Scaling Success in Ecommerce with Steven Pemberton

Episode 205 • 12th December 2024 • eCommerce Podcast • Matt Edmundson

EP - Steven Pemberton FOUNDERS

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Matt Edmundson: Well, hello and welcome to the eCommerce Podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. Now, this is a show all about helping you deliver eCommerce wow, as we like to say. Helping you do eCommerce just a bit better than maybe you are right now. Maybe you're looking for help. I don't know. The reason why you're here.

But if it's like me, I also run my own eCommerce businesses, and I just want to learn, I want to grow, I want to scale, I want to do all those amazing things. So we get to chat to amazing people, like today's guest, Mr. Steven Pemberton from Elevator, about his incredible journey in building successful eCommerce brands.

The good news is, I'm I've got my pen. I've got my paper. I'm going to take notes. I'm a bit old school, a bit analog, but I'm going to take some notes and hopefully learn some things along with your good selves as well. So welcome to the show. If this is your first time with us, thank you. Thank you for joining us.

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Because one, as we know, is never enough. Each boasting seven figures in revenue, and now he helps other businesses that have plateaued in eCommerce sales scale from six to seven figures and beyond with his company. Elevatum. Steven, welcome to the show, man. Great to have you on. How are we doing today?

Good, sir.

Steven Pemberton: Matt, thank you so much for having me. I'm great. I'm excited to be here. Honestly, your podcasting voice, I just have to say, is immaculate.

Matt Edmundson: Wow, that's a good way to start the podcast, butter up the podcast host. Well, thank you very much. We've worked hard on the podcast. My son, actually, I should probably not say this on the podcast airwaves, but my son, who is in his early twenties now, while he was at uni, would inevitably end up doing bits and bobs for the podcast, you know, some editing and stuff like that.

And he has, he has learned how to mimic my podcast voice. And so when we're sitting around the table, he'll just turn into podcast dad. Uh, and I find it quite funny. I love that. Yeah. So does he. He finds it quite funny as well, actually. But apparently I have a podcast voice, but it's kind of you to say.

Thank you very much. You're welcome. Whereabouts in the world are you?

Steven Pemberton: So I'm smack dab in the middle of the United States in Oklahoma.

Matt Edmundson: Ah, the musical.

Steven Pemberton: Yes.

Matt Edmundson: Very good. And are you an Oklahoma native or are you an import?

Steven Pemberton: No, I'm an import. So I'm originally from Tennessee. Tennessee is much prettier than Oklahoma.

Oklahoma is very flat. But one thing that Oklahoma does have is they have beautiful skies. Yes. Where I'm from in Tennessee, honestly, the sky's the same everywhere, but how you see it is different. It's all about perspective. And in Tennessee, I just had a lot of mountains around me. So I wasn't able to see what we like to call here in Oklahoma, big sky country.

So being here, the sunsets are amazing. The sunrises are also just absolutely incredible.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. I've never actually been to Oklahoma. I have been to Tennessee. I have been. Are you talking about the mountains between Tennessee and North Carolina? Yes. Yes. Yes. Beautiful, beautiful part of the world.

Um, I think I may have mentioned this before on the podcast. It's something that I like to admit to. I have also been to Dollywood, which is in those mountains. Yes, I

Steven Pemberton: love Dollywood. LAUGHTER

Matt Edmundson: Dollywood is phenomenal, by the way. If you're wondering whether you should go, yes, you should. Yes. Especially if you like Dolly's music, but listen, before we digress too far, tell us a little bit then about these two eCom businesses which you've built and sold.

What was, what were they?

ne who spearheaded it back in: 2018

r fast. So in fast forward to: 2018

Do you want to join me? And I told my wife, I said, absolutely not. I finally started working my way up the corporate ladder. I was making enough money for her to be a stay at home mom and to do all of the things that she wanted to do. We were able to take vacations, do all the fun stuff. So I said, why would we go back into business?

I just had a very tainted view. And so my wife being the amazing woman that she is, she did it anyway. She did not listen to me. She just decided, Hey, I'm going to do it anyways, despite who you are and what you're saying to me. And what was really interesting. I was watching her progress because honestly I was not a very supportive husband.

I was the direct opposite and she did it anyways. And I just remember one day, cause I was working on average 14 hours a day, so I just thought I was doing everything and then some. So one day I come home and I just worked a 14 hour shift and she was still up. And then the next morning I wake up and she was already up working and I went, okay, so let me do the math.

That means she at least has worked at 17 hours straight. And so I realized very quickly that just because the paycheck from her side wasn't as big as mine did not mean that she was not outworking me in every other statistical category. So I decided to start helping her out around the house and I watched her go from someone who was getting, she would get a one star review on Amazon and cry and get an A to Z claim or something would happen, get a, a Just any of those things that would happen in a normal eCommerce business and it would just devastate her too within a year.

So by: 2019

So That would be nice if it

Matt Edmundson: was.

Steven Pemberton: Yes, it would have been. But we were at 10 percent profit margin, so we didn't make a lot. Plus we had a financial backer that took half of it. Cause we didn't know how to structure deals or do any of those things back then. So we made less than I was making in a corporate job and in my corporate job, I didn't have to have four employees and all this overhead, like that was handled through the job.

So in: 2020

Cause we had figured out how to boost those profit margins. We were up around 25 percent and by August I thought, okay, we're going to do great. Now we're doing more. Uh, we're doing, we're doing more, we're making more money. And, and then in August, Amazon decided that they wanted to shut us down because we had used a, we had used someone to get a shipment.

And what was interesting is that they were selling us wholesale shipments and it was 15, 000. They had the lifestyle, right? So they're on Instagram showing how they've been doing it. They've done wholesale for a long time. And we decided to trust them with 15, 000. So we got that, that shipment in, but, and the thing was is they had, they had expressed authority to sell that stuff, but we didn't.

So because we were selling it and we didn't have the authority to sell it, that we got shut down. Huge thing. We're a hundred thousand dollars in debt. No income. Now I'm stressed out. I'm just like, okay, this is the end of my life. And it was, it was fascinating. Within the next 60 days, we ended up going on to Shopify.

This is where, for me, things really changed. It was because we went on to Shopify and our main channel at that time was Facebook. So Facebook shops, Facebook marketplace, channeling it all in through Shopify, mainly focused in home goods. And what ended up happening was that first month in business, we made 5, 000 profit by the end of that year.

So: 2020

And that was about a 50, 000 project. So it was really amazing to do those things. And it was just incredible to watch how you can shift skill sets. Like this is something I talk about a lot is people get so encapsulated in, well, I got to make this business successful. It's like, but if you look at Google, Google kills off their little mini businesses and mini ventures all the time.

Matt Edmundson: But the

Steven Pemberton: thing is that they shift personnel, but they also shift skill sets. So you may be learning in your eCommerce business and maybe it's not thriving to the point you want it to yet, and you're learning what you need for what's coming up next.

Matt Edmundson: That's super fascinating. So, uh, uh, tip number one, listen to your wife.

Yes. I think it's, it's, it's, it's fair to say. And I, I would probably echo that sentiment, Steven. I'm not going to lie. Always listen to the good lady wife because she genuinely knows best. I'm curious, why did your mum get started in Amazon? Was this just something she picked up? Was it a YouTube video she watched?

Was it a course that she did? Because it's quite an unusual thing for you. I'm just thinking about my mum. If my mum called me and said, Oh, I've started an Amazon business. It wouldn't be a natural thing for her to do, do you know what I mean, and so I become like, really, how does that come about, and so I'm curious, how did your mum get involved in Amazon?

Steven Pemberton: So first and foremost, I want to say I've been on well over a hundred podcasts and I've said a similar story to this and no one has ever asked me that question and no one ever. And I love this question because it's fascinating. Like you're diving a little bit deeper than most people ever would. And my mom has always been a serial entrepreneur ever since I was very young.

Matt Edmundson: And

g. So what she did, it was in: 2017

So she wanted to make her own brand and she did. And what was fascinating is she makes her own brand. This I'd say it was basically STEM toys before STEM toys was a big deal. And she started making pretty good sales, but she didn't know how to scale. So she just tried more products, more things. And that unfortunately led her to where when she contacted my wife, she didn't know what to do.

She just decided instead of trying to scale up this one business model on Amazon, she was just going to completely shift and go into a whole different business model. And that's when my wife came into play. Cause my wife had done the Cardinal sin with social media and she had made a post just talking about how awful her life is and how unfulfilled she was.

Because my wife is the hardest working person I know and she's a, she's wicked smart. So for her, that was something that really, really bothered her. So when my mom came in and made her that offer, she was all in.

Matt Edmundson: Wow. Wow. And so is your mom still involved in Amazon?

Steven Pemberton: Not anymore. She's more, she's still in the eCommerce side, but she's not as focused on the Amazon anymore.

Just because we've dealt with Amazon for so long. Amazon, I think is great. If you build a brand and you start on Amazon, then I think it's great to stay there until you scale it to a certain level, then you can have things like Shopify and do different levers. But for me, what I've seen just from being in Amazon for as long as we were, I would rather start on a Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, whatever you want to do, because then you can control the list.

The thing with Amazon is you can't see, you cannot control the customer list. Like, there's no way for you to directly attribute an upsell. Sure, you can do PPC and different things, but Shopify and these different, these different platforms, they give you more, more levers to pull on to make your brand successful.

And the thing about Amazon is, yes, they are basically second to Google when it comes to search, to the search engines and all these things. And I love that. But if you don't have the right strategy to get into the flow of what people are looking for, it doesn't matter. Like your stuff isn't going to get found.

Unless you actually know how to set up that strategy.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, it's an interesting point, isn't it? I think Amazon is in itself now so complicated and so competitive that I almost, I mean, I don't have any hard data cause I can't say I've ever gone to look for it, to be honest with you, but I, it sort of anecdotally feels like it's actually probably easier now to just not do Amazon as your first thing.

Whereas a few years ago you'd go, well, man, the The eCommerce space is hyper competitive, right? You've got a bid on Facebook, on Google, and all that. There's so much going on, um, and it's expensive. So go to Amazon, because it was cheap at the time. And I think, it almost feels like, I don't know if you've, if you'd agree with this, Steven, and feel free to disagree, obviously, uh, but it almost feels like it's sort of switched somewhat.

Steven Pemberton: Yes, I would absolutely agree, just because, and it is an unfortunate thing, I think that eCommerce as a whole, Amazon, no, not Amazon, it's a business. So you have to have the right skill sets, you have to have the right understanding of what you're getting into, and if you hear the leaf blowers in the background, I apologize, but For me, I've seen it.

I had somebody reach out to me and they asked me to talk to their son because their son had just invested his whole life savings in Amazon and he had only made two sales and both of them were to this guy and to this guy's or from this guy to his mom and to his dad. That was it. And so when I talked to him, he said, man, I've, I've been watching, I've been learning and studying and watching YouTube videos for the last three years.

And then I got into Amazon and what was so unfortunate about that was he invested all of this money into it. And it didn't make any sales because he didn't know how to actually get into the flow of traffic.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. I, it it is not a, an uncommon problem, isn't it? I and I, it's a shame in some ways. I, I, I still see the videos on, on YouTube doing well and I kind of think it's not, it's not actually as easy as you make it out to be now guys.

It really isn't. It's a lot more complicated. Um, and you've gotta have much deeper pockets. Trust me, I know. You know, building brands on Amazon, and we're building, we, we obviously, I say obviously, we are building our own brands on Amazon, and I know the depth to which I've got to put my hands in the pockets to make that thing work, right?

But it's, It's nothing and what the sales that we have on Amazon are nothing really compared to the sales that we're having through the web store. And so, and I would say new customer acquisition is cheaper outside of Amazon. I would say new customer acquisition is easier in some respects outside of Amazon.

Um, And I would also say that the value of the transaction outside of Amazon is greater, not in terms of just profits, but in terms of, like you say, I now know who that customer is, right? Yeah.

Steven Pemberton: Yeah, absolutely. I think I'm exactly the same mindset that you are. I believe now Amazon is very, it's very difficult to get into.

So this is something, again, this is something we talked about offline. But there's a brand that I'm even working with now that they really were fighting me hard on if they should have their Amazon and do PPC for Amazon, but yet they were not profitable in general, and they were making 30 40, 000 a month, and I told them, I said, Amazon, you don't need to do it.

I said, there's not a reason for us to invest time, energy resources to it. If you do not have one sustainable marketing channel right now to acquire customers and because everyone wants to think that it's a, it's a subsidiary. So it's like, well, if I'm running Amazon or if I'm running meta ads. And people go Google me or whatever it is, then they find me on Amazon.

Then they're going to buy there maybe. But the thing to think about with Amazon, the way that I've, the way that we were successful the first time on Amazon was we leveraged a lot of other people's stuff. It was not our own brands. So we would go do a lot of wholesale. We're doing a lot of retail arbitrage.

re on their listing, you have: 3000

Now, when you're, if you have your own skincare line and they go to your listing and it has zero reviews or it has two and it's only at four stars, they're much less likely to buy. Cause there's no authority piece for them to say, Oh yeah, this is a trusted brand. Let me buy from them. And I think that that's what you're even, cause you can control the narrative a little bit better on your own website.

You can have your own testimonials. You can have a founder story. You can have different levers to pull than you will on Amazon. Amazon is very much just like Google. I'm going to Google it. Let me look at the first three to ten results. Find the one that works best for me. On Amazon, same thing. It's, if you're not on the first page, it's much less likely for you to get high, a high number of sales.

And then if you are on the first page, Page, then your stuff has to, we'll probably have a lot of reviews and most likely you've got to have brand safety. There's just a lot of things you have to put into consideration when it comes to Amazon. And so for us. Shopify and building out our own websites has been, has been the key.

And that's what we've done with other brands as well, because I want them to understand that it's not just about how to get the first customer. The thing about Amazon that I've noticed is unless you have a, a renewable, so something that somebody has to buy every single month or every few months, then they're not going to come back.

And if they do, you don't really know. If they did, like there's not enough data there for you to understand. It's like, okay, they bought it at 35. They came back in six months. They bought again. It's the same customer when you're doing it through something like a Shopify or using different tools like triple whale, you can actually track exactly.

This is the lifetime value of this customer. It costs me 200 to acquire them for a 35 product. It seems like I lost money until you realize that now in one year, they've spent 2, 000 with me. So those things matter more to me. And I've learned that over time, being an eCommerce founder, working with brands is knowing your data and analytics and how to use that to better your brand.

Matt Edmundson: So if there was, uh, just talking about the data and the analytics then, um, if there was one metric that meant, uh, how do I phrase this? It means more to you than any other metric maybe. Um, what would your, what would that one right at the top of the tree be? Ooh,

Steven Pemberton: that's a, that's a fantastic question. So I would say right now, the one that I've seen matter the most.

Is your average order value mm-hmm . And so it's, and I would say it's a toss up between that and your lifetime pro or your like lifetime value, lifetime gross profit of a, of a customer. It's definitely between those two, but especially for if you're a brand looking to get from 10K a month to 30K, 40K, 50K a month, the thing to look at the most, you probably haven't been around long enough to fully understand the lifetime value of a customer anyways.

So that metric isn't going to get used as much. I think the thing to really think about is your average order value and understanding that if you have a hundred customers. And a hundred, you get a hundred customers a month. The thing that you can change is how much they're buying for. So maybe that means you've got to increase your price.

Maybe that means you have to run a discount where they buy one, get one 50 percent off if your margins are there in the product, maybe that is having some kind of upsell, whatever it is to get them to buy more in one go, it gives you more flexibility to spend more to acquire them in the future. So average order value is one of those things that it can be the same amount of customers.

Like if you have a hundred customers come in per month and on average beforehand, it was 35. You make it in 300, you're making 3, 500 bucks. But if you are, if it's a hundred customers at 350, you're making significantly more money. So it's just understanding how, what the right things to do, the right things to position to get that average order value up.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. It's such a powerful number, isn't it? The, um, the average order value. What strategies then have you used? To increase average order value yourself, what are some of the things that you've seen and gone, man, that's been really good. Um, that really worked well.

Steven Pemberton: So I'll use a real example. There's a brand that I'm working with that their hero product, which just means the thing they sell the most of is a 35 shoe wear.

So 35 is not a crazy amount of money, but what is interesting is that their profit margin for them, their all in cost of is 3. So they're all in cost of goods is three bucks. So they're making really good money on that. So the thing is though, is they thought the best way to get their average order value up was to create more things around it.

I want to do print on demand. So I'm going to have shirts and I'm going to have hoodies and I'm going to do pants and I'm going to do all these other things and maybe they'll buy those too. But I looked back over the last 14 months of their business, 98. 9 percent of customers come for the, for the footwear.

So that means that no one is buying anything else. So, if that is the case, then how do we, if we're going to focus everything on the footwear, what can we do? Well, we can have them buy one, get the second one 50 percent off, and you're still in good profit. And what happens is then is the mindset behind, well, I can get two for 50 bucks instead of just buying one for 35.

And the quality's good, it's got great reviews, it's got all these authority pieces. And we watched that in the last two days, of just in the last two days, it took their average order value from being about. 36, 37 to in the last two days, it's up over 70 on our average order value is doubled and their conversion rate has tripled.

And what's very fascinating is we did some market research before doing this and just looking at the best potential customer. So I think this is something for smaller brands as well. You actually have to understand who you're selling to. Not everyone is going to be a customer for your product. So for them is they just thought that they were selling to everyone in this specific, in this specific demographic, but realistically, they, they just need to target this one.

Smaller niche inside of this demographic, it's older, older ladies. And what we found is targeting older ladies. The thing that they care most about is not necessarily the price. They care more about the comfort. So is the quality good? Does it have art support? Oh, it does. And I can buy one cause they have multiple colors of this.

I can buy one in one color and I can get the other one 50 percent off. And then we watch that just, we're watching that crush right now. So having an understanding of your actual customer. First and foremost is going to give you insight into what they want. To increase the average order value. Maybe you're in a spot where you are doing skincare and you only have one thing.

You have foundation and then you go, okay, well maybe you add lipstick because they're asking for that. But go ask like if you have customers already, instead of just brainstorming and saying, well, what? What do we want to sell? Is actually asking them what do they wanna buy? Okay, we've got 5,000 customers.

Talk to them, send them an email. Hey, we will give you 10% off your next order. We just wanted to get your insight on this, this, and this. Ask 'em three questions, give 'em 10% off

Matt Edmundson: and

Steven Pemberton: getting real data, because then if you have real data that that 90% of people said that they want these same exact thing, but in a different color.

Now it's going to save you on labor costs, on shipping costs, on production, to not get something else made because you were maybe going into hoodies or whatever else. Maybe you just did another color and that saves you, that not only saves you money, but it's going to make you more money because that's the thing that everyone's asking for.

Matt Edmundson: That's so smart. I like that. I mean, the footwear example is really interesting, isn't it? That the t shirts and the hoodies and all that sort of stuff didn't really sell and you would logically think, well, if I'm selling lots of shoes, I'm going to sell, you know, Lots of hoodies or socks or whatever, you know, that kind of thing.

Um, and I, I think I've seen a lot of people actually do that and then get despondent when it didn't work. Yep. Um, and invest a lot of money into it and go, this is not working. Uh, whereas I would view it as, well, actually that particular thing didn't work. You need to tweak something, something somewhere needs to be, needs to be better.

And so, um, the, uh, what's interesting is you're, you're doing this sort of buy one, get 50 percent off. I suppose my initial question there, Steven, I'd been slightly skeptical cause you know, I am British after all. Um, are you not robbing Peter to pay Paul, uh, in the sense of giving such a big discount on the second product?

Uh, it doesn't sound necessarily that's like what you found, but I know people will want me to ask that question.

Steven Pemberton: Yeah. Great question. So no. And the reason why is because not only. Did it increase the average order value? It increased the overall net revenue and it increased the profit margin. So what we saw as a whole wasn't, it wasn't just an increase in the amount per order.

It was an increase in the orders. It was an increase in how much money that it made. And it was an increase in conversion rate just from changing one thing. So this is something else to think about is yes, let's say we would have just kept it at the 35 and we just continue to run ad spend to it.

Beforehand, it was at a, their best day was at a 1. 86 percent conversion rate. After making this one change, their conversion rate has been on average over the last few days at a 3. 5. So almost double. So for the same amount of traffic, you're getting twice as many sales. So that's something else to consider too, is it does seem like in the short term, if you look at it from a.

Macro perspective, it's like, oh, you're just taking a little bit of money here and just kind of moving it somewhere else. Hmm. But actual, actual actually for the same amount of traffic, we're, instead of just getting one, we're getting two. Yeah. So a huge difference. And that's why, and it's not only just getting two, we're getting them to pay us more for those two.

So now we actually have more money to spend, to acquire more people. So it's, it's really interesting how it, that one change impacted the whole system.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, that's very clever. Very clever. And I like this idea of, you know, uh, if you have an idea, go away, go away and test it before you order a lot of stock.

Yes. One of the things that I've seen actually work well, is people put pre orders on their website. So you go, right, well, I'm gonna, So I've got my foundation skincare, so now I'm going to do moisturizer or whatever it is, right? So, or lipstick. So you go, right, well, listen, guys, we're going to do this lipstick.

It's on pre order. Um, and you can, because I've found, I don't know about you, I've found that if I do surveys, I get certain amounts of information out of people. But usually the information they give me is information they think I want to hear. This is, I've always found that that sort of problem with surveys, unless you actually get on the phone and talk to them for like 30, 40 minutes where you can dig into the weeds a little bit.

What I have found worked well, um, and seen work well is when you go, right, we're going to put this on pre order, uh, and see, you don't actually take any money off people. You just sort of see how many people will actually click that button and go through to the next page. And you kind of go, well, now we're starting to actually gather some hard actual evidence here.

of people who would have clicked the buy now button, and we know on the rest of the website that X percent of people that click that button will end up buying, and Y percent won't, so if I extrapolate that out I then can decide whether or not this product's a winner or not, right?

Steven Pemberton: I think that's super smart.

It's the, basically the wishlist strategy where, Hey, we're coming out with this. You can wishlist that now. So you will be the first one to know when it launches. This is something that we we've talked about with an apparel brand, even here locally, where we live, they have a very big following. They have Almost, they have over a million, I would say total on all of their platforms, they have well over 2 million followers.

And these are, these are pretty ravenous customers. They want to buy stuff. And for some reason, this apparel brand, they just, they do terrible. When it comes to launches, they just don't do it very often and they don't make their stuff very easy to buy. It's very difficult. For you to actually acquire any of their apparel.

So they aren't making the sales that they want to. And the thing is, is that if they had a consistent way to do drops, so if they wanted to come out with a collection, instead of just coming out with the collection and saying, Hey, we have this new collection, which is what most people do. Have your normal baseline stuff that you've been selling and say, Hey, this is, we, we have this idea.

And if you have a social media following, I'll just throw this out there, is it is, especially if you do have some kind of new creative that you want to test for ads, something you want to do for your apparel line. If you have it, just make a post, make a post and see how well it engages, because if you get really good engagement and then you can go, okay, so these people really engage with this.

Now, that would probably make a pretty good eye catching ad when you run ads. Now, the thing is true, it's also true, is that if you do this with your creatives to see if people would buy that apparel, it's, hey, we're thinking about coming out with this collection, here's some of our mock ups, whatever it is, and if people engage with it well, then you can do the wish list, where it's, hey, it's on our website, this is a launch that we're going to have, and hey, hush, hush, it's only for the people who wish list.

So, for the people who wish list, if you, when you get in, when the collection launches, You get 24 hours before anyone else gets in, or you get three hours before anyone else gets in to buy this. Mm. So then you're making this exclusivity. Yeah. You're making it scarcity. So when they wishlist it, if you have a hundred people that wishlisted for it, they're gonna be more likely to actually come back and do something.

'cause they know that they have access that no one else is gonna have. And I think that that's just one of those little caveats that I would encourage people who do that strategy to just add in. Is that it's just like a couple hours and just adding in a couple hours where they are the only ones who get access to it, because that's going to make it to where everyone wants to wishlist for it.

They're going to get into it. You only have a certain amount of quantity, so those things are going to sell out. And then if it doesn't, then it goes to your general public and everyone else that can buy it. And that's going to save you a lot on ad spend. You're not going to have to really run ads to that.

That's people who are going to just wishlist every time you do some kind of new drop, some kind of new collection. And that gives you really good insight onto what people are looking for before you ever make it.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, that's very clever. I love that. Really great strategy, the wishlist strategy, and I, I, I, I can see that working very well with things like apparel brands, and especially if you do, like, limited quantity runs.

Scarce is a wonderful thing, isn't it? And that fear of missing out, um, the whole psychology of that, I think is quite intriguing when it comes to clothing brands. So I can see how that wishlist strategy would work super well, you know, and you, uh, yeah, I, I, I, I'm going to steal that one, Steve. Uh, so, um, so what, what are you seeing at the moment in eCommerce?

What are some of the, If there was like, if you had a magic wand, you know, Izzy Wizzy Let's Get Busy kind of a thing, and you could fix One key problem that you see over and over again, uh, in eCommerce with your clients, with the, you know, with what you're doing, what would it be?

Steven Pemberton: Oh, so again, fantastic question.

If there is one thing I would say, just right off the top of my head, I would say taking more time to actually understand who your actual ideal customer is. I think so often in eCommerce, we think we know who they are, but what happens is instead of focusing on knowing them better. We just decided to make more products.

We decided to run more marketing. And then we are upset with our results in the end. We're upset that our cost to acquire customers too high. We're upset. We're not getting the results that we want to, but did we take enough time to actually understand who they are? The same thing with this brand. They've been in business for the last four years, so they've sold well over, they have over 12, 000 customers.

So they had an understanding that they said, this is who our idle customer is. When I went and I looked at it and me and my business partner went and looked at their business, actually did a little bit of digging around, talking to people who they thought was their idle customer. What we found was it was a subset of those people.

And what happens if you find the right subset and then you have the right marketing, creative, whether that's a static image, a video and the right copywriting to go along with it, you can just print money almost because those people are going to say they're speaking directly to me. And I think what happens if there was one thing I would change is people hear the terminologies.

Things change all the time with Facebook and so they go, Oh, we're just going to go broad. You know, we have the advantage sales campaigns now, which is just, well, you just, you click a few buttons and you launch a campaign and a super broad. But the thing is, is that may be broad, but who you speak to needs to be very, very targeted.

So if you can speak directly to their pain, like if you can speak directly to someone who is in college, that they're failing class and they know that they failed class and have to move back home, that their parents are going to kick them out and they're going to be homeless. If you can find exactly what their pain points are, and then you can inverse it.

By saying, Hey, are you this person? Are you dealing with this? And here's a way to not deal with that. This is exactly how you handle that. And also just the, the concept of doing that, but also not trying to sell with every single piece of ad or ad that you have, marketing, social media content, because.

There's a statistic that there's an, out of the a hundred percent of people, there's really only about 10, there's about 10 percent of people who are ready to buy now. Like they are, they're ready to buy from you right now. So how do you leverage the other 90 percent of people? There's another maybe 10, 20 percent of people that are, they're kind of looking around, but they're not really in the buying mood yet.

And then you have probably another 70, 80% that they're just not ready to buy. They just don't. They don't know that they're they're not problem aware. So putting things up, whether if you have the budget doing it through your ads is going to be faster if you don't have the budget doing it through your social media content, however, you want to do it on your website, just making people problem aware they pro they may have a problem.

They just don't know they're aware of yet. And because then what happens, you make them problem aware, they go down that funnel. They've become the ten, 20%, who are more likely. To at least know they have a problem looking for a solution. And if you were the one who's at least told them they had a problem, you become the solution.

So then your cost to acquire a customer is going to be significantly less over the lifetime of your business. But I would just say getting hyper specific about who your customer is, their pain, what are they actually looking for? How can my product be the solution to that pain? And if it's not, then how can I make my product better?

But I think that those are the questions that a lot of business owners kind of shy away from. Because they just want to make money, but if you get hyper, hyper specific about them, about their needs, then you can make so much more money because you're actually dealing with a problem. Yeah,

Matt Edmundson: yeah, yeah. No, that's super great.

I, I, how do you know them better, I think, is a great phrase. You know, know them better. And I, over the years I found that actually we, we get to know our customers and then we, we kind of don't do it again. Uh, but customers evolve and change, don't they? Uh, and a customer today looks, I think, different to a customer two years ago and we have to, we have to know them better.

Yeah. So how do you do it? How do you do that? How do you go and find out more about them? I mean, you've, you've found. For your client, a sort of subset and a niche, or a niche, uh, from the American Cousins. Um, either way, uh, or Nikkei as a friend of mine calls it. Um, but how do you, how did you do that? How do people find out what these, uh, are?

Ideal customers are?

Steven Pemberton: So that's a great question. There's a few different ways to do it. There's actually one is similar. What I was saying earlier is you can do, you can reach out to your past customers. You can reach out to people on social media. If you have a, any kind of following, it really doesn't matter.

I think when people hear a following, they think they have to have a hundred thousand or a million followers. You can have a thousand, but if those people are engaging, you have five, 10 people who like your posts, just asking them, Questions about it, asking them questions like, Hey, what about this? You actually like, Hey, what about, why do you, you keep engaging?

I keep seeing you over and over again. Is this something you would actually buy because, and just asking real questions and letting them know, letting them off the hook, this is something I've learned too, is you got to let people off the hook. Hey, I'm just want to ask a couple of questions and be, feel free to tell me that you don't like it.

Feel free to tell me no. And because then they're not going to feel so bad. It's like, you know, I honestly wouldn't buy this because I don't like X, Y, and Z. Or I don't trust the website or whatever it is. That's a very low cost way to do it. Another way to do it. There's a pretty cool platform called PickFu.

PickFu is a pretty neat platform where you can basically do these different tests, these different surveys anonymously. So people don't know it's you and don't, they don't know what's your brand and you can pit it against, you can put it in front of, let's say you have pets, like you do pets, Supplies. You can put it in front of pet owners and you can be very specific.

Y'all want to put it in front of dog owners, in front of cat owners.

Matt Edmundson: And

Steven Pemberton: then when you put your brand in front of them, they're going to be able to pick from a variety of different brands. So you get to control that too. If it's packaging, you can have your packaging against three of your biggest competitors.

And maybe most of the time in that case, you might not, you might not win. And that's okay. If yours is like the lowest, then you can say, Oh, I need to improve. Why is this one the highest? And then you do another test with a couple other competitors and this one that won again. And you say, oh, this one won again against these other people as well.

And

Matt Edmundson: me,

Steven Pemberton: so now I get to understand that there's something about their packaging. There's something about how they do their marketing that speaks to them. There's something about their copywriting. And then you get to actually study because a lot of people will talk about doing competitor analysis. I don't think that's super important in the beginning because realistically, if you don't understand your customer really well, You don't know who your competitor is, but you and I can both be in both be chiropractors.

But if you only specialize in helping people that are 70 and above, and I work with people who are student athletes, those were not direct competitors. We're in the same industry, but we're not the same. So understanding that customer first and again doing it and you can if you have the ad spend, you can do it through paid marketing.

And you can just do a lot of tests. And this is how a lot of people, as they scale their business, they'll do it. So they'll do a test on the audience. So their audience will be much more honed in. And what that'll mean is their targeting is different, so they'll get very detailed. I want this person in this place, the behavior is they're an engaged shopper, they're, maybe they are engaged, they're married, they're whatever it is.

And then the copywriting is gonna be different. And the way that you just do a really good test is you keep, you gotta keep some aspect of it the same. So if your audience is different, keeping every all the creatives the same to just see did it work better with this audience? And then if the audience is the same then you got to change one piece of your creative One problem I've seen with brands is they'll just change everything and just see if it works better But how do you know what works?

Yeah, don't but if you change the headline and that's the only thing that changed But yet your ads perform better Then you know that that was the thing that drove it to do better if the next thing you change, so you found your winners, you test again, you change the main body of text. Mm-hmm . And now it performs worse.

Then you know that the other text did better. Mm-hmm . It's not super difficult, but it's also, you gotta be very detailed in what you're changing. You know what you're changing to actually be able to read what's happening, but those are just a few different ways that you can go about actually finding those people and communicating with them.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, that's brilliant. That's really, really good. And I expand if you don't mind, um, you, you said earlier about don't try and sell with every ad. Um, and you're, you're talking about, you know, 10 percent of customers are only really ready to buy. You've got the other 90 percent to think about. How do we engage then?

Because this has always fascinated me. You know, the, you know, the, the other 90 percent or whatever the, the, the number is for your industry, but how do we engage that 90%? What are some of the strategies that you've seen work well there?

Steven Pemberton: So one of the best ways I've seen out, and this is what I love to do because I also have worked outside of eCommerce.

So I've done a lot of virtual events. I've worked with a lot of clients across the board and virtual events, coaches, consultants, authors, people doing AI that are on the cutting edge, all these different things. So for me is I'm getting to study what works for them. I think something that happens when we get very industry focused is we don't look outside our industry.

And if you look outside the industry, you can find things that are working very well, then apply it here. One of the things I've seen is you can run. Marketing. So whether you're doing meta ads, Google, YouTube, however you do your ads the best. And in that ad, you're not selling anything. What happens is you're just making them aware of the problem.

It's like, Hey, do you have foot pain? So this goes back to the art support. It's like, Hey, do you have foot pain? Most likely it comes from you wearing shoes that don't have art support. And what happens is then if they click the link, it would take them to basically a one page funnel where it's explaining the things to watch out for.

It's like, Hey, these are some of the things you need to watch out for when you're buying, Footwear is this, this, this, and this. And then if you want more information on that, click here and then they can go to your website and then they can then on the website where it would take them as it wouldn't take them to a homepage.

It would take them to an about page and why your stuff is built and having it showing, Hey, this is what's different. This is how we built our shoe. This is the quality of it. This is the arch support in it. So then what happens is that they're going down a literal funnel. So a landing page, they're hitting the landing page, understanding how this is hurting your knees and hurting your back because you don't have arch support.

And how and ways to overcome that. So look for, and the thing is, even on that page, you're not saying, okay, this is the problem by my shoe is you're saying, this is the problem when you go look for shoe companies, these are some of the things you should watch for. So you should make sure that they have our support.

You should make sure that they last longer than 30 days. You should make sure that their quality is really good. And then you give them the option. It's like, Hey, we also sell this kind of stuff.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. And

Steven Pemberton: so that makes them problem aware. It also makes them solution aware. And you also become the solution because I've noticed this in the B2B space.

So outside of the direct to consumer space is if you make them, so if you're on a sales call and you're talking to somebody, instead of thinking, how can I make them a customer? It's think about how can I help this person the most? So when I just had this conversation a couple of weeks ago, and this lady was looking to hire, hire somebody, she wanted to hire someone.

I said, okay, here's some questions you need to ask an ads agency. She wanted to hire another ads agency. Her last two had just burned her. I said, you need to ask them, okay, with my current, my current account, with my current website, what do you think the conversion rate would be? She had an awful website.

So if they start telling you that you can get a five, 10 percent conversion rate off of that website, or if they say, Oh, we don't know now, you know, that they don't actually know the numbers asking them, okay, across the board with you, the brands you're working with, what is the average, the average return on ad spend?

What is your average ROI? What is your average cost to acquire a customer? If they can't, what's your average click through rate? Like just asking pretty basic stuff. If they can't give you those numbers, you're They may not be the best fit. So all I did for her was make her problem aware. Hey, when you're talking to people, make sure to ask these questions.

So you don't get taken advantage of. And what ended up happening was, did, does that mean that she, she ended up working with me? No, but the thing was, is she found a solution that works really well for her. And what happens then is she texted me back and said, Hey, I decided to go this other direction, but I want to keep you in mind for other projects because you inform me and help me make this best decision.

Matt Edmundson: So

Steven Pemberton: now she became problem aware. She became solution aware. She found a solution and worked for her in that, in that time period, but it also lets her know that I'm also a solution in case anything happens with that. So that's the way that I would structure it. To get people to actually down that funnel.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, that's very powerful. Very good. I think I, the older I get, um, Steven, the more I realize the key to selling is just to help people as much as is humanly possible. And the more you help people, the more value you bring, the more people want to buy your thing. Right. Yes. So in, and I've, I realized this years ago when I started out in eCom coaching.

And I was like, well, this is my IP. This is my secret source. I'm not telling anybody that, you know, you have to pay money for that. And then actually I started just by saying, well, this actually, this is what I'm going to do. This is my framework. This is my IP. This is, you know, everything that I know. The more I told people and I'm like, there you go.

You've now got everything you need to go away and do what you need to do. The more they came to me and said, great. Can you do that for me?

Steven Pemberton: Yes. I heard this. I heard this amazing quote, but information is free. The implementation is paid. So you're giving away everything and what happens is, you know, especially people like us where we have, we have this proprietary product.

So we go, yeah, but can I just give away 99%? It's like, but honestly, the majority of people will get that information and do nothing with it. So, if you give away 100%, it's going to be actually really high value, you're going to help more people through your marketing than your actual implementation ever will.

So, you're going to have, you're going to have good, like, people are going to have faith in you to do the thing. Because they're going to hear all these testimonials of people who have never worked with you. They just watched a YouTube video, they got a free PDF that you gave, and it changed their whole business.

And what happens is then, people will come to you and say, hey, I've heard all this stuff, you sound like exactly who I'm looking for, how much do I have to pay you for you to do this? And, because most people would rather just pay to get the problem solved instead of trying to solve the problem themselves.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, very, very wise. Very wise. Steven! I need a question from you, Bud. This is, uh, where I ask you for a question, uh, that time of the show where, uh, if this is your first time listening to us and your first time maybe you've got this far into a podcast, uh, I ask our guests for a question, uh, which I'm going to answer on my social media channels.

If you don't follow me on Instagram or LinkedIn, come find me, at Matt Edmundson, where I'm going to answer the following question. Q. Steve, what

Steven Pemberton: is the best way that you have found to grow an eCommerce business from starting to sustainability?

Matt Edmundson: Very good. If you want to know my answer to that question, come follow me on social media.

I'm Edmundson, like I say, on Instagram or LinkedIn, uh, where I'll be posting my answer to that question at some point in the non too distant future, if it's not already out by the time this episode airs. Uh, but Steven, listen, how did people, well, why don't you tell us a little bit about Elevatum, your company, what you do?

How do people reach you if they want to do that? Maybe just tell people how you can help them and what's the best way to reach out to you?

Steven Pemberton: Yes. So first and foremost, you can find me at elevatum. digital. We went a little new age with the, with the URL, but elevatum. digital is the best place to find me. And what we do is we work with companies usually between a half a million to a million dollars a year.

You've gotten to a certain spot, and even as you said in the bio, they just plateaued. You don't really know what to do. You've made the same kind of sales for the last year, for the last six months, and you don't know how to scale, so you're trying a lot of things, and it just doesn't feel like anything's working.

I've been there. I've been a two time founder, grown to over a million dollars a year. My business partner has also had a multi award winning, multi seven figure, full marketing agency that he exited. What we do is we come into businesses, and we help them. Understand the key levers to pull to be able to get past their, their growth ceilings and help them achieve the growth that they're actually looking for sustainably.

So not just getting you more revenue numbers, but actually having more money physically in your bank account.

Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. And where can people reach you?

Steven Pemberton: So Elevatum digital. You, they're right there if you, if that makes sense to you. I'm right there. That's a good way to go about it. You can press it.

That's my actual calendar. And you would actually talk directly to me. And then if you just want to engage with some of the things I make posts all the time, LinkedIn is by far where I'm at all the time, every single day I'm on there all, always and often. So LinkedIn is another great place to find me.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. LinkedIn's great. I really need to get better at. Uh, being more consistent on LinkedIn, but that's, you know, that's a personal issue which I now need to resolve. Uh, but yeah, Steven, listen, uh, thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, man. Thanks for joining us all the way from Oklahoma. Uh, I have got lots of notes, uh, as I always do.

Uh, and, you know, kudos to your mum for kickstarting this whole journey. Uh, you can go to your dad and say, Dad, you were wrong. Well, as was I, and we've learned from this whole situation, uh, but it's been an absolute pleasure, man. Thank you so much. Thank you. Wow. There you have it. What a great conversation.

That was huge. Thanks to Steven for joining me today. Now, be sure to follow the eCommerce Podcast wherever you get your podcasts from, because we've got some more. Phenomenal conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss any of them and in case no one has told you yet, stay, let me be the first.

You are awesome. Yes, you are. Created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. Steven's got to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. Now the eCommerce Podcast is produced by Podjunction. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. The amazing team behind this comes from Podjunction, including the beautiful Sadaf Beynon, who I'm very talented, Josh Edmundson, who wrote the theme music.

As I mentioned, if you would like to read the notes, transcripts, all that sort of stuff, you can find it all at ecommercepodcast. net or just simply scroll down on your podcast app. Uh, but if you'd like to connect with us, subscribe to the newsletter or reach out to me on social media. You can do all of that.

Just go find me at Matt Edmundson or follow the links on the ecommercepodcast. net. website. But that's it from me. That's it from Steven. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.

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