00:00.00
retailjosh
Welcome to today's episode of retail initiative. This is part 2 in a three part series about the 3 core ingredients of online success. So I'm going to cue the theme honestly this stuff what I'm going to talk about today I really do believe might be the most important thing that I teach. Ah, so stick around can't wait if you're listening. We're going to cue the theme if you're watching we're going to dive right in so see you on the other side.
00:50.16
retailjosh
All right? So let's dive in so last week we introduced this idea of the 3 core ingredients. What does it take to succeed online and if you've listened to me before I've used language like that a lot and I typically am talking about. Ah, driving traffic getting more people to your site increasing conversion offering an incredible experience and retention not just getting the first purchase but the second the third the fourth and those are are that that's the the framework. That's the thing. Um, and if you really want to succeed online you focus on those 3 but to a degree like that is a mixture of tactical and strategic. But I talk a lot about the idea that there are 3 levels of the way that we operate there are tactics the things that we do. Where do we click and what do we publish behind that is a strategy how do like in general how does our brand engage. Our customer. But then behind that are principles why we do what we do and the the traffic conversion or retention is is a hybrid of strategy and tactics. But what are the principles that guide it and how do we start to build those out and I think from there is these 3 core pieces. So last week. Ah, talked about you as the entrepreneur and I asked this question and I want to ask it again. where do you want to be three years from now where do you see your business now. There are two sides to defining the success. There is the financial side. What's your revenue look like what's your profit look like what are you taking home.
02:23.51
retailjosh
And what does that mean for you what impact will that have on your life and 2 what does fulfillment mean what is fulfilling for you personally because financial success without fulfillment is never going to be enough ever and so how do we. Start to define that because if we can define it we can reverse engineer what we want our life and our business to look like but here's the question about our business three years from now. Let's think about our goal what we want and then what team sizes that require how are we advertising? How are we delegating. What are you doing versus what is your team doing and are you as you are today capable of running that business I think most of us including myself would hint or no um if I look at the Josh of three years ago I would implode my business today as we're doing. Ah, conversion-centric design and taking people through this incredible program around gaining. Ah um, brick and mor retailers gaining traction online through redoing their sites or elevating their existing sites and then creating a marketing and operations plan I would implode that guaranteed. And yes I did just kind of subtly drop what we do. Ah, if you're interested in the show notes. There's a link we can talk about it but that's not why I'm here today? Um, and so the the question that I presented was where do you want to be are you capable of getting there.
03:51.70
retailjosh
Are you capable of operating that business and then I shared some beliefs and principles around elevating yourself elevating your mindset to be the person that is capable of running that because if we can adopt the mindset and the way of thinking of a better future version of ourself. Then I think that we can kind of shortcut getting to our goals way faster. So that's the recap if you didn't listen to that episode I would definitely go back? Um, but today I want to talk about your perfect customer now if you think about a storefront. Ah, think about when you walk into a store. What is awesome. You typically get greeted you feel that you look around you see things you might smell things and that is all designed to make you feel something now think about a store that you recently went to. They probably greeted you and you felt a certain way and what did you feel if you were their ideal customer. Of course you probably felt welcomed I think that's where most of us go but deeper than that we want people to feel like they're in the right place and in a store a lot honestly, a lot of us are really talented people. We're really good at making literally anyone feel welcome. You could serve. Girls in their younger 20 s and an old man walks in and your personality is good enough like you were good talented enough at what you do that? You could make them feel like they're in the right place. It's crazy how we're able to do that but online. That's a little harder because our brain is wired to walk into a room and know.
05:21.73
retailjosh
I'm in the right place where I'm not like I don't I either do belong in this room or I don't belong in this room and when we land on a site our brains make that decision in less than a second and we either click that back button or we are like yeah this is for me and we stick around. And this is one of the core problems that people make online is they don't build that connection and the way to do that starts with identifying your perfect customer and I literally do mean like create a character who is 1 perfect customer and they're and this is related to their demographics their age their income. But we also want to get deeper into that so I want to take you through really two sides to this I want to introduce you to the framework that we take our clients through and then I want to share something that we teach and manifest that really helps you start to understand who that is so. The reason first off just to to explains I know some people when I say 1 perfect customer. They're like well I serve moms and daughters like I don't just serve one. We have multiple people and here's where I would make the case. Um, that. Like let's use the mom and daughter analogy most of the time we don't actually serve moms and daughters. We serve the mom and the daughter is also able to find things or we serve the daughter and the mom is also able to find things but instead of trying to buy for a 25 year old and a 55 year old.
06:47.48
retailjosh
If we could acknowledge like hey you know what our customer probably is actually in their mid 30 s she's a mom. She has little kids she this this this and this if we can identify that that impacts our marketing are buying and we can be something incredible for a certain person. Rather than trying to be a lot of things but really only mildly being able to solve a problem for a lot of people so I would much rather always lean towards I'm going to really help this small group of people the term that you might have heard is called. Riches are in the niches. it's a it's a weird thing. It's counterintuitive. You think by serving more people that you would grow but actually by niching down more and more and more and more we then become the absolute place that people like that want to go to. And so when someone lands in a meteor like oh my gosh I didn't think that a store exists it was made for me but look here it is like this thing was literally made for me. You now have a raving fan. You have someone who is going to be your most loyal fan because you were made for them. So. There are three sides. Three sides. There are two sides to this. The first is the process that we take our clients through and it's 3 parts it first we want to know who are they this is their demographics. This is basic stuff their age their income their marital status.
08:15.70
retailjosh
And that starts to help us understand like who should we have modeling or what should our imagery on our site look like then we go 1 level deeper and we say how do they shop for what you sell what questions do they ask? How do they talk about it. Um, what things are they looking for. Is it. Are they trend-based or are they comfort based or what things are they thinking about when they buy what you sell and then the the deeper level is kind of their deeper desires their hopes and their fears and that starts to impact all of your marketing language. You're doing content for your site. Understanding their deeper desires helps us do that. So how do we really start to understand who this person is so we in manifest my friend Tara and I created a framework. It's an acronym if you're taking notes I would recommend getting those out. Ah, the acronyms develop and the acronym is designed to help you be an exercise that can be done on a regular basis to tune in to who your customer is so first is d this is demographics demographics are the. Um, hold on.
09:59.49
retailjosh
So the acronym is develop and so if you're taking notes I would recommend that you start doing that. Um, and so I want to take you through it and this exercise is designed to go through really on a regular basis to continue to tune in to your customer. Understanding your customer is never a 1 ne-time exercise is something that we're constantly thinking about next week we're going to talk about the relationship between your brand and your customer and think of it almost like a friendship or a marriage. You don't meet a friend and learn 10 things about them and then move on and never learn about them. Relationship continues to grow into foster and so that's what this exercise is for so the first thing is demographics their age their income their marital status. Do they have kids. What do they work? Do they not work. Do they work at home like what is what are these things look like for them and these are just objective facts. Then we get 1 layer one layer deeper and we get to ecosystem ecosystem is like just what does their world look like when they open Instagram what do they see what accounts are they following when they open Facebook what do they see what kind of stuff are they interacting with? do they read blogs if so what blogs do they listen to podcasts if so. What podcast what news source do they watch what or do they even watch the news. Um I talked to someone the other day who was like telling me that they were concerned about the economy but she didn't know if her customer was concerned about the economy and I was like ok well.
11:27.14
retailjosh
What accounts do they follow and we went and looked at the accounts and a lot of the accounts were talking about the economy. So I was like look if their world is talking about it. A lot. They probably are concerned. But if you go to like high end um high end style stuff that's more Aff fluent. You're not going to see it about see it a lot. Because there's less concern in that market. So if we get in their ecosystem. We can even start to understand what their fears are which we're going to get to so the ecosystem this is important I joke that if your customer is a different age than you. Um, you even want to listen to their music because like I you should be able to open their Spotify and guess. What they're what the curated playlist are we want to be so in tune with their world that we know all that's going on our brand's going to have to be best friends with them and so we need to understand who they are I think of it like you know, but this is especially true if your customer is different from you think of it like a parent. But the teenager and desperately wants that great relationship with the teenager. Guess what they're going to go to the concerts with them. They're going to do these things. They may not have normally done because they want that relationship. It's the same thing we want that relationship and so we're going to put ourselves in their world next is values. Values are these deeper beliefs that guide everything that we do and I think that there are 2 types of values. There are what I would call aspirational values. These are the values that we all typically say that we have like faith family. Um.
13:02.66
retailjosh
You might start to put some virtues in there like courage or wisdom or temperance you name it and big into stoicism. So you're going to hear some of those things and then there are the values that we actually live out so like ah in college. For example I would have said faith in family but my life would have said that i. Really, it was like friends and enjoying like having a good time that was the values I lived out and we want to understand both of these because our marketing can speak to it. A great example of where you see these combined is have you ever seen those little tea towels that say. I love Jesus but I cuss a little that is a aspirational value their faith with a lived out value that you know we drop an s word from time to time. Maybe an f bomb. No judgment I do it is what it is I try not to on the show I don't know if I have or not um, but. Anyway, we want to understand what that is because we can speak to it then we get a layer deeper and we get to their status the the on on acronym this is elevate what elevates their status now a lot of us think that status is an affluence thing. It's related to wealth but status means something different to everyone. So for example with my friend group and my wife's friends um within my friend group. It is the typical stuff cars watches. Um, how nice your clothes are within my wife's it's how cute clothes are they don't really care about Bram but handbags are a thing but.
14:34.25
retailjosh
Weirdly, within her friends and I don't understand this like the minivan was a status thing. It showed what type of Mom you are and so her Minivan is a status is a elevation of status over not having a minivan and so we have to understand what. Does Actually what does actually elevating their status mean because everyone wants to elevate it and your brand is one of the core means to them elevating their status next language. How do they talk a lot of times we write copy and we write our social posts like we talk. But how do they talk? How do they complain about things. How do they brag to their friends if they were to text a friend about the dress that they bought from you. How would they describe it when we can understand their language that impacts our emails our social posts. Our product descriptions. Ah. Our headlines all of these things when we can start to use their terminology. So For example, let's talk my world I Market to retailers. But here's the thing I started to learn when I started talking to retailers is most retailers don't identify with the retail industry. They identify with the type of retailer that they are that they work in the outdoor industry they work in the boutique industry. They're in the pet industry. Ah the the identity is not with retail the identities with the industry that they're in and so I had to to understand that to use language that speaks to that.
16:04.99
retailjosh
So for you? What could that be next. We get to two sides here of really the same coin one is Opportunities. What are their hopes and goals about the future. There are two sides to this there is short term. What are their short term goals for their. This could be like the hey they their short term goals are keeping up with the joneses and they want to look great. They want to be in shape they want to still have a good relationship with their spouse and they want to keep a sense of Independence But what are their long term goals their long term goals could be wealth um a second home. Ah, still like having a healthy marriage when their kids move out of the house. Whatever those things might be we want to understand both of them because all of marketing pushes towards pleasure pushes towards our goals or it pulls away from failure or pain.
16:57.66
retailjosh
I know I'm kind of like getting deep here and honestly this is the stuff that we dive deep and into and paid content and I'm putting it up for free tear of you're listening I'm really sorry I hope that this is okay but I want to add a ton of value to people that show up here and then the last one pain and pleasure. It's 2 peas but it's not develop with two p it's just. Going to combine them into one p because well it's my podcast and I get to so pain and pleasure now we want to identify what does pain and pleasure mean to your customer. This is what are they are scared of what are they scared of what are they trying to avoid where does pleasure come from for them. Some of this is related to status. Um, but I know a lot of us may be thinking well pain and pleasure is pain and pleasure but is it think about like a mountain and beach vacation I went on a vacation with um with another couple. Ah, that had kids my kids age this summer we were in Colorado amazing couple like some of our best friends in the world. Um, but my wife grew up in a family that like when they vacation they don't do beaches they do like they're like when I go over to their house on a Saturday I have to pack for like a nice dinner a workout. Ah, hike you just you just never know with them. There's all stupid in shape and it's ridiculous and when we go to Colorado it's a hike in the morning a hike in the afternoon a stroll through town in the evening and our friends were like well could we maybe like do a Monday hike and a Thursday hike and then just kind of chill. The rest of the time.
18:31.99
retailjosh
Pain and pleasure look different to the person who wants to sit on a beach and read a book that mountain trip with a bunch of hikes is miserable but to the person who loves the hikes and the mountains laying on the beach all day and reading books sounds miserable to them. We want to understand pain and pleasure because that's going to help us like let's say we have that mountain person. Well we don't want to use copy. That's like related to sitting on the beach and doing nothing and so we can start to create this persona around these pieces and this is a acronym to go through on a regular basis. But by understanding who this 1 perfect person is we can design our site plan our social planner emails plan our buying around that and I believe that this is the single most important thing that a ah a retail business can go through in transformation. And I have seen it now in countless business businesses where they see their business as like there's before we understood our customer and after we understood our customer and I think that that what I just shared with you could really be 1 of the most impactful things that you can do. So if you didn't take notes I would go back through listen I think this stuff is going to be so good for you. Um, next week we're going to dive into the brand side of this and what is the relationship your brand has with your perfect customer. Um, so that's it now if you enjoyed today's episode or if you enjoy this podcast. Um, if you could leave a review that is so helpful for us. It helps us get in front of more people.
20:03.38
retailjosh
And share this very important message with as many people as possible and then if you don't follow me on Instagram you can hit me up at retail Josh say hello I actually love hearing from you hearing what you think otherwise I will see you next week
