Welcome to YourMarketingPodcast – How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days. This is your step-by-step guide to quickly launch an eCommerce store and start seeing those sales roll in! 

Hi Everyone! Welcome to our first podcast. I’m your host Ishani DePillo. 

I’m going to start with some background on myself and the hardworking team behind this new podcast – yourmarketingpodcast. I have been in the marketing industry for over 10 years now and I’ve actually been working with the yourmarketingpodcast team for almost just as long. In 2017, I started a digital marketing agency, called “Your Marketing People” with this same exact team.  Talk about a crazy and long partnership and friendship! And since our inception in 2017, we have been handling digital marketing for a range of clients – from small budgets up to multi-million dollar ones. And we’ve been fortunate to have a lot of experience working with eCommerce clients. 

And to branch out our skillset, even more, we just recently launched, in January 2020, to be exact, an eCommerce store called Roam Often. And boy did I wish there was a podcast out there to help us get started with that new venture. 

Especially because this year has been a very strange one.

We’ve seen first-hand the devastation and turbulence that the COVID-19 also known as CoronaVirus has caused for many businesses across the world. It’s been quite uncertain, which is another reason why we wanted to start this podcast – to help store-front retailers successfully transition into an eCommerce store to help generate sales right now, during shutdown, and in the future. 

Everyone benefits from having an eCommerce store.

I’m a big fan of podcasts and I have wanted to get one started since 2017. Finally, after 3 long crazy years, we are here today! To talk about how you can get an eCommerce store up and running in less than 30 days and how to successfully sell online. With this podcast series, my hope is that you have a much smoother process than I did in launching an e-commerce store. We will walk you through every step of the process, from deciding on a product to sell to creating your eCommerce website, to marketing your product successfully, and if you have questions at any time, feel free to email us at team@yourmarketingpodcast.com. 

So let’s jump right in with today’s topic: Discovering a product to sell.

First thing’s first, what are you going to sell? It’s the big Kahuna of questions and makes all the difference in everything you do moving forward… like who is going to be your target audience or customer? What is your brand going to look like? Will it sell? Will it generate enough revenue and more importantly, profits?  It’s so important that you spend a lot of time figuring out the right product to sell.

It’s no secret that You have to sell a product that customers will want to buy, a product that has demand, that is different from what is currently on the market, and a product that will sustain profitability long term. That last one – sell a product that can sustain profitability long term – is important and one that we will cover on our upcoming podcasts.

But first, let’s start with how to generate product inspiration. There are 3 main ways to do this that we’ve discovered.

One way to garner inspiration is to use an application that predicts upcoming trends out there. They call this “trend hunting.”

Let’s go over a couple of our favorites:

• • Exploding Topics. I’m subscribed to their weekly email and always find the email very interesting. Exploding Topic’s technology analyzes millions of searches, conversations, and mentions across the internet. And then their algorithm identifies Exploding Topics before they take off. It’s free to sign up on ExplodingTopics.com. The application is fairly new in the space, so it doesn’t have a ton of suggestions every week, but you never know, it could spark an idea for you!
    • We have Joshua here the co-founder of Exploding Topics sharing some trends he’s recently discovered in the eCommerce space that you may want to take advantage of.
    • “There are a bunch of cool, really broader trends right now for eCommerce. Two examples of these meta-trends jump to mind. The first one being pet products. They are huge right now and taking off.  It makes sense because people are willing to spend more on these niche-pet products to look after their pets because they see them as family. We’ve detected like dog toothpaste – literally toothpaste for your dog, but not minty, it’s actually flavors that your dog will enjoy like chicken and meat.  And then another one right now is cat supplements that’s similar. Another one in the pet products sector is insect hotels, which are small wooden structures containing like logs and wood pieces that house different kinds of insects in your garden. That’s this broader pet trend; if you’re in eCommerce, pet market, and then one within that niche is a good one. And then another broader right now that is really relevant for eCommerce is bamboo products. And all kinds of products made from bamboo and I think this is taking off right now because people see it as a more sustainable alternative and people like the style. Specific examples of this are bamboo clothing, made of bamboo fabric; there are bamboo toothbrushes and even bamboo toilet paper made from the bamboo pulp. That’s another good trend for eCommerce – bamboo products. I see these all the time, these broader trends with specific opportunities within them because we are finding them for Exploding Topics. If you want more like that, there are loads of those that would be great for eCommerce products on ExplodingTopics.com. There are untapped, really.”
    • Those are some really cool ideas. Thanks for sharing your algorithm findings with us, Joshua. You know Joshua started Exploding Topics initially to help his own research and now he’s expanded that into an app and a newsletter all because people around the world have found the data so helpful.
  • Another is Kickstarter Trending Product. You’re probably pretty familiar with Kickstarter. But just in case for those who are not, Kickstarter is a funding platform where you propose a creative idea, product, or project, and communities come together to fund those ideas. It’s a great way to see what types of products and projects are popular. So head on over to Kickstarter.com to see what products are trending.
  • Another one is Pinterest. Pinterest, as you all know, is a popular social media platform where you can find visual ideas to pin onto your boards. People around the world use Pinterest for inspiration on things like cooking, crafting, traveling, and much more. Pinterest recently introduced trends.pinterest.com where you can view the top US search terms within the past 12 months. I highly recommend checking it out.
  • The last one I like to mention here is a big one! TrendHunter. Trendhunter.com leverages big data and AI to identify consumer insights and innovative opportunities. The site definitely has a lot to digest. So head on over and start poking around to get some really cool, out-of-the-box suggestions. Don’t be surprised if you spend hours on this site, absorbing all the creative trends. 
    • We spoke with Trent Hunter who gave us insight into how their platform can help business owners like you, determine what consumers really want to see in the future and here’s Ady with some Insider information:
    • “So we have over two hundred thousand people all over the world who are consistently scouring the internet, trying to find the latest trends. Now once they submit these articles or trends to Trend Hunter, they are not automatically going to go live, we do have a rigorous editorial panel that essentially parses down all of the clutter and really finds all the great gems that we have on our platform. Now the editorial panel will go through and make sure that everything that we’re publishing is new, that it has that editorial flair to it, and it is not something we’ve already covered on our platform. Now from there, the articles essentially go live on Trend Hunter and they’re tested against everyone that comes to our platform. So if you go to TrendHunter.com, you will notice that every single article is attached to a score and that consists of three main criteria. So what we’re really tracking on the back-end is, of course, the freshness, so when the article was published to our platform; we are tracking the popularity, which is essentially tracking how many eyes are on the article, how many clicks it is receiving, and then, of course, we are also tracking the activity. This is actually a little more robust and what we are tracking in terms of the activity is how long the readers are staying on the article, if they are clicking through the images, or even resharing that on their social media platforms. So once an idea is actually live and being published. On the back-end, we have our team of researchers and our research advisors who are actually looking at the popular ideas, but furthermore what they’re actually doing is trying to connect the dots between seamlessly unrelated ideas and once a researcher can gather enough information on a variety of trends, they can make those connections and create what we call our Consumer Insights. Now Consumer Insights is something that is actually not live on TrendHunter.com. Those are actually exclusive to the clients that we work directly with. And these are really the crown jewels of Trend Hunter and they’re essentially how we help brands find the next big idea and really understand what the underline Consumer’s desires are.”
    • Isn’t this so interesting to learn what goes on in the back-end? How Trend Hunter connect-the-dots to predict popularity of a product in the future. Thank you so much for sharing your insights with us Ady.

So those are the four “trend-hunting” applications I’m going to cover in this podcast, but there are definitely more. Head to yourmarketingpodcast.com/trendhunt to get an even larger list. And happy trend-hunting!

If trend-hunting isn’t your game, another way you can discover a product to sell is to draw from your own experiences, passions, interests, and pain points.

This is actually how we came up with our eCommerce store.

We had the mindset that we wanted to create an eCommerce store, but we weren’t quite sure about what we wanted to sell. We brainstormed ideas and asked ourselves, “What problem have we experienced?” That we wished there was a solution for. On a recent trip to Napa, one of our team members experienced having a tangled necklace that made her really late to dinner. She was frustrated and determined to find a solution, so it would never happen again. After much research and finding that she didn’t like what was currently on the market, she suggested creating a product to solve the issue of tangled necklaces. so we designed our own travel jewelry case. You can find this new product “The Wanderer” on Roam Often. 

Skip to: 14:46 To create a product using your own experience, write down:

• Your passions and interests. For instance, we love traveling, but maybe you love a certain sport or hobby.
• Then next to each of those passions and/or interests, write down what’s your challenges or pain points are for each one. It can be big pain points or small pet peeves. Basically, think about identifying a problem to solve. For us, it was, “tangled necklaces while traveling.”
• Then brainstorm solutions. Like, “jewelry travel case.” Then hop on Google, Amazon, or your search engine of choice and start exploring what is already out there in the market that could help you solve your problem. This is going into a little bit of competitive research that we will cover in our next podcast but it’s still good to start here to develop a complete product idea.

Skip to: 15:51 The third way to discover a product to sell is to actually start with an existing product and seeing what improvements would you make to this product to make it even better. So let me explain.

You don’t always need to reinvent the wheel.

Building off an existing product and finding ways to improve it, like upgrading the functionality, design, adding new features, or repurposing it for another benefit, is okay.

If you decide to go about improving an existing product, start by listing out:

• The products that you truly enjoy, that you’ve found to be worth the price you invested in it. You could even ask friends and family members for their favorite products too. Categorize each product like apparel, kitchenware, sports accessories, etc. The goal is to identify products that you truly enjoy but feel like they could be improved.
• Next to each product, make a note of what you would like to change, what you feel you could improve upon. Ask yourself:
  • What’s the biggest challenge that I’ve experienced with this product?
  • What would make this product even cooler?
  • What don’t I like about this product? What do I like about this product?
  • Think of design, colors, patterns, and even branding. Maybe you think the product could look cuter, or be used for something else that it isn’t currently being advertised as. Just changing a marketing angle might be a solid opportunity.
• Before you go down the route of building a product, make sure you check that there is no patent on the product. You can do a search online. But always consult a legal professional if you need further assistance or have questions.

And coming up on the last topic we will go over during this podcast – reselling.

Sometimes you don’t even need to start from scratch, you could just resell an existing product.

Maybe it’s hard to find a product in your area or in your country? Maybe you see the potential to resell an existing product with a different value proposition?

We spoke with Charith, the co-founder of the largest automotive performance parts eCommerce store in Canada. He was able to discover a missing piece in the automotive market and here is his experience:

“We felt like there was a whole segment or a whole sector where their needs weren’t being taken care of. A lot of the Canadian consumers were ordering from the US retailers, and we decided, ‘hey if we created a store, was upfront about the total cost, and made it free shipping, no customs, and duties, that you know, people would buy the product.’ So we built it.”

Okay, so once you know the demand is out there, then what? How do you choose what products or brands you want to resell on your eCommerce store? Charith from TDotPerformance reveals his strategy in brand selection and I think you might find it super helpful.

“So we’d simply looked up the search volume. We looked at which products had high demand, low competition, good margin, and good supply. And if we found a particular brand that had all four of those, we would focus on that initially. Nowadays it’s time to find something that’s all 4, so you may find some that are 3 out of 4,  but that’s how we focused on what to upload in terms of priority. Then we also looked at the competitive landscape to see who’s focusing on what and how can we enter the market. Being a company that doesn’t really hold any inventory and we’re dropshipping, we had a large array of different brands that we can look at because we weren’t limited to a specific few brands.”

Reselling provides many benefits such as you can typically get up and running faster since you aren’t waiting for research and production phases, you can purchase products at wholesale prices (depending on quantity), and you may not need to house or store any products if there are drop ship options, which saves you on cost and hassle. Plus, the product is currently selling elsewhere so it gives you an idea of how it will perform and there are typically assets already available to use, so you may not need to take photos or videos to start selling. A topic we will cover in another podcast.

The cons to Reselling are that your margins are typically smaller and can be tight, depending on the product. And there might be restrictions by the seller like you can’t offer promotions or sell below a certain price point. Additionally, the product isn’t truly unique. Meaning, your customers will probably shop around, so it’s essential that you’re price competitive as well as building brand loyalty. Because you want them to buy from you over the other guys. A great customer service experience can go a long way in getting repeat customers.

So we covered a lot in our first podcast of the Series. And there’s a lot of information here for you to digest. The most important thing to remember though is that you need to find a product that has demand and will be profitable for you to grow your new eCommerce business, which leads into what we will cover on our next podcast, next week – Do your research to evaluate product profitability. Because a product without profitability is not worth the effort. 

If you’re just starting out on your eCommerce journey, we urge you to sign up at yourmarketingpodcast.com/letsgo to receive email alerts with daily check-ins. It’s so easy to get distracted and derailed. And we want to see you launch your eCommerce store and crush your goals! These email alerts will keep you on task and come with even more resources because we can’t just cover it all on here. Thank you for listening to yourmarketingpodcast. See you next week!