Episode Summary
In episode 21 of the 7 Figures Beyond podcast, Greg chats with Garrett and Sarah from Duncan and Stone, founders who have successfully ventured into the memory book and journal market. The conversation delves into innovative strategies to boost average order value (AOV), a crucial metric for their direct-to-consumer brand. Their story began unexpectedly, transitioning from unrelated careers to entrepreneurship driven by personal needs and community feedback. Key strategies discussed include targeting customers with complementary products, using upsell techniques, and adjusting free shipping thresholds to encourage larger orders. They emphasize understanding customer behavior and preferences to fine-tune offerings and maximize revenue.
Key Takeaways
- Customer Insights: Leveraging customer feedback and buying patterns to refine product offerings and marketing strategies is essential.
- Complementary Products: Introducing related products to customers based on their initial purchases can significantly increase the average order value.
- Strategic Pricing and Promotions: Adjusting free shipping thresholds and creating bundled offers can incentivize higher spending.
- Data-Driven Decision Making: Employing tools to analyze customer data and shopping habits helps in making informed business decisions.
- Brand Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Focusing on what makes their brand unique and valuable to customers, rather than imitating competitors, is vital for sustained growth.
Episode Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Garrett Peters LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrettlpeters/
Sarah Autry LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-autry-421894216/
Duncan & Stone: https://www.duncanandstone.com/
HiTide: https://gohitide.com/
Episode Transcript
Greg: 0:27
All right. Hey everyone. Welcome to episode 21 of the 7 Figures Beyond podcast. Hope everyone is having an amazing day. Today I’m going to be chatting with two of my favorite people. We’ve got Garrett and Sarah here from Duncan and Stone. Both are the founders of their brand. Garrett is the current CEO and Sarah is the creative director, although I would argue that Sarah probably runs the company. Is that true?
Sarah: 0:57
Basically Power behind the throne, you know.
Greg: 1:01
Oh, I love it. So these two and their company are absolutely killing it In the memory book kind of journals game. They literally have anything that you can well maybe not everything you can think of, everything I can think of so you should go check them out. Today We’ve got a really awesome discussion planned. We’re going to be talking about creative and useful ways to increase your average order value. We haven’t really had a discussion yet on the podcast all about growing AOV.
Greg: 1:34
Most brand founders and marketers know that in order to scale a D2C brand, you have to play several games or pull several levers, and one of those is growing average order of value. So I am super pumped to dive in today. So, garrett and Sarah, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedules to be with us. Sure, of course, before we get started, could each of you take a few minutes and introduce yourself to our listeners and share just a little bit about your personal story, your journey and kind of what you’ve done to get to where you are today, sarah, I’ll let you take that.
Garrett: 2:15
Start or keep us off.
Sarah: 2:15
Sure. So I graduated from the University of Arkansas almost 15 years ago now with a degree in elementary education, so absolutely zero percent related to what I’m doing now. And that’s actually after I graduated, stephanie and I Garrett’s wife, one of our other co-founders that’s where we met working at a nonprofit and became friends, and so from there we actually both started our families and had kids and decided to leave our jobs and stay home. And so over the years Stephanie and I talked a lot about how we wanted to do better at keeping memories for our kids. Where do we put all the photos, the cute stories?
Sarah: 2:56
I always tease Stephanie because I knew her kids’ milestones and she didn’t like she couldn’t remember their first words, but I would. So I was like you need something to write this down, but there was so much out there in the market that was just really cheesy. And so one day we were at a play date. Our kids were drawing with chalk in the sidewalk chalk and we started drawing out an idea for a baby book. What would be a baby book we actually wanted to use? So, even though Stephanie and I were both teaching dropout, we kind of came full circle of the entrepreneurship game and going, what would matter to us, what’s something we could be passionate about, a product that we could be passionate about, and that was kind of how we launched the company. And then, on a personal note, our fourth co-founder is my husband, garland. We have three kids together. We live here in Fayetteville, best friends with the Peters. Garland, we have three kids together. We live here in Fayetteville, best friends with the Peters Garrett.
Garrett: 3:51
Now you can share your side of things Absolutely. My career kind of journey was really all in the space of Walmart and Sam’s Club, and so I spent until we launched Duncan and Stone. I spent 13, 14 years working with brands at Walmart and Sam’s Club and I love that. I loved working in sales, working in that sort of space, but I was watching and seeing these brands grow and do really cool things and I was helping them go win at big retailers.
Garrett: 4:18
But at the back of my mind I’m like wouldn’t that be kind of sweet if you could do this yourself? And so I’m just have you know, stephanie and I have always been like interested in a lot of different things, and when the idea of Duncan and Stone kind of came to be and Sarah and Stephanie are starting to envision what this could be, I saw the success that they were going to have and I was just like I’m not going to let this happen without me Dang it. And so I was like let’s do this together. And, like Sarah said, we launched a business with two families in 2019 and 2020 and have been rocking and rolling ever since. And so we also have Stephanie and I also have three kids as well and live in Fayetteville. That’s awesome.
Greg: 5:02
So a lot of companies that I talked to like this term that I’ve heard before. It’s like accidental business owner, right. It’s like we see a need, we hate everything that’s out there, we want to go make something better, and then they kind of fall into it, right. And then all of a sudden they have this business that’s starting to work and take off and that sounds exactly like your story. I love it, right. And then all of a sudden they have this business that’s starting to work and take off and that that sounds exactly like your story.
Garrett: 5:27
I love it. Yeah. Yeah, there’s something along with like with that, and I think they’re there for your listeners that are like hey, I want to start out my own business, or I mentioned this or that. I think it always starts with what problem are you solving? Like, what are you actually going to solve and bring to the world? And Sarah and Stephanie just had the right mindset and the right kind of background to say, hey, we can solve some of these problems, let’s launch a business to do that.
Greg: 5:52
I love it. I love it so much. So, sarah, just really quick before we dive in, did you even teach at all? You said you met Stephanie at a nonprofit, so did you do any sort of teaching?
Sarah: 6:04
So she and I both did the same master’s program through the university, and so you teach for a year while you’re still in school.
Greg: 6:10
Got it Okay.
Sarah: 6:11
God bless the teachers. Like I finished that year and I was like I can’t do it. This is so much, which is why we we make products for teachers. We love teachers, just not me. But thank you for doing it to someone else.
Greg: 6:23
Seriously like they are the real heroes. I’ll tell you what I love it Cool, cool, All right, so let’s jump in. Kind of the first thoughts that I wanted to share is I think that most marketers out there, most early stage business owners, most marketers, really understand the idea of average order value, why it’s important for a brand. But could you talk about specifically why it’s important for your business and why you obsess over that? Why was that something that you wanted to talk about today?
Sarah: 7:01
Yeah, I actually love that you use the word obsessed, because I started our 2024 meeting year with telling the team this is my goal for the year. I really want to dive into the AOV situation and figure out it’s painted on the wall.
Greg: 7:14
There’s a big sign AOV.
Sarah: 7:17
I came to the meeting with a printout, with my plan, and the team was like, oh, wow, she really means it. I was like, yeah, I’m doing it. So I say to our team pretty frequently like I don’t want to leave money on the table. So when we’re talking about marketing strategy or, for me specifically, product creation, I’m looking at it through that lens Are we leaving money on the table from the customer experience? So, for instance, in 2023, we had 3.6 million in revenue, which was about 114,000 individual sales right, which was great. That was an increase of 55% year over year. But I did the math that if just half of those orders added 10 more dollars to their actual order, we would have increased our overall revenue by $570,000. So we would have jumped up to almost 4.2 million just by getting them to add $10 more to their cart.
Sarah: 8:10
Yes. So after running that math I was like, hey, especially in our product category, $10 is not a huge ask. That’s an easy thing to accomplish. Now we just have to figure out how we’re targeting those customers and what exactly that looks like.
Greg: 8:24
That’s awesome, yeah, garrett, anything else there.
Garrett: 8:27
I’ll add into that, like I was thinking back to, when we launched our business in 2020, we officially started selling products online in spring of 2020. And for context for your listeners is, you know, we launched our business on Amazon. We made that decision for right or wrong, that we were going to launch our business and start on Amazon as a unknown brand you know out there in the marketplace and Amazon has been a great channel for us, obviously over the years. Well, you know, fast forward a couple of years, you know, say 2022 ish, we start looking at our business of going, specifically our website and our direct to consumer kind of business and going.
Garrett: 9:08
We have not been intentional and strategic with the way we’re thinking about that side of our business, especially when it comes to AOV. And so you know, for us, we can get into the nuts and bolts and I’d love for Sarah to speak to exactly how that’s played out for us over the last few years. But it became it was like a light bulb, at least for me, it was really a light bulb moment of like, wow, what does that look like for us to drive that channel where it is a more profitable channel for us, and so for us. It’s like we have more control over that and are able to do different, more strategic things with our customer on our website, and so it was a switch for our team to start focusing that way, and obviously Sarah’s taken us to that next level this year of like, hey, let’s get very tactical and think about exactly how we can raise the bar and increase our AOV.
Greg: 10:03
Yeah, I love that and, like you mentioned, kind of those tactical things, a lot of brands, just you know, they throw up a website like I’m going to sell what I’m going to sell, and they don’t really kind of have a strategy behind growing AOV at the end of the day. And so I love that. What I mean, what are you guys going to do if you hit your AOV target this year? Is Garrett going to get a tattoo of AOV on his lower back?
Sarah: 10:28
Probably Don’t tempt him with a good time. I can’t say that.
Garrett: 10:37
There’s no telling what I’ll do.
Greg: 10:42
It’s funny. So what are some of those tactical things like? What are some of the basic things that you’ve done over the last few years to grow your average order value? Like?
Sarah: 10:52
these are the things that all brands should be doing, no matter the industry, the size that they should be working on and thinking about every day so you know, whenever I think through this idea of like not leaving money on the table, part of that is, theoretically, what if the customer was willing to spend more money and we just didn’t target them with the right product or with the right strategy? But actually they had the money and were willing to do it. We just didn’t do it correctly. So some of those things that we have instituted the first thing was the funnel approach for products. So, for instance, really thinking through each product and composing, like, what is the typical customer for that product? Is this an item that people are usually buying for themselves or is it typically a gift? Based off of the item that they’re buying? What do we think that they’re interested in? Like, if they’re buying a travel journal, okay, we know this is someone who’s adventurous, they’re doing really fun things. What is their life season? Right? What would be the natural next buy for that person? For instance, if someone buys an engagement journal from us, then we’re automatically going to retarget them for the anniversary journal. If you buy our legacy journal, which is like an autobiography journal for someone who’s getting older, then we’re going to retarget that person for a grandparent memory book, basically, going wherever you start with, how can we get you to more of our products and making sure that we’re pushing that next right thing for that customer? Let’s see. And then also so for us, practically, that looks like being strategic.
Sarah: 12:17
On our website, if you’re on our pregnancy journal page, we’re going to have right below that a link for our baby journal. So it’s like hey, clearly someone’s having a baby. This thing is something that you’re going to want to have. You thought about that, or, garrett, you can talk more about. We’ve been discussing a lot with our add to cart. What does that in the game experience look like when the customer gets there? If they haven’t done it? What does your cart look like? Gary, can you talk a little bit about?
Garrett: 12:44
that A couple of really practical things that I would suggest folks to look into. I think for us, we run our business on Shopify and so there’s obviously lots of great apps and things you can add out there. We started using Lifetimely this was a year or two ago just for us to understand the consumer journey. You know, like what are their buying trends, what are they buying together, like just really understanding the entire picture of the kind of buying process. And, um, the other piece with that is we, until recently, weren’t using any sort of upsell apps and so, um, specifically post-purchase you know, suggestions, post-purchase surveys, like giving them in the extra kind of step. Once they check out, you can add another cart, another item to your cart, or even on the product display page, like you know, making those suggestions. Like Sarah said, hey, let’s build out, based on the lifetime data, we can see what they’re purchasing together or what their second purchase may be. Let’s, let’s kind of prompt them for that Specifically. If they add that to their cart, they’re getting a suggestion for another item. So it’s all about building that basket. I think the way that we’re thinking about is how can we continue to get our customers to build that basket to add another item, get over that shipping threshold as well.
Garrett: 14:10
And the other piece that shame on me for not knowing exactly how to do this, but specifically around our free shipping, we had an arbitrary I think it was $65 until recently, sarah, we just had this number of. That seems like the good number, a good number. Who even knows how we came up with that at the time, but it was just kind of sitting out there. Well, there’s some actual, like like you know, structural things you can go through to get to what the actual number should be, you know, based on the product cost of goods and this and that and marketing spend. And so we finally got to a place of oh, this should be our, our right, shipping them, free shipping, you know, kind of threshold. So for us, if we can get people over that $50 mark and they’re adding an item or two, that’s way, I mean, that’s so much better for our business, you know, to get that. And so we just got more intentional about how we were building it out.
Sarah: 15:09
You know, ultimately, A practical note on that free shipping change. So we basically went through and ran the math, like Garrett said, we’d been at 65. Average cost of one of our journals is about $30, 35. I think our AOV was $36 for 2024, sorry, 2023. So we basically discussed if that basically equates to give or take one journal, what do we need to change the free shipping threshold to? To push that person to add that second journal, because adding another $30 item is not a small upsell, but you’re getting free shipping for adding that. You know the psychological piece of that. So we changed it to 49 and we’re newly tracking this data. But we’re definitely seeing a correlation for greater sales, greater AOV, since we’ve changed that free shipping threshold.
Greg: 15:54
Nice, I love that. I like that a lot. The free shipping thresholds one of the ones that definitely I’ve seen like it is a big driver for increasing average order value. If you could, if you could, I’m going to catch you off guard here. I know we kind of had a discussion beforehand. If you could think back right, what, what would be the number one thing that has driven the most growth in AOV that you’ve done over the last couple of years?
Sarah: 16:26
Let’s see. I would say from my side of things, on the creative side and product development, I have really tried to think through what are some easy upsell items that we can add that feel less expensive for the customer. So, for instance, making sure that we are filling out our initial product line was anywhere from probably $38 to $45 per journal, right. So I intentionally created journals over the last 18 months that hit more of that $20 to $25 threshold. That way, if we needed to get them to a certain free shipping threshold or if there’s just a psychological number in mind, it feels way less like it’s taking from the customer if you’re adding just an extra $20 journal versus another $35, $45 journal, if that makes sense. $20 journal versus another $35, $45 journal, if that makes sense.
Sarah: 17:22
We’re also like so looking toward 2024, we are about to launch blank journals that’ll cost like $10 or small add-ons, like, if you’re buying our anniversary journal, we’re going to promo you our vow books where you can write your vows. Now, those cost us next to nothing because they’re tiny, but we can sell them for $10. And if you’re buying that anniversary journal as a gift for your spouse or for a friend, that’s an easy thing to add on and go. Hey, that doesn’t feel painful to give away that $10. And wow, look at this gift bundle that I just created, which is another thing that we do. A lot of gift bundles of going. Instead of buying these two things separately or just buying one, you can buy them both and we’ll give you 15% off. But finding those creative ways to go, here are some small things we can add on that make the process of adding more to your cart feel enjoyable and adventurous instead of being like oh, I just overspent.
Greg: 18:11
I just overspent Yep.
Garrett: 18:13
Yeah, I love the way Sarah lined that out and I would completely echo that. Is the way that we’ve built out our kind of product mix and the offerings that we can give our customers, like adding some lower retail price and then just being strategic about the way we’re bundling it, the way we’re communicating. It’s at every level right. And you talk about this, greg. It’s like that brand engagement around what are we saying around our email? How are we building out our website? What are they seeing on the product display pages and the card? And it’s just you’re constantly just guiding them along that process. Sarah’s leadership around the way that we’re structuring new items and adding in these new little pieces is like really building out our brand and not just like we sell. We sell just journals, but we also sell these other things too, and so this idea of accessories and kind of upsell sort of items that add value and they feel like an easy win without breaking the bank, you know, is kind of the way we’re thinking about it. Yeah, I love that.
Sarah: 19:22
I really look at it like, even though we’re e-commerce, the cycle, the psychology behind the customer journey is very similar to brick and mortar. So we are basically trying to offer a digital end cap. What is that thing? You go to the journal section, you pick it up and right there on that end cap is a set of pins that you’re like oh, I don’t actually have a cute pin and I like those, and it’s only five bucks, let’s do that. We’re just doing that in a digital version.
Greg: 19:46
Interesting. That’s a great way to look at it. So do you peruse the aisles of Barnes Noble to see kind of what they’re doing?
Sarah: 19:53
Yes, absolutely. I go in there, I check out what’s on their physical end cap. Is there something we’re missing? Especially, you know, when you’re talking product adjacent things like pins or photo books or sticky tabs, all of that stuff, I’m like, hey, we could do that, we could add that to our carts. You know we should do that too.
Greg: 20:10
That’s awesome. You talk a few times about customer journey. How do you guys stay close to your customer, like what do you do to talk to them and get insights and ideas and those kind of things?
Sarah: 20:25
So we sell on Amazon, our own website through Shopify and also Etsy, and our Etsy customer base is very engaging.
Sarah: 20:34
We get a lot of feedback from them because it’s a lot of, um, small businesses it’s. I think they feel much closer to the sellers that they’re buying from, so they will give us suggestions. And hey, have you guys ever thought of this? And uh, their reviews are very detailed. I bought this for my grandma. She’s 102. I want to get her story down before she died. You know like this is such a great family heirloom.
Sarah: 20:55
So we’re getting tons of specific feedback of like are they buying for themselves? Are they buying it for a gift? Is this their? Has this become their go-to baby shower gift? Awesome, what else can we? What’s similar to that that that person needs to still be bringing to the next baby shower? Now they’ve got two Duncan and Stone items that they’re bringing with them. We’ve also done some market strategy around getting an analysis of our customer, our typical customer. We call her Kate. We know her general age bracket. We know her um general hobbies, like she’s a mom, she probably has little kids. We know her income. So that also that helps us give strategy to our pricing of our future products. What can she make, what is she willing to spend, and we’ve used that to give a lot of direction in our product development and how we’re reaching that customer.
Garrett: 21:44
Yeah, the other piece that I would add to that is something that you suggested, greg is no commerce and using that for surveys, and I think that we’re trying to get better at it and just figuring out the best way to get customer feedback. I’m sure there are other things we could be doing as well. We really want to build out I have a vision of almost like a pop-up of sorts. When you come to our website, there’s brands doing some cool stuff around, pop-ups. Are you buying this as a gift? Just making it fun and kind of like engaging for the customer.
Garrett: 22:17
But you know we’re we are intentionally thinking about, like our customer segmentation. We have been the last six months or a year going. We want to segment our customer better and be able to communicate them to them specifically how they want to be communicated email, sms, you know, whatever it looks like and then really building out the our, our engagement with them based on what they’re interested in, based on what they’re buying, you know. So, anyway, it’s it’s a journey. We’re getting better at it, I feel like, but we’re just trying to use different tools and capture data as much as we can.
Greg: 22:56
Yeah Right, data is the big big thing these days is you’ve got to get it, you’ve got to know how to use it and then you’ve got to use it to your advantage. I know that we were introduced through Sendlane. I mean, sendlane recently just launched forms on their platform and they have built in the ability to collect that pre-purchase survey data as well. That’s pretty awesome and so like being able to capture that like who are you, why are you here, what are you shopping for? Like, what are your interests, and then being able to segment and build out almost like pre-customer workflows I don’t even know what I would call those New subscriber workflows. There you go, I knew it was there somewhere, I like that and and then be able to coach and nurture them can also help you increase your average order value as well. Right Cause they haven’t purchased yet. So help them understand what they need, what people like them typically buy, and then how they use it.
Sarah: 23:56
Yeah, one of the things that was really helpful for us as we were getting to know um, our target customer, was that a lot of the time she’s buying this journal um for someone else and not for herself. So understanding like this isn’t just about the product, it’s about the psychology of how it makes her feel to give that to someone. So when we’re reading our reviews and what we’re hearing, they’re saying, oh, the person I gave it to loved it so much. But they’re also saying, I loved giving that gift and making that person feel special. It’s not just about the giving the recipient, it’s about how it makes the buyer feel. So even with that, with our marketing language, we’re using that you know the gift that they’ll never forget, or what you know. We’re using that um, the you know the gift that they’ll never forget, or what you know we’re. We’re using that language in marketing, knowing that that’s going to speak to how it will make them feel to buy and gift that to someone else.
Greg: 24:45
I love that feels, feel make people buy it, really do Right.
Garrett: 24:51
It’s true, it’s so true.
Greg: 24:54
I love that. So I know we talked about a lot and maybe you don’t have an answer for this at this point because we’ve just kind of gone pretty deep. But what other things? How do you figure out what else needs to be done to grow your AOV Eventually? Some point you’re you’re going to exhaust all of those ideas. So, like, what are next steps for someone who’s done all of those things?
Sarah: 25:17
I think we spent, you know, the first couple of years that we launched playing it pretty safe, because we were just trying to make sure that the business stayed in business right, can we pay salaries, can we keep the lights on, so to speak, even from a digital e-commerce perspective and I feel like the last two years we’ve really been able to be more adventurous and going why not, let’s try some things, different types of sales and discounts and playing around with the shipping costs. So I mean that would definitely be one piece of advice that I would give is once you feel comfortable enough to start moving some pieces, just try everything. Did you hear about some other company doing some promotion? Great See, if that works for you, maybe it’s not a good fit. You know, for some people social media is like a huge selling market, um. For other people it’s like email. Email marketing is where it’s at, um. But we’ve had to try a lot of different things to kind of figure out what works best for our customer base I like that.
Garrett: 26:13
Yeah, that’s really good. I wouldn. I would just add to Sarah echo what Sarah’s point is. I think we’re constantly having a mindset of humility in the sense of we don’t know what we don’t know regarding e-commerce and regarding what other brands are doing, and so I think, having a open mindset around, oh, this brand is seeing great success with X, y and Z. I didn’t know about that tool. Let’s check it out. Let’s try it. Like Sarah said, let’s test out some things. I just had a call this morning. There’s a company out there called Hightide. It’s like a social media kind of like build your list, but in a super engaging way, and I don’t fully understand what the heck that really means.
Sarah: 27:09
But I want to learn about it.
Garrett: 27:11
You’re the worst. So I mean we’re constantly learning like, oh, what are some new cool ways to to build your email list or build your SMS list, and there’s all the things that we have are there. So we’re just trying to get better at going. I want them to work together in a very like, seamless way, in a very engaging way with our customer, and we ultimately want to add value. We’ve always taken the stance as a brand of going. We don’t want to bombard our customer. We just haven’t built that sort of brand and business where we’re going to email you every day. We’re just not going to do it. So, hey, we’re going to stay true to what you know. We think our customer wants and we want as consumers as well, and so we just are constantly being intentional about trying different things and working with different partners and, you know, getting those pieces in place, and so we’re constantly learning.
Greg: 28:06
So, yeah, I love that we don’t know what we don’t know Exactly. I’ve talked some over the last you know month or so about this knowledge gap. Right, I talk about it on LinkedIn. It’s like everyone has knowledge gaps and there’s lots of different ways to fill those knowledge gaps. You could work with an agency, you could work with a freelancer, you could join a mastermind group, you could go to a highly specialized training. It’s important to be able to try to fill those knowledge gaps as fast as you can and test, test, test, test, test. And that’s what I love about you guys. You’re always talking about some new tool that you want to test. Right, and it’s amazing. So you know what are we? We’re a quarter and a month into the year. There’s still a lot of you know uncertainty and volatility right now in the e-commerce space for a lot of D2C brands. What kind of predictions do you guys have through 2024, 2025 about where things are going, what people should be thinking about? I’m always curious to hear what brand owners have to say about that.
Sarah: 29:17
From the creative side, especially watching what’s been happening with interest rates and we’re going into election season, which always leads to all kinds of housing markets, e-commerce, whatever can leave it unsteady, and so we’ve seen in a lot of retail spaces that that average order volume or the amount of orders are going down. So I have kind of been pre-planning for that and intentionally creating. We’ve got nine new items that are coming this summer and they are all on that lower end of our price point, so hoping, basically, if people are willing to spend less money, we can get you there too. We are a premium brand, but we can also offer some smaller premium products that still get you the feeling of this high end piece that you wanted but is not going to go over your budget when you’re trying to shrink it.
Garrett: 30:04
Yeah, it’s so good. I think there continues to be a lot of like volatility and just this being in the e-commerce space, I’m just so interested and fascinated by how just the journey, the customer experience and engagement looks for brands. I find it very fascinating, just because it’s just so, the lines continue to be blurred, I feel like regarding the process and so Amazon and Google, ads and Facebook and you know website, and it’s just who knows where you’re? Like, how do you track all that stuff? Like?
Greg: 30:41
you don’t you don’t.
Garrett: 30:43
We talk to you guys about this all the time. It’s like you know, uh, that’s why we’ve always had the position of like we want to make sure we’re being busy, like have all of these boxes checked and people are seeing us out there, and we have all these things running at the same time. But I think, regarding our business in particular is like I’m I kind of originally, like about a year or two ago, I was really focused Like we have to drive more volume through our website and I think that we definitely want to continue to do that. However, I also get a lot of feedback from mentors in the space that are like why does it matter? I mean, if you’re growing your brand on Amazon and other channels, walmartcom, whatever it may be who cares really? Like I mean, there’s arguments to be made both ways, and so I’ve kind of taken this new approach in some ways of like to be made both ways, and so I’ve I’ve kind of taken this new approach in some ways of like, hey, we want to be available for wherever that person should, is, is shopping, and and um, you know, anyway, I think there’s the way that we manage our business, the way brands are managing their entire like business and different channels, I think is going to get one.
Garrett: 31:54
I think it’s going to get more and more complicated to truthfully messy, very messy. It’s like it’s just more mess and more like just noise in the system, um, which I think can be overwhelming, or like how do you manage that? Et cetera. But we’re basically like taking the approach of we want to, we want to be a brand that people can buy anywhere. So, anyway, that’s kind of the space that we’ve taken.
Greg: 32:23
I love that. Those are some kind of great thoughts to end on. I mean, I’ve posted a couple of times on LinkedIn like this fictional customer journey right, someone visits the website, they shop around, they leave, they get a retargeting ad. They come back, they shop around, they add, they get a retargeting ad. They come back, they shop around, they add a product to the cart and then they leave. They see that you’re on Amazon, they add it to the shopping cart and they leave, and then they get a direct mail piece. And then they come back to your website and they start the checkout and they see that shipping’s too expensive and they leave. And then they get a mailer. They see that you’re at Costco, they go in on Saturday and they make the purchase.
Greg: 32:59
Right, it’s like who on earth gets credit for that? It’s a dang mess. And you know our, our, our guest next week um, she’s the VP of marketing for a brand called Ketter. They are uh, like, uh, they hate the word plastic. It’s resin, resin sheds. They’re not plastic. Resin’s a fancy word for plastic, in case anyone doesn’t know that. But they sell in Costco, right, it’s like we drive so much traffic through SEO and revenue just kind of inches up. It’s like it’s trickling down to Home Depot. People want their shed tomorrow, right, they want it on Saturday. They want to be able to build it. They don’t want to have to wait seven days for it to ship, and so it’s kind of just this holistic, very muddied customer journey and it’s really hard to track. And I think it’s going to be an important thing for brands to embrace this year and figure out how to make everything work together to grow the brand overall. So I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Any final words of wisdom before we call it?
Garrett: 34:07
Sarah, what do you got? I know you got some wisdom.
Sarah: 34:10
No, I feel like we kind of already talked about you know the most important things. Do the work to get to know your customer. Don’t be afraid to try new things, to step out of your norm, really be thinking more about their, like you were saying, about their journey, even through the website. Why are they dropping things? Why are they picking things up Then, just like, what’s a good product? What are my competitors selling? I’ll sell what they’re selling. What is their experience and how are they getting to your product? What do they actually want out of it? What’s the psychology behind them buying that? Besides, just well, that’s a cool product. Think I’ll get it.
Greg: 34:43
Yeah, I like that, Garrett. I know you probably have some words of wisdom.
Garrett: 34:49
Oh yeah, you know I always have wisdom ready to share at any time. I would say, you know, I would echo what you were just saying, greg, just a minute ago about you know the holistic mindset. I would say the caveat to that in my mind and the wisdom I have for your listeners or other brand owners is figure out what makes sense for you, though. It’s like this being you can’t be all things to all people, you can’t be all things to all people, and I think that we have to. This is a conversation we’re constantly having internally is like, yes, this new opportunity has come our way, it sounds interesting and great, but also does it make sense? Does it make sense for our kind of strategy and where we’re going and etc. Etc. So I mean it. So I mean it’s just like having you know, really conviction around, like who are we and what are we going to stand for.
Garrett: 35:43
That probably doesn’t mean you sell on all channels at all times. Maybe it does, but we’re not a dude wipes brand right now. So like we just know who we are currently and so we’re going to focus toward that end right now. Now, in a year or two it might be different, but I would say you have to get alignment on that. You have to get like a strong foundation of like here’s how we’re going to play and here’s who we are. And then, once you decide that, then it’s like go all in on that, go go for it in a major way. But, um, I think that’s in a I, I, I struggle with that too. Like as a, as a brand owner, is like gosh, we should be doing all these other things, like what are we not doing the right stuff? And I always come back to that’s not for us, that’s not for us right now and that’s okay, yeah.
Sarah: 36:33
I would add one thing onto that Garrett cause. I love what you’re saying about identifying your brand and your journey and not just trying to be everybody else. I think it’s really easy to look at the market in general and say what’s selling. Really well, let’s make that. But we have tried really hard to go why are customers coming to us, why are we retaining them and what makes us unique? And let’s put out more of that specific product and capture those customers instead of trying to recreate the wheel with what someone else is doing so good.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
