The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Michael: you’ll have to check the latest terms of service. And not the best route in the world, but it can be done. But, I think caring about it in the first place is. The most important thing and then the tactics come second,
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[00:01:12] INTRO: Hey folks, today we are back at the eCommerce leader. We are talking about having discussed whether you should revitalize your old products at all. Some are worth it, some not. And if you didn’t catch that’s in the previous episode. Today we are talking about how many ways can you breathe new life into an old product?
[00:01:28] And we have about 12 actually. So we’ve got a great list to get through today. Some of which may spark something in your mind and makes you realize, ah, I could do that. If so, we’ve done our job and I hope that you get at least one or two aha moments today. Hopefully you will. Thanks very much adverts for listening.
[00:01:44] Let’s go over to the show.
[00:01:45] Michael: I entirely agree. I I think that’s more important. I wouldn’t suggest to anyone that if they don’t like their customers and don’t care about their product, that they start hiring somebody as a solution.
[00:01:53] That I just think that’s, to your point, yes, you should get out either preferably by selling part of the business or something. The product, you can, by the way, it’s not so commonly done, but I’ve come across people selling skews on Amazon. It’s a bit messy, but it can be done. And, if you want to do it, you’ll have to check the latest terms of service.
[00:02:09] And not the best route in the world, but it can be done. But, I think caring about it in the first place is. The most important thing and then the tactics come second, which is, but I find it hard to get myself to actually do this. Okay, we’ll hire somebody cuz then you’ll be paying money and you’ll really expect results then.
[00:02:27] And they all ask them for results. And because they’re being paid for you and they’re being judged on the results, they’re more likely to do stuff. They may or may not be any good at what you do. And by the way, I’m not talking give about going from being a celebrator Burnett, a full-time product manager hire that would bankrupt you probably.
[00:02:39] But part-time good quality person, it’s a one off project after all the product development thing, isn’t it? Okay. Eventually it becomes an ongoing thing if you’ve got a big catalog and in which case you probably got a team anyway. But if you’re a solidaire, then hire them project by project.
[00:02:53] But hire somebody, but only if you care about them to that point. Yeah, totally.
[00:02:56] Jason: With all of this as pre. I, we do have a list of ways you can refresh, recreate, renew, whatever you wanna call it, redo, your product. And so we’ve got, I think it’s 12 things on the list. And we’ve talked about some of this before, and I’m talking about where this list come from.
[00:03:16] But, the, the idea here is there are tons of ways to renew and redo, older products. And so let’s you wanna walk through some of these and move on to that part of the conversation here.
[00:03:27] Michael: Yeah, absolutely. How to do it is really good. I think, I don’t think we should apologize for thinking about whether you should, though that’s really the most important decision.
[00:03:34] Yeah. Because people often leap straight to the tactics. Yeah. I guess you got faster or shorter duration of something painful here. So that’s a good start point and faster, easier. Yeah. Cheaper is the old internet business pitch cliche. , tell me a bit more about your thoughts on that.
[00:03:48] Jason: The thing that, the first question that comes to mind is, is there, something that’s a hassle, like a hassle factor in your product? Or is there something that’s super, enjoyable associated with the product? And the most obvious thing to do with your product is eliminate the hassle factors.
[00:04:05] So if signing up for your thing is a hassle, make that faster, get that to be one click or, and that, that’s Amazon’s original innovation, right? It was like one click checkout or whatever. And so that hassle bit is really important to think through. And, and so this really goes to fundamental attributes of the product in its current state, and how to evaluate them.
[00:04:24] So that would be the first one. It, if there’s parts of it that are. Then remove them or make them shorter. Make them as elegant as possible in terms of getting customers past that difficult bit in association with the product. And obviously if it’s a hassle and you can make it easier, if there’s technical things you can do to make it, just much simpler to use or easier to use, then those would be things to consider in your, upcoming version.
[00:04:49] I think those are pretty straightforward. As a couple first ones, a third one on the list that I have here is make it more comfortable associated with the physical attributes. Now this is be for physical product, it’s amazing how many times, a product is just not elegant to use in a tactile way.
[00:05:07] And it, it could just be more, straight more design in a more straightforward way so that it’s not, uncomfortable. To use. I’m, I’m looking at these, this is for example, these, phone holders. Everybody’s got some of these now these ones have the bindy wrap around thing.
[00:05:21] I’m using a different one as I record this. It’s more like a three sticks and a little gimbal ball that holds the phone. But, you think about these products and you think, how could this be more, more comfortable to use and more versatile to use? I don’t use this version, I use a different version in certain contexts.
[00:05:39] And these are the things you wanna think through the physical attributes of it. And obviously getting customer feedback is important. Seeing what other competitors are doing, if there are trends, is important. But also just, being creative in terms of understanding how people want to use your product or don’t, and how you might serve them better.
[00:05:57] And there’s a million ways to iterate when you start thinking about comfort and utility, of the item. That I think are important to start brainstorming,
[00:06:06] Michael: Yeah, I think that’s, those are really good starting points. And I think just on the idea of customer feedback, I just encourage people not to just get feedback on an existing product, but I would say there’s, two very good chapters in a book called, I think it’s called Scaling Lean.
[00:06:20] So it’s a rather cut down and simplified version of what I always find a rather complex book. The whole, lean, thing. I can’t remember who’s gone out my head, who did it, but the whole lean development thing. And those two chapters are, the problem interview and the solution interview.
[00:06:32] And, somebody, Mary, I’ll put the notes in the show notes at 10 K, sorry, eCommerce leader.com. Sorry, again, podcast confusing . So the point here is simple but important. Don’t talk to people with a product in hand. Talk to people without a product in hand to refresh your understanding from the ground up of the problem you’re trying to solve and the person you’re trying to solve.
[00:06:49] , then come back with a problem. Product or a new improved product scaling. That’s exactly the book. Thank you so much. Rescue me, myself, Ashmore
[00:06:57] Jason: Eric. Eric Re is the Lean Startup, which was the original
[00:07:01] Michael: one and then this exactly, which is complicated. Yeah, so Ashmore, I would say it’s chapter seven and eight.
[00:07:05] I think it says a problem interview, solution interview. I found those to be very doable, practical, things to apply straight away. So you know, start from first principles. Don’t assume that your products going in the right direction anymore. That’s the first thing. And I would say from that, the second thing is don’t just copy your competition cuz especially on, it’s just a disease.
[00:07:23] Somebody comes up with something genuinely innovative and then everyone coppers it. First of all, that’s a real risk. You can get your products taken out for patient infringement. I’ve been on the receiving end of that and rightly cause I was private labeling something from a factory in China that it turns out didn’t do their homework on that.
[00:07:36] Left it to me to do my homework and I didn’t. That sounds interesting. It was. Yeah. I only had like about $2,000 worth of product that it was, it could have been worse, but I gave it away and it works. Okay. Gave it to charity, but yes. But in the less, strictly IP infringing way, if everything looks the same, then you’re not differentiated.
[00:07:53] So starting from first principles and creating something that, whilst you may acknowledge your CAP competitors, your design is genuinely different, is really critical If you’re gonna bother doing this in the first place, otherwise, just why not just do the old private label thing? , so I think that’s really important.
[00:08:09] Jason: Yeah, totally. Okay. Another one on the list here, number four is make it Pret. Shinier, happier, newer, make it chrome if it’s plastic, the, the thing that comes to my mind in this regard is really websites, websites go through cycles of, of visual aesthetic that are on trend or not.
[00:08:28] And this is really about the visual aesthetic of the product. Not the functional attributes, but, there are a lot of times when products just look dated, like websites just look dated. But the guts of it are great, the actual, the thing itself still does what it’s supposed to do.
[00:08:43] And so I think there’s a lot of scenarios in which digital marketers at e-commerce operators have an opportunity at the physical item level, but also just in terms of their brand social media efforts, their, website. All of those kinds of things can be made to. Prettier more on trend, and you’d be surprised just, taking something that looks, dated and making it refreshed and new, it catches new customers because there’s a customer that will, be drawn to the visually effective, the aesthetic of the item.
[00:09:18] There are other customers who are drawn to the utilitarian nature of an item or, the reason it exists and don’t care so much about aesthetic. But, that’s something to really think about. If you’ve got a product that has worked and worked well for you, but you never obsessed over the visual, look and feel of it, then that would be a new way in which to iterate and to really draw in new people.
[00:09:39] And again, websites are an easy thing to, to think about. In fact, I did a training last week, for our community. I will teach you to buy a Shopify site. And I just, one of the things in the training is that there are a lot of websites that are built in the late nineties and, that are still on the internet and many have awesome key phrase rankings.
[00:09:58] But they just are hideously, visually to look at cuz they’re so old. And buying a site like that and revamping it, refreshing it as a clear way to, iterate. And that true, the same thing applies for products for the physical product, universe. So what are your thoughts on
[00:10:13] Michael: that? Yeah, I, first of all, to that point, I think the mentality of coming in as if you are an outside person, it’s, again, it’s hard to do.
[00:10:22] So you might wanna just hire somebody who is an outside person, just have a frank look at your product and your listing or your branding and they would have different skill sets. Somebody who’s got a web design eyes, someone who’s got a physical product, design eyes, somebody who reduces physical products.
[00:10:34] So yeah, looking at it fresh, literally. Is really great because then you’ll, again, you won’t just do the same old automatically couple of tiny tweaks or iterations iterations of what you were saying. Don’t forget to update packaging that’s like the equivalent for physical products, and you can I would say on Amazon, it’s exceptionally important. You can use the physical product both for the unboxing experience, which is when you get a good product to market fit, people rip open the Amazon packaging and they love what it looks like. That leads to good reviews and happy customers, and maybe a repeat customer if you’re lucky.
[00:11:05] And also it helps the. Message to market match that is to say on the listing, cuz you take a picture of beautiful packaging and you use that to get a splash color or to have more control than you would have otherwise. For the main image, you can legit legitimately show the product and the packaging and if the packaging is basically a color by colorful background that you can use to tweak the main image, that can be really powerful.
[00:11:27] So packaging’s particularly essential, I would say for an Amazon focused product, but for any product. Yeah, totally. The final thought on that is simple, which is you said the guts. The guts are often good, but you need to like maybe get a chrome out outer scheme or when it was boring plastic before.
[00:11:42] Sometimes it could be the reverse. If you’re in a market that values functionality, you upgrade the inner guts, but keep the outer chill the same. So that’s another tweak that you can
[00:11:50] Jason: have. . Yeah, totally agree with that. It is interesting what you can do sometimes the minimalist approach.
[00:11:56] Serves you better than making it super flamboyant. Yeah. The next thing on the list here is, make it more engaging or interactive if it’s fun by nature. And the simplest way to do this, it’s just so available to us as e-commerce operators, is to create a community, around your product. If you have a product where people just enjoy using it and it’s, maybe it’s a recreational thing, maybe it’s a sporting goods or something like that, the clear opportunity is to use social media hashtags, for example, to create a community and or have a Facebook group.
[00:12:27] And those kinds of community building components on top of the core function of the product is one of the ways to really extend and leverage the lifespan of the use of the product. And anything that you can do along those lines in terms of. Marketing to build community is, I think a huge opportunity.
[00:12:47] You can do that of course, without updating the core attribute of the, the product itself. But to your point earlier, that’s probably the kind of thing that you would wanna weave into your packaging or your unboxing, informational sheets or that kind of thing. And, and doing that all at the same time where you’ve got a new version and it’s got community C.
[00:13:06] Really is the makings of a great launch. Obviously if you have people in community, you’ve got an opportunity to sell them other things, and so building community on the back of a successful product is just a, an obvious, thing to lean into.
[00:13:18] Michael: Yeah. I love this. There’s so much, my brain’s adding multiple things together or multiplying them by, there’s so much power in this.
[00:13:25] I, I had a client who built a Facebook group with the express aim of increasing the review rate on Amazon, which was about average for a lot of his product cert. When they started, it was about 1% and they got it up to three 4%, which is just a monster increase. And that’s such a massive competitive advantage to the point you were making earlier.
[00:13:42] , if you’re installed in the rankings and you’ve got a huge number of, as long as they’re average positive reviews, then it’s super hard to compete with you and that creates such a moat as far as you can have on Amazon at all. They were Amazon focused with their products. And, it, it took a lot of work.
[00:13:56] So this is not a casual thing. There was one person who was working maybe couple of days a week equivalent on this, but it really worked. And what I love about this is it’s not just a way to get rankings or reviews, although it is, but you can create more of a buzz around the brand as a whole, which is harder to measure the value of, but it starts to build a more sensibility around the business as a sort of rapper if you like.
[00:14:17] But also you can do that in advance of new products. And here’s the other thing that’s like a leverage thing. So the point we were saying earlier, you’ve got a product installed on Amazon with 20,000 reviews and it’s ranked number one. It’s probably not going anywhere, but if you can sell it to a community as it’s new cuz it’s a new version, but to Amazon, it’s the same product.
[00:14:35] So it keeps all the reviews and rankings. , then you get the best of both worlds. And I’ve seen that work incredibly well. So it’s a lot of work to build, but it’s super powerful and most people don’t do it because it’s a, it’s work and they don’t do it. But the long term benefits, if you are launching a lot of products, one after another, it’s just really great for the right kind of product.
[00:14:52] So they, it’s definitely a thing. I
[00:14:55] Jason: love what you said too, which is it creates more enterprise value. Think about selling your business. If you sell your business, you say My signature product has a community of 10,000 people who like it and talk about it and obsess over it together.
[00:15:07] Wherever, Facebook or whatever the enterprise value for that business is just obviously stronger than, a product business that doesn’t have any type of similar thing. So I think that’s a thing to really think through that anybody could do for their existing business, line, line of business, and products, regardless of whether you’re gonna revamp them or not.
[00:15:25] That’s a, whole track you could run on any time. The next thing on our list is, if it is a, opportunity to extend the duration or to make the product work longer or last longer, I think of the energizer, rabbit for the batteries, two x longer. Anything that you have that’s a product, if you can make it more durable or extend the use of it and market it that way.
[00:15:48] And a lot of that goes into the components of the product itself. You know what kind of. Raw material do you use for the parts itself? And if those, parts and pieces are gonna break after a certain defined, by engineers, duration of use, can you upgrade for a half a penny of some item, that is bound to fail?
[00:16:08] And then say your product lasts two times longer. And those simple utilitarian changes can really be powerful marketing, functions. So sometimes just for a fractional cost, change, you can have a massive marketing advantage. And you know that’s the kind of thing to think through as you’re thinking about the actual technical components of the product.
[00:16:28] And, there’s a lot of marketing that’s been done on the. Two times more effective, lasts two times longer, or, whatever. Those kinds of sentiments and phrases, are pretty straightforward, to think about what they’ve gotta be engineered into the product. Any thoughts on that, Michael, from your point of view?
[00:16:44] Michael: Yeah, I really like it. If you can find that it’s the, I suppose it’s the, it’s called profitable variation by, Richard Kosh. I think it’s that thing where you find a small tweak to the product that doesn’t cost you very much, but it produces a great deal of more value for the consumer. So they’ll pay a lot more, but the cost is not much more and therefore it’s much more profitable.
[00:17:00] And that’s like the absolute, that’s niana really. If you can find things like that, it’s amazing. Because you should get more sales cuz people like it more. and your costs highly gone up, so your profits should be really up as well. So that’s definitely always worth looking for. Not always easy to find.
[00:17:15] But the other thing I really love about it, it’s an extremely concrete promise. Obviously you gotta be able to deliver on it. And the other thing is that you gotta be able to try and find something that’s not easy to copy. I didn’t say won’t be copied. . Hence the need for constant innovation. I I think the truth is you need to come up with something you’ve just said that kind of thing. And you probably need to do it every six months if you can, which is a hard demand. But if you can then that’s why iPhones are still selling by the bucket load, even though everyone’s created smartphone, which is a copier iPhone, let’s be honest.
[00:17:44] Yeah. So yeah. Really great skill to get down. Again, a reason to hire a great product developer because it’s not easy to get that done. You need somebody who knows both sides of the coin, the physical manufacturing side, and also has a little bit of an understanding of the market.
[00:17:57] So that’s when it, I would say that’s worth hiring somebody to the point I made earlier.
[00:18:01] Jason: Yeah, totally agree. Okay, so the next thing on our list is, improve the perceived value. Now this is where the marketer hat is on, and maybe it’s not a technical, specification that changes in the product, but the perception of value can be changed.
[00:18:15] And so how, how can you change the perceived value of your item? And this is probably worthy of a whole specific podcast, just all on its own. But, there are ways in which you can engineer a product in terms of the perceived value. One of the things I always remember about Russell Brunson’s, original ClickFunnels work was, he said that one of the best offers that he would make would just be to, ask the customer during the checkout process if they wanted a second bottle.
[00:18:42] Do you want, oh, the second item. Do you want a second one of these? The implication there is that the product wasn’t sufficient. In what it was, the offer wasn’t sufficient in and of itself, which you think about, what is a customer saying there? They’re saying what you were giving them wasn’t really enough.
[00:19:01] And to Jim Segal’s approach at Costco, can you just increase the quantity count? Instead of getting five items, you get 55 items, but the product’s a lot more expensive. But you satiate the customer demand for more of what they want. Literally just by, changing the, the amount that you include in the package or that kind of thing.
[00:19:21] And the perceived value is a little bit different cuz that’s real value, but then there’s perceived value. And so playing with these, Of, what is something’s perceived value versus real value? I think it’s something to think about. One of the ways to increase perceived value is to have a new use case or a new benefit that you didn’t previously market.
[00:19:40] And you can get that with some products because you literally are just asking the customers for their feedback all the time. What, why do you use this? Why do you like it? How do you use it? You create something and you think it’s being used in a certain way, like the way you intended, but a lot of times people aren’t using things in the way they were created or intended.
[00:19:58] A lot of times you’ll hear there’s a different use case that you hadn’t thought of. As soon as you articulate that second use case, you have a higher perceived value, for the, for the item. So something to think about and really play with is how do you get after that as a marketer?
[00:20:13] Michael: Yeah, there’s lots of great things here. First thing is, Let’s start with the use case thing. I I think actually it’s really powerful because it’s not necessarily, if you have a use case that’s new and it doesn’t happen to resonate with the customer sitting in front of you as it were, you won’t necessarily get a high price point or conversion from that customer.
[00:20:30] But what you’ve done is you’ve opened your product up or you’ve woken up your audience for that product to a new market segment of people. . . they’re solving probably different problems as well. And that can actually spin off to basically a set of products that are geared to specific markets but are very similar
[00:20:45] And that happens in the book world all the time, doesn’t it? In it American sort of, business book world. There’s that sort of who move, what’s it called to how my, cause he moved my cheese and who moved my cheese for entrepreneurs who might my cheese for moms and who might move my cheese for Christian moms and who Yeah.
[00:21:00] It’s like a standardized way of doing it, isn’t it? . And I think we don’t do that enough in the product world for some reason. and we can, and I’ve not seen it done that often successfully because people lock in on the market. And I think there’s an opportunity actually that’s relatively simple.
[00:21:13] If you tweak one thing about it, maybe change the color, maybe tweak one aspect to the product physically and put it in different packaging, it’s probably ready to go. For example, I used to sell music sound lights for musicians, and it turned out a lot of people were putting on their reviews or use this for reading in bed.
[00:21:27] So I don’t disturb my wife. It’s not really a, unfortunately ran into some problems with it meant I had to stop selling that product before I could get there. But the next move I was gonna make was exactly to just create a reading light that was built as a reading light, possibly even having couples in sight in the images.
[00:21:41] . Another, sorry. Can keep going. Yeah, I was gonna say just two other quick ones. Bundling. is sometimes just to perceived value difference. So if you put a load of cardboard and you put chocolates in it, and you call it an advent calendar, you can charge a great deal more money than for either the cardboard or for the chocolates.
[00:21:56] And that’s a very simple but very doable sort of version of all sorts of things. Once you return things into sort of gift, you can add value because it’s the construct as a whole that you’re selling, not the bits. And, there’s all sorts of things you can do with bundling that people, again, it’s relatively straightforward, even if you have a bit of a sort of retail arbitrage model and you are making forays, creating your own kind of products, bundling things in a ma propriety packaging, but not anything sophisticated, there’s so much value in there.
[00:22:24] Yeah. It’s always worth thinking about that. And you’ve mentioned before if you’ve got slow moving products, you can bottom one with fast moving products and there’s just tons of value in broadening. Yeah. The last quick win and with purely marketer head on is this, what’s industry standard? But nobody mentions in their marketing, I have to reference Mad Men here, where they had some tobacco person in and they were saying, we can’t mention, X, Y, and Z because they’ve just changed the legislation in the mid sixties, rightly but they said, okay, so tell me how’s a tobacco made in? The guy said it’s toasted. He said, great. That’s what we say X, it’s toasted. And because they were mentioning it, nobody else was then it seems like a different thing. It’s not got a lot of defensible, but you might as well get, it’s strange reference.
[00:23:03] It’s toasted. There you go. So the madman reference got one in there.
[00:23:07] Jason: Yeah, totally okay, so this is great. So we already talked about this next one on the list, which is eliminate annoyances. And I think that goes back to this whole, the polarity of is it a desirable product to use that’s enjoyable and if so, enhance and extend those ideas.
[00:23:22] And is it a annoyance, a a product that’s a hassle, but you have to use it to get something accomplished. If so, make that, as efficient as possible and eliminate the obvious annoyances. So there’s that. The next one on the list though is make it easier to get, easier to keep or easier to use.
[00:23:38] I guess those could be three separated out, but getting, keeping and using a product is really an interesting idea. There’s a lot of products that, you can make, and you can build in things like a, like it’s a toothbrush with a holder or, those kinds of ideas you build into the product, the way in which you keep it or, have it be, used.
[00:23:59] And, there, there’s a lot of examples. I, I think like in the, in the, my toolbox, there’s a lot of things where it’s I want a drill bit. Do you really wanna drill bit or do you want a drill bit? Plus 19 other drill bits and a holder for all the drill bits.
[00:24:12] Do you really want 20 D batteries or do you want a box that holds 20 D batteries too with the D batteries? Those types of product integration pieces are really something I think that are easy to think about. The easier to get bit, I guess Amazon is done for many people with their rapid delivery and their, kind of obsession with how fast people get the product.
[00:24:34] But I think it’s for this reason because they’re trying to make it as easy as possible for people to get what they want. And obviously trying to compete with local retail many times in that regard. And so I, I think those elements are important to think through. Just this, the pivot from Amazon FBA to Amazon merchant fulfilled is a big deciding factor for many people who are in that journey of, how fast can I get this?
[00:24:56] And so thinking through that logic, is there any way in which you can speed this up? So customers get it faster. Obviously making it virtual or digital is, a step on that journey. If it could be delivered, in, in virtual, then why wouldn’t you do that? Zoom meetings come to my mind, the world in the last three years went through the evolution of feeling like in person meetings were required, but actually meetings could be set, sped up radically and done much simpler if we just all used Zoom.
[00:25:27] And we all learned that together. I, we had used Zoom for years, Michael, together before this was popularized because of Covid. But what you realize is the whole world realized you can get stuff done faster and easier if it’s digital digitized or, digitized. And I think the question is, put in front of all of us as product marketers, Can we digitize something that’s an old school physical delivery, and therefore get the customer satisfied, faster, and simpler, in the process.
[00:25:56] Michael: Like that. And I guess I just, so devil’s advocate and me as well to say, if you happen to be a market that’s very digital and nobody’s offering something physical, go the opposite way. Just to be different. Not to be different if there’s no market for it, but you can at least experiment because it’s a differentiation point.
[00:26:11] It’s not a physical product example, but I write a mask one where we have a physical meeting, which is a pain to do and it means people have to fly or take the train. I have to book a hotel. But it’s a differentiation point. And actually it, it creates more sort of connection. And the same is true if you send somebody a book and they can get it through the post.
[00:26:27] They have that unboxing moment. They can mark it, they can drop it, and then, spill coffee on it and internet generally interact with it. Then, if everyone else is sending kil books, I’d be tempted to. Then go and go create a physical product version as well. . Yeah. Which isn’t quite the same as easy to get.
[00:26:42] That’s a differentiation point. I’m just flipping it on its head. And I guess that’s the kind of thing you’ve gotta do, right? Just approach it from 20 different directions to poke it around and see what sparks. So yes, I like that a lot. That’s good.
[00:26:54] Jason: Yeah. Two thoughts in that regard. One of the things that’s become very popular right now on Shopify for Shopify sellers is, an app called Post Pilot.
[00:27:02] And it’s direct mail postcards and it’s baked into the back end of your Shopify store. And a lot of people are using it with good success because the pendulum swung too far and people aren’t using direct mail anymore. And somebody figured out how to bolt on direct mail into your Shopify store with an app.
[00:27:19] And it’s all the rage right now, because the pendulum. Swung too far and no one was doing things in the mail. And so it made it an opportunity for e-commerce sellers. Yeah,
[00:27:31] Michael: I’ve seen clients with, some response rates of up to about 10% with asking for reviews via postcards. It does depend which niche you’re in.
[00:27:37] But yeah, it’s incredibly effective actually. And that, again, it goes through fashion. Nobody’s talked about it for a lot, I know, for four years since I’ve last seen it, so yeah. That’s really good. Yeah, totally. Which is a, this is a slightly different point to make it easier to use.
[00:27:49] I guess we’re back to differentiation, aren’t we really? . . is always a obsession you gotta have. Yeah. Yeah. You got a couple more for us, so let’s not these off. I’ve got something. Just try and tie this together at the end, hopefully as well.
[00:27:59] Jason: Yeah. The next one is to try to make it cool again or to make it cool again.
[00:28:03] And you could do that in a lot of different ways. One of the ways you do that is changing the trend line in an industry. And your product launch can do that, use influencers. If you have an influencer in your space and the your, your new product launch has, some unique attributes that are, making it interesting.
[00:28:22] What’s old is new again, frequently. And and this happens a lot in fashion. The current, as we record this current popular, jeans for young ladies that I keep seeing them wear, I remember seeing in the eighties or nineties they were called mom jeans. I think they still call ’em mom jeans and they is a specific style, but it was a popular 20 years ago.
[00:28:43] And this is a fashion, standard playbook, which is make the old thing trendy or new again, don’t change the product at all. Just re let it reemerge as the, a new trend. And I think that’s an easy and obvious one. Couple others and then we can wrap up is, make it cheaper.
[00:28:57] If the cost structure has changed inside of, manufacturing, if there’s a way in which you can make your item cheaper, for goodness sakes, right now, when inflation is just going crazy all around the world, I would think that making your product cheaper is, would be a huge win. You might have to do that just to keep your margins and your prices stable.
[00:29:16] But if you can do it to the consumer advantage and make the product, substantially less costly to them, and obviously that’s a great way to iterate. Final one would be to make it digital, and of course, that’s the ultimate, cost reduction strategy. Take it from physical atoms to digital bits and allow for the cost structure to fall because of that reality.
[00:29:38] So that’s the list. That’s 12 items. Any thoughts on those final couple?
[00:29:44] Michael: Yeah. Make it cheaper. Just needs to, you just need to be. So it sounds so obvious, but I’ve just seen it so many times. Don’t just reduce the price you sell it for. I see that so much. From people that I would’ve expected to know better.
[00:29:57] I just panic sets in. So start with the construc. . And if you can’t bring your cost down, then you’re gonna have to sell out of that product and move on because, running things at ever decreasing profits. Yes. Squeeze profit margins now. Okay, so it wasn’t 20%, 30% margin, maybe it’s 10% less.
[00:30:13] It’s gotta have a degree of stability to it. So that’s all I would say. , it sounds the obvious thing to say. The other thing I, again, I’m not saying anything we haven’t said before, and you are the master at teaching this, but Physical product sellers, I’m always trying to bind the drum for what you do, which is adding digital products.
[00:30:28] People just don’t seem to do it. And I think that’s such a missed opportunity. And again, to the point of the ultimate in low cost to the point of just making about price. It is just something to really take seriously now. If you can add an eBooks, your mix or anything, a community that you get paid for, so therefore it’s a product, not just a marketing thing.
[00:30:47] Anything at all that’s digital. I think it’s just now is a great time to look at it really. Yeah, totally. I’ve got one final point, which is really to try and pull these together, which I think is, somebody I know you, and which is Alex’s a hundred million dollar offers book, and he’s got this thing called the value equation.
[00:31:02] I can show it in the video here if you’re not, if you can’t see it because you’re listening to the podcast version, basically it’s a sort of C source. So you’ve got, at the top of it, you’ve got the dream outcome multiplied by the perceived likelihood of achievement on the top, divided by the time delay, times the effort and sacrifice.
[00:31:18] Now, you talked about making it easier, that kind of thing. So for example, if you could say you could get a product that promises to get rid of the headache you’ve had for 20 years, and people really believe that it’s gonna happen, it’s instant because it’s a pill and then the effort and sacrifice is very low because you just go, click and it costs you $20 and Amazon delivers it.
[00:31:35] That’s why things like headache pills make people billions of dollars because the dream outcome. is very high. The perceived likelihood of achievement is very high cuz people trust that it works as they’ve had that experience or they believe, an influencer authority figure in your marketing or whatever reason that is.
[00:31:52] And then the time divided by the time delay and the effort and sacrifice. So that equation is really worth running everything past and seeing how much you can push the, the desirable things and reduce the friction. And, yeah, that’s, it’s not easy to do, but that’s I think that the thing that pulls together, the concepts you discover today.
[00:32:10] Yeah.
[00:32:10] Jason: This is fun times. I’ll tell you one final reason to relaunch a tried and true product, and I think this is probably, if I could make one argument for why you should consider, redoing and reviving your hits of the past. It’s for this reason when. Redo or revive a prior success.
[00:32:30] It gives you the opportunity to step into current marketing practices. This is really important to think through. If you marketed a product 10 years ago with the tools that were appropriate and the systems and, online selling strategies that were appropriate at the time, you missed out on a ton of awesome ways to market your product because in the last 10 years, things, evolve and the competitive space of online marketing is very different.
[00:32:58] To relaunch your product in today’s marketplace is to learn new techniques and strategies, tools for successful marketing. And by doing that, you’ll bring yourself into the current era of, of digital marketing. You know that story we started with, where the person went from that stable business for 30 years certain level, and then.
[00:33:18] Really enhance it. Part of that journey was learning new marketing strategies and techniques. And we too can do that. And we can do it with tried and true winning products. And I think that’s probably the biggest, aha. For many of us, for myself included, to think about as we think about what the use case or rationale for relaunching and redoing, tried and true winning product.
[00:33:38] Yeah.
[00:33:39] Michael: I like it. I think it’s a very uplifting topic because I think it’s about finding the gold buried, in your own back garden. You’ve neglected and it’s, It’s always an important exercise to go through. Even if you don’t find something, it’s gonna force you to think things through in a refreshed way.
[00:33:53] And I think that’s just never bad to revisit. Who are we trying to sell to? Are we really serving them well? Do our products really work? Even if what you conclusion all of that is actually no, we shouldn’t revive any of our products. You’ve made a decision and you’re gonna move on. So that’s really important.
[00:34:07] But to your point, often there is golden lamb, there are hills or buried in the garden or whichever metaphor I’m wrapping myself up in now. So before I wrap myself up in, in mixed metaphors, we better wrap up there. . Jason, thank you for an excellent topic. It’s not often discussed cuz it’s not sexy news, shiny objects, but to the point you’re making.
[00:34:23] It’s, yeah, it can be super powerful and I’ve certainly seen people have a lot of success with that. And, so great topic. So I just say to anyone listening, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcast or Google, wherever else you are. Come and join the family. We’ve got increasingly large numbers of subscribers on Spotify.
[00:34:41] The trends are going satisfying upwards line. Come join us and thanks so much for listening.
[00:34:46] TEL Outro: That was the E-Commerce Leader podcast with Michael Viy in London, England, and Jason Miles in Seattle, Washington. If you liked this content, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on your podcast app for free resources, including PDFs and videos on topics like traffic products and sales channels. Just go to www dot the e-commerce leader.com.
[00:35:12] No hyphens, just as it sounded. Thanks so much for listening.