Book Summary: Ecommerce Evolved by Tanner Larsson - Introduction (7)
Book Summary: Ecommerce Evolved by Tanner Larsson - Introduction
I've just finished reading a simply fantastic book on ecommerce, called Ecommerce Evolved by Tanner Larsson, available on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Ecommerce-Evo...9352160&sr=8-1
It's so jammed-pack with practical tips and tricks on how to Build, Grow & Scale a Successful Ecommerce Business, I thought it would be helpful to share some of the highlights of the book here.
The book consists of 3 parts:
PART I: Evolved Strategy
PART II: Evolved Intelligence
PART III: Evolved Marketing
In this post I'll summarize the introduction of the book, and will make 4 additional posts to summarize the first 4 chapters that make up PART I. For PART II and PART III, please read the book. (Originally, I had plans to summarize the entire book, but by the time I was finishing summarizing Part I, I realized I had reached the 10% fair-use threshold...sorry!)
Here are the links to summaries of the 1st 4 chapters:
Chapter 1: Funnel-Based Ecommerce
Chapter 2: Recurring Income Core
Chapter 3: Think Before You Sell
Chapter 4: Conversion Tricks, Sales Boosts, and Profit Maximizers
Disclaimer: These are my personal notes so I've paraphrased quite heavily in some places. If you like what you read, please buy the book to get the complete information in its original glory.
Let's start!
__________________________________________________
About the Author
-Tanner Larsson has started, co-founded, built, sold, scaled, bankrupted, and/or succeeded with over two dozen companies.
-He has produced millions of dollars in revenue for his own ecom companies and over $75 million in revenue for companies he has partnered with, advised, or consulted for.
The 12 Core Principles of Ecommerce
1. Your Business is Not Unique
Common mistake for business owners: They almost always fail to ask for help because they believe their business is so unique that others can't understand it. No matter how innovative your company is, there's somebody out there who can offer you some advice. If you realize that your business is not unique, you won't ignore solutions.
2. Your Business is Marketing
You cannot hate marketing! You may have the best product, but you can't be successful until you accept that your business is marketing and the product is just the thing you sell.
3. Brand Centric, Not Product Centric
Focus on building a message or movement that your customers can align with. There's no better way to get people to lower their guard and purchase from you than by making them feel like they belong.
4. You Must Control the Order Process
You need to control the order process - product selection, payment processing, receipt page, follow-up emails, everything. You must own the customer data.
e.g. Amazon FBA should just be one of your sales channels. Amazon keeps the customer data and controls the entire sales cycle. They can change their search algorithm or shut down your account on a whim. Don't make it the foundation of your business.
5. Don't Compete on Price
Competing on price is a race to the bottom. It makes prospects think that the only good thing about your product is the price. As your profits evaporate, you'd start looking for cheaper products or haggling with manufacturers who will in turn start cutting corners to offer cheaper prices, resulting in subpar-quality products. Worse, cheap products attract cheap customers that can cause problems for your support team.
6. Don't Be Walmart. Niche Down
Going niche can achieve high ROIs. You can cater your message and copy to a niche demographic, to target ideal customers with limited funds and maximize ROI.
7. No Such Thing as Free Traffic
SEO or content marketing takes a lot of time. When you buy traffic, you get it immediately and you can run tests, get relevant statistical data, and make more money.
8. Business Costs Money
Don't be a cheapskate! Particularly when it comes to spending money on advertising.
9. If You're Not Mobile, You're Out
Mobile-optimize your site.
10. The One Who Can Spend the Most to Acquire a Customer Wins
Ecom businesses have some of the highest customer acquisition costs of any business.
Rule of thumb: Be willing to spend up to your customer lifetime value (LTV) to acquire a customer. This can be difficult to calculate - another figure that's easier to calculate is the 60-day valuation of a customer = how much your average customer spends in 60 days.
Optimize your business (funnels etc.) to maximize customer LTV, so that you can afford to spend more than your competition to acquire customers.
Important: Being willing to spend up to customer LTV does NOT mean you should, or there wouldn't be any profits.
11. Sell in Multiple Channels
The more places you sell your products from, the more customers will find them, e.g. your ecom site, Amazon, eBay, and offline retail stores.
12. There Are Only Three Ways to Grow a Business
According to Jay Abraham, there are only three ways to grow a business: 1)Get more customers, 2)Increase the size of your orders, 3)Increase the order frequency.
Most ecom businesses focus on 1) only, which is a mistake, as it's 5 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to sell to an old customer.
Even small growth in each of the 3 areas will result in geometric growth.
Next: Chapter 1: Funnel-Based Ecommerce
haha just reading it myself - 2/3 done and a great book. thanks for the notes.
I got it based on Jasons instagram recommendation few weeks ago.
Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums mobile app
Originally Posted by tijn
Amy
Thanks for posting this Amy, there are definitely some very interesting and valid points here.
As for the business being unique - it could be special in terms of what you offer, but the processes and things that need to be done aren't (at least to a very large extent)
So if it feels special and everything has to be done by the owner / one who started it, it's a mistake and failure of the one who operates the business.
Yes, in the beginning you might have to do everything yourself, but as soon as you scale up, you shouldn't have to be involved in everything.
As for don't compete on price, you can. And should. At times.
There's never a black and white.
Sometimes, price is all you have to compete with and if you can make it work, you can attract a lot of business.
Especially when products and offerings are comparable. Which is the case in mature markets with sophisticated competitors.
And if you know your numbers well, you can lose money on the front, while making money on the following purchases.
With all these statements, don't just take them as written in stone. It's the matrix - sume rules can be bent, some can be broken.
Test, think and find out what works for you.
I think what the author is trying to say, is to not try to make cheap pricing the only reason to buy at your store. Obviously for big businesses like dollar store chains and walmart that know what they're doing, they have managed to do just that, but for the little guys operating small stores on limited cashflow, it would be difficult to buy in bulk and sell for cheap and expect to make up for low margins with larger numbers of orders.
Like you said though, nothing is ever in black and white, and we should always think and test for ourselves.
P.S. Sent you a PM.
Amy
Sent from my SM-G930W8 using STM Forums mobile app
Thanks for this summary Amy! I just finished the book (actually after seeing you recommend it in another thread), and found the book jam-packed with info. I'd love to jump into ecom asap, and the book is a great starting point.
I'm not too good at taking notes when I read, so this write-up was very much appreciated
vortex can we use the book in 2020 ...? despite the change that happened in facebook and all of the other platforms ?
Home > Paid Traffic Sources > eCommerce