So season 3 is back in full swing and today’s episode #2 is a solo show! I’ll be sharing updates on what I was up to over the summer break and how I intend spending the next quarter.
I also have great news – we have not just a sponsor but two sponsors!
I am elated we have brands and you the audience supporting us.
Our sponsors are…..drumroll:

So….there are going to be some changes in the format of the show – as I recently launched my online store, I am going to talking a lot more about running ecommerce businesses from the driver’s seat rather than just as a marketer. A lot of my customer acquisition tactics revolve around paid direct response marketing on social media. It is an interesting play of psychology, copywriting, storytelling and math (you have to know and understand your numbers when it comes to paid acquisition).

The Case for Shopify

Back to Shopify…as you may already know, I come from a marketing consulting background and initially arrogantly thought that only serious businesses ran on mid-tier and enterprise-grade platforms such as Magento, SAP Hybris Commerce,  SuiteCommerce, SAP Hybris Commerce, IBM Commerce, etc. You see, these platforms are great for us consultants as they keep us busy – I mean for a business to run on Magento, they’d need to get on board a small team comprising of an IT manager, junior developer, probably an analyst, they will need to hire an SEO expert to help with at least technical SEO compliance and don’t forget a competent hosting company. I have not mentioned the marketing team. This setup will probably be suitable for an enterprise or omnichannel retailers and although inefficient, may still be needed to keep the wheel going. But for a vast majority of ecommerce businesses, you’d be okay with platforms such as Shopify, BigCommerce and Woocommerce. I have a client, that need to run on Magento due to the complexities of their product configurations. In such cases, they just have to run on Magento but in a majority of cases, you need to really take a KISS (keep it simple stupid) approach.

Focus Less on Tech and more on Marketing

As an ecommerce entrepreneur, you need to drive sales and closely watch your margins – not worry about server uptime, security, endless configurations and even digging out metrics.  Shopify has really disrupted the ecommerce platforming space and for good reason. They have freed up a lot of ecommerce entrepreneurs’ time in order to get to marketing and product development. Think about how fast growth company, Brooklien grew to a $15 million in revenue business in just 3 years without having to focus so much on tech.

The reality is that the barriers to entry in ecommerce have been totally shattered. I built my ecommerce site in just 4 days. And I mean with all the bells and whistles – new template, app installation, product imports, etc Yes, just 4 days for something decent for the world to see and then over 4 weeks we improved on the initial setup.

So why should you use hosted ecommerce platforms such as Shopify to scale your business?

• Agility
• Speed to market
• Modularity via the app store
• Integration to a large degree is a breeze
• You get shedloads out of the box

The LOWDOWN is that you do a lot less technical tinkering and get on with marketing and selling products