eCommerce Marketing Trends for Fun & Profit!

Introduction

Trends influence buyer behavior. Smart e-commerce sellers identify them quickly, adapt and change in keeping with them – and profit. In this episode we’ll discuss types of trends – and how to profit – or at least avoid being hurt by them. 

LET’S TALK ABOUT Types Of Trends

Megatrends

  • Inflation 
  • Retail going online = ecommerce adoption trend
  • Mobile first trend 
  • More people getting online / ubiquitous access to the online/e-commerce world.
  • Cultural references – ‘green’ ‘sustainable’ ‘regenerative’ 
  • AI / Bots

There were people who immediately figured out how to message in an appropriate way in the light of COVID and present offers appropriately

  • If you didn’t reference it, it seemd crazy
  • Eg with charity – “ISEW lation”challenge” 
  • Every marketer is well served by this
  • Eg now inflation

Fads vs Trends

  • Fidget spinners!
  • Fast vs sustained
  • NFTs

Fads and Trends start with similar enthusiasm and energy. The key difference is sustainability.

How to determine that:

  • What are the implications of everyone being on the bandwagon? 
  • Positive implications – eg network effects
  • Like phone
  • As opposed to devaluation
  • M thoughts 
  • Vs fax machines

That implies competitive trends

  • Devaluation
  • But also implies validation of the market
  • And consumer education less needed 

The question is how do trends move into market dynamics?

  • Some markets are built to be monopolies – 1st mover advantage
  • Some are duopolies
  • Some are fractured and always will be! 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

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[00:00:00] JM: the megatrend is digital documents. Digital, uh, signing. And, you know, really, I would say it was covid that pushed everybody over the edge.
[00:00:07]
[00:00:29] MV: Trends influence, buyer behavior and smart e-commerce sellers identify them quickly, adapt and change in keeping with them and profit from them. So in this episode, we’re gonna be talking about trends of all kinds and how to profit from them or. equally important, at least how to avoid being hurt by them.
[00:00:46] Jason, you ready to discuss this interesting topic? Yeah,
[00:00:50] JM: I love this one, man. This is a great topic. Uh, so vital to all of our success is really understanding what the times are telling us, you know, and what’s going on in terms of consumer sentiment and behavior. Um, so much to talk about with this, this, uh, podcast.
[00:01:04] So yeah, let’s jump into it.
[00:01:06] MV: Yeah, it’s a big area. So let’s start with the, the very biggest one, I guess, which I, I think is, um, kind of, it can be so vague as to be meaningless and yet if you handle it the right way, I think also something to keep in the background. So on the, um, Uh, this sort of big picture strategy.
[00:01:20] Before I plunge any further, I should acknowledge also one of the reasons I’m thinking about this is one of my recent guests called Ken Burke, who runs a company, education company for entrepreneurs called Entrepreneur. Now he created Market Live in the mid nineties and sold it for 10 figures in 2016.
[00:01:36] Um, so a really serious player in the e-commerce space and, uh, yeah, so he’s a very good person to reference if you want to deep dive into, take among other. Type topics. So, uh, first thing to talk about is mega trends, which I think is very interesting. It can be very general ballroom conversation, or it can be a profound strategic insight depending on how you look at it.
[00:01:54] So obviously one of the trends in the big economy is inflation. And then the other big trend that strikes me is e-commerce adoption, which keeps going up year on year, generally speaking. Mm-hmm. . So those, those are the ones that strike me as the obvious ones. What do you think about this even worth looking at the mega trends?
[00:02:08] Do you think it’s just too general? What are your.
[00:02:11] JM: No, no, no. I don’t think it’s too general at all. I think you have to do it or else you’re in big trouble. You know, for example, when Covid hit, there were people and I, I put myself in this camp who immediately figured out a strategy or tactic to, um, in essence market to your audience in an appropriate way in light of Covid.
[00:02:32] And I wouldn’t say take advantage of Covid, but I would say present offers in light. Covid because when Covid hit, if you didn’t reference it as a, you know, kind of a touchstone, you seemed completely outta your mind. Like, if you just did business as usual, it didn’t make any sense. So you had to weave in, you know, uh, covid.
[00:02:56] So for example, with our charity, we did something called the Isolation Challenge, which was I S E W. Isolation challenge. I, so for seamstresses, um, and it was a play on words for isolation, but it was also a relevant thing and it just allowed us to embrace a megatrend, uh, and adapt it for our use. And I, I think every marketer is well served by doing this if people aren’t talking right now about how inflation is impacting their customers.
[00:03:26] they need to think through how to do that and, and on and on and on down the line. I mean, there are big mega trends that you have to weave in. So yeah, I, I think that’s a huge one to start with and super important, um, to understand. And, you know, the, a few others that we could mention, um, you know, the whole world going from retail to online buying had been a trend for 15, 20 years now.
[00:03:47] I think it’s sort of a pendulum swing a little bit, where now there’s. Integration where people are trying to refigure out retail, physical retail and integrate it. And so I think that’s an emerging trend. I think using AI and bots is a massive emerging megatrend that’s impacting many things on online marketing.
[00:04:10] Um, and you know, there’s other big mega trends too. You know, the whole push towards environmentalism as. Uh, table stakes. You know, you have, you have to present yourself in such a way that you’re sustainable or, you know, in the farming niche. Yeah. That I, uh, I follow. They use a phrase, regenerative. They love that new phrase.
[00:04:29] That’s the new trendy phrase, regenerative farming. Um, so these trends are massively important. All that to say. Yeah. I
[00:04:37] MV: like that. And I like the word use table stakes. In other words, this is not, uh, a thing you’re gonna have necessarily to have an advantage ever, everyone else. It’s just like a basic that without that you are, you know, putting yourself at a disadvantage.
[00:04:47] And I guess you’ve implied already some of the uses, you know, in the practical way of spotting trends. What does that change about your behavior? Well, communication as one, and we’re gonna talk in a bit more detail about how we. Use the insights once we’ve had them, but you’re [00:05:00] right. Table stakes, very well put.
[00:05:01] I mean, I’ve had so many clients who say I wanna do X, Y, Z as a sustainable or green, uh, regenerative if it is a new word for me, but that sounds like old mining, new bottles to me, but mm-hmm. , you know? Mm-hmm. and I, I always say, look, great. Well, that’s not an advantage. That’s, as you say, table stakes. That’s pay to play.
[00:05:16] So, uh, that’s a really good insight that sometimes we feel clever cuz we spotted a, a trend and like, actually it’s just gotta be basic before you get and move on. Mm. . So another thing I think’s really important, particularly uh, in the, you know, cuz I naturally we come at things from the, the Amazon seller perspective, in my case and the direct to consumer site owner, aka Shopify.
[00:05:34] In your case of course, um, I’ve seen quite a few things that people think of as trends that I think of as nasty fads. Fidget spinners are the most famous example of that. So what would you say is the way to tell the difference? Because I think that’s really critical cuz getting on the back of a fad that that disappears can be really nasty for your business carnet.
[00:05:51] So how do you deal with that differentiation?
[00:05:54] JM: Yeah, I think it’s really, really important to think through. Um, it can be difficult at first to understand what is. Popular that’s gonna be a fad versus popular. That’s a new trend. Clearly they both start with the same social energy and enthusiasm and people talking it up, whatever it is, fidget spenders or whatever.
[00:06:15] Um, and then the, but the question is like, for the long term, is their sustainable ability in that message, to use the cliche phrase, uh, is it a regenerative idea? ? Um, so and so, how do you determine that? Well, I think part. Thinking through this is just to, for tell or think through what are the, what are the implications of everyone being on a bandwagon?
[00:06:38] Is there one thing which would be positive, which would be network effects? So, you know, when the Alexander Graham Bell introduced the telephone, was that a tr trend, mega trend, or was it a, a fad? Well, Resultant effect of more people adopting was a po. A social positive versus the resultant effect of everyone producing and selling fidget spinners was, uh, a devaluation of, you know, I mean, it was basically a, a, um, oversaturation of a, of a market idea.
[00:07:12] So I think you wanna, the first thing to ask is what was the implication of, you know, if my neighbor had this, would it be good or bad for me? If everyone had this, if everyone do, did it c common adoption. And, um, and if the answer is, yeah, it’s helpful, that’s great. It’s terrific. Then I think you, you probably spotted something that’s gonna be a, you know, an ongoing trend and not a fad.
[00:07:35] And so that’s kind of how I look at it. I don’t know if that helped at all or not. What your point of
[00:07:38] MV: view on it. Yeah, I, I think that sounds very sensible, uh, that the, the positive and negative implications are very interesting insight. I hadn’t thought of that. And of course, things can go in more than one direction so that the, you know, we, we tend to think, especially in America, because America has had such a sunny kind of economic history every single decade that America’s entered, it’s exited with a bigger economy that that is not normal for the rest of the planet.
[00:08:02] And so I think, uh, mm-hmm , that can give an overly optimistic view of life. Of course, fax machines will be the classic example where the, the. Work effect kicked in and it’s now gone in reverse, I believe. I can’t remember if it’s in the UK or us. There’s some obligation upon the, I think it’s in the uk, there’s an obligation on the phone network to fund and keep fax machines going.
[00:08:21] And they’re about to get rid of that because it’s become absurd cuz nobody, but nobody uses fax and so, mm-hmm. , uh, you could be on the downside of a trend as well. And I suppose that’s, uh, even with a network effect,
[00:08:31] JM: I would, I would differentiate that example to say that, um, Digital communications was the megatrend, the carrier was the fax machine.
[00:08:44] But that’s like saying, you know, communication was, was a fad and pigeons were, you know, when pigeons went out of vogue, that was, you know, it was over, but, but the pigeons weren’t the megatrend, the pigeons were the. and same thing for fax machine and you know, so, but that was a real slow death. You gotta be honest.
[00:09:02] I mean, we’ve been in internet age with PDF documents sending for literally 25 years, and those fax machines are still sticking around somehow. It’s like, how in the world are those things that still live? So anyway, the megatrend, you know, the megatrend is digital documents. Digital, uh, signing. And, you know, really, I would say it was covid that pushed everybody over the edge.
[00:09:24] Where like, we bought a house and sold a house during the time of, of Covid in essence. And, uh, it was ridiculous before that to have to go to a title company and sign a stack of, you know, 300 pieces of paper when we could have done it digitally. Well, no one would let you until Covid hit and then we’re like, oh, I guess we could do this all digitally, you know?
[00:09:43] So, yeah. It’s interesting to me. I,
[00:09:45] MV: I hear things like that from Americans quite often. I, I feel like the weird thing is America’s so innovative and, and created the internet pretty much single handedly as a country on the back of ANet. And most of the, the big companies were American. And yet the infrastructure of American civil life seems to be [00:10:00] very.
[00:10:00] So 10, 20 years behind Europe. I’m like, when my American friends come to to London, they use touch card, you know, what do you call it? Um, you know, yeah. You just beep into this, the tube with your car. Mm-hmm. . They were kind of like, wow, what is this? And I’m like, yeah, this has been normal here. So it’s interesting as you say that there’s sort of pushes towards digitization.
[00:10:16] Mm-hmm. , but yeah. Right. I, but, but nevermind. Trends like that. The most important thing, as you say, is the megatrend is, is digital communications. And the pigeon was just to carrier and so was the fax machine. That’s a really brilliant differentiation. I like that a lot. And I think, um, another way to look at a trend for me, um, kind of related to what you’re saying there, is the idea of mega trends.
[00:10:30] Underlying trends are very powerful and very long term is to think about. Two things for me to see if they’re real. One is, um, to look at some numbers, as you said. There’s an energy around conversation, which I think can be very, very fluffy if there’s numbers behind it that show like some industry numbers or growth, , you know, compounded annual growth rates, c Kea or whatever you call it, can be really good.
[00:10:51] a little bit more solid. And then the other thing is to think in terms of the sort of fundamentals, not so much to be sort of chartist as a fundamentalist, if you like, in terms of mm-hmm. stock market investing. Mm-hmm. . So in other words, yeah, there’s a trend, but what’s behind it? Okay. Well, digital communication is more convenient.
[00:11:05] It is simply harder to persuade people now to turn up in an in-person meeting than on Zoom, cuz zoom’s so flipping convenient and it doesn’t involve any travel. And so there’s a very powerful dynamic. There’s understandable and clear and there’s a logic as well. So I think if you can see those things for.
[00:11:19] It starts to feel more like a, A solid trend.
[00:11:22] JM: Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I think that’s the right way to look at it. And CAGR for those who aren’t, don’t know are compound annual growth rate, right? So you do wanna look at the data and ask the question, is this just something I’m sucked into Some rabbit hole of internet marketing that I’m thinking is a big deal, but it’s really just some little corner of the internet.
[00:11:40] But it’s ki they kind of have their hooks into me and now I’m getting, you know, in the slip stream. Whatever fad people are pushing, or is this a megatrend? And you kind of have to look at it, especially if you’re using it for business and sales and marketing purposes. Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. All right, so those are megatrends.
[00:11:56] All right, so let’s keep going. And then there’s fads versus trends. We’ve talked a little bit about that. Yeah, we’ve dealt with that. I
[00:12:01] MV: think another thing you’ve just implied, whi, which I, I could jump on the back of that, which is the next topic really for me is. Competitive trends, so that’s very, okay.
[00:12:09] Yeah, it’s very, what’s the word, daily experience for e-commerce sellers. Again, particularly in the Amazon space, I think it’s just intensified, but it’s the same for everyone, uh, which is that if you see the competition changing, suddenly when you’ve spotted a trend, you’re not the only person. Yeah. And as you say, in many cases there is a feeling of devaluation.
[00:12:27] of individual product lines, so the price point tends to go down. On the other hand though, and this, I’d be interested to get your thoughts on this, I think sometimes people are a bit too scared of competition because that does imply a couple of things. I mean, first of all, people know what a fidgets spin.
[00:12:40] I’m not suggesting anyone bias them, by the way, but they know what a fidgets spinner is so you don’t have to explain it and what the virtues of it are, how it works, so at least people come along knowing that it tends to create quite a strong demand because people have heard about it. There’s a sort of network effect amongst consumers.
[00:12:56] and then of course it, it validates the fact that there is a market there. Mm-hmm. . So I, competition is not always just bad, but nevertheless it’s always, you know, thought provoking. So what’s your thought about dealing with when you see a trend of competition coming up? Well,
[00:13:09] JM: I mean, I think the question, the bigger question or the, the question around this is how does trends.
[00:13:15] Um, merge into markets and the market dynamics are always gonna be market dynamics regardless of whether there’s a new thing happening or, you know, it’s never change in a million years or, uh, whatever. Or it’s a brand new market market. Dynamics are still gonna be there. And by market dynamics, what I mean is some markets are winner take all markets.
[00:13:37] Some markets are built to be monopolies and it’s a first move advantage. Some markets are duopolies by nature, where there’s two big. Compe competitors that end up, you know, dominating, other markets are fractured and will always be fractured, where it’s a million little providers and no one really can roll it all up and be the dominant player for structural reasons.
[00:14:02] So you have to understand the market you’re operating and obviously to understand how the megatrend would impact it. So let’s assume that you’re a veteran. in your market and you know, the lay of the land. Then the question is, you know, how, how do you look at megatrends? And then Al also, how do you look at trends in your market itself?
[00:14:22] Because to your point, um, there are a lot of niche level trends or market level trends that I think are very, very interesting. Um, you mentioned more competitors joining the market. I would turn the other side of the coin over and say, what. Competitors, for example, who were in their late sixties or seventies who have built good businesses, maybe, you know, multimillion dollar businesses, and they’re leaving, they’re retiring, they’re turning over the keys to people who are less qualified.
[00:14:51] Maybe they’re gonna sell the, their business that you see as a competitor to people who have no clue what they’re gonna be doing. I don’t, I mean, I, I don’t look [00:15:00] at it as necessarily negative. I, I think in the, at the trend, There are ways to win and you know, understanding the lay land and how megatrends impact it is really important.
[00:15:11] There is a massive baby boomer age out event happening in the US right now. That’s a mega trend and so for business owners it’s really an important to understand who your competitors are. I know one of our clients is acquiring multi-million dollar businesses from his direct competitors cuz they’re all.
[00:15:30] and he’s just, he’s just friend friending him and, and, and playing his part, which is the younger upstart who’s just trying to learn the business. And how are you and could I come visit your office and, and learn from you? And Yes, sure. And you know, these guys are looking for exits. And here comes this super smart young marketer who knows how to do online marketing, marketing, and he’s nice and he’s in their.
[00:15:56] And they’re starting to think to themselves, I’m gonna sell my business to this guy. This guy’s my parachute. So anyway, I, I think there’s opportunities like that in the, at the niche level. That’s very fascinating. You know?
[00:16:07] MV: Yeah, I like that a lot. And as you say, the, these things, we’ve seen a long, long period where trends tend to go in one direction.
[00:16:14] Mm-hmm. , sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. And the competition has been increasingly, so much, uh, since I’ve been working in the Amazon world in 2014, and. Yeah, as you say, that’s not always the direction and uh, as we’ve discussed before, um, important to say that I think there will be another big market share opportunity, uh, from the trend of, of recessions, which tends to clear out those who don’t have enough cash reserves or don’t have a strong enough business or are unlucky, whatever the issue is, who may not be choosing to exit.
[00:16:40] Uh, some of those of course may also be baby boomers who, who just designed to exit cuz they’ve had enough of the fight others. Just not be able to keep going. And, and so you are right that the, the trend of competition may not be a one way at all. Um, I’ve certainly seen that within the mastermind. That, that somebody recently got, they literally got phoned by an old competitor who said, with closing up shop, do you want to buy some of the business
[00:17:00] Uh, and I that Yeah. Yeah. That will be continuing, I think over the next while, you know, that would accelerate if anything I su, I suspect. . It’s, uh, quite totally agree, quite, it was quite striking to me that it came so early in the game. So then the other thing, of course, uh, is the actual marketplace themselves.
[00:17:16] I’ve mentioned Amazon. You mentioned Shopify. Obviously the dynamic between those, particularly in the pandemic, I think shifted quite a lot. I mean, certain, certainly Shopify’s, uh, Stock price, if I remember, and correct me if I’m wrong, sort of 10 x during about a year. So that implied that certainly the financial markets thought that Shopify was suddenly arrived and that can change a lot of things, can’t it?
[00:17:36] So what’s your experience of that as a guy who sort of sits on both sides of that? . Well,
[00:17:41] JM: for a long time I was a stock investor in Shopify, and I kind of prided myself in being an early investor in Shopify, um, from like 2014 or 13 until a year and a half ago, two years ago. And when it hit at Zenith, uh, I thought to myself, this is just, I, I mean, I, I had watched it for so long, I thought to.
[00:18:02] The top, there’s a top here that has to come off. And sure enough, I think its valuation is down by when it’s astronomically down compared to where it was. Um, because everybody thought so late in the process that Shopify was an answer to the migration, to online selling. Well, people were so late to that party.
[00:18:21] It was like, there was just, it was the greater fool theory kind of at the end. But I had been an investor for so long in shop. because we’ve used it for so long that I could just see it, you know, it was so weird. So anyway, as it relates to their stock price, that’s one commentary. I don’t own any of it now, but I might, I might be interested in buying back in now that it’s really falling apart.
[00:18:42] But, um, yeah. But as it relates, by
[00:18:43] MV: the way, not neither of us. Qualified stock market advisors. So don’t go best. No, no, not at all. Not at all. No, but it’s an interesting point. I mean, I, so the wider sort of trend idea, I guess that just to on the back of that actually just quickly, the whole valuation of e-commerce companies based on a re very short timeframe, i e trading 12 months at the end of the pandemic, sort of big 12 months struck me as, you know, what you’ve just said is a subset of that and what I saw with the aggregators.
[00:19:13] Um, buying Amazon based businesses was also an example of that. I thought it was not quite great, a full theory, but it was obvious that it was an exceptional period in, in e-commerce that was unlikely unless we have another very similar set of circumstances to ever be repeated. And so I saw a. Suddenly a bunch of aggregators coming on the podcast and my, my, um, friend started selling businesses at kind of crazy multiples, considering it was only based on Amazon.
[00:19:36] And that’s a big concentration risk in my mind. And, um, you know, and their client sold for, you know, five times EBITDA and, and then suddenly nothing. So again, I think, you know, sometimes having a short term view of a a trend can give you really distort perspective, can’t it?
[00:19:52] JM: Well, let’s unpack that comment for those who aren’t familiar with Amazon, um, you know, private label and third party seller marketplace.
[00:19:59] So [00:20:00] basically in the last couple years people realized you could. Aggregate or roll up smaller e-commerce, uh, sellers and really build a portfolio with venture backed money or whatever, investor money, um, and stack the revenue. You know, so you end up having, uh, a hundred million of revenue or whatever because you bought 10, 10 million e-commerce sellers.
[00:20:22] The. Bloom came off the rose on that deal. Real quick as I understand it, which is the aggregators, and maybe I’m wrong, maybe you know better than I do, but what I’ve heard is many businesses were purchased from kitchen table entrepreneurs that had scaled up, you know, the million dollar to 10 million valuation businesses or whatever.
[00:20:43] And, you know, maybe they made a, you know, a million dollars in revenue and they, they sold their business for one or 2 million or whatever. Um, And those people knew the blood, sweat, and tears that went into making that business a reality. They knew how to operate. They were operators and then they, they sold to aggregators.
[00:20:58] And what I’ve heard is the aggregators were not operators. The aggregators were financial engineers who thought they could roll these things up, just like roll up laundry mats or you know what? . And, um, as it happens, it’s hard to run e-commerce businesses, , and it takes a lot of work. And, um, so the aggregators have, uh, dually gone bust or kind of imploded or whatever,
[00:21:25] Um, all I can tell you is if I could buy their businesses from them, um, for pennies on the dollar, and maybe, you know, these people, Michael, you could revisit those aggregators who have come on your podcast. True. Yeah. I know a lot of them still work at. Still work at the company that they’re a part of and say, Hey, if you have some amazing e-commerce businesses that you’ve run into the ground with, without saying it that way, And you, and you are looking for buyers.
[00:21:52] Let’s talk. I mean, you know, it’s, it’s just an interesting trend that happens. That’s
[00:21:56] MV: very interesting thought. I mean, actually, weirdly enough, I’m quite well placed with that. I’m not, I’d need to go and get some, some cash together from other people. I don’t know if I can afford to pay million dollars right now for a business, but, or even hundred times you might
[00:22:06] JM: be paying hundreds of dollars, not millions, hundreds would
[00:22:09] MV: be affordable.
[00:22:10] Yes. . I, I think another thing, uh, to that point, I mean, yes, you’re right, that that’s what I’ve strongly got the impression of, uh, having, you know, spoken privately and off air and on air with the aggregators and quite a few fr um, friends of mine who’ve sold aggregating in the conversations mm-hmm. they’ve had as a business owners, reading between the lines.
[00:22:28] I think not only are you absolutely right that they didn’t know how to. Amazon businesses and they completely underestimate the challenge. But I think there’s the third one, which I spoke to an aggregator. He was the sort of head of the European operation for the aggregator, I won’t name cuz I’m about to say.
[00:22:43] He said to me privately, well it’s not just acquiring and it’s not just running, its integrating them into a bigger system. And of course, if you earn a hundred brands to integrate them into your backend systems of people who can write Amazon listings, who can do keyword research, who can deal with Amazon’s massively the variable customer service.
[00:23:01] Um, . Yeah. That’s an even bigger problem. So every was a fad. It wasn’t,
[00:23:04] JM: wasn’t
[00:23:04] MV: was a fad. It was a fad. And it was actually the, the business model idea was flawed. And that’s a slightly different thing from a trend, which I guess we’re talking about, but it, but there was a trend where, mm-hmm. , how can I put this?
[00:23:16] The business model was, was flawed from the beginning, but people kind of overlooked that because they saw other people raising a large amount of money. Um, from people even as, as prestigious and seemingly responsible as Goldman Sachs in one case. And then they felt they were missing out. And then of course they stopped thinking so clearly about, this is like the dark side of a train.
[00:23:35] Right? And when people stopped thinking clearly about the logical process mm-hmm. .
[00:23:41] JM: Yeah. I was just gonna state the difference between that being a fad because aggregator were doing it and the client I was speaking about earlier, who’s rolling? E-commerce operations in his specific niche. I mean, it, it’s funny because both, both activities are very, very similar.
[00:24:00] In the one hand, they’re just rolling up e-commerce operations cuz they’re like, Hey, this is all e-commerce. In his case, he’s like, Hey, I’m in this specific niche. I know all of the manufacturers. I’m one of the top sellers for them. I know exactly who my competitors are and how their businesses make. and I’m going to roll them into my operation.
[00:24:21] That to me, is a rollup with extraordinary, incredible opportunity for success. And yes, there’s still integration issues and operation issues, but the chances of survival and success in that regard, um, are infinitely different than, you know, buying, uh, you know, a bolt manufacturer in one e-commerce operation and a chainsaw on another, and a sporting apparel company in another.
[00:24:46] you know, all these random, you know, industries and niches and trying to figure out how to integrate them. So yeah, I, I think it’s very interesting and timely, uh, conversation. But let’s keep going on our list here. We’ve got a few other trends to talk about, and then we haven’t talk about the
[00:24:58] MV: parts of this.
[00:24:59] Yeah. But that’s very [00:25:00] interesting that in a way, what you’re saying, just to differentiate again between a, you were talking earlier about the digital communication and differentiating between the pigeon and the fax machine and the, you know, the, the carrier. And in this case, it sounds like, The business concept is not necessarily over as a megatrend.
[00:25:16] In fact, it may accelerate from what you’ve been saying, which makes sense to me. Um, but the, the implementation of it is perhaps the, the difference, right? , if that’s what you’re thinking. This is very interesting. Yeah. Um, so, okay, next trend then, right? Sales and marketing, obviously, uh, there’s, this is one of the areas where I personally feel there’s a lot of fads and I’m always more suspicious, but that doesn’t mean it’s, there aren’t genuine longer trends here.
[00:25:41] Um, . So, you know, are we particularly, um, marketplaces or digital channels? Is ClickFunnels the best thing? Is Shopify better than WooCommerce? Is Amazon gonna be overtaken by Walmart? That kind of discussion, which happens a lot on podcasts, and I always feel like, well, maybe I should discuss that on my podcast sometimes.
[00:25:57] And I feel like, but is it a real trend?
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