Crafting a Winning eCommerce Strategy for Your Brand’s Online Growth

In this episode of The eCommerce Nurse Podcast, we go beyond Amazon and TikTok to explore how brands can build a tailored eCommerce strategy that sets them up for long-term success.

Host Carina McLeod, ex-Amazonian and CEO of eCommerce Nurse, is joined by special guest Rob Murray, Client Services Lead at eCommerce Nurse, alongside regular guest Owen Aderibigbe, ex-Amazon Seller and eCommerce Nurse's Business Development Manager.

Together, they dive into key considerations for choosing the right eCommerce approach, including:
 ✅ How product type and price point impact platform selection
 ✅ The role of customer behaviour in determining the best platform for success: Amazon, DTC, or social commerce
 ✅ Budget constraints and their influence on platform profitability
 ✅ Common mistakes brands make when expanding online—and how to avoid them
 ✅ The importance of testing and validating different eCommerce channels

Plus, they share the latest trends shaping the eCommerce landscape in 2025 and beyond. Whether you're an established brand or just starting out, this episode is packed with insights to help you scale and thrive.

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Transcript

Hi there. Welcome to the eCommerce Nurse podcast. I'm Carina McLeod, CEO and founder of Vendor Society and eCommerce Nurse. And today, we're going beyond Amazon and TikTok, and we're gonna be talking about how to build an eCommerce strategy to set your brand up for long term success online. And we have two special guests.

We have Rob Murray, our Client Services Lead at eCommerce Nurse who has over ten years of experience in the eCommerce world. And we have our regular guest, Owen Aderigbigbe, who is our Business Development Manager here at eCommerce Nurse joining us today. So welcome. Thank you for having me. Thanks for having me back.

So today, as I say, we're going beyond Amazon. We're going beyond TikTok, and we're gonna really talk about eCommerce. What I'd love to do is start off and talk about what brands should be considering when we start talking about building an eCommerce strategy and all the different factors involved in that. And then we're gonna start really diving into the nitty gritty to help our audience today for those that are trying to figure out what their online strategy should actually be. Excellent.

Sounds good. Over to you, Owen. So for brands listening today, you know, it's quite easy to throw eCommerce strategy out there. But what do we actually mean by eCommerce strategy? Yeah.

So ultimately, it's about your presence online, what channels you're gonna be selling on, what price points, how you're thinking about, the advertising side of things as well. So how you're driving traffic to the various channels. And ultimately, you know, as a brand, the ultimate goal is to be available where your customers are looking for you. So if, you know, you're looking at Amazon, for example, we always talk about Amazon as a place where a lot of searches start. But then there's brands that make decisions to say, actually, we don't want to be on Amazon for various reasons, and we're gonna be more focused on our own website.

And that's not necessarily wrong, but it's just, you know, thinking about those considerations around, you know, where are the customers, how do you sort of drive success for your brand in the long term? And, you know, there's the other element of this as well, which is building a long term relationship with your customers as well. Right? Which, you know, when you're doing it on other platforms can be challenging. So there's, you know, various things to kind of dive into there in terms of how, you know, where you decide to focus your energy.

And that's a lot of it is, you know, obviously, you wanna be everywhere, if possible. But for a lot of brands, the question is where do we start? Where do we focus? And then, you know, what's our main channel? And then where are we gonna build out from?

So it's taking it up that higher level. Right? Because we do a lot of work with brands that are focused on Amazon. You can get very focused on that one channel, but actually there's overlap across different channels as well. And what you do on one impacts the other.

Because I know that you have those conversations with brands, Rob, when you start talking about an Amazon strategy, but I know you also delve into, okay, but let me understand your overall eCommerce strategy, which sometimes brands will be able to answer. But in many cases, brands can't really answer that. Yeah. Quite often, brands sort of consider, brands that I've spoken to in my experience sort of consider different eCommerce strategies for different platforms and perhaps don't have a holistic view necessarily of what they're doing. Platforms and perhaps don't have a holistic view necessarily of what they're doing.

So they don't necessarily have knowledge of the integrations that they can set up to make all of the different channels work seamlessly together, integrated with their ARP, for instance, and things like that. So, yeah, there's lots for them to consider but, overall, having a kind of holistic view of all of your different channels. I think that's really important. Right? Because as I say, you can have your Amazon strategy.

Let's say you've got your social strategy. You've got your DTC website strategy. But if they don't all sync up and they're not aligned, and often you actually find that there's different teams working on each channel, doing completely different things, focusing on completely different products, and there doesn't really seem to be that understanding. Or the other way around is that it's a complete mirror across everything, which again doesn't work. No.

Absolutely. I think one of the things there as well is just because your competitors are doing it doesn't mean that it's the right thing to be doing. Lots of your competitors might not have looked at profitability for putting that product on that particular channel, for instance. So really do your own research upfront and decide which product should fit which channel of course, you've got different silos for different channels as well, potentially, but do, keep that overall view on what's going on across all channels. Channels.

You mentioned something about product type. Mhmm. I'm guessing product type and price point play a really key role here in terms of when you're thinking about that overall strategy. Yeah. Definitely.

I think, you know, sometimes when brands are looking at, for example, TikTok, they'll say, price points, you know, because people on TikTok are looking for discounts. And actually, yeah, for a long time, Amazon was that as well. Right? For a lot of brands, it's like, if I go on Amazon, I've got to think about the fact that Amazon always wants the cheapest option and I need to have a discount there. And so, like, you have to think about, ultimately, how the pricing is gonna affect, or how the channel is gonna affect your pricing.

And, you know, look at your strategy overall and decide whether, for example, like, maybe right now my products aren't great for the culture of TikTok, for example, because I don't really wanna be throwing around heavy discounts. So I'm gonna be more focused on trying to sell through my own channels. And then maybe if I am giving discounts, it's in exchange for, like, email addresses or whatever, where I'm able to kind of build on that customer and and think about sort of the lifetime value of a product, for example. You touched on something interesting there, the lifetime value or even if we take it to the product life cycle. Right?

Because there's a point where a product's new. And I found this really interesting, actually. I was looking at this. There was a brand. It was a fitness massage gun, and it appeared on Instagram.

And I was like, right. It keeps appearing. They're doing a lot of remarketing here, but I'm comfortable with Amazon. That's the place where I do my research. So I'm gonna go straight to Amazon, type in that brand.

I typed in that brand and loads of brands that they're not really brands. They look like they've just been you know, they're not known brands or that they don't even look like an actual brand appearing. And the whole first page of search results was just these cheap massage guns. I couldn't find that brand at all. So in the end, I went to their website because they were focused on DTC.

And it made me think, why? Why are they just focused on DTC? There's so much opportunity here on Amazon. Right? But you just mentioned something really interesting in terms of they're at the start of their journey.

There's that control of creating a premium brand over what can get quite lost on Amazon? Yeah. 100%. I think, you know, when I was working at Amazon, I left Amazon and started my own business as well. And, it was a clothing brand, and I didn't want to be on Amazon at the time despite my experience, like, knowing more about Amazon than the DTC channel for that reason.

I wanted to create a relationship and a kind of experience that obviously the DTC channel gives me the option to do that Amazon wouldn't. So I think it's a very valid position for a brand to be in to decide, look, we're gonna focus on DTC and we're gonna focus on really building a relationship with our customers. Because obviously, on a third party platform, often, you don't have that direct relationship with the customer. So, you know, if anything was to go wrong with the platform or the platform changes the rules or, you know, the algorithm isn't as kind to you as it was before, you're kind of in a position where you lose access to those customers. Right?

So this is ultimately like the ideal position for most brands is to have a direct relationship with their customers. Now, once you've built that, you might then start to think, okay, we wanna expand, we want more new to brand customers, we want people to find us where they're at. That's when we're going to start focusing on Amazon, that's when we're going to start focusing on maybe being on TikTok shop and other channels like that because we know the people that are looking and are in the market for our type of product but don't necessarily know who we are. We wanna make sure we're there. But also, you know, if you've built up enough brand equity, people start to see you as a leader in that space whether you were originally on Amazon or not.

It's interesting because sometimes it's not that way. Right? Do you deal with brands that are very Amazon focused and there's sort of when you talk about their DTC, it's almost nonexistent? Yeah. Absolutely.

And as Owens just mentioned, the other way around too, but it also, one thing to take into consideration is sort of, could your product be copied? You know, are you a new product, completely new product? Do you feel like your product is brand new to your category? And will people be copying your product? Because if you launch on direct to consumer first, then you have time to kind of establish yourself as an emerging brand and then start to maybe expand onto other channels.

But the other way around, you're much quicker to market if you are launching on Amazon because Amazon has an established customer base already. Mhmm. So you might consider doing something that way, in order to grow your brand more quickly. But then, of course, you have to be aware that perhaps within six months, somebody might have copied your product. So you'll really need to get behind it, get your strategy set up correctly, and really launch into that from the get go.

Be brave with your ad spends, etcetera, and get everything established as quickly as you can and ramped up as quickly as you can so that you do establish as a leader in that particular category for that product. 100%. And I think that just shows you why you need that strategy and it's not a one size fits all because it's not to say, okay, you just have your direct to consumer website, build that. Then once you've built that and you've got x amount of customers, then go to Amazon because it's very, very product specific, brand specific, where you are in the market, if you're a new emerging brand, if you've got a new product to market. There's so many different factors that you need to consider before you even jump in that not many brands are doing.

And there's this other part with the audience because I'm guessing with DTC websites, you're not having to narrow an audience whereas if you go into marketplaces, are you then refining that audience more? So what should brands be thinking about in terms of the right place for them and their strategy when it comes to target audience? Well, I think it's interesting. I think if you have your own website or or, you know, you still need to think about the audience and narrowing that audience because it's you still do have to drive traffic to your, to your website. Right?

So it's expensive to have a very broad, target market. So it's still obviously beneficial for you to have, you know, a really good strategy in terms of knowing who your target audience is and how to reach them and how to to drive them. So you are ultimately, even with a DTC platform, still using, either Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or whatever to drive or YouTube to drive traffic to your website. Right? So there's a need to still think about that.

I guess the difference though is that once they're on your website, your competitors are not showing up next to the, you know, your product page in the same way. So then you have, I guess, a bit more of an opportunity to kind of control that situation from once they once they get on your website. But there is there's still, I think, a need for you to think about audience and how you, you know, especially if you're a new brand with a with a low budget, you wanna you wanna really focus in on who's gonna be my core audience and how do I kinda get at them. You mentioned about brands with a low low budget. Let's talk about brands with a low budget.

Rob, you're smiling, so I'm gonna pass this one over to you because I think that that's the challenge. Right? As in you can have an overall eCommerce strategy. Excuse me. You can have an overall eCommerce strategy, but that's an ideal world because there's costs involved.

There's costs involved in getting a website, driving traffic to your d to c website, and setting up on Amazon, etcetera. How do you manage it all on a low budget? Good question. The reason I was smiling is because it kind of, flips on its head what I said earlier, actually, in terms of if you have a super low budget, you need to go to a search engine effectively that has a huge target audience for you ready to go. So you might decide to list directly on Amazon because you're not having to go out and find those customers yourself.

If you have a low budget, it's gonna be incredibly expensive for you to drive traffic to your own direct consumer site. So you might decide to launch on TikTok or Amazon directly, perhaps in the first instance. And, of course, you might also have your own direct consumer website, but to to be paying for Google PPC advertising and advertising and and things like that is going to cost you a lot of money. So you do need to, low budget brands, I would suggest, get straight onto Amazon, get onto TikTok, start there, but consider growing into a wider, group of channels if you like, going forward. Yeah.

I read that the customer acquisition cost for websites is so much higher than the marketplaces. But the lifetime value can actually be quite rewarding on a direct to consumer website. Depending on the product if you end up with a loyal customer base and a subscription based website. But that's really good advice on the Amazon side and TikTok. Is there a point where there's a brand, let's say you've got an emerging brand.

They've got a low budget. They're like, okay. I'll start with Amazon. I'm not even gonna contemplate having a direct to consumer website. Is that a wise decision?

I'd say, overall, obviously, if you're looking to create a long term strategy, you want to have as many channels as possible, so that you can reach out to all different types of consumers and and and be in the places that they shop, for instance. Yeah. I guess go for it. And once you've fixed on your strategy, just go for it, I think. But just, not going having your own d to c website, I think, is potentially a mistake in the long run.

You do want to be starting to build reviews and ratings. Your long term strategy should include people being able to review those products on your own website rather than them disappearing to Amazon to see what other people are saying about products. So I think getting established in the early days with a direct to consumer website is the best way to go in my opinion, because longer term, you'll want to be driving as much traffic to that as possible once you do increase your budget, I'd say. I love what you just said there about the reviews because Amazon is the place that you go to for research. I gave you that example earlier of that fitness massage gun.

I was straight on Amazon. Because if you're not building up that review base on your own website, then customers will go elsewhere. But I guess there's also a bit around trust as well is how do you build that trust in early days on a d to c website? Are you more and it goes the other way around. Right?

How do you build trust? You're a new brand on Amazon if you don't have a website. It's almost like doing well, I'm a shopper that does my research, like, for legitimacy and understanding a bit more about the brand. I guess it's that backing. Yeah.

I think with the question of being a low budget brand and, like, initially sort of where to start or how to start, I would say that the game for a low budget brand is to basically get as much attention as possible. And that's where socials becomes really important. So, you know, where TikTok really gives you a great opportunity is because if you are very low budget but you have time, then you have then you basically just post as much content as possible and try to get creative. You know, start to send out samples of your products to affiliates who can also help you sort of grow the brand. And I think there's like if you have a low budget, then really what you're trying to do is get an idea of how your content performs that you can create relatively cheaply or for free essentially.

And then once you're clear on that, then you can start to put that little bit of budget behind ad spend to then start to grow your brand. So that's where, like, socials in general become really important. And that's also true for bigger brands as well. But I think when you have a small budget, like, your options are relatively limited and that's where creativity really has to has to be part of it. Right?

You just wanna get as much attention as possible to drive. And, like, when the question of, like, okay, small brand, Amazon gives me access to loads of channels, I think it obviously will depend on your product. Because if you're in a situation where, it's a very highly competitive, brand, sorry, space where the product's essentially commoditized and it's really difficult for you then to sort of get the visibility you need. It's not necessarily cheaper to launch on Amazon in that instance, right? Because cost per clicks, like if you wanted to sell collagen or supplements or whatever.

Some of those cost per clicks, we're talking about $40 for a keyword. So it's like, it's ridiculous. So in those instances, it's actually not really feasible for you to launch on Amazon alone and expect, without putting a lot of money in, and expect to do well. So then that's when you're like, okay, you have to start sort of get creative, see if you can build an audience on socials through, I guess, organic work, and then start to put a bit of money behind that. So that just thinking around as if I was sort of giving advice to a brand with a low budget, I would say, like, focus on socials, focus on creativity, test that way, and then start to put some money behind ad spend and go from there.

And what that looks like for your channel, I think, as Rob said, it makes a lot of sense for you to think long term about having a DTC to start with. And then you can decide to supplement that with Amazon or or whatever. But again, it could be that you go on Amazon and actually very few people are selling your product. In which case, you know, you have a great opportunity to kind of or you have a highly differentiated product in a place where you know there's a lot of demand. Awesome.

Go launch on Amazon. You don't have to spend a lot on PPC because, you know, hopefully your keywords will be, sort of targeted for you long term long tail stuff or stuff that's, like, very specific to your point of differentiation, in which case that'll be a really sort of cheap cost per click. And you're able to kind of go from there. But you know, depending on how competitive the space is on Amazon, it can be really difficult to just launch and, you know, and go without spending a lot of money. A %.

And I think that's where it goes down to being very brand and product specific. Like, as you say, if it's a really saturated market, supplements are a prime example. We see that. We're seeing supplements, and beauty is a very saturated market on Amazon, like skincare. We're seeing those categories boom on socials because I guess people are brands are being forced to almost go elsewhere or not because Amazon then becomes quite a, a very competitive space for brands to even I always say they get lost down the black hole unless you're willing to pay for ads, which ends up being at a high a high cost itself.

So, yeah, competition is quite rife. Yeah. To Owen's point around socials as well, completely agree. Even if you are launching on Amazon first, social socials are absolutely the right channels to be to be also setting up at the same time. I think one thing that mustn't be overlooked is the fact that you need as many people engaged with your brand as possible, for the lifetime of that product that they've bought from you.

So even if it's a purchase that they've made, which is not kind of fast moving, consumer goods, but it's perhaps in another category, they need to stay engaged with your brand so that they come back again. Perhaps they bought a coffee machine or something like that or whatever it might be, but you want them to come back and purchase again later. One of the key things there is you need customers to sign up to an email newsletter. And there's method in the madness there because if you get customers to sign up to your email newsletter, you can actually use that, to create your custom audiences long term. So when you have grown your brand to a point where you're perhaps launching Amazon DSP, for instance, then you can start to create custom audiences and either target people who are not signed up to your email newsletter, who are not purchasing from you on Amazon or haven't purchased for a long time.

So you can target them through DSP. And you can also do the other way around, which is to negatively target those customers. So if they are signed up and they are engaged through your direct consumer platform, you actually add those to custom audiences on DSP, for instance, so that they don't see your ads. So you're creating kind of a very long term strategy that way. Yeah.

And that is when it becomes so important that the teams are talking. Mhmm. And you haven't got this isolated Amazon team working on. Because if we switch that on its head and say, okay. So let's say a brand that's listening today has a very large budget, which is always music to your ears.

Right? How much of that is reality? Let's say they do have that big budget. How would they then manage the strategy for that? Because I guess that's different.

And usually, a brand with a big budget has very separate teams as well.How do they manage that? Yeah. I think it's obviously, again, super, like, category and product specific. Right?

But as I said earlier, the name of the game, essentially, if you can be, you wanna be where your customers are regardless. Right? So it could be, you know, we're focusing on your own channel or you're on Amazon or you're on TikTok and you're driving that. Multi channel is like the way to be, right? You wanna be everywhere essentially.

And I guess that's the short answer. I would say like in terms of what that looks like, there's like because we know that, like, the game is attention, right, as Rob was saying, being able to have a prolonged conversation with your customers and with your community is, like, the best thing. Because you can resell them on new products, you can, you know, extend that relationship, and it's much easier to do that and in the long run cheaper than trying to sort of get new customers every time. So the ways to do that, as Rob mentioned, is again is like, you know, emails, sort of push notifications, having constant interactions that way. But also, again, through socials and what I like to think of as like a production strategy, right, where, you know, I take, you know, First Island as an example, where they have their own sort of YouTube channel, which is where they're working with some of the biggest YouTube stars.

And the whole, the whole product or the whole sort of content is based around their product. And it can be actually, you know, the actual content itself has actually nothing to do with shoes but it's part of culture and they're situating themselves in the middle of that culture. And you're able to then do so much with that and in the end it also sort of generates a lot of revenue for them as well, having that YouTube channel. And so, yeah, there's, I think, the real benefits of actually thinking in terms of getting attention, because that's the name of the game. Getting attention, keeping attention.

And, you know, YouTube, TikTok, all the other socials give you that opportunity to do that. And I think if you have a big budget, that's what I would say brands should be focusing on. I guess each channel has something different, like, to bring to the mix. So, Rob, you mentioned about Amazon. Amazon's a quick place to go to to get customers.

Right? Because at the end of the day, Amazon is the largest online retailer place to call out and get attention on content? No. It's not the place. You've got TikTok that is.

You've got socials that are. So you've got them that are calling out for attention, but then you've got this other part and YouTube, which is really interesting, especially YouTube shorts, which is a growing area. But then you've got this ultimate promised land, it sounds, which is the website, which in an ideal world, everyone goes to your website because you can control price, you can control content, you get all the names of everybody. But it's almost like none of those can function well without the other. Mhmm.

There's almost always this loop here, but I guess at the same time that is influenced by product, by price, and product life cycle as well, cost. Yeah. There's so many different factors involved there. Yeah. Exactly.

Because it's really, obviously it's so easy for us to say do everything. Right? And for a lot of brands, you will just need to make a decision on which channel am I focusing on at this stage. Yep. And then I'm gonna decide, okay, we're happy with where this channel is now.

You know, we're still gonna continue to consolidate it, but now it's time to start adding other channels and growing other sides of the business. And that's also fine. Right? Finding, you know, we know brands that have scaled on one platform and done that very successfully, but then have decided, alright, that's great. This is good.

We need to diversify and make sure that we're on more channels and, you know, expanding. And you have more power to do that because now, hopefully, you have more cash. You know your audience. You know what's worked on one channel, so then maybe you can start to adapt it and use it for other channels. And, you know, we always talk about, I mean, even on Amazon, there is still an opportunity for you to create your brand identity or mirror your brand identity to an extent, on Amazon.

Even if you have less consoles and less things. So, if you're doing something, a campaign that's really working on, let's say, YouTube, and is driving really great traffic to your website, you still maybe you still can use Amazon and reflect that campaign, you know, that's so you're adjusting, content and doing things. So the whole picture, regardless of, sort of, you know, where the customer is seeing you, it's still consistent. They're still getting that message. They're still getting whatever campaign it is you're trying to drive, whatever product you're trying to drive.

You can still do that across the various channels. And as you mentioned, it's really important that everybody in the business, all the different departments, know that you're where the business is going, where like, what strategy you're focusing on. Because for a lot of customers, it's you gotta think, right, yes, they're on Amazon, but that same customer can also be on TikTok, can also be on YouTube, and you wanna basically be everywhere. You wanna be top of mind at all times. And the only way you can do that is if you have a coherent strategy that joins everything up.

So whether you're big or small, you can do that. So I think that's just that that's what you wanna be focusing on, really. When you talk about scaling, it's an interesting one because when we deal with brands on Amazon, a lot of the time their idea of growing and scaling is going, well, let's just still focus on Amazon, but let's go international. Like and and start wanting to venture into other countries as opposed to remaining in the one market? Well, not one yeah.

One country and expanding to new audiences there. Yeah. I think, sort of going international was kind of a an exciting, thing to do internally within a brand, especially if you've kind of you've sort of conquered Amazon UK or Amazon US or Amazon Germany, for instance, and you suddenly want to sort of go out, reach out into new markets, or try out TikTok or whatever. And it's great to have that kind of ambition. But I think that you've really got to nail what you're doing in one locale first before you move on to another.

That might be sort of a bit small minded potentially, sort of or come across as a bit small minded. But for instance, take DSP. It's a big buzzword. Lots of people want to do it. But are they actually running their sponsored ads campaigns efficiently right now?

Are they really efficient campaigns? And can you then start to expand into DSP, for instance? To, the points around TikTok and other audiences as well, sort of decide where you need to be and decide how your, how your audience are gonna engage before you then start to expand into new locales. Just being there is not gonna get you anywhere. You need to kind of have a solid strategy in one locale first and then kind of mirror that in new locales as well.

You raise a good point there though as well when some brands will be like, okay, what's the next thing? And you're like, but you haven't mastered x yet. Oh, yeah. But in their mind, they've mastered x. And they wanna go to the next because sometimes what happens is the new launch on the new platform or new market is a quick win initially.

Right? Because all of a sudden sales come in a bit quicker. But long term, it doesn't necessarily mean that. So that can sometimes be what we see brands doing is jumping from one to the other quite quickly and then not necessarily seeing the right results. Mhmm.

I think also I mean, I mentioned ERP earlier. One of the key things that I see is, you know, we want to launch on Amazon or we want to launch our own direct to consumer website, etcetera. But for scalability, you need integration. So if you want to set up your own direct to consumer, your own your Amazon, your TikTok channels, and everything, You need to make sure that whichever platform you're using, whether it's, you know, if you're going direct to consumer, if it's Shopify or whatever it might be, does that integrate with your ERP? Does that integrate with Oracle or NetSuite or Microsoft, for instance?

And have you got all of that set up in a way that you have a team who you can work with to quickly integrate all of those different channels into one place, for stock control, invoicing, etcetera? So that sort of groundwork might seem boring. And it's surprising how many brands sort of haven't necessarily done that first. And perhaps they engage with a consultant or an agency who's going to be helping them. And, actually, there needs to be somebody within their own business who can support the agency, who can provide all of the assets they need and things like that and can quickly provide pricing and knows their profitability centers and things like that in order to know which platform something should be launched on.

So there's a lot of groundwork that needs to be in place first so that you can properly scale. Because launching on Amazon's one thing, and you can do that in isolation. But does it integrate with your existing ERP, for instance? Yeah. That's a great point because that comes into the overall strategy.

Right? As in, okay. Well, we wanna be in all these platforms long term. We're just gonna launch on Amazon, but you also need to do within that building that infrastructure from day one because well, you know what it's like. Sometimes you think, oh, we'll deal with that a bit later.

But once you deal with that infrastructure later it's harder to do later on because there's so much more that needs to be changed and you've already got a business and processes working in another way. So that just highlights the importance of just sitting down and mapping out the long term direction you wanna go to be able to build that infrastructure because what often happens with these brands is they haven't got the infrastructure because they don't have the long term strategy and it's just like, oh, yeah, well, we'll master Amazon and then we'll figure it out. So I think that's huge and, and a huge way for businesses to scale, but also to not scale and to fail when it comes to scaling as well. Absolutely. Yeah.

I think one of the key things is you have to have a team who are passionate about processes, and they need to work really well together. So your head of eCommerce needs to be really integrated with the finance team, with the operations team, and they all need to work super closely together to and and be as agile as possible. As soon as something changes within any of those platforms they're using, they need to be able to pivot, etcetera. So I think that's one of the key things. The whole team just needs to be passionate and be behind your overall eCommerce strategy for it to work.

Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. I really like the point around, getting your operations in order. I think this comes to the other point around what sort of platforms you're on.

Right? Because you could be on TikTok where the variety of your product can take off just like that. And you've got massive supply chain issues because the product that is doing really well is now looking like it's gonna sell out. You could be out of stock for weeks. Those sorts of And there's an element of not necessarily being completely able to prepare for that because it's really difficult to predict.

But if you do have a long term strategy and you know, you even know that's a problem that you're gonna need to anticipate, that still gives you a head start rather than being completely stuck. So I think having those operations in place to allow you to scale, is obviously so important. And I think, like, yeah, as you said, someone that's very passionate about processes in a business somewhere. Yeah. The room.

But we've seen that. Right? So we've worked with brands. We've scaled their businesses on Amazon for them, and we're then doing that on other channels, so TikTok shop. But sometimes something happens and it just booms, and it does set out.

Right? Sometimes you can't avoid all of that because it's learning a new platform. It might be tapping into a different audience and so forth. But having the right system in place to be able to manage that is vital. So that's a huge thing.

And I guess that comes on to my next question. We talked when we talk about, okay, that's what brands should be doing, but what are the common mistakes that we're seeing that brands are doing at the moment aside from not having an eCommerce strategy or not having their processes locked in? Are there any other things that sort of stand out that brands should stop doing, basically? I think a big one for me is looking at a new channel and saying, we need to trial this and not fully commit to making it work. Right?

So not putting the amount of budget that you need behind it. Not putting the sort of resources that you need for it to be successful. And then just going, Oh, that channel doesn't work. So because I mean and not just not just that, but when a channel doesn't work or when something isn't working, I think it's really important to break it down to the, like, the elements of each thing. Right?

So for example, you could have launched on Amazon and you're not getting any sales. And so you could conclude, I've tried Amazon, doesn't work, doesn't get any sales. Or you could have a little dig in and say, actually, we're getting loads of traffic, but there's an issue with our conversion. Right? So that's a much much more helpful way to look at it because now it's like, okay, conversion there's so many different things that could be causing this conversion thing.

But now we're gonna have a look at it. Maybe our reviews aren't great. Right? We've got three star reviews, two star reviews, we're not getting it. So we just need to improve that.

Or the images could be improved. Improved. And then suddenly, you start to see those sales go up. I think that applies to everything you're doing. Right?

If you're launching on any site, but, you know, it's worked with other people in the past. So it's not a complete, crazy thing that it could work for you. You just need to dig into why it's not working and give it the proper time and resources to get it there. Yeah. That's, that's really valid.

The investment piece is an interesting one. You mentioned that right at the start with brands, they start working and they trial. And then they go, well, we're not seeing the ROI, but you've only been testing it for three months, or we're not seeing the ROI when we include agency fees. Well, you're not going to. Right?

And I think that's the part where brands need to really start thinking about this is long term, and your overall there needs to be a certain investment and to and this comes into just every day with, like, even Amazon Yeah. With ads. When brands become so fixated on that ROI on a daily basis without thinking about the long term, it then becomes a hindrance for them to grow as well where they can't grow any further. Rob, what are you finding, like, from an advice of, brands should be stopping doing right now? Stop focusing on one metric.

That's probably the key one. I think it's interesting. You mentioned ROI, for instance. And, you know, should they be focusing on what they should be focusing on in terms of metrics? Or is there one specific metric they should be focusing on?

You know, for Amazon vendors, for instance, they might have lots of different things that they need to achieve. So they've got an overall sales target of x, but their net PPM perhaps is low. And then, the ROI on a particular product on different products is at a different level. So then you really need to be using all of that data to make the right decisions about which products to push, and you might be surprised which products actually. Because if you're driving various different metrics and have an eye on all of them, you need to drive the right products that will positively affect all of those different metrics at the same time.

So, yeah, not focusing on one particular metric is probably the key thing. And as we come to time, this is all really useful information. And for those that are listening, really, the conversation of today is to get those of our listeners to start thinking about more the whys behind an eCommerce strategy is important and different things to think about, which isn't so tangible in a way. It is the thought process that needs to go into all of this. There's but before we sort of wrap up and I completely start summarizing everything, we're in 2025.

We're in March. My goodness. I don't know where time has just flown. What trends if you were to call out one kind of trend that you're seeing overall in eCommerce, what would that that what would you call out? Owen, I'll let you go first.

Although I apologize, Rob, if then Owen steals your trend, so could go either way. There's a few. Yeah. Yeah. Trends, so when you say trends, you mean sort of new things that are emerging?

Yeah. That brands should be looking at? Yeah. So I think I've kind of already mentioned this, but I think it's an important one. I think the content game as a whole is just very important.

Right? So you need to start thinking about how to bring your brand to life, and how they interact with the customers. Right? It's all about social commerce, that element of things. So, obviously that does lend itself to Tik Tok, but it's not the only channel where that's applicable.

And I think what's going to happen and what's already happening is that the other channels are starting to mirror Tik Tok. So if you understand social commerce as a whole and the power of video and direct access to customers, it's gonna help you in all whatever's I think it's the future of e commerce essentially, right? That social commerce piece. So that's the thing I would say. Yeah.

Definitely. And content, I guess, is the video content, right? You've like we were talking about TikTok, video shorts now becoming a thing. Even when I'm on LinkedIn, I'm if I'm on LinkedIn on my phone, straight away it's video content now, which is engaging, I'll admit, and you kind of get pulled into that. So, yeah, definitely the content part, and it requires investment as well, and it requires time, which brands need to be planning for.

And creativity because %. As more and more brands do it, it's gonna you know, it becomes hard to stand out. So yeah. You're gonna need to be creative. Definitely.

And you often do know when brands are getting you and not being afraid to try it to start with because I do see, like, brands trying it, and I could see that it's like they're trying, but you're still pretty rigid in front of the camera and trying to figure it out. But that's okay. Everybody starts from one place. Don't let that stop you from jumping on it, right, and and just testing it and having fun with it as well. It's lots of fun.

And for those behind the scenes reels footage and everything, maybe even bring it up in interviews with new starters coming into your business, perhaps working in, you know, customer service or working in the warehouse, packing orders. You know, you could be on camera at some point. People love behind the scenes footage. So even bearing that in mind in terms of what type of people you're gonna employ, you know, make sure that they're happy with being on camera, for instance, some of them. Yeah.

So that you can do that behind the scenes stuff and get that out to your audience as well. We love a bit of behind the scenes. Yeah. I know you do. But in terms of sort of, what to keep up with, in terms of trends, I think one of the key things with things like, with Meta, with TikTok, etcetera, you need to when they launch new initiatives, like, for instance, threads, you know, if you are on it and you're one of the first people there, you will win effectively.

Because people like you know, with Instagram, if they launch threads, they are gonna be driving traffic to that. That is gonna be one of their key objectives. And so if you're one of the first people there, you will win in the long term. And, sure, it might not work out in the long run. It might be that it disappears, in the long run.

But you were one of the first people there. You engaged the audience that were there. And so you're you're you're already being seen. And it and that also kinda puts you in position for the next thing. Right?

So, you know, once you've gotten into the habit of looking at the next thing and developing it, even if one platform dies, another will come very similarly, and you've already got the skills in house or you've already developed the skills to, to thrive. Yeah. And you're learning it before everyone else, which is where we were talking about content. Some people have just mastered content, but they didn't from day one. Mhmm.

Whereas some people are just starting that journey, or some people haven't even started it. So it's definitely something that's really, really important. So this has been fantastic, great conversation. I know this is a topic we could probably continue for a lot longer because there are so many different variables. It is such a case by case conversation.

It's so brand specific, even product specific. And this is where we as an agency come in. Right? Because these are the conversations that we're having, Owen and Rob, you're having with brands when brands come to us. And it may be that a brand comes to us and goes, right.

We need to really focus on our Amazon channel. Then taking a step back. Okay. What's your overall strategy? Where do you wanna be in three, five years?

Is Amazon the right focus? Or, actually, have you thought about the TikTok shop or what's going on with your DTC website and everything? And that's where we can support in all areas, but it's making sure that they have that overarching strategy as well, which is really, really important. But for those listening, you can now hopefully see that there are so many different things to be thinking about, when making that decision, but also the importance of an eCommerce strategy and what an actual eCommerce strategy is. Because things get thrown around as in, oh, yeah.

I've got an eCommerce strategy. And it's like, no. Really, what it is is you wanna sell your products online and you've just chucked your products on Amazon. You've chucked the same products on TikTok. You've mirrored absolutely everything, and you're just going and seeing what happens.

Right? So that's sort of the world of eCommerce, which continues to evolve. So anything you wanna add before we say goodbye to our audience and, and thank everybody for listening today? I think, watch out for AI. Keep that front of mind.

For Amazon sellers specifically, with Rufus, the first ever dog in the Amazon office, that that content you've created for each of your channels is so, so key, and it has to be created differently, for every channel, in some cases. But especially with Amazon, when you've got things like Rufus where people can start to shop using that, using that, functionality, I think it's key just to make sure that you have done everything you can to, to attract the right buyers using the correct search terms, relevant search terms, etcetera. %. I'm glad you brought up AI, because that's so important, especially when you talk about the content. I can already see it now, AI creating, mirroring content because it comes from somewhere.

It's not coming. It's the creativity part isn't there, the ideation, and that's a risk as well. So anything from your side, Owen? No. That's literally just saying, like, I was just thinking you need to be creative.

Like, don't be afraid to kinda step out the box because, ultimately, it's an attention game. No matter what platform you're on, that's ultimately what you're trying to do is be front of mind for the customer. Awesome. Well, thank you, Owen. Thank you.

Thank you, Rob. Thanks for having me. It's been great talking about eCommerce. And thank you, everybody, for listening today. If you want to know more about eCommerce, TikTok, shop, Amazon, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.

You can also find us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and we are here to give you content to help you on your eCommerce journey.