[Music][Applause][Music]hey guys Greta here and today I'm goingto be covering five things that you needto know before you start an e-commercebusiness over the last six years Ifounded for multi-million dollarecommerce brands including skinny meatyv and drop model and scaled these brandsinto the eight figures I've also madesome huge mistakes along the way theseare mistakes I see new ecommerceentrepreneurs making again and again nowI've also taught a course alongsidefound are called start and Scalia onlinestore to thousands of students so I'venot only learnt from my own mistakes butalso send thousands of e-commerceentrepreneurs just starting out maketheir own the best thing about making amistake are the lessons that you learnin doing so so today I'm not only goingto identify five things that you need toknow before you start an e-commercebusiness but also give you someactionable tips around them where I canso let's list them quickly now so thatyou know what the agenda is for todaynumber one your product is the solutionto a problem number two your productneeds to be viable for e-commerce numberthree you need to be able to communicatehow you're differentnumber four your customer is noteveryone and number five you can buildyour audience before you have a productso I'm going to take you through all ofthese with an example of a newe-commerce brand and how you'd applyeach of these learnings to that brandlike I said this is going to be veryactionable then I'm going to let youknow how you can get started today solet's dive straight into it number oneyour product is the solution to aproblem so the first thing that you needto know when starting an e-commercebusiness is that you're not justcreating a product you're solving aproblem the world does not need moreproducts what it does need is bettersolutions to existing problems one ofthe most common mistakes I see newentrepreneurs making again and again iscreating a solution before identifyingthe problem so before thinking whatproduct can I sell first think aboutwhat problem can I solve so what we needto do is find a problem that you knowexists or better yet you've experiencedyourself ideally this will be a nichethat you're truly passionate about asthis is going to be something that youwant to be able to do day in day out forthe foreseeable futureso let's use an example I'm interestedin protecting our shared environment forfuture generations this might be becausemy mom was a bit of a hippie and alsolike a lot of mums the person I look upto most in this world so a hugeenvironmental issue is waste bothlandfill and recyclable for differentreasons my mum has taken to doing thingslike lighting have been with oldnewspaper instead of plastic bags andshe religiously takes her own reusablebags to the supermarket including theones that you put your fruit and veggiesin to be weighed so the problem I'd likemy brand to solve is decreasing wastefrom everyday disposable items so a goodway to come up with your product typehere is by turning your problem into aquestion and your product type over theanswer to that question so the questionwould be how can i decrease waste fromeveryday disposable items and one answerwould be to make those items reusable sonow let's start to think of some itemsthat use daily that are disposable thatyou could make reusable so the first fewthings that come to mind just off thetop of my head of razors toothbrushestakeaway coffee cups and straws so nowyou want to begin to have a think and dosome research around each potentialproduct idea and which you think has thebiggest market potential and which isn'tbeing done as well as the others solet's fast forward and go for the itemof those which has the least marketsaturation which is disposable strawsthen we want to focus in and start to dosome additional research around ourproblem and solution so we want to lookinto some of the facts and figures thatyou can focus on to highlight theproblem of disposable strollersapparently an estimated 500 millionstraws are used everyday in the US alonethis is a powerful number and will helpyour potential customer instantlyunderstand the importance of making achange then you want to highlight thefact that plastic straws can not berecycled and that they sit in landfillfor years or pollute our waterways soyou're starting to create a compellingreason for your prospective customers toswitch to a reusable straw by getting totheto understand and even empathize withthe problem now your customer just needsto understand how your product isdifferent to every other reusable strawon the market which we'll cover in pointnumber three but first we need to makesure our product is viable fore-commerce so moving on to point numbertwo not all products are viable fore-commerce now that you've come up withthe problem in it you're solving and thesolution your product you need to makesure that your product is viable toe-commerce so the number one thingthat's going to determine whether yourproduct is going to be viable fore-commerce or not is whether it's ableto be shipped worldwide so it needs tonot be too heavy or your shipping willcost a lot it needs to not be toobreakable or you'll be issuing a lot ofrefunds so let's take our product ideainto account here is it like to ship yesit's reusable so you'll only me needingto send one or two items at a timerather than items of bulk and is itbreakable this is going to depend onwhat the straw is made of there are twomain kinds of reusable straws glass andplastic the e-commerce viability let'sstay away from glass as it's far morebreakable plus it could be quite adangerous product if it was to break insomebody's mouth for example so a metalreusable straw is a viable ecommerceoption it's also a financially viableoption as it's relatively cheap toproduce and has a high perceived valueso you might be thinking there arealready very usable straws on the markethow is my product different this takesus onto topic 3 so topic number three isthat you need to differentiate yourselffor your competition the next thing thatyou need to do is be able to communicatehow you're different from other brandsor products on the market what we'relooking to do here is to create yourunique value proposition a unique valueproposition is a single clear compellingmessage that states why you're differentand worth buying a common misconceptionin e-commerce is that you need a crazynew product idea to be successful thisis not true at all and actually the mostsuccessful e-commerce brands are theones that have taken existing problemsand sold them in a new way so what'simportant to note here is that you don'tneed to reinventthe wheel you just need to find a pointof difference the way that I do this isby taking my product and considering howI could make it different by changing asingle dimension only the dimensionsthat I take into account a designfunction price and time so let's take alook at how we could make our reusablestraw different to others on the marketstarting with design an option to changethe design of our metal reusable strawcould be making it in a differentcolorway especially a trending colorwaylike rose gold or Chrome but again thesemay already exist another morespecialized design option could beplaying on the design trend ofpersonalization and each straw could beengraved with your customer's initialsfor example this makes the product feelmore like their own and is a great waynot to get your straws mixed up and inthis way it could encourage bulk ordersfrom families and offices etc so movingon to a way that we could change ourproducts function the best way to goabout changing a products functionalityis to take a pain point into account soagain off the top of my head I canimagine that a straw floating around ina bag or day might get quite dirty orthat you might not even be carrying abag and you might not want to take along awkward straw with you everywherethat you go so a functional way to helpsolve these pain points could be bydesigning a straw that's retractable andable to be folded down to fit in a smallcase maybe around the size of a matchboxand in turn this case would help protectyour straw off and dirt so maybe evenmaking the case from an antibacterialsubstance like copper the next dimensionthat you want to consider as a point ofdifference is the price of the straw andit kind of surprising you want toconsider whether you're going for alower direct-to-consumer price pointwhich is more accessible to the massesor a more exclusive price point forhigher exclusivity I generally go forthe lower direct-to-consumer price pointfor a product like this and you canalways bring out a more expensivelimited-edition version of your productlater for example a solid metal ratherthan a Polish metal straw and finallythe last dimension that I consider istime in particular the amount of timethat your product is available for saleat my company the fifth watches we wereable to differentiate ourselves from thehighly saturated watch market bychanging this single variable only theamount of time that our watches wereavailable for we decided to only sellour watches on the fifth of each monthfor five days the scarcity of thiscreated demand and the exclusivityincreased the saved value othercompanies have done this through limitededition models like jay-z's or the flashsale model like gilt with thisparticular product I think it wouldn'tlend itself to only being available fora certain amount of time except like wediscussed for maybe a limited editionversion so there you have it some ideasaround how to differentiate your productfrom others already on the market so wehave our product now we have to considerour market which brings us to pointnumber four your customer is noteveryone so you know the problem you aresolving you know how your product canserve as a solution to that problem andhow to differentiate yourself from yourcompetition now it's time to startthinking about who you're going to beselling your product to something that Ihear again and again is that because anew entrepreneur thinks that theirproduct is so amazing and as it'llappeal to anyone therefore their targetmarket is everyone but the thing is thatnobody can afford to market to everybodyso to get more ROI out of your marketingyou need to find the group of people whoyour offer is the most compelling forthis is your target market one way tothink about this is in an ideal worldwho would love your product and want totell all of their friends family andfollowers about it this is the groupwe're looking for first so there are alot of different ways about going tofind your target market you can createcustomer personas you can do research onyour competitors and who they'reactively targeting or speaking to butbefore you launch the easiest way willbe by reverse analyzing your productfrom your audience's point of view youcan do this by ever taking an audiencecentric or product centric approach sofor an audience centric approach themain things that you're going to beconsidering are your audience'sdemographics so things like their agelocation gender income level ethnicityetc and your audiences psychographic sothings like their personality values andinterests and for a product centricapproach you want to take apart yourproduct and its core offerings againthis could be in turndesign time function and price anddetermine who these would appeal to mosteither way as a starting point beforeyou've launched and have any data aboutwho your customers actually are we justwant to come up with a few basics somaybe one or two demographic basedfactors and one or two psychographicfactors so let's say for our reusablemetal straw that were wanting to targetpeople predominantly based in the US dueto our initial messaging around 500million straws being used daily in theUS aged between 25 to 34 as these couldbe young adults wanting to take moreresponsibility for maintaining ourshared environment for futuregenerationsso they'd value the environment andfillers that they can make a differencetogether this is definitely enoughinformation about our target audience toget started with so let's go find themwhich brings us to the fifth thing thatwe need to know before starting ane-commerce business you need to buildyour audience before you launch yourproduct one of the biggest myths ine-commerce and with any business reallyis the idea that if you build it theywill comethis is that if you have the rightproducts a beautiful website and greatproduct photography that people will notonly find you but actually followthrough and make a purchase in realitythis could not be further from the truthand it's a reason that a lot of brandsdo fail so creating a product andwaiting for your market isn't the rightway to go about it but what if we flipthis on its head and focused on buildingan audience before we launched a productand this is where my concept of marketproduct fit as opposed to product marketfit comes in this concept highlights theimportance of building an audience or amarket before you launch your productrather than the other way around so Idid this with my brand drop bottle I hada really big Instagram account witharound eight or nine hundred thousandfollowers at the time called app detoxwater which featured fruit infusedwatersso I created a product for this audiencewhich is a double world glass fruitinfuser drink bottle that product waschosen as one of Oprah's Favorite Thingsa couple of years ago and was featuredon the front page of Amazon atChristmastime and as a result we sawsales skyrocket so building an audiencebefore you launch your product is agreat way to get started and where I'vestarted with all of my brands has beenInstagramInstagram is still a very powerfulmarketing platform where you can buildan audience for free or with a veryminimal budget if you're usingtechniques like shoutouts or Instagraminfluences over the last six years I'vegrown my combined Instagram following toover 16 million followers across 25different accounts including app vineswith 5.7 million followers but the mostimportant question is how do you goabout growing your social following togrow your social following you need tofocus on what I call the three C's ofcommunity the first C is content thecontent that you post is greatly goingto determine the type of followers thatyou attract to your account so you wantyour content to be both relevant andvaluable to your target audienceso take a look at what other brands youaspire to be like a posting these don'tnecessarily have to be a directcompetition just other brands withinyour niche the second C is collaborationand I'd suggest collaborating withinfluencers other accounts in your nichefor shoutouts or another branding yourniche to host a giveaway and the third Cis consistency posting consistentlydoesn't only help to establish frontEmine positioning for your brand throughrepetition but is also favored withinthe Instagram algorithm in other wordsaccounts that post consistently willreceive more organic reach on their postmeaning Instagram will show their poststo more people so keep the three C'scontent collaboration and consistency inmind here founder actually runs the bestInstagram course on the market thatteaches you step by step how to growyour Instagram following calledInstagram domination so if you'd like tofind out more about that I'll put thelink in the description as well and forthe record I'm in no way associated withthe course and I'm not an employee offounders I just strongly recommend thiscourse so when thinking about buildingan audience on Instagram for examplebefore we launch our reusable straw wewant to keep what we know about ournation target audience in mind so wewant to be engaging with environmentallyconscious people from the US agedbetween 18 and 34 first we need to finda theme for our Instagram page we don'twant to create a product page yet as wedon't have our product and we don't wantto be posting other brands so to pickthe theme via page a goodidea is to go back to the problem you'resolving this is so that when weintroduce our product to this page it'llbe relevant and seem like a goodsolution to our followers so for us itwas decreasing waste from everydaydisposable items first when thinkingabout content we might want to begin byBri searching other environmentallyfocused pages on Instagram within theniche and also active hashtags withinthe niche both to use in our posts andto identify viral trending content wecan repost to our page with credit soafter doing a little research I found awhole Instagram movement aroundminimizing waste and there are all kindsof hashtags for this movement likehashtag zero waste with over 1.5 milliontagged posts hashtag zero waste homehashtag zero waste life the list goes onso the content on my account would becentered around promoting reusablesubstitutions to everyday disposableproducts so I'd begin postingconsistently around this theme and interms of collaboration I could do a minitag to win competition around some ofthe items that I feature that wouldn'tcost me much I could also buy some shoutouts or influencer posts from some ofthe larger pages in my niche or even getthem to run a competition on my behalfin this way you'll be able to slowly butsurely start to build an audience thatyou can then introduce your product tolater when you're readyif you switch this account to a businessaccount on Instagram this will also helpto validate your target audience as youmight end up with analytics that showthat your audience is predominantlybased in the US aged between 25 to 34and predominantly female for examplethen what you want to do is startgetting this audience to sign up to thewait list for your product which youmight not even have in stock yet thisway you'll have an engaged group fromwithin your target audience to email outto come launch day so there you have ita way to begin building your audiencebefore you launch your product so thoseare the five things that from myexperience you need to know beforestarting an e-commerce store if you likebeing guided through today is step bystep with an idea in mind then you'lllove my color start and scale withfounder start and scale your onlinestore will take you through everythingthat you need to know to launch and growyourown successful e-commerce business fromscratch from finding a trending productto how to brand and validate your ideamanufacturing your product creating astore using Shopify building an audiencebefore you launch your store all the waythrough to launching and scaling youre-commerce brand start and scale we'lltake you through step by step withactionable advice along the way so we'llput a link below where you can find outmore about starting scale so thanks forwatching guys and if you want morecontent from myself and the founder teambe sure to hit subscribe below thefounder mission is to help you create anass-kickin business and help you learnstraight from the mouths of world-classfounders get your free printed editionof founder magazine featuring SirRichard Branson just cover shipping andhandling at founder com Ford / Branson
Source
