emerge Council is that Steve focuses his legal practice on e-commerce and provides strategic and legal representation to entrepreneurs to protect their IP. So for example, if you’ve ever been ripped off or knocked off on Amazon, then Steve can help you fight back and protect yourself.

24:03
Now, first and foremost, protecting our IP starts with a solid trademark and Emerge Council provides attorney-advised strategic trademark prosecution, both in the United States and abroad for a very low price. And furthermore, the students in my course have used Steve for copywriting their designs, policing against counterfeits and knockoffs, agreements with co-founders and employees, website and social media policies, privacy policies, vendor agreements, brand registry, you name it. So if you need IP protection services, go to EmergeCouncil.com and get a free consult.

24:32
And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a hundred dollar discount. That’s E-M-E-R-G-E-C-O-U-N-S-E-L.com. Now back to the show. So I know it still sounds a little overwhelming to me, because you have to think about the types of content you just specified in addition to getting leads. So how do you prioritize? Because I know you talk a lot about SEO also in terms of content, right?

25:00
and then there’s social, the whole bunch of different places. Well, here’s what I would tell a lot of people. You probably have produced a lot of content that’s not producing any results for you because you got on the blog bandwagon and you woke up on Monday and said, Oh, what do need to write about? And so you just wrote content. And the good news is now you have 247 blog posts, but they’re just out there in the ether, unconnected, disconnected to anything useful.

25:24
So one of things we’ve been doing for the last three years is going into people who have done that and restructuring their content into what we call hub pages. So content around a particular service or around a particular idea. Now, if you Google the term guide to local marketing, you will find a, I think HubSpot beats me out on some days, but you will find the duct tape marketing guide to local marketing either in the one or two spot. And what that is,

25:52
is simply a restructure of content that I’d written for years about various aspects of local marketing. Google AdWords, or I guess Google Advertising as we call it today, Google My Business, citations, you all the various things that go into local SEO. But what the Hub page does is it structures that content almost like a table of contents for a complete guide. So if somebody’s trying to figure out how do I do local marketing better, they could come to that page and find

26:20
what’s effectively 30 or 40 blog posts or links to 30 or 40 blog posts structured around some of the subtopics about local marketing. And some of most of them will be on my site, but others will be some other good resources in other places as well. And all of these pages, which used to be just individual blog posts, all linked to each other and then all linked back to the hub page as well. And so what we’ve done is repurposed

26:50
a tremendous amount of content that we’ve written, some of which was very old, into a very useful guide that we use in sales that we promote. Now there’s also a lead capture device there when people come there, but we promote that in ads and in Facebook ads. And because it’s so useful, people share it, they linger on it, they click around to three or four different pages. so…

27:15
that content that we really wasn’t doing that much good for us now has become a real magnet for potential leads for our business. And it’s mainly because we’ve turned existing content into a utility. So that’s one of the things that I would do with many, many people that we work with who have been producing content for years, but they’re just not getting that much value out of it from a lead standpoint. But that content also works

27:43
in a lot of other stages in the journey, because it builds trust. So people get our SEO playbook that is there. It really allows us to dump them into a sequence that is going to nurture them and give them further calls to action. so we’ve taken content that we use for lead generation and now are able to use it to really help guide the journey along. Can you comment on like all the different mediums to choose from today? I mean, it’s

28:11
pretty overwhelming like where to start. Back in the day, it was basically just written word, right? Content marketing. Now there’s like YouTube, TikTok, social media, all these different things. How do you wrap your head around it when you’re advising a company on where to go? So we’ve put pretty much everything into a number of channels. I mean, to me, the website content in SEO has risen to the strategic level. I mean, that’s part of planning our website structure, our content, how we’re going to optimize that content is really one of the first things that we work on.

28:42
building that foundation. then obviously email marketing is huge. Social media is huge. Reputation management for a lot of businesses is huge part of that. And then obviously all of the paid search. And then, you know, let’s round it out with the analytics because that’s the part that a lot of people sort of forget about. We build this whole system, but then we use analytics and goal tracking to make sure that what we’re doing is getting the most impact.

29:08
So those are the primary buckets that we put everything into. And then it’s really a matter of, your strategy is going to be driven or your tactics, should say, are going to be driven by your strategy. it’s very appealing for a lot of people to say, like you mentioned TikTok. TikTok is really hot topic right now. lot of marketers, a lot of e-commerce folks are saying, how do I crack that nut? How do I figure that out?

29:37
It may be the place that you should be playing. However, what a lot of people do is they get so scattered that they’re really not able to master anything and they’re not able to really get any momentum. mean, it feels like a waste of time because they’re throwing stuff into TikTok and into Instagram stories or reels and they’re just, you know, they don’t feel like they’re getting any for it. And a lot of times it’s because we’re just, you know, we’re just dabbling, you know, to places.

30:06
And so what I try to get people to do is to really lock in on what they think is going to be their best opportunity to go deep. Because one of the challenges I think a lot of people have with social media today is, because there’s so much competition between the platforms, they’re all getting far more complex in terms of the formats and things that are available. So it’s very hard to…

30:32
create one little video and think, oh, I’m going to put this in all, you know, all the social channels because it’s, know, it’s just not going to work. So my advice is to pick one or two and learn it, pick the, pick the one or two that you enjoy, that you get and learn them and go very deep and focus on them and get some traction there before you start thinking about, oh, here’s the next new one. And I know a lot of people just feel like, oh, I’m missing the opportunity. You know, clubhouse was

30:59
was, you know, giant for about six weeks. Yeah, during the pandemic. Yeah. And so many people were like, I’m missing, I’m missing out if I don’t get there. And I think that a lot of what we do is we spend a lot of time helping people understand what not to do. Right. Yeah. I think that’s the biggest challenge. There will always be more to do or more that you want to do than you can do. So let’s prioritize. So maybe I’m old school, John, but, you know, social media requires posting so many times.

31:28
Whereas YouTube and just SEO in general, it’s almost like you put your efforts in in the beginning. And once it gains traction, you get that traffic for a long time. What is your philosophy in general on just the mediums? Yeah, I’m not gonna argue with what you just said at all. mean, we have blog posts that I wrote probably in 2005, 2006 that are still getting hundreds of views a day.

31:54
So, you know, that’s pretty hard. That’s pretty hard to replicate, as you said, in any kind of other platform. I think that it really all comes down to your strategy. I mean, if if you’re selling a fashion item, let’s say you’re selling purses or something, you know, social media is where a lot of people are going. Yeah. For that. Now, if you can over time dominate searches for product, but good luck because you’re

32:22
competing with Google and you’re competing with a lot of people. It’s tougher. mean, that’s the golden goose, right? Is that you’re showing up for product searches, specific product searches for stuff you sell. But that’s the competition there now has gotten so brutal that I think a lot of people are realizing that social media still gives them the opportunity to reach certain markets if they’ll hustle and work that. But you’re right. The challenge is

32:52
you got to do it every day. It doesn’t. It doesn’t. Other than the fact that you might build a large following that you then now have access to on an ongoing basis. You certainly have to keep reproducing your efforts every day. want to revisit repeat business because I feel like it’s something that most businesses don’t think about that much. But there’s been so many studies. think Bain had one where a 5 % increase in retention was something like 75 % more revenue. And

33:19
It’s not as sexy, right? You’re not getting new customers. So I’m very curious how you advise your companies on how to increase the repeat business front. Well, you know, there are two variables, repeat and retention. So there are lot of people that are selling. I actually sell a membership to a consulting program or a consulting network. know, we very much the growth of that business relies on us getting new folks.

33:46
but it also relies on us retaining about 85 % of those people who continue to pay a fee to stay in there. So really focused, in fact, we probably spend more time on retention than we do on recruitment. That’s partly because just our time and resources are limited. But for us, we find the value in not only keeping those folks, but finding what else we can.

34:12
This sounds so coarse, but finding what else we can sell them is because they because in some ways and again, this this sounds probably too bold, but in some ways they will buy just about anything we have as long as we continue to deliver the value we have delivered in the past. And so, you know, our job a lot of times is to think of what how else can we serve them in a way that that’s going to continue to bring value that they are willing to pay for? That gets a lot easier than going out there and saying, how can we

34:41
do a campaign to bring in new people who maybe have never heard of us before to buy something. You do need both of those, but if I was given the option to prioritize, I would prioritize in that instance retention. Now repeat business for a lot of folks is a form of retention. You get people to come back and buy again, especially if you have something that’s a consumable. So obviously that’s a, just staying top of mind, continuing to communicate.

35:09
making sure that they’re happy. Because a lot of times what happens is people start seeing this, this erosion of repeat business and you’re just not sure why people just, they’re just not coming back anymore. Don’t know why. So obviously keeping your finger on the pulse of exactly what’s happening, you know, over communicate surprise people in some fashion, do something they weren’t expecting. Like you said, you were doing those calls and giving people free product. I remember one time I bought a pair of shoes and

35:37
running shoes online and I got some socks and energy bars in the box. I was like, wow, you know, I’m going back there. Yeah. You know, that was really cool to get that. So those kinds of things, I think you just have to be intentional about. but also the the the the crime, the criminal thing act that I see happening so often is, you know, somebody will have a customer and that customer will be talking to the customer or customer say, oh, yeah, we just we just added such and such.

36:06
to our thing and just like, wait, you know we do that too, right? So not failing to communicate all the other ways that you can help somebody who becomes a customer. They come in one door, they buy from you, you give them what they bought, give them the service, provide the service, whatever it is, but then you’re not kind of immediately on the lookout for continuing to educate them on what else you could do for them. And that, know, those…

36:34
Those two things I see as one of the easiest buckets to fix. That idea of staying top of mind with your existing customers so they come back, communicating with them so they come back, and then continuing to educate them and cross upsell on what else you could do for them are probably the two easiest sort of layup opportunities for many businesses. I just wanted to let you know that tickets for the 2022 Seller Summit are now on sale over at sellersummit.com.

37:03
Now what is the Seller Summit? It is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. And in fact, every speaker that I invite is deep in the trenches of their own e-commerce business. Entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods,

37:30
and not some high level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. The other thing I can assure you is that the seller summit will be small and intimate. Every year we cut out ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets will sell out fast, and in fact we sell out every single year, many months in advance. Now if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250k or $1 million per year in revenue, we are also offering an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. Now the seller summit is gonna be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 4th to May 6th.

38:00
And as of right now, we’re almost already sold out of Mastermind tickets and we’ll be raising the price every month leading up to the event after Cyber Monday. more information, go to SellersSummit.com. Once again, that’s SellersSummit.com or just Google it. Now back to the show.

38:17
Yeah, there’s a couple of things that you just said that I just want to highlight here. And basically this is for the Amazon sellers out there. But you know, once you have, and you’re talking about retention, once you have this reputation, and this is often bolstered through content and which content leads to authority, people will tend to buy whatever you have to sell. Like I have friends who will buy any Apple product as soon as it comes out. Right. And likewise, I’m sure you have fans who will just buy any book that you have coming out, right? Regardless of what the topic.

38:46
I mean, you could be writing about apparel or something. People would still buy that book. And that’s what you’re missing when you’re using a marketplace versus your own store where you can actually create these relationships by communicating with your actual customers. And I’m sure you’ve seen this, because you’ve been doing this for a while that I think that’s one of the greatest ways to stand out in the online world is to actually provide some human touch, let them know there’s a real person. I mean,

39:13
I get some things every now and then and somebody will slip a note into it that says, Hey, this is really a pleasure for me to pack this up for you today. Let us know if there’s any issues, uh, know, rusty. And I’m like, wow, maybe there’s a rusty, maybe there isn’t, it felt good to get that because, know, we’re just so used to the, the sort of robotic ordering of things now, uh, that, that any company online company that I think adds a little human touch, that’s a great way to stand out.

39:41
You know, it’s funny, John is like everyone who’s a small business wants to act big. And I feel like every large conglomerate wants to act small. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Whereas I always like tell everyone who’s small is just embrace being small and just do all those little things. Like I remember when I first started, I did a lot of these little things that I stopped doing now and I’m kind of revisiting them now. Cause like, why did I stop them if they were working? We get busy and yeah, I think we got it all figured out.

40:10
It’s just something I struggle with. I don’t No, you’re not alone. think, I think any, you know, one of the, one of the challenges is, is you, you know, you meet a level of success with it and it’s very common. stop a lot of the things you did in the beginning to hustle is because you were trying to, know, you were trying to get on the radar. Uh, you get on the radar and sometimes it’s easier to, uh, to let some of those things slip. So John, I wanted to also talk about the ultimate marketing engine. What, is this book about? I haven’t read it yet.

40:38
So, so it’s, uh, the subtitle maybe helps a little. It’s called five steps to ridiculously consistent growth. Um, it is essentially a strategy book that, talks about, basically sum it all up in this one sentence. The ultimate marketing engine is a successful customer. One of the big premises of this book I’m trying to suggest is what if we looked at our customers, uh, less as a transaction and more for the transformation that they were looking for? So in other words,

41:07
Maybe our initial relationship is they come to us wanting a certain thing. They come to us in a certain stage in their life or their business. What if, what if we look to our business and said, how can we take them from where they are today to where they ultimately want to go? So it’s about growing with your customers much more than it is about, you know, what are, what’s some new Facebook tactic. So in the context of, guess, some of your memberships, can you just give me some concrete examples?

41:38
Yeah, so in our consultant network, we have what we call a consultant maturity model. We have a lot of folks, a lot of consultants that join the Ductype Marketing Consultant Network. We really attract a lot of people jumping out of corporate. I think a lot of my point of view is sort of old school about marketing and very systematic about marketing. And to be honest, it’s not necessarily an e-commerce side hustle kind of marketing.

42:06
Our focus is really a lot of traditional kind of businesses. And so we attract a lot of what I would call traditional marketers jumping out of corporate, to, want to start their own gig, but they really want to have, um, you know, a roadmap kind of to, to, run on. And so we, we actually have stages and each of those stages have characteristics and we know that, you know, we know what the consultant looks like when they’re in a startup mode. know the challenges they’re going to face and we know.

42:33
that the promise of moving them to the next stage, what they’ll be able to do with their business. And so we actually have five stages and each of those stages has a list of milestones that we know if we can get them to accomplish this list of milestones. if they’ve accomplished this one, we check it off. If they haven’t, here are the tasks to help them accomplish that milestone. And our ultimate goal is to move them.

42:59
through the stages to the point where they not only have a successful business, but they have built a business that gives them a lot of opportunities, maybe at some point allows them to certainly scale that business wherever they want to go. Some people want to stay small intentionally, but we get them very stable. Some people actually want to scale to the point of hiring employees or maybe even exiting that business. And so we have that roadmap pretty much planned out for them.

43:25
And can you know, we’ve really becomes the mission of our business of that particular training business, not just to sell them a membership and say, here’s what you get, but but to actually move them through these stages. So I know you probably have a lot of customers. How do you maintain like that human touch despite the fact that you have a lot of customers? What are some things that you do? One of the things we try to do, I won’t say that we’re the best at it by any means, but.

43:54
We really try to make sure that everything that we write, everything that we produce, all the videos that that feature me are very humble, very down to earth, very practical. we’re not, uh, you know, we’re not hypey. We’re not salesy. It’s probably, uh, cost me millions of dollars, uh, because I don’t do some of the checkout, um, and three upsells. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds spammy. Yeah. Yeah. That’s just been my point of view. Maybe it’s.

44:24
You know, it’s, it stems from who I am also doesn’t hurt that two of my employees are daughters. And so they’ve seen me do that for, for many, many years. I think that’s probably the biggest thing. It does get harder as you get bigger. mean, I, know, I get hundreds of emails a day, people asking for stuff. And we respond to a lot of them as best as possible. We’ve gotten to the point where we respond to a lot of them.

44:53
with canned responses. That’s not fun, but at least they are the friendliest, nicest canned responses you’re get, even when we’re saying no to something. Well, let me ask you this, John, like a lot of things have changed since both you and I started with content. If you were stall over today, where would you start? You know, a of people ask that question, Steven, I hate it because I’m tired. I thought I was starting over again.

45:21
I love what I’m doing. so the, you know, I don’t know if I can, I’m not going to give you a very satisfying answer. mean, I would, I would probably start in something that a content or a content topic, or maybe even a store or online store or something that was maybe wasn’t even, I couldn’t even think to myself.

45:43
Yeah, I’m going to make a money doing this, but it would be a topic that I would enjoy. I’m I live in Colorado in the mountains. I love the outdoors. You know, if I were to start over again, I would start something, some sort of educational element about some aspect of nature and outdoors and being in the outdoors and being active in the outdoors. And like I said, that’s probably not a very satisfying answer because it’s not, it’s not like, yes, if you dropped me in this town and I only had $5 and I had to start all over again, here’s how I would build my empire. But it’s, it’s.

46:12
I think what I would focus on is at this point in my life is just stuff that interests me. Yeah, you know, it’s funny, Joe. I get asked that question probably not as many times as you do. But my answer is always this. I would just start creating content on something that I’m really into. And if you think about it, everyone’s into something. Yep. Right. And I would just start writing it without even the intention of making any money on it. Just pour my heart into it that’s my hobby. Yeah. And then good things just happen. Yeah.

46:41
It’s, it’s funny. There’s a book I’m reading right now and I recommend it highly to anybody that will listen. It’s called 4,000 weeks. And it’s, it’s a quasi time management productivity, but it’s completely backwards. mean, it’s not, there are no hacks in this book. It’s really, it ultimately comes down to almost saying, you know, give up, you can’t manage time. You know, here’s what, here’s how you have to think about the short, you know, life that you have on this planet. I know I’m, probably underselling the book, but one of the things he talks about is, is

47:11
the distinction between a hobby and a side hustle. A lot of times people, um, if you’re not embarrassed to talk, uh, just a little bit embarrassed to talk about your hobby, it’s probably not something you’re passionate about. And he says that the, that that’s the difference. A lot of people call something a side hustle because they justify the fact that they’re doing it because it might have some monetary gain. Uh, but I, when you just said that, I think that you’re absolutely dead on something that you really call a hobby and it’s

47:39
crazy like you pour 10,000 hours into building little mini toy train, you know, tracks or something like that is probably the thing you should be writing about. You’re right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, John, where can people find you online? Where can they get your book? Your latest one? Yeah. So, you you can find anything I’ve been doing for the last couple of decades at ductapemarketing.com and that’s just D-U-C-T-T-A-P-E marketing.com. This newest book has its own companion websites called The Ultimate Marketing Engine.

48:10
And if I don’t know when the show will come out, but the book itself comes out September 21st. So. Pen upon when you’re listening to it. But if you want to get a jump and you’re hearing this before September 21st, there’s actually a companion course that you can get for free. So if you pre-order a copy of the book, you can go back to the ultimate marketing engine.com and you’ll see a big banner that says, get the companion course. And it’s six video lessons of me talking about some of the concepts as far, as well as some of the resources, the forms and tools that we actually use.

48:39
related to the topics in the book. I love that. That’s a tremendous value. And we did see you on video. That’s right. Cool. Well, John, hey, I really appreciate you coming on the show. It’s a great conversation. Well, it’s my pleasure. you know, congrats to you. You’ve been doing doing this for a while showing up and it’s and it turned out to be a great gig for you. Cool. Thank you.

49:06
Hope you enjoy that episode. Now it was an honor to have John on the show and if you’ve never read his book, Duck Tape Marketing, I highly recommend it. For more information about this episode, go to mywifecoderjob.com slash episode 387. And once again, I want to thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash du.

49:34
That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Clavio, which is my email marketing platform, a choice for eCommerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned card sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign. Basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIO. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIO. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog.

50:02
If you are interested in starting your own ecommerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.