Featuring Luke Carthy

You know the drill.

It’s November, the pumpkins are in the compost heap and if you’ve got kids, you’ve started to wheel out the threat of “Santa’s watching” to improve behaviour.

Yes, Christmas is coming.

Which means, from a business perspective, it’s almost BLACK FRIDAY.

That means we get all steamed up about a concept we imported from the States (I’ll get over it soon) and focus on selling piles of products to our customers. If you want to know how to win in ecommerce, have a listen to the discussion with Luke Carthy.

Highlights of the discussions include:

  • Amazon (can you talk ecommerce without mentioning them?!)
  • FBA v fulfilling your own orders
  • Postage and why people hate paying for it
  • Investing in your brand to help you sell more online
  • Products being ‘good enough’ to sell
  • The merits of Burger King’s more whacky campaigns
  • Fast Payments v Stripe
  • Luke and me working together
  • The opportunities and challenges of Christmas 2020
  • How to handle discontinued products on your website
  • What you can do if you haven’t set up online sales yet
  • The numbers! Margin v sales and LTV of customers
  • Black Friday
  • The sales beast that is QVC
  • Singles Day or Double 11
  • Lessons to younger marketers

Listen / Download

Watch

Show Notes

Links We Discuss on The Pod
Eugene Wei’s Invisible Asymptotes blog post
Luke’s discontinued products blog post
Blue Array’s Mastering in-house SEO book

Luke X
When Luke comes together to work with Eximo Marketing, we go under the brand of Luke X. We both still run our own companies, we just buddy up for some clients who need both our skills.

Why do you need us? You get Luke’s impeccable ecommerce skills and Andi’s strategic marketing approach. We know the companies that win online are those who have their whole game working.

Just having a great product isn’t enough. Just investing in performance marketing won’t work in the long term. We can help you navigate the complex world of ecommerce and find the right course for sustainable growth.

What we do:

• Ecommerce audits – understand where you are now
• Ecommerce strategy – setting a roadmap for growth
• Performance marketing consultancy – SEO and paid strategy
• Market research and opportunity discovery – where to play and why you will win
• Ecommerce technical consultancy – use the right platform to allow you to grow
• Training – bespoke knowledge transfer from our team to yours
• Leadership development – working with your senior to provide focus
• Objective setting and performance management

Drop Andi a line here or get in touch on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Luke Carthy
Luke is a well-seasoned eCommerce consultant and international speaker delivering double/triple-digit growth for eCommerce brands.

Luke parks himself right in the centre of conversion, growth and SEO disciplines.

Having worked with brands spanning both D2C and B2B verticals including CAT, Renault and Mayflex, Luke knows a thing or two when it comes to getting C-suite buy-in and delivering smart, scalable eCommerce growth.

Find Luke here…
https://lukecarthy.com/
https://twitter.com/MrLukeCarthy
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukecarthy/

And don’t forget to check out his new haircare brand, Afrodrops.

Andi Jarvis
If you have any questions or want to talk about anything that was discussed in the show, the best place to get me is on Twitter or LinkedIn.

If you don’t get the podcast emailed to you (and a monthly newsletter) you can sign up for it on the Eximo Marketing website.

Make sure you subscribe to get the podcast every fortnight and if you enjoyed the show, please give it a 5* rating.

Andi Jarvis, Eximo Marketing.

Interview Transcription

This transcript has been done automagically using Happy Scribe and hasn’t been checked by a real person, so there may be some hilarious mistakes where the AI can’t work out our accents – I’m sure they’re trained on just the American accent.

Eyup my name is Andi Jarvis and welcome to the Strategy Sessions. This is Episode 12 and the episode is called Black Friday.

It’s coming in to the Golden Quarter, the peak time for retailers, both physical retailers and online retailers. We’ve got the biggest e-commerce event in the world happening in the next couple of days, in the next couple of weeks. And we’re going to talk about all of that today. I am joined by an e-commerce legend today, Luke Carthy.

Luke, who are you and why are you on my show today?

Right. So am I. So, yeah, e-commerce consultant, I do bits online, how clients, that sort of stuff. Why am I here? I guess I’m a perfect keyword match for Black Friday. So why not? Also, it makes perfect sense. It just makes perfect sense.

I was like absolutely all over it. We are e-commerce. This is my thing. And I can’t wait to see what unfolds, to be honest, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas ads, the whole thing, the whole shebang. And then just to add extra drama, it’s going to be fun.

Going to be great to see. So Luke and those of you who are regular listeners will know is the first person ever to come back onto the show twice.

So Luke did to open up a couple of weeks ago on the episode about Ecom. It got some great traction. Some people got in touch asking about it. And we thought, you know what, it’s coming up to that time. We’ll bring Luke back on. Just before we get into talking about e-commerce, I want to let Luke give a plug for his new business as well. Luke, as you can see, if you’re watching, the video has a little bit more hair than I do.

And it’s a beauty of an afro coming on. I used to have one of those and not quite as tight as that, but I used to have one of them. And Luke spotted a gap in the market. Luke, tell us about your new business.

Yeah, so I’ve recently launched an e-commerce business, surprisingly called AfroDrops. And it’s basically first and foremost a brand that is designed to stand in power, celebrate everything about natural and afro hair.

And the idea is it’s like leveling the playing field in beauty standards. Right. Your head doesn’t have to be straight to be gorgeous. It helps with information and accessibility and just, yeah, really kind of making a song and dance about what natural hair really means. So we don’t believe in things like relaxes. We’re all for weeks and we’re all for like, you know, silk prices and all sort of stuff. Anything that chemically alters and permanently damages your hair is something that we will be strongly against.

But, yeah, it’s it’s a space that I saw needs a lot of TLC and there’s plenty of really cool, cool, powerful brands are making waves in this space. Try to trust this one to show out to those guys. But there doesn’t seem to be anyone that’s really gelling together. A really powerful content platform, say naturally curly and a really well sorted e-commerce platform or e-commerce experience people have been stuff from.

So, yeah, I thought put I’m in the water and give it a blast and we’re introducing Aphro drops. It’s been life unschool when this episode goes. I put it launched when the billboard. I should know this was like a week ago. So still very, very early days.

Still really excited, lots of grassroots stuff going on there and stuff where look and thus ends the advert. But do check out Afrodrops if you have Afro hair, if you know anyone who has Afro hair, please do share McFarlin. Why? Because it is a really underrepresented segment in the market. So please do. Right. Let’s get into it then. So look, e-commerce is if you read the newspapers right now.

All right, well, no one reads newspapers anymore, but if you scroll through the newspaper websites these days, you see it written about as if it’s this brand new thing that has just appeared at the beginning of covid to save the world and people, you know, and it sorts of shit.

Right. So what have you seen over the last few years that’s changed in e-commerce that has kind of made it more mainstream. There was a technical level, not a lot, but e-commerce is still e-commerce, e-commerce website clicks and stuff. Ibtisam stuff gets delivered. But what I would say is the big thing that’s changed the last few years is the barrier to entry has fallen dramatically. Right. So I guess if you think pretty Shopify, if you like, which wasn’t that long ago to get on e-commerce, you have to go and get some some eye watering quotes of a bunch of Web companies and spend probably tens of thousands of pounds to to get online.

And of course, you needed Magento implementation, didn’t you? It was like it was great if you had a product list of 80000 products. But, you know, I’ve got these 10 things I want to sell last twenty five thousand pounds.

Exactly. Exactly. It was off the wall now, I guess. Now, anyone, you know, whether your 12 kind of selling jewelry or kind of, you know, a big entrepreneurial business like Heinz, for example, who have recently jumped on the bandwagon, it’s so easy. You know, you can have a really good, really slick looking e-commerce site with next to no effort whatsoever. So I would say that’s one really big change. And Shopify is constantly evolving.

I think on top of that, it comes out the other side for distribution and that kind of expectation of I want it now, you know, with with I don’t think I can ever talk about e-commerce or that talk about Amazon and the elephant in the room that the antichrist of e-commerce, if you like. But they’re huge. They set the standards. They get started with literally 12 hours if you place an order for your prime customer. And that level of expectation is, of course, resonating across the e-commerce industry.

And everybody wants it that everybody wants high street power lines. But other e-commerce experience and August is another company that really embraced that in for Sunday delivery. So, yeah, that they’re the kind of two things, I think, to really kind of expand it. Right, the beginning of our launch and then. Right. The how do I get stuff to customers as quickly and as normally as possible?

Great stuff. So if you are listening and you are an e-commerce business, right. Luke is going to give us some top tips so I can put you in a B, because I know that’s what you love. But as we get just a little bit further into the episode, we’re going to get some some real killer tips from him about how to turbo charge your online business. But before we get there, we’ll talk about Amazon rakes. You can’t talk about, as you said, you can’t talk about income without talking about Amazon.

I’m going to put in the show notes a link to a blog. It is a long read. It’s probably a 20, 25 minute read by a guy called Eugene Wei who was one of the architects of Amazon Prime. And he’s quite clear. He’s like he didn’t invent it, but he was one of the early people involved in it.

And this is a long, long paper, a blog, really, about how that decision came and the thought process behind it and the data they looked at. And it’s stunning. I think it’s called invisible.

Invisible something or that. Right. But it’s in the links to the show. Not it is worth reading. It’s a stunning piece of work on understanding your customers and getting giving them what they want. So you can see primes really set the bar for people. You you don’t want to pay for delivery, but you’ll pay every month to get free delivery, you know, and you see similar studies coming out from eBay where they are the product that will sell for ten pounds, including free postage, will sell more often than the product for six pounds plus three pounds postage because people just don’t want to pay postage.

So Amazon have reset the bar on what people want to do in delivery, for example, what other areas are they moving, how the e-commerce industry works that’s forcing smaller retailers to keep up and can they keep up?

Yeah, so there are behemoth, right? So a couple of things that that really resonate, I mean, from what you said, is that connotation of not wanting to pay for the it’s that horrible. You know, you’re spending three hundred quid on something, but all of a sudden three pounds is enough of a decision to make you think, forget it, I’m going somewhere else or even drive 50 miles in your car, but more than three pounds of fuel just to go and get it right.

The mindset is unreal. But yeah, when I started in e-commerce at the tender age of 16 on eBay, and yet we did loads of say, wait, I did loads of tests on exactly what you said ten times free delivery pounds and three times for delivery. And the conversion was off the scale, something different. But I think what Amazon are doing is just building a universe that you don’t ever need to leave. So why you have seen the film Wally or Walleyed, depending on which part of the world you live in, everywhere you go, you have, by and large brand.

Right. And everything that pops up is being out IMAX that is literally Amazon of the world of Wolly. They are just in everything and they are the locusts of technology. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. They’ve built an ecosystem. They’ve built a way which you can buy something without ever having to leave the platform. You don’t even need to get your credit card back. And the fact that you’ve bought into Prime at seventy nine pounds a year or whatever it is, you’re handing over money to be part of an exclusive club.

Plus the amount of products like it’s almost like a knee jerk reaction that if you think about buying something and then firing with the Amazon for such a long Google and it’s like, you know, three or four on a page, it’s time for our retailers perspective.

Then should you just you know, you mentioned Shopify before and things like that. Should you just go? I stop this. I’ll just sell on Amazon.

How do you know what the answer to this question is? Yes and no. I’m not horrible on defense. It depends on what my opinion is actually be multichannel. So if there’s a saying that, you know, famous saying if you can’t beat them, join them. And I do believe that as part of your sales mix, you should absolutely be selling on third party platforms like Etsy. If you’re in the creative space, like Amazon, like eBay, and even a new relatively new marketplace called on by which is you go and check out, which is like a new baby version of eBay and Amazon.

Really cool. And it’s a UK specific platform built and made in the UK. But the point is, what you ideally want to do is maybe find an audience on Amazon that wouldn’t have found you otherwise and then get them over to your platform. So, you know, get them to building, buy into the brand, get them to build trust and authority in what you do. And then, of course, transition to your own sales platforms, because as we know, as sellers commissions on Amazon are wateringly high.

You know, 30 percent is not unreasonable. And for so many businesses, especially fast moving consumer goods, that kind of margin is is is just you know, it doesn’t work.

And you see as well, I’ve worked with a company, I’ll not name them because I haven’t asked them if I can name them, but they they’re sold on Amazon and they were very clear that what Amazon did was once they proved a market, Amazon would go and buy a boatload of nuts. Even if they were using FBA and fulfilled by Amazon, they’d suddenly find that a product that Amazon never used to sell. Once they’d spent two years building that market up and selling stuff, all of a sudden Amazon would be selling this product themselves, either the same thing bought from somewhere else or a very a rip off of that product.

And Amazon have flatly denied this time and time again that they use that selling information to inform their decisions.

But I believe there’s a case is it in the U.S. or the E.U. where they’re having to defend themselves against that sort of allegation? They deny it time and time again. So just before Amazon’s legal team come in statute, I’m just telling you the story based on what our client told me.

But it is difficult, right, that they want to take that big commission from you. But if you’re not on that, then are you going to find your customers?

But migrating customers over from a business like Amazon isn’t as easy as you think, is it?

No, it’s not. It’s not easy at all because, you know, you’ve got all the red tape you’ve got to play by the rules.

So if you want to try and throw in a leaflet in your FBI fulfillment, like you can’t drop any kind of promotional merchandise and tell people that it off the next board of directors, none of that stuff.

So it’s not easy at all. But there are there are ways. There are different ways. So one way, of course, is to sell a fairly small odone, although this sounds like it’s going to be the first to open AP or AP.

Right. Go first. OK, so that’s the first part that being equal is equal parts scary and pretty well. Yeah. So the first step is to fulfill your own stuff, which is easier said than done depending on the volume. But if you fulfill your own orders, then Amazon can’t really put you in that sense because you can put it in your own brand new packaging. You can put from material. You could do all sorts of stuff. Additionally to that, you know, if you sell a unique product that is identifiable to you exclusively, then think about just owning those those those keywords in Google.

So if someone comes back to it to purchase those again, then there’s a chance that you can get exposure elsewhere outside of outside of the Amazon world. But equally, you know, as we know and as people who use Amazon and Amazon Prime now, it’s not the most cost effective option. So everybody knows really that if you’re going to buy something from Amazon, you can probably get it from 10, 20 percent cheaper. If you went direct to the retailer or you started to do your homework and what you’re kind of paying for the convenience.

So my point here is if you saw something at ten point fifteen pounds on Amazon and at least be in a situation where you can cover your margins and still make it worthwhile with selling for 10 pounds on your own site, I know it’s not always possible if you’re competing on a product that’s not unique to you. And there’s 15 of the sellers of one case when China we started for nine or to understand how the how to make that work. But my point here is trying to make it work for you, not just sell on Amazon for Amazon sake.

It’s got to be you know, it’s going to be business viable first before it sells.

Yeah, well, we could make this a whole podcast about Amazon, but let’s not let’s let’s move on sell selling on your own site and do and doing your own and doing your own stuff.

So we’ve both worked with companies that sort of turnover. You’ve started your own company and we’ve worked with companies that turnover fairly significant amounts on e-commerce platforms all the way up to. Some of the biggest companies in the land selling online as well. So what do you see that the bigger companies do really, really well, that those sort of mid-sized companies haven’t quite got onto yet when they’re selling on their own platform? Well, it’s really interesting because I actually think it’s the opposite way around, I normally find that the underdogs and the smaller, more junior companies, the flashy companies are the ones that do things really well, and it’s the larger companies that are somewhat arrogant and reliant on brands.

And this is how we’ve always done it. But equally, you know, I think a lot of things that make big companies work really well is all down to brand and customer loyalty. And I think the things that keep the newer businesses hungry is the fact that they don’t have that yet. So they know they need to work two or three times as hard to be relevant and to be seen. So what did you think of Jim Sharp? Perfect example.

You’ve got your companies like Nike, Adidas, you know, the brands are available, that kind of stuff you have to say, but that, you know, are hungry as heck. They do some stuff that no one’s ever done before.

But it’s one of the things with Jim Shack that they have invested in Brand.

And one of the things that comes up time and time again on this podcast when we talk to lots of people, is how some of the old concepts of marketing have been forgotten a little bit and actually gimcrack invest a fortune in their brand, whether that’s not invested in terms of cash investment all the time, I don’t know enough about them to say that. But they have worked too hard, worked very hard to create that brand that they have. So it gives them some credibility.

And when I look at smaller retailers, they look at getting the pricing right.

They look at getting the delivery right. They look at making sure that the CEOs right.

And that the pieces when you talk to them about brand and they go, oh, it’s just that fluffy shit.

Yeah. There’s a reason why that company charges 25 pounds for a training vest and you’re charging 20 for a jumper and a hoodie and you put it in a free gift and you give away this time whether that’s because they invest in the brand, is that what you see missing it, that sort of middle level? Yeah, 100 percent.

I think you’ve hit the nail on the that nail on the head, as it were. Definitely it always goes back to basics. Right. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s a CEO, whether it’s anything super technical medicin or even just bare bones marketing. Like if you don’t have a brand, if you don’t know your customers, you don’t have a business. If you’re not offering a really good service, you don’t have you know, doesn’t matter about price at that point.

It’s not about price for. You have to be head and shoulders above, I know we’ve moved away from us, but again, that’s what this brand of identity is not about price anymore. You buy something at twice the cost just because it’s easier, it’s more convenient. If you think about the logic and I use this as an example, quite a lot of going to your local corner shop, which is a five minute walk down the road versus jumping in your car, getting the coat on pocket of getting your mask on, walking into Sainsbury’s or Tesco or in the supermarket.

Yes, it’s going to be probably a third less. What you have to have something to jump in the car or walk a further distance as opposed to having to spend two quid on a bottle of milk. And, you know, you’ll hear some moan about it, but it’s more convenient. And I think convenience brands building a loyal customer base and really kind of get into the core problem that your customers have. Another couple of examples, Dyson Perfect’s.

What else is that I could think of that had a lot of companies in front of my head just they’re not going to read them all off like an absolute barrage, but the whole game. But Dyson is a perfect example. They identified a market. You know, you’ve got ChiX option Arthurson. They sell hair straighteners, eye watering prices, but you can guarantee they’ll sell a shitload of them because it’s. Yeah, same thing. Something. So if the smaller businesses aren’t investing in brand and I’ve seen it a lot where, you know, companies have got a great product and got our product better than somebody else’s product, so that’s why it should sell.

And I think this concept of product being good enough isn’t really understood by a lot of smaller retailers, at least, that actually once you get past an entry point into a market, that the customer doesn’t always care if your product is infinitely better.

Now, the obvious example of that is smartphones, not just phones.

Now, we don’t call them smartphones anymore. Do it. You know, every time Apple released a whole bunch of features, Android users are like, yeah, we’ve had that for three years. It doesn’t matter. Apple still outsell it because it’s good enough. It gets you into the market, does everything you need it to do. And yet this feature isn’t as great as that feature, but it’s good enough to do what it needs to do. But you can boil it down to lots of other industries.

And I think that’s missed by a lot of retailers, is that they just they think because their product is better, that’s why they’re going to win in that market. And actually, that is one of the things you need to win in that market. And it’s not everything you need to win in that market, you know. Yeah, hundred percent. You could probably simplify that in five. What it’s a been like you could buy that that instead of a king of beans behind have literally been in the spot or even Coca-Cola versus Pepsi.

So basically very similar type products. But, you know, Coca-Cola, you could argue, has got a better brand or, you know, if seen as the better brand, not by taste, but just because of who Coca-Cola is. Right.

That Coke segment is is one of the things that would make it give up doing anything right. So a couple of weird things that happen in the Coke segment.

You do a blind taste test, do the Pepsi Challenge. Right. They made a whole campaign about this.

You do blind taste tests and people prefer Pepsi over thing almost all the time.

It just happens to. So Pepsi then do the OK people prefer our brand to their brand, so then they go out and they spend millions advertising and whether they’re doing a Pepsi challenge, whether they’re sponsoring the World Cup, whether they’re sponsoring whatever.

What happens when No. Two in the market starts to advertise? No one in the market goes up in market share. That’s what happened in Sydney because people see those ads and go, jeez, I want a Coke.

But at the moment of purchase, they get into the show, they get into the store and they look at the fridge and they go, oh, Coke or Pepsi, I’ll have a Coke.

So like, if you were Pepsi, just like this, let’s just give up and go home now. It doesn’t matter what they do. All they do is help Coke sell morning like, oh, man, that’s a nightmare.

Is yeah. That’s the you’ve got to be a prop.. You’ve got to have a real thick skin to be like a marketing director, a Pepsi. But equally, do they have more creative license. Right. Because they were in the dark like the whole. I know we kind of going off welfare, off e-commerce. Not we’re not. We’re in a rut. Is the whole Burger King versus McDonald’s campaign. You may have seen that. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I can think of basically telling everyone to go to McDonald’s because the, you know, people in the industry and accustomed to Burger King have gotten you a couple of years ago, they got a new marketing director, CMO or whatever his title is.

And they’ve been doing some really interesting, different rave, crazy pictogram where depending on where you think they are on that spectrum campaigns, that they’ve had moldy whoppers being shown to show that they don’t use preservatives.

They’ve just had a campaign up that looks mentioned, which is go and shop during lockdown. Everybody needs your support gunshop, including at McDonald’s.

And it seems to me with no background knowledge of the campaign, that they are focused on sort of free media and brand salience of the two measures that they’re trying to move so they’re not spending millions on.

They are spending a lot on ads. They will be spending millions, but not maybe as much as they used to do. But they’re trying to see how much more free media they can get by having campaigns that are socially shareable. So the multi WOPR went everywhere because it was such a campaign. The McDonald’s thing has been shared everywhere because it’s again, it’s quite an unusual campaign. So if they’re measuring brand salience and how people are talking about their brand, is it positive or negative?

That’s probably my guess is on the way up. Are they looking at the media values of what they’re getting? Yes, I’m certain they are. They’re probably on the way up.

I go back to I talk about the metrics that matter.

I’m yet to see the study that says they’re selling more burgers because now they might be. And there’s going to be an ad there’s going to be some campaign award submissions coming out soon that will show if it’s moved the dial. Now, if it has, it’s a work of genius and it’s the best thing that I’ve done.

If it doesn’t look great, it’s just another example of marketers focusing on the wrong metrics to say I’m not for or against, but I’m interested to see has it put more bums on seats in Burger King or more feet and walk through or whatever? And has it sold more burgers?

That’s the key here. Yeah, yeah, I understand. But yeah, it’s all relative. It all goes back to the same principles of, you know, it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about energy, commerce, tech or a lemonade stand by a seven year old, you know, sweet looking down the principles of marketing and a couple of them saying they’re speaking to the actual legend in this particular spot. But it ultimately remains unchanged by all the market.

And it’s still very much the same, I think, to use to kind of bring this back and pull us out of offline stuff, fast payments. I think everyone in the world kind of knows who the health payments are. And they have built an incredible brand. They are basically the sexy version of Stripe and Saijo that they’re throwing out hoodies and shit. And the fact that they’re called fast, it just makes it super multiversity. There’s nothing about payments and happy to wear that stuff.

I’m not going to run around wearing a striped, but it is just weird, just like an account with everyone is happy to wear a fast body because why the hell wouldn’t you want to be associated with that perfect example of building a brand before even before the thing was even available? People were hoping this thing and yeah. Massive respect to those guys.

And time for another advertisement during this podcast, you can see why Luke and Luke Carthy Ltd and Ximo Marketing Ltd are coming together to do a little bit of a cool promotion, if you’d call it that loosely under the header of Luke ex.

Yeah, well, it sounds like a good idea at the time.

We’re going to, but we’re aware that in Northern Ireland there’s a lot of companies who are looking to improve their e-commerce game. Some companies have taken taken advantage of the digital selling capability grunts the cracking to invest. And I gave their their funding schemes to help companies to covid. If you’ve got that ground and you’re looking at strategy, how you’re looking at sorting out your e-commerce platform, CEO, your performance, marketing, all of those bits, Luke brings absolutely impeccable eCom background to it.

And I just bring a lot of talking and a podcast.

No, it’s kind of general marketing stuff. We’ve got to come together as well as a couple, we’re going to be double dating the pair of us and we’re going to bring our expertise together to help companies boost that what they do online. So if you’re interested, if you’re selling online and you want to see how you can wrap that up. So just to be clear, we’re not going to say, OK, we’ll take over managing your PC for you.

That’s not what we do. We’re consultants. We’re here to steer you in the right direction if you’ve got the digital selling capability. We will take advantage of that, get you set up, get you going in the right way and help you find the people who can take you forward. Luke. Are you excited about working with me? Yes, very. Now, I can’t wait. I can’t wait.

It’s like you’re in my opinion, this is like a wedding speech now, but you’re the kind of guy that I go to or read or respond on just the stuff that so many companies miss. It’s just the fundamentals, like, hold on a minute before you even build the site. Have you done X, Y and Z now before you even think of a brand name, before you can think about anything. Have you done. Have you read anything on the job at this point?

I think that’s it, yeah. So to kind of work with someone who can do that really important stuff before we talk about the sexy Comcast Digital Playground, I think it felt pretty well at this point.

Brilliant stuff. Brilliant. So that contact details are around somewhere on the podcast. You know where I get hold of me, right?

So enough of the advert. Let’s carry on.

Look, I’m going to ask you in a minute for a top tip, another top tip for businesses selling online coming up to Christmas. But before we do, let’s talk about Christmas.

So the UK in various different ways is in lockdown. The Republic of Ireland is in lockdown. So England is in lockdown, I think until the second of December. Scotland is probably going to come out early. Northern Ireland in two weeks time. Wales, slightly different. Republic of Ireland got really, really stringent rules to help lock down Unkovic. Essential retailers in many places are the only ones allowed to open.

So we’ve got two different questions here. One, what are the opportunities here for online retailers with all the shutdown happening? And two, if you’re a physical retailer that hasn’t quite got yet into this space, is there anything you can do to save Christmas? Two very good questions, I think, to kind of throw the issue into the lockdown. Greg is allowed to stay open kind of just completely, completely says how much of a shambles this thing is.

But anyway, they said, look, I lived in Newcastle, which is Greg’s hometown. Right. And if you try and sell Jordis that Gregs is not an essential retailer, there would be a right guaranteed.

It will be a riot. Sorry, carry on. I could believe it. So, you know, all I can think about now is what do you want to do? You want to refer those questions again.

So let’s let’s do one at a time. If you haven’t already opened the door to e-commerce and you’re worried about losing your business because a lockdown, what can you do now to save Christmas?

All right. So one first thing I want to say is get on Google and start firing queries for what you saw, get a feel for the playground and I won’t take you very long, half an hour to an hour, tops. Second of all, if you’re already you know, if you’re in a situation where you have a proposition to get online, just don’t you, Shopify, I’m not even going to bother talking to you about whether you should go for commercial shapefile, genocide or e-commerce or whatever.

Just get on Shopify. It’s the most widely supported and really cool free trial. And as much as you know, Shopify has its faults as CEOs typically are a bit tongue in cheek about it. It doesn’t matter because it gives you a platform to sell and it’s dirt cheap. Second of all, I think once you’ve done that social. So if you’re not already on social media, if you don’t have a social presence, if you’re a butcher who’s kind of purely on footfall, for example, classic example, stop, get your kids to do it.

Get your mates kids to do it. Like, just get them online and start spending a few quid on identifying your local audience and really trying to drum up. The point is, if lockdown is impacting you, there’s a very good chance it’s going to be everybody else in that same article, that same industry. So it’s not the only butchery in the UK that’s going to be thinking about, you know, how am I going to sell my mate? Right.

That sounded like really bad euphemism on the. But you know what I mean.

I just wait until I clip the op and put it out on social media, but yeah.

You like it. It’s it’s really I know it’s intimidating, especially if you’re not in technical, but it really isn’t that difficult like this. There’s always there’s always people around. There’s always people who are handy with technical help. You just get online twice and I think. Yeah. So that’s the that’s my answer. The first question is it’s not difficult to get on Shopify, get on people. I’m going to say get on Google. I don’t necessarily have a thousand people.

I just start typing or I should get some ideas.

And then the other part of the question is, if you are an online retailer now and maybe a little bit bigger, slightly bigger scale, but you’re an online retailer, essential shops are being locked down. What’s your play now? It’s coming up, it’s the golden quarter in November already. What’s your plan for Christmas? Is it ramp everything up and really make a go for it now?

I would personally say that the best thing you can do right now is sacrifice margins and sales. And I know it sounds crazy. I don’t mean like myself a loss, but if you sell something that’s a 100 percent margin, then think about selling a high quantity, a 70, 80 percent margin. If, of course, your stock, especially if you can get more stock in easily, if it’s a series of products, if it’s something that, you know, you haven’t got for me to buy.

And therefore, the reason why I say that is because it’s more than just margin. You’ll think your market share, you’re thinking 2021, once all the dust to settle, you’re thinking building a database and getting that customer base to kind of give you that springboard for next year. And I have a claim again submitted so far, I won’t mention them who are doing exactly that. So they have bought a shitload of Christmas stock, to be frank, and they are a omnichannel brand.

They have a high street presence. They have a online presence. But of course, because the high street is practically you time off of demand, how the heck are they going to get all of that high street stuff sold online? The chances are that a lot of it probably will be stuck there and will be brought back out again in 2021. But as a result of that, they have to realize that as much as their brand says luxury and expensive and premium, if they want to survive and have cash ready for whatever the next quarter brings, they have to slash their margin and get things sold.

And I’d argue that that’s probably a good way to play.

So is that a business decision? Not necessarily a marketing decision, insomuch as they’ll be factoring in storage costs of that for for the next 12 months if they need it, if they can find storage, because there’s a big problem with warehousing and storage in the first lock down. So therefore you can sort of take the hit on the margin. Are they looking to do that on products that don’t have that issue as well as a customer recruitment tactic and that, you know, are they in margin so they can build the database?

Yeah, I think it’s I think personally what’s happened is that a business problem was brought to the board or brought to a board room or a bunch of people and said, look, we’ve got a load of Christmas stuff that we don’t think going to be able to clear out as we planned. What do you propose? And it was called margin erosion. Get it sold, build the data, get people to sign up for it this time. So it’s an excuse for an extra Black Friday sale is an excuse for another pre Christmas sale.

So you can wrap it up and it’s much more sexy and it’s marketing as you want. But ultimately, what it means is they don’t want to be in a situation where they’re sitting on million pounds worth of stuff that they cannot sell for another 12 months. So, you know, that might that might be quite a specific challenge for retailers. Let’s talk about sales retailers that don’t necessarily have Christmas specific stock. What is the strategy that they can use to sell during this particular period?

I’d say just be clever about use lockdown in the messaging. I don’t want to say scaremongering, but if you know there’s a problem out there in terms of accessibility. So, again, in the business that I’m working on or the business I’m building, they’re not going to be huge because the, you know, the African shops. So there’s emphasis there on being able to support that audience and to help them get what they need. So if you have an opportunity left, you think about it goofily again, brought some content on it, added to your Africa page, original proposition, extend your returns policy, for example, to make it easier for people to return things in the year that I think about softening some of your maybe more stringent, less customer focused rules.

So there could be a delivery threshold that you have of, say, a Japan, Japan maybe potentially reduce that will increase it if you increase increases because people are buying in bulk. Like, I guess what I’m trying to say to you is, again, goes back to the basic principles of what are your customers pain points, what are their challenges and put that into your your marketing message.

And to me, everything comes back to the basics in that the one question I would say that most customers I talk to, most of my clients sorry I talked to that a week on is what’s your lifetime value of the customer? And lifetime value doesn’t mean from the day that customer is born to the day it’s died. Is that lifetime with you?

That might be a year. It might be five years. It could be three, four years. You know, banks have lifetime volumes of customers that are huge.

And the number of times where you just get this blank look in the microphone.

Sorry, folks, you get this blank look where you talk to say, what’s your lifetime value of a customer in light of what David was on his Facebook consults and it drives him insane when they have no idea we want to spend this money to recruit a customer.

Great. What they’re worth.

So you’ve got to understand the basics of the business. You’ve got to have those things in. What’s your margin? What’s the customer lifetime value? Is it worth could imagine to bring that customer in because next year you’re going to sell them another four things cost, you know, do it, but you’ve got to be really across that and not. Just across the way we spend this much on Google or we spend this much on Facebook, which seems to be the level.

Most companies go to instead of drilling down a bit further. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. A lot of sense. Black Friday, right. So we’ve got Black Friday coming up at the end of November. I still you know, I’m getting older.

I’m still irritated that Black Friday shouldn’t be a thing in the UK because as a reason for being in America, it’s not er I’ve just lost that battle, so let’s forget about it.

Yeah, I got this, this show comes out on the 10th of November, so there’s a couple of weeks before Black Friday.

Can you give us another topic, speak about Black Friday sales and what companies should be doing with a couple of weeks to go?

Yeah. So if anyone and if anyone like the seven people that I know read my blog posts, if anyone else posts that, there’s one thing I always preach, whether it’s in a previous life where he’s got to stand on the stage and talk to people or get in a line. Can you just make sure, like retailers for real pay attention? If it’s just been in the background, it kind of cooking in the kitchen when you do what or whatever it is you do and just stop for a second and pay attention.

Please make sure that your Black Friday company is consistent like every single year. So I don’t want to see no Black Friday 2011 and I don’t want to say no. Last year’s Black Friday 2090 paid for for not with. Right. Just make it like Friday, whatever. Black Friday that started Monday so you can eat the better you can use. You are. That carries way through the weekend. The reason why this is so important is because you want to recycle all the hard work that you’ve done every single Black Friday.

So if you’re a huge spotlight retailer like Kuris, the kind of big typical electronic brands and stuff like that that are really going to be, you know, the first choices people go to for Black Friday keep you out of sight because it just means you’re going to instantly rank really high this time next year. Equally, keep the audience allowing you to keep that pipeline all year round. Just because Black Friday is not in between December and October doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have a lot.

Absolutely use it for Easter eggs. But there’s no reason why someone can’t go to Black Friday back in February and say, look, nice try. How about a 10 percent discount to have actually deliver it and use it? Right. But don’t just kill it because it’s not Black Friday anymore.

So that’s my biggest bit of advice, because so many brands, big and small, would that also leads into probably the first time we met was when you talked about discontinued products and SEO for that. So we’re going to get the theme tune up for the third time and you can give us your top THP on discontinued products. All right, pretty you really need to get that attitude, and I could remember what I would say at this continue. So Black Friday, as we know.

Let’s not pretend that no one knows this individual. Let’s get rid of stuff that’s sitting in the warehouse and you want to sell it.

So when a product is discontinued, most retailers will kill it. They’ll just turn the products off. They get a nasty fourth floor. And at the opposite end of it, you’ve got a bit of a jarring user experience for your potential customers. So my advice here, and it’s got to take a bit of time to explain. So what I’ll do is I’ll say just people look out for these products and it’s the most often detailed information that put a link in the show notes as well.

That’s one thing to do is keep them alive. Now what I don’t mean what normally when CEO’s here keep it live, what they immediately think I mean is keep it live and keep it that new keep alive for that amount of time. That could be six months to 12 months. It could be longer or shorter, depending on your customer demand and more your product lifecycle after a certain amount of time. Keep it alive, but take it out of the people index or the search engine indexes.

So if people want to go and find instructions for it, if people click it in last year’s Black Friday, if there’s some links because it’s been featured in 2019 or 2020 is black a campaign, you can still cycle objects and then you put it recommendations and Winslett user experience to say, hey, if the TV at night is no longer available, go and buy this 55 inch at one time this year. And it’s that kind of experience that customers want.

I don’t want to see for a forced but more importantly, what they don’t want to see is three, I want I don’t want to be expecting a JBC 50 inch TV two nine nine will be redirected to a JBC 52 TV at seven.

That’s a no. From a marketing perspective, that kind of makes sense in the modern society with things. That’s a really good idea. But it’s not. And, you know, it’s not as if consumer consumers don’t do it. Run over.

Listen, I love Arantes. That’s what the whole podcast was born out of my desire to run about things. So, yeah, look, I’m all all fronts for the growth.

In Black Friday. I saw somebody was doing a podcast, no webinar called Is Black Friday Over Now?

I didn’t bother clicking because I just assumed it was a click Baity title to get people to sign up. Then so is going to be. No, but what’s your view?

And I think Black Friday has got masses of growth yet. I don’t I think the bottom of that curve.

What’s your view on it?

You know, see, I think we’re we’re a little bit different here because I actually think that Black Friday has been stretched too far. And I think it’s got to the point where people are just doing what they want with it now. So you’ve kind of got Amazon doing it, Amazon again, but they’re doing like they’ve just basically put the middle finger to everybody and just launched it like two weeks before everybody else Amazon Prime buy what it was. But then you’ve got people do not Black Friday month and just kind of stretching the whole thing out or it goes beyond that hyper quick.

Get it while it’s hot. Twenty four hour window we can so I think there’s loads of life left in it. But equally, I think brands just need to actually behave themselves and start making an extravaganza for them.

So one of the bigger brands I’ve worked with and again probably can’t mention them, but they are a major ecommerce retailer. I want to say I’ve worked with after a tiny bit with them. I’m not going to pretend I’m their go to e-commerce consultant.

I’m not got a tiny bit with a tiny, tiny bit, but they they run Black Friday over at least two weeks and then have the wash up.

They don’t really call it Cyber Monday anymore. It’s just the Black Friday deal season, which is about three weeks long.

But that whole it was done basically out of the the pausing spending. So so in the early years of Black Friday, what they what a lot of retailers noticed was the two weeks ahead of Black Friday, maybe even three weeks that spending started to dip quite significantly because people were saving the firepower for the deals coming on the day. And while when you’ve got physical retail, you start of hold on because you want the queues you want. I don’t remember the TV pictures of people fighting over TVs and getting stars and stuff like that, which was actually while it looked really daft and look shit, it was actually good for the brands.

And then the next year they all had security on and nobody turned up because because they actually realized this window, this pull forward window where they could sell Black Friday deals.

Now, still the best deals come on Black Friday itself, but actually was just a way of getting rid of all the stock and getting people to spend in that two week window.

How far do you take that? Who knows, and I think, you know, it depends on stock levels and what else is happening, and I think this pandemic year could be quite different in that the markets changed.

Know if essential retail are a. Do you need to offer such a discount? Do you just say that should we can we can hold some prices. But what if you know but we’ve still got to look at a competitive set of other retailers. It’s a really difficult decision, I think, for retailers. Quite late notice because Black Friday campaigns are going to be starting. Well, some of them have started about the daily emails, too. Yeah, it’s a trick.

I’d love to see the bulls, the man or woman who makes decisions. I think, you know, what we’ve done is dropping our prices. Let’s just let’s just hold on and keep knocking on like.

Yeah. I think for me, I’d like to see someone being really creative in the space of just throw down a really random idea. How about, you know, this is another tactic.

If you want to go to Opti AP, I’m not sold on.

I’ll give you an answer. I’ll give you again. Are you ready to opti AP if the click at the end and this one gets me every day. Oh wow. OK, well what was occurring. Yeah. So how about like a VIP club where you have protected stocks. I think that would be awesome because one of the biggest things that you have with Black Friday is like, oh shit, I need to be really fast because there’s only like a couple thousand things left and I’ll fly off the shelves.

But if you allow customers to sign up to a free, maybe you could even potentially charge for it almost like Ring-fence Club, I think they call it on QVC. They call it Kucuk, which is kind of like jumping the queue and just getting to the front of the line where you can kind of feel that once Black Friday is over and all that kind of normal people stock is gone, the new the super exclusive plan can get access to this kind of specialist for the benefit of that.

It’s one you kind of mitigated one of the key problems of Black Friday, which is availability, availability and scarcity. But secondly, you’ve collected a shit ton of data and then you can stretch Black Friday beyond that into payday. So I’d like to see someone being really clever and creative rather than just kind of the cliche. Let’s just make it Black Friday and that’s just, you know, raise the heck out of it.

You mentioned QVC, that when you first get into to selling stuff online, you may not consider QVC as an outlet for you, especially if you’re a product manufacturer. You might not consider QVC for your retail. You are making a massive mistake, right?

If you don’t use QVC, tell us about I mean, when I when I first found out, I remember kind of I drove home from the office about five or six years ago, maybe even a bit more. Now, I just remember driving home from the office with my weird look on my face going.

Cuvee. Oh, no, I’m not, I’m not I went home and watch QVC for the night and then just was just mind blown by the scale and the scope of it.

And the company I was working with at the time they sold a fortune by QVC was amazing for them.

Tell us about QVC.

Just takes me back to my childhood, back to the mornings. My mom wants to buy this today. Special valuable bullshit got on the TV at that time. But yes, the whole time anyone bought in the in the 80s because, you know, back channel, well, now it’s on Freeview, so everyone gets it.

You don’t get exclusively. QVC is a behemoth. You basically get some bigger products on a studio set for about half an hour to an hour depending on how about actual and yeah, it’s awesome. It’s kind of like eBay, but with people selling stuff rather than listing equally, they have a website and you can go and buy stuff as well. Yeah, it kind of I feel it was at the epicenter of this explosion of tele shopping. I don’t think that’s the right terminology for it, where now you can go and buy you box cordless vacuum that you see on the cartoon channel all the time where you kind of, you know, you buy your your cordless vacuum, 149 pound fifty, which I genuinely think something like that has some legs.

And even just saying QVC, not even think about that at the south channels.

So maybe we should just give Amazon the middle finger and it wants to sell the because the couple of retailers I’ve worked with who manufacturers who are also retailing their own product have worked with QVC.

I cannot speak highly enough about look, let’s let’s let’s be honest, but QVC take a massive commission for what they do. Right.

They’re a monster of an operation, but you do serious volumes in particular products, in particular segments do well.

They have a quite a particular demographic on QVC. I think QVC, you can probably get all the stats from an advertisers park on their site. I think I’m right in saying excuse heavily female, slightly older audience, often a lot of retired people. If you talk to your nuns, you nuns probably bought something from QVC on Oscar night.

She will have them.

And so it’s weird, but it sells stacks of products. So do check that out. Yeah.

The other thing I want to talk about, which may not be in your experience, I just want to show, because there’s so many people you talk to don’t know about, this show comes out on the 10th of of November.

The biggest e-commerce event in the world is happening the day after the show comes out and you talk to people here in the UK and Ireland, in Europe, whatever, and you go, what’s the biggest e-commerce event in the world?

And they’ll go, oh, Black Friday at noon.

You know how in the world is look like an absolute bastard because I want you to and it for me to say I can actually tell me about it every single day.

Ali Yeah.

Ali Baba Low Singles Day, which is 11th of November, October one is they sometimes call it and ultimately lemons sorry, as they sometimes call it in China.

One woman one. It’s a day where single people are celebrated. It’s now become like the biggest day for weddings in China ever. But it’s it’s almost like Vaillant’s people are getting married on Valentine’s Day.

China, you get married on Singles Day is a big thing.

But Alibaba made a huge e-commerce event. Singles Day deals. It’s like Black Friday on steroids. I think last time I checked the figures, it was something like two or three times bigger than the global sales for Black Friday happened in China on Singles Day.

It is just immense in scope and scale.

Now, to many retailers, people listening to this, it’s probably not got issues like, oh, singles, they’re great. It’s not really a thing here for sales.

And unless you’re selling into China, it’s probably not something to worry about too much.

But what I would say is just keep an eye on those sorts of events, because if something’s that big, I guarantee you somebody.

I mean, it’s the reason Amazon launched Amazon Prime Day because Singles Day, which is Alibaba I thing that was all we can do this ourselves.

And Longyear, if it’s such a big sales event and in such a big market, somebody will be looking at that going, how can we make this work here?

Now, it might not it might be too close to Black Friday to be a thing, but keep an eye on it because these things will suddenly take legs and traction and run.

If somebody said to you fifteen years ago, Black Friday is going to be a massive thing in the UK. It’s the American Day after Thanksgiving and the big and you’d be looking at them going, you want to buy that?

Well, yeah. No, well, you said it’s never going to happen here. We’re not Americans. We’re Brits. Roll forward 15 years.

It’s the biggest day of sales in eCom land, but by mail. So just keep an eye on those things are happening and especially things in China that probably don’t get the media coverage here. So if. Heidi, Heidi and. You’re on Top Tips, you have to jiggle yourself. What I probably could do that OPEC AP keep an eye on what goes on in China with singles there.

It could be coming to the UK, something like that.

I think I need to record you one like you can use if you can.

This is no, this is quite a big moment for me because I’ve never let anyone else do the top tip jingle. Do you want to. It’s t o p t i p. But you’ve got to go i it’s got to go on the. OK. OK, got ready. Yeah. All right.

The OPEC. Yes. And we’ve got the clock as well. Singles. They’re coming up 11th of September. Keep an eye out for this big e-commerce moments, especially if you sell into the Chinese market or you have a lot of Chinese customers. We could probably do a whole of the podcast on selling to Chinese customers and to China.

We touched on it a little bit in the exclusive product edition with Ashleigh from from Google, where we talked about the Chinese market.

So it’s a bit of a different segment, the way Chinese customers like to pay delivery options and things like that are different. But do keep an eye on those sorts of things that happen in other countries because they might lend to you and to get traction pretty damn quickly. Right, coming round of the last last lap, Luke, before we need to wrap up, what are the couple of big mistakes U.S. companies making that they should stop doing right now?

You’ve talked about stopping doing discontinue products.

You’ve talked about not having the Black Friday with a year.

What other mistakes are retailers making when it comes to selling online? And neglecting such like the stats on this is unbelievable, and every time I’ve kind of made a bit of a career out of running around and slug it off big retailers for the mistakes that have got into hot water three times that all of us actually live when you were there at such love used by having an orgasm in the audience and they were happy. But the point was, I’m not you know, I’m not being inappropriate.

I’m not just picking on me because I don’t like that. It’s a glaringly obvious marketing mistake of made, and I’m shedding some light on it. So I’m base was my most recent victim, I think last year. I haven’t really found on the ship kuris actually when you search for Black Friday specifically on this search bar, I don’t know if it is mobile centric, but if you search for it and get redirected to a simple fridge freezer, can’t honestly.

And then they’re wondering why they’ve got six and a half thousand people looking at a single, really cheap fridge freezer on curious. I’ve got a feeling it’s not because everybody wants to buy a fridge that’s silver and under 200 pounds, just partly because people are searching for Black Friday and said, well, the customer communications and brand director was episode two.

So I might message that I might take this clip and send it to Don and go, what’s going on, Don?

I’ve got the footage as well if he wants it, because that may have fixed it may have just been a weird book. Someone was messing around with it. But yeah, it was a weird one. But I think overall neglected sites, such misspellings, people searching for non-commercial queries. So everyone just assumes in e-commerce that when someone uses site search, they want to buy something, although that’s largely true, people might want to help, whether it’s tax policy, whether it’s coronaviruses, like a big deal right now, as we know.

But, you know, not coronavirus in terms of products you sell, but how you deal with Eastern operating there and things changed. So just really kind of tuning into what your customers are searching for and whether you’re serving in the best results or any results at all. Just to give a really quick example of the kind of man the brand for context. But I can AKAM, where I used to work before I went solo, is.

The number one brand that they sold, which was actually their own brand. If you search for that one, you’ve got no results. And that was just like that was like my first week of work in there. And they just kind of went bright red and just kind of it wasn’t too happy about it. But that’s my point is, like, people can buy like three. I think there’s some numbers on it. Consultancy on the six hour block.

So you’ll have to go and check those out. Don’t quote me. But the numbers in terms of how people how much more people can buy you such such compared to people is staggering. And the point is, it gets it gets so neglected. So that would be my next bit of advice is. Yeah, OK, good.

So what about and we have a few sort of students, grads, younger markets is here. What advice would you give them to get into the world of e-commerce if they can?

And do you have we take book recommendations from every guest on the show as well. So do you have any books? Doesn’t have to necessarily be about e-commerce just for your book recommendation. So advice for younger marketers at the minute.

And what books would you recommend for people to read about marketing e-commerce?

All right. So your market is the first thing I’m going to say is get your hands on in the field tools, because I am frankly fed up to the back to everyone, not everyone. But a lot of people know how I feel about higher education in the world of marketing and just how empty it is. So if you just literally got a degree masters and honors a bachelors or whatever you want to call it in marketing or individual, and then you sit at a laptop on the first day, things like right.

A of I do not like the infield to never get spoken about, to go and take the analytics course, go and play around with that camera. And I am trapped in the real in the field tool that you use in your respective space. If he’s going to go into email going out to play with Clivia Melchett, because these things aren’t taught. And that’s really annoying because they have all the theory. But you have no idea what to do on the first type of job.

And that will really help you get forward to just look at that stuff in terms of books and get on the same kind of on the same kind of plug. Blueberry’s in Accio book. It’s really, really good because it’s real world, in-house mistakes, epiphanies under the dystrophies, if you like, that come around the workplace in an associate pastor. Did they interview you for that book as well? No comment yet.

But there’s also some really of the good people that not me. I don’t look at my shit because I’ve pretty much spoken about all of it today. But there’s just a lot of and equally that you can go follow those people on Twitter and start your network of people to start, you know, thrive off of research, whatever. But, yeah, I just to kind of comment that, again, if you are at uni studying, I promise you the best thing you can do to come out with a degree is great.

Will also get your hands on the actual tools, because the amount of postgrads that I speak to and say I’ve never used Google anything was that I might get a job. I don’t care if you got a Masters if you can’t play around with basic tools in the marketplace now. And I know it sounds really candid and frank, but it’s the reality.

Good stuff. Good stuff.

Alison, just before we wrap up, I just want to give another plug to the fact that Luke and I are working together.

If you are an e-commerce business looking to grow and go to the next level, or if you’re just looking to go from how do we do this to getting online and starting to move. Luke and I are partnering up on the head. Luke X, there will be something on the website fairly soon about that and we’re going to work together. So strategy to get the basics right. Understand customers why they want to buy from you. Get those. Are you using the right CRM, all of that stuff and then that.

How do you actually take this forward? How do you avoid making the stupid mistakes, not having a site search on please don’t do that.

All of those bits. So if you want to get some help in that, get your business selling more online, selling, making more money. We’re not just going to tell you a cop margin all the time, although it’s certainly one of the options.

If you do want to get in touch at Andi Jarvis on Twitter, Andi with an “i” and the links to where you’ll find both myself and Luke are in the show notes to the podcast. Luke, thank you for your time.

And it’s been fun. It’s been brilliant. You know what? In the world of Lockton, this is as close as we can get to a beer right now. And I know it really helps just to have a proper good conversation with someone. And I appreciate it.

And and listen, let’s just do it together just to finish the show off for everybody. And we’re going to do the top six things together. I’m going to count you ready?

Three, one, go t o p t i p. I think at least we got the click at the same time anyway.

Right. Luke, thank you very much. And we’ll see everybody again in two weeks. Time for the next episode.