The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:30]Intro-Michael: [00:00:30] Welcome back to the e-commerce leader. And today we are in the midst of a, I think very exciting discussion of Amazon live. So live is really the Internet’s equivalent of the QVC home shopping network, TV channel selling live on TV. That proved to be a monster moneymaker in the nineties and the noughties.
[00:00:50] And eaten perhaps even earlier in some cases and, is now really coming to the internet in a big way. And Amazon is now embracing that in a big way as well. So we’re talking about fairly high level about what the opportunity is and how you might get started in it. So. Incredible, opportunity. And the more that Jason and I talked about it, the more enthused I’ve become about this.
[00:01:11] So definitely worth learning about, so enjoy the show and don’t forget to, stay around to the end. When we get to tell you how you might win $250 visa gift card as well, stay tuned into it.
[00:01:22] Jason: [00:01:22] it’s probably true that if. Topic itself or the category they were operating in was a real draw to you. You would have invested a little more emotionally in over looking the, you know, kind of the, the flaws in what you were watching, because you really wanted the insight information or info.
[00:01:42] So, you know, I know you love music stuff, and if they were pitching the latest, greatest music yeah. Tool instrument or whatever that might’ve, captured your attention. I would just say this other example real quick. I didn’t think of this, but when we were at, NEC, which is Europe’s largest sowing show in Birmingham, it was two summers ago. And it’s massive. It’s like 60 to 80,000 people there. So it’s no small thing that whole, stadium NEC like it’s a big, huge convention, you know, facility. It was all oriented around a TV set. That they were doing QVC style TV programming live from, NEC.
[00:02:24] And it was also in channels in our, our volunteers at our booth said to us, there are. TV channels in England that are so in channels that do lives constantly, that are always doing lives. Now we didn’t, we don’t have anything like that in the U S so I, yeah, you guys are pioneering some stuff over there.
[00:02:44] Had no
[00:02:45] Michael: [00:02:45] idea, cause I don’t own a TV. So I don’t that that’s not part of my sort of culture consumption yet. I’m always on YouTube or watching Amazon prime video. So as you, as you say, those two worlds are colliding aren’t they, the old TV thing is becoming more niche, niche, niche, like the internet. Also tell us if the UK is.
[00:03:00] You see, I had no idea. Yeah. The one thing that strikes me is this, that, because based on what you just saying that, is it about the present or is it about the topic? I think there’s a combination of the two that I think one big danger for certain types of consumers. And it’s certainly true for me. And yet it may be, it works beautifully for mass marketing is for example, I looked on the HSN home shopping network link that you sent me in preparation for this podcast.
[00:03:21] I looked up apple computers cause I’m genuinely a big, big fan. I consume their stuff. I buy it online. And I was turned off massively within 10 seconds by the presenter. And yet I have watched influences who are obsessed about max as much as I am or more because they repair them and take them apart and obsess about them much more than I am and being very influenced by their opinions to the extent of buying things.
[00:03:42] So I think what that says to me is for certain types of consumers, That they want to feel like the person li influencing them isn’t necessarily slick or beautiful. Although this guy did have very high production bodies and it is a young, good looking guy, but more importantly, that they really know and care about the products.
[00:03:59] And I think that’s where I suspect that the influence. Even like your clients have a huge advantage over these slick, over polished QVC type presenters who probably just been handed a Mac 10 minutes before the show and said, sell this it’s a bit like sell me this pen kind of thing. And I think that that triggers all the, all the instinctive responses we have to a sales person.
[00:04:19] Who’s obviously a salesperson as opposed to a fellow enthusiast. So that’s my, my sort of reaction for very amateur kind of audience response, rather than any sort of advice really.
[00:04:29] Jason: [00:04:29] I think it’s the stratification of culture and, and, and basic personality types, that’s playing out because I think people are comfortable with people that are, that they’re like, yeah, but birds of a feather flock together as the old saying goes.
[00:04:47] And I think that’s so true. You’re, I’m comfortable listening to people who. What kind of seem like me, and I want to hear, like, you know, you’re basically drawn to people who you’re, you know, you’re, you, you feel like you could be friends with, you could be, you know, hanging out with, and even I would say, you know, I I’m, I don’t want to get controversial or whatever, but like, even as a Pacific Northwest guy, the Southern draw, the Southern accent, or might not so much.
[00:05:17] That’s not really, my that’s not ringing ringing true to me. It doesn’t sound like something I want to know, just bond with, hear about or connect with. Sometimes it’s charming sometimes it’s amazing. But other times it’s like, no, that’s sort of a, it’s a, it’s a barrier to, w what you really want to do with people is just have them forget about everything.
[00:05:37] Except that the topic. And if there are these little yellow or red flags that pop up. Oh, I don’t like this guy. Oh, this is boring. Oh, this is distracting. Oh, their background looks weird. Oh, what is that behind them? Oh, they’re Southern dressings. Fake. All of these, these little attributes are barriers, but when, but when it works.
[00:05:59] And when you find somebody who’s like, man, that’s the gal for me, or that’s the guy for me. I could just, I could chat with them about this stuff all day, as long you’re in business and the internet is making it possible for there to be a million of these shows and they will each attract, the right audience to them and some will scale massively.
[00:06:19] And, and I think that’s the interesting part to me is just sort of, what’s playing out in the real world of live selling.
[00:06:25] Michael: [00:06:25] So it comes down to that the long tail, doesn’t it? That the club Anderson book that I think I read in 2007, it’s still really playing out. Isn’t it? Cause they really, this is the live hasn’t really responded to the implications of that until now.
[00:06:38] In other words, that there are niche audiences who are fanatically obsessed with a certain thing, like for. TV channels obsessed with sewing and the convention of 80,000 people. And just in the UK, which has only got 66 million people in it. It’s not like you had a country that that’s an example of how big a niche is.
[00:06:54] And yet I had no idea it existed. And, that’s yeah, it, this is, it was kind of. In a sense, amazing that Amazon hasn’t plunged into this until now. I guess they were busy doing other things like trying to get their warehouse systems, work, change CEO. So let’s talk a little bit more about the tech people enthused about this.
[00:07:14] How do we take care of it? Technically, you talked about it within Amazon university. You need to be brand registered or registered as an influencer. How do we, if assuming that we jumped through one of those barriers and with our we’re approved, what do we have? We actually did it. Message across to people.
[00:07:28] Jason: [00:07:28] Well, the beautiful part is that this tool we’re using right now, stream yard to broadcast into whatever we’re in. We’re in two or three Facebook groups, a Facebook page or YouTube channel, et cetera, et cetera. This tool itself streaming our.com is the backend tool that will allow you to broadcast straight into Amazon live.
[00:07:47] So that’s really super. Interesting because you know, you and I have been using this for what year, a year and a half, something like that. And, I’ve used it for a couple of years now and very comfortable with it as a broadcast tool. So, technically. You know, that’s what you want to look into because it’s slick, it works.
[00:08:08] And a few elements of, of stream yard that are really powerful to me. First of all, you can go do a stream art, set it up and do a, a video and not have it broadcast anywhere. You can just keep it. For file as a video recording. So in essence, you can practice as many times as you want and, or, you know, do a live seemingly live.
[00:08:29] That’s not really live in the moment. Save it, have it as an MP4 file and then upload it to your Facebook channel or whatever. So you can practice.
[00:08:37] Michael: [00:08:37] That’s really good. By the way. I think that’s really important. You just said, cause that should remove the fear from a lot of people that you’ve got to get it right.
[00:08:43] Live in front of people or look. Yep. Yeah. I think the underlying fear that put box, a lot of people are going to look silly. Sounds silly in front of hundreds of people. And of course that’s a big barrier psychologically. So the fact that you can get around that is huge. I think.
[00:08:55]Jason: [00:08:55] Okay, so that’s a powerful one.
[00:08:57] The other elements of that that are super cool is, you can actually do Chirons across the bottom. Like w we don’t do it when we’re doing these, broadcasts, but, but you can have a, a streaming con you know, comment along the bottom that’s on camera. You can also, mock up and, and. Overlays image, overlays, MP3 files without, with a transparent background that literally will mock up your screen so that you look exactly like home shopping network, you know, those placards they have on the left-hand side of the screen that say, you know, three payments of $19 or, you know, item number 4, 2, 4, 2, 9, 2, or whatever it is, you can have those graphics cards.
[00:09:36] Very simply created, create them in Canva, save them as a clear PNG. You add them in stream yard and you literally click with one and then there they are on camera. You can look exactly like home shopping network or QVC, through stream yard. And there are other attributes that are really cool as well.
[00:09:53] But, I would just encourage people to check that out. If they want to learn about how to do this. Once you do a couple of streamers, you get comfortable with it really fast. It’s easy. We’ve been doing it for our charity. We do what we call so powerful live it’s the last Monday of the month, every month.
[00:10:08] And we’ve been doing it. Yeah. I dunno about year probably. And, you can go to, Facebook, are so powerful, Facebook page and see all of those prior ones and see how we use it in a charity context. But it’s very similar. Technically there’s no difference between what we’re doing and what you’d be doing on, on Amazon live, or just talking about a different, you know, different set of topics.
[00:10:29] But the stream, our tool is something to check out. And it’s that simple. I mean, it’s just, there’s not a lot of technical difficulty. Yeah.
[00:10:36] Michael: [00:10:36] Yeah. I think a lot of it comes down to mental barriers and also skill sets. So as you said, you talked about trade skills before. I think this is sounding to me like it’s a trade sale skill.
[00:10:47] That one should I developed for myself or because it’s such a big trend, and such a lot of money at stake that you should possibly, at some point, it may not be soon for some people consider hiring or, or, you know, finding a person within your organization to do it. I would say. A couple of things.
[00:11:01] There are a couple of concepts. Ricks is Ari, who who’s a big, you know, fantastic person to know in this era. I’m lucky to be in conversation with him through podcasts and other times, yeah, he was in the early Deadspin, you know, really pioneer of QVC HSN or whatever it is, is sort of selling direct to, to, to selling on TV and billion dollar sales, George Foreman.
[00:11:20] Et cetera, et cetera, Grove CRO cameras, you name it, the big stuff. He’s he’s got a couple of simple concepts you put across. First of all, as we’ve been kind of saying concept is model what’s working, which is kind of simple, but the other thing he says is testing, but, particularly useful tip is to test intros until one sticks and to make you feel better about it.
[00:11:38] George Foreman grill was obviously a massive smash hits assess, but even Rick with all his experience. I got it wrong first time. Cause George Foreman had just back in the day, won the heavyweight championship, age 46, the oldest in the sport. So for boxing fans, that was a big thing. They started the initial ads with boxing footage that cost them thousands of dollars to buy the rights to that footage.
[00:11:57] And the audience was mostly women and they hated it. They hated the violence, they weren’t boxing fans. And they went back to the drawing board and they changed the intro and suddenly it popped and went on to be a huge success. So he’s got three, three ways to puck in hooking viewers at the start of a video.
[00:12:13] Probably the easiest place to tweak and to rerecord, if you’re recording it for yourself as well. First of all, option one, start with the question. Would you like to lose 10 pounds in 30 days? Cheesy cliche, but still. Useful work, actually address the problem, this and it’s very, and what it does in two ways is, instantly, a question is really an embedded command.
[00:12:33] Isn’t it? It’s saying, think about this and it’s also flagging up what problem you’re addressing. So the audience could quickly filter. No, it doesn’t interest me or, oh yes. Maybe the second thing is a factoid. So for example, the juice man juicer, there was a factor or there’s an element in broccoli shown to prevent breast cancer.
[00:12:47] And the third thing is a short story. And that’s where I think, if you’re a real, enthusiastic and user of your product, for example, you in cinema, obviously like Uber in, as soon as an Uber expert, I would say these days about cinema sewing, but somebody who’s been doing it for 15 years used to do it with their grandmother or something that’s immediately engaging.
[00:13:04] So those are three really fairly simple, but really powerful things to tweak with. And just like if your email company. Copywriting is it working test the subject lines first? I think this is the equivalent test, the first minute or two of what you say and your video. And if people stop, stop, clicking away and start staying and engaging, then you can probably judge that.
[00:13:24] But if your video is starting to work and then you can start to work on the rest of it. Okay.
[00:13:28] Jason: [00:13:28] I love that. Yeah, no, that’s fantastic. Obviously there’s tons and tons of lessons to be learned about how to do this. Well, this is the makings of a really, really cool book. And, and there’s, I think there’s a ton of direct market.
[00:13:41] Material there that people would want to learn about. So this is fantastic. Yeah.
[00:13:45] Michael: [00:13:45] When you mentioned a cool book, there is a book, by fixes. I called video persuasion on that very topic now, but it doesn’t specialize in live. So there was definitely still a book to be written about how to do live well, but yeah, it’s very, very good, basic concepts of using video as a commercial direct selling medium is not very far away or is a very solid starting point side.
[00:14:05] I would a hundred percent recommend getting that book and reading that.
[00:14:08] Jason: [00:14:08] Awesome. Well, comments are popping in here. I want to make sure we mentioned them all wrote. I’ve started selling on handmade, Amazon and doing really well. So that’s interesting. I w we need to do a deeper dive into hand.
[00:14:19] Michael: [00:14:19] Yeah. And, category.
[00:14:20] Very
[00:14:21] Jason: [00:14:21] interesting. I think. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. He said he basically copied a us model. That’s doing very well and learnt how to make it. There’s no monthly fees with handmade, but no A-plus con. PPC PPC or paid ads seem extremely expensive at the moment. So live selling sounds very interesting and my products are gift products.
[00:14:43] So sometimes it’s hard to think of the best way to promote as it’s not something that people search for. Yeah. Let me just to camp on this for a minute. You know, the basic sales formula for all of us as e-commerce sellers are, have a product finding audience and the. Outside observer would say, oh, well, I don’t have a product and I don’t have an audience.
[00:15:04] So I have two barriers to entry. Well, if you think about it, the amazing part of this is it doesn’t have to be your product and it doesn’t have to be Europe. Amazon is gifting you, their traffic. Like how often would you ever say that is true? And I know that, you know, for a lot of Amazon sellers are like, this is it’s hard to get, you know, a best seller rank.
[00:15:27] It’s hard to get eyeballs on the product. It’s hard to, to get reviews and, and velocity. And there are, there are very few times when Amazon gifts, you, traffic now, most of the time, like for prime day or whatever you have to pay for those opportunities, those are very expensive. You know, promotional packages that Amazon will offer to, to sellers, but at the moment, this is a completely and totally available to, to the masses.
[00:15:53] So I think that’s the interesting part of this is, they’re gifting you, eyeball. And, that, that to me is a rare thing. They’re clearly doing it because they want to compete. They want to build up this concept. And yeah, I mean, I, I think that, you know, forget PPC advertising. I mean, I guess here’s what I’m trying to say.
[00:16:13] You could spend a lot of money in the next month doing, Amazon ads with some outcome, or you could spend time and energy and thinking, and, you know, strategic work to learn how to do a lot. And you don’t pay any money for it. You just have to invest in it emotionally, mentally, you know, and, and some of the technical elements of learning it, that’s a different.
[00:16:33]You know, different track to run down. And I think that’s, what’s interesting to me is this is the opportunity. If you know me, if I’ve always said, if it’s free, if it’s free, it’s for me. And, this to me seems like Amazon gifting people, a huge, huge, you know, Blessing into your business.
[00:16:48] Michael: [00:16:48] Yeah. Two thoughts about that.
[00:16:49] I mean, the first of all, the sort of spontaneous nature, I mean, I think by the way, this is not going to work for all audiences. This is exactly why I like to feeling of control and Mo I, I was saying maybe I’m a control freak. I’m definitely a control freak, and I’d like to feel clever and intelligent analytical now.
[00:17:05] But I’m definitely not in control of the world. And I’m probably not as clever as I think I am sometimes when I’m shopping. But yeah, I like search because it puts me in control. I like browsing so much and I really hate somebody coming on TV. The opposite extreme is saying some random person I’ve never met talking about a product they’ve never used and telling me as a person they’ve never met that.
[00:17:22] I should use it. Now. Having said that though. Yeah. Search as a discovery mechanism is becoming incredibly monetized by Amazon. Somebody mentioned, oh, Amazon ads are expensive at the moment. I would say to you, I’m afraid you’ve seen nothing yet. I don’t see anything, but up in the, for various strategic reasons I’ve talked about before and I may be wrong, but I doubt it sadly.
[00:17:42] And if you look at all the different platforms for marketing channels, generally they monetize more and more heavily over time to look at the Google clicks now compared to 10 years ago. But I would say that is. So that’s the first thing, search has become expensive, so we need to try something else.
[00:17:57] The second thing I would say is, some products don’t work as this person was implying was just commenting. I couldn’t can’t see that the name of it was, yeah. Was, oh, so, but some products really ping off the page and people think, oh, that’s really wonderful when they see it, but they’re never going to look for it.
[00:18:09] So for that kind of product, this is an amazing gift. And the third thing I would say to your point, if it’s free it’s for me, what generally happens with traffic channels is that it’s new and experimental. So. That the channel puts a lot of money and resources behind it, and it pays to be free to you.
[00:18:22] Then it kind of consolidates and they’ll reel a lot of people out who don’t meet certain criteria and then they monetize the heck out of it. I will imagine that it’s going to be the same with this live thing. So I think now is a moment in history to jump on it if you’re interested, because I suspect it will not be as free or as available for very long, because it doesn’t make sense economically.
[00:18:42] Jason: [00:18:42] Yeah, totally agree. And so it’s a window of opportunity and that’s how these things work. And I mean, people who have built their business over the last 24, 25 years on the internet, on the back of windows of opportunity. And that’s just how it works. There’s a, there’s a time and place for different opportunities that come, and then they go, and for those of us who have been selling for, you know, decades now we’ve realized that and, and kind of have a spidey sense.
[00:19:09] Tuned to what is in and what is out. And yeah, and so that to me is the interesting part of this is that there’s always something new and as it happens, The new new thing. And it creates a massive opportunity. Okay. Well, I think we’ve, I think we’ve covered the topic here today. This has been a fun conversation.
[00:19:26] Appreciate, the dialogue here and the chats people are jumping in and, and, appreciate it. And it’s really, really fun to bring these types of topics to the party and have our audience in various, you know, groups and, and our various channels learn about these new opportunities. It’s an honor to be able to just chat with you as well.
[00:19:47] Michael stuff is always fun to brainstorm on and kick around. There’s a, there’s always new angles to look at for each of these things. And I, it’s always fun to debate them and discuss. And, have conversations with you about them. So, yeah. Good
[00:20:00] Michael: [00:20:00] stuff. I think the main thing I would just like to sort of underscore is.
[00:20:05] This really changes who’s thinking of selling on Amazon, because it’s, until this point it’s been almost entirely sort of product centered. You’re either good at getting products that you get manufactured on your behalf or sourcing them. The fact that the other side of the equation, the audience side has always been what Amazon’s provided.
[00:20:20] And of course that is the heart I would argue. That’s the hardest bit to get, but if you are good at getting an audience and you’re not so good at the product side, then that whole influencer opportunity, although I don’t know exactly how it works, but that that’s obviously. A whole different way to tap into Amazon.
[00:20:35] And traditionally the people listen to our show and listen to e-commerce based advice would have products and be looking at how to sell them. But increasingly I’m starting to see people who are good at the other way round, or what are the members of the 10 K collective mastermind, created a, an Amazon affiliate website.
[00:20:49] So in other words, the ninja scale, if you like was SEO on Google in order to then make sales and, and get commission selling on Amazon, but it’s turned out that selling his own products. So via that mechanism is this of side hustle now, because the main thing is making money from that site, which is blowing up really quickly is selling other people’s products.
[00:21:07] So it is possible to transition your skillset from one to the other, which is very interesting. That’s not so common, but I would, I wouldn’t want the influencer play to be missed here because I think it profoundly changes. The relationship to Amazon that’s on offer instead of just being the sell person and Amazon offers the audience, we can be the person that will offer the audience, which is
[00:21:27] Jason: [00:21:27] very interesting.
[00:21:29] It’s two, it’s two sides of that conversation as well. So, let’s just, w one of the clients that I work with, it’s working through this dynamic right now. I said to them a few weeks ago, they could go live themselves one day a week. That doesn’t feel onerous or, you know, too, too difficult, but they could find six other influencers to go live in support of their product on Amazon.
[00:21:54] So, you know, think about it that way, all these influencers are going live on Amazon. What are they going to talk about? Whatever they can make money at and are interested in. And there, you know, so, so we could, as, as sellers, Think of it that way as well, we could think of who are the influencers doing lives that are comfortable, that are good, that have an audience that when they go live, people show up and can I reach out to them and can I ask them to pitch my product?
[00:22:22] There’s nothing that is stopping people from doing that. So that’s a whole nother angle. So I think there’s a lot of interesting, you know, ways in which selling can occur through these, these new opportunities. Yeah, there you have
[00:22:35] Michael: [00:22:35] it. Yeah, absolutely. And just to kind of top that off with something that is current experience of mine, which is to say a lot of the serious six, seven, well, eight figure sellers and a couple of places who are doing really well, are really finding influencers more and more influential as it were on their, on their bottom line.
[00:22:50] So, this is just another expansion in that way of the universe of influences is just obviously if you’re influencing somebody on a channel where you could just click the buy button and actually just literally have it delivered to you by the same. So it’s got a vertical integration, I suppose. Isn’t it.
[00:23:03] Instead of a Facebook influencer who sends you over to Amazon? And Amazon influencer and yet they’re already, so I think that’s kind of pouring gasoline on the fire as you would put it in the states. That’s that’s really exciting opportunity. So yeah. Well, I mean, the first thing I would say is thank you too, for opening my eyes to, to my shame, to some degree, to, to the level of power in this Amazon live thing.
[00:23:24] I had no idea what it was blowing up so much and now I do. So yeah. Got to say, thank you. And, and, can you sort of wrap this up in a bow for us? What do you think are the sort of simple takeaways for people? If they’re e-commerce operators.
[00:23:35] Jason: [00:23:35] Sure go to amazon.com/live and see what’s happening and think about implementing your business either directly yourself on camera, using a tool like stream yard, streamer.com, go check it out.
[00:23:48] Or using influencers that are going live on Amazon to help sell your product. These opportunities are. Completely and totally available to all of us. And, you can either be an influencer yourself. You can be brand registered and go live or just go find an influencer to work with you, to sell your products.
[00:24:06] I mean, there, there are multiple ways to approach this and the opportunity is literally statistically doubled. Financially right now, every year, according to market researchers. So it’s a huge opportunity we can take advantage of it simply and easily. And I would encourage people to go check it out and to learn more about the subject.
[00:24:28] And as always, I guess I could just do a final call to action. Feel free to check out other podcasts that we have at the e-commerce leader.com. Scroll through the list on your favorite podcast player and check out our prior episodes. We’ve done a ton. Of, episodes on all things e-commerce, I’d love to have you like, and, or, subscribe on the player of choice.
[00:24:51] And finally, I’ll just say we’re running a contest at contest. The e-commerce leader.com and we’re giving away a $250 visa gift card for people to, to potentially win, just, enter the contest and the entry methods are following our podcast. So it’s pretty, self-serving obviously, we’d love to have you check that out and, enter the contest.
[00:25:16] If you’re listening to this in July of. Of 2021, then you’re eligible inter and if not check out that page, cause maybe we’re running a contest right now. As you listen to this in the future. Amazing.
[00:25:28] Michael: [00:25:28] The final thing I should put in is obviously you’ve got a couple of clients are doing very, very well with this strategy.
[00:25:33] And obviously you’ve got a broad, broad, broad, set of expertise that you and Kyle you’ll partner in, in the consulting business brings. So where do people go to work with you and Carl? Now you guys are busy. Rebranding. Is it still the old site or where do people go if they want to explore that
[00:25:47] Jason: [00:25:47] it is still winning on shopify.com.
[00:25:49] That’s the place to go at the moment and it’ll redirect to our new relaunch rebrand. As we roll that out here in the near future.
[00:25:55] Michael: [00:25:55] Yeah. Thanks. Well, it’s been a pleasure and eyeopening to talk to you about this more opening than it should be. I need to go away and do my homework as an Amazon seller.
[00:26:04] And I’m based in Europe, which allegedly is where this is kicking off, but I’m behind the curve here, but I’m, I’m really excited about this. It sounds like a great opportunity and, always a pleasure to talk to you and it always educational, man. Thank you so much for, for taking.
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