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Slide Notes

Google is blowing up the old e-commerce. The old content marketing is going, going, gone. In the future websites will be an impossible tyranny.

Better to burn your website down and recreate as a fluid, artistic and evolving platform of content, community and commerce.

Here's how....
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Disruptive Ecommerce - Burn Your Website Down

Published on Nov 06, 2015

How can SMBs (Small to Medium Sized Businesses) overcome the web's vicious catch-22 - winning requires scale and scale needs winning? Disrupt or die and burn down your website.

PRESENTATION OUTLINE

Untitled Slide

Google is blowing up the old e-commerce. The old content marketing is going, going, gone. In the future websites will be an impossible tyranny.

Better to burn your website down and recreate as a fluid, artistic and evolving platform of content, community and commerce.

Here's how....

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Disrupt or die. Do the same things as the crowd and you will be crushed. The new smartphone addicted, fast and connected online world requires getting beyond your comfort zone.

If you've won based on X assume X won't be here much longer. Create new strategies and designs now or die.

DONE

Tactical marketing online = OVER
My teams and I succeeded by beating our competitors by 5 minutes. You won't have that luxury for two reasons:

* No one gets 5 minutes anymore.
* You MUST HAVE at least 5 minutes of advantage to produce Return on the Investment needed to learn and implement any advantage.

OVER

  • Email Marketing.
  • SEO & Organic Search.
  • PPC.
  • Affiliates.
  • Social Media.
  • Content Marketing.
These and many more tactics are so OVER now. If every online marketing tactic is old before it's time thanks to the scrum of marketers who immediately pile on to even the smallest success then isn't your WEBSITE OVER TOO?

ANSWER: YES.

Old = Destroyed

Burn Down Your Website
Websites are an old tyranny too many still believe in. Your customers are out there on social nets, smartphones and competitor sites. Don't get stuck in an old tyranny.

Create an artistic expression of flow. Be where your customers are and value their input, content and commerce.

Gone or Going

  • Print.
  • Hard Goods (books, movies).
  • TV (going).
  • Interruptive Selling.
  • Search Marketing
If a tactic is in a "red ocean" of competition where the tactic is rapidly becoming a commodity then DON'T SPEND MOST OF YOUR TIME AND MONEY THERE.

This is NOT to say ABADON SHIP on these very important tactics. In fact, once you find your ANSWER knowing how to use social media, email marketing and other "gone" digital marketing tactics will be IMPORTANT AGAIN.

Yes the irony is you can't win organic SEO now unless you are not interested in winning organic SEO. Does that mean you should have "home" in your homepage title meta as one of our unfortunate customers just experienced (from a vendor who should have known better)? No, the COST OF POKER has gone up.

Now you must be technically skilled so when your MAGIC happens you don't hang an albatross around your online marketing's neck. You want all the lights to turn GREEN when you step on the gas and that requires understanding every tactic I'm telling you is over (lol).
Photo by carnagenyc

Tomorrow's Ecom

  • Community - their content on your sites
  • User Generated Content from Ambassadors
  • Sharing & Featuring THEIR (customer) content
  • Curating more than Creating
  • Search = answering questions and tapping UGC to do so
Tomorrow's ecommerce is more social, curation based and community creating than anything anyone is doing today. Give pieces of your site up, share your Google rank and rank, links and traffic will be shared in turn.
Photo by C!...

SCRUM

Marketers = Channel Killers
We Marketers are the Channel Killers. We run from pillar to post in the hope we've found the solution. The world as we've known it is gone.

And that, the disappearance of the known, means efficacy from those tactics is over. We pile on and kill efficacy of any tactic fast now.

Key is NOT to think tactically but to think DIFFERENTLY.

You will note how "thinking differently" employs all the "usual suspects" for digital branding and marketing such as:

* Know your Why.
* Research keywords as a proxy for market sentiment and understanding.
* Share your vision.
* Listen more than you talk.
* Create tribes willing and capable enough to speak for you and your brands.

etc...
Photo by cgt

Tatics

Not Unimportant, But Secondary
We work with a lot of SMBs and they tend to hear HALF of what we say. They hear the "don't have to do" stuff FAST since they are all overwhelmed and hurting. Don't half hear us now.

You will need tactical excellence when it is time to step on the gas. Keep a team working on your "usual suspects":

* Email Marketing.
* PPC.
* Social Media.
* Content Marketing.

Create a skunkworks of your best, most disruptive rebels and create some healthy in-house competition. Don't limit your "usual suspects" team. Challenge them to find innovative ways to turn tactics on their head.

Can you still find 10% growth from tactics? Sure, for a short time, so challenge your "tactics" team to do just that. Give them a "stretch" goal that blows their mind a little and STARVE THEM. Best ecom teams have NO MONEY, no resources and PRESSURE and DEADLINES (why I am NOT an Ecom Director anymore lol).

Need Scale to Win & Winning Needs Scale 

Have to have SCALE to SCALE feels like a vicious CATCH-22. Actually innovation scales providing the SINGLE way up the ladder we know of that doesn't plop a SMB right back where they started.

D I S R U P T

N O W

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You Can't Catch Up
When Zilow rolled up the real estate world online did they do so by creating a 5 page site with the MLS i-framed as one of the five pages?

NO

Zillow (and Homes.com, realtor.com and others) disrupted the space by taking the ammunition, the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), and splitting those atoms more ways than Cern's super collider.

Could ANY OTHER realtor do the same thing? Yes and no. Yes the same TECH was available to all, but realtors don't THINK the way my web marketing friends and tribe think. We think KEYWORDS, TRAFFIC and DISRUPTION.

Why when SMALL when winning BIG doesn't cost any more and provides some insulation against tactical attacks? Answer: THINK BIG always and RISK accordingly.

BLUE

Must Discover, Share & Protect Blue Oceans
Read Blue Ocean Strategies by Kim to understand how Cirque du Soleil change "circus" forever by:

* Removing the most costly things (animals).
* Focusing on acrobatics (where there is an endless supply willing to work CHEAP to extend a gymnastics career).
* Get people to come to YOU instead of putting the show on the road.
* Play the cultural zeitgeist to keep pumping more RELEVANCE into your shows. Never do the same thing over and over.

Blue Oceans

  • Cirque Du Soleil vs. "Circus"
  • Uber vs. Taxi
  • Amazon vs B&N
  • Social Shopping vs Shopping
  • Community & Love vs Commodity
Blue Ocean Disruptors
Who would you put on this list of great blue ocean disruptors?

Create Blue Oceans

  • Mobile (Uber, Cars that pair to phone)
  • Mashup OLD into NEW (WaNeLo, Fab)
  • Add Community (MassDrop, Woot)
  • Add Social (Pinterest, Folks)
  • Make Visual (Instagram, Facebook)
  • Add CROWDS (Kickstarter, IndieGoGo)
Creating Blue Oceans
There are a million ways to re-imagine your business, our favorites include:

* Connect X to your customers' smartphones (where X is literally any product or service on earth). On the phone = fun and cool.
* Mashup DATA so it can be easily understood (like Kayak did to travel sites).
* Create the most SOCIAL and ENGAGING environment in your space (requires great Brand Ambassadors and many truckloads of User Generated Content).
* Create the most TRIBAL and EXCLUSIVE club in your business vertical.
* ARRESTING VISUALS are powerful as Red Bull proves daily and they receive MOST of their content FREE because they are so aligned with their exploration brand ideal.


Don't Forget the 1:9:90 Rule
1% of a site's visitors will provide meaningful content.
9% of visitors will vote on a site's content especially when it comes from the 1%ers they trust and love (more than you the site owners sorry).
90% READ and are important to Google traffic data, but harder to engage (have to model the silent majority based on your 10%ers).

MOBILE

= Simple & Disruptive, Deserves Special Mention 
Mobile Is All
Mobile is more and less than you think. More because your ENTIRE THINKING should start with the phone and work backwards (no one is there yet btw).

Less because you can't do as MUCH on the phone. You need to trip functionality, flatten images and simplify design. If you feel like you just read the marketing RX for the future we think so too.

Mobile Mythbusters

  • Mobile influence = Bigger than your "mobile stats".
  • Mobile Influence = HUGE.
  • Mobile = FUN & EXCITING (same "boring" tasks onlaptops).
  • Mobile First = IMPORTANT.
  • Mobile = NOT the PHONE!
If we hear one more SMB tell us, "Mobile isn't that important we only have 10% of our traffic viewing us with mobile devices," we may scream and not re responsible for our actions (lol).

MOBILE IS SO MUCH MORE than your visitation. Mobile is the GAME, the future, the EVERYTHING.

Mobile is a MOVEMENT and you opt out at your absolute peril. Want to FAIL so miserably you need to look for a new job, career, wife and kids? Think Mobile is coming but not here yet.

WRONG.
Photo by Ulf Bodin

Game

Smartphones = Game Consoles
Smartphones Are Game Consoles
Smartphones are game consoles. They make even the most routine, familiar and so boring task feel FRESH and NEW. Can't get reviews? Bet you could with a mobile app.

Can't get customers to READ your stuff? Bet you could if you re-imagined your content marketing as a game, created some base gamification (leaderboards and stated "rules of the road") and really CARED about the content your customers WANT to share with you.

"They don't want to share," every SMB tells us about their business vertical. WRONG, if you aren't drowning in User Generated Content it is because YOU haven't asked right, don't value UGC and aren't sending the "we are listening" signal.

Quick test. Do you follow back more than 50% of your Twitter followers? NO = you don't get social media marketing because we are in the middle of a conversation and you are only listening to a tiny fraction of customers who want to help. DON'T DO THAT is our advice.

Advice shared in It's The Conversation Stupid Haiku Deck about SMM: https://shar.es/12egEC
Photo by Ian D

REVIEWS

On Laptop = BORING, On Smartphone = FUN 
Can't say this truth we all know but few recognize often enough. Tasks on your laptop = WORK. Same task on your phone = FUN. Do you want your marketing to be FUN or feel like work.

If you answered work we need to have a longer conversation (lol).

Why Smartphones = Fun

  • New
  • Beautiful objects
  • Aspirational
  • Social
  • Save Time = Perception
  • Save Money = Perception
Why do you think Smartphones are so much FUN?

We think the LIMITS placed on we the marketing tribe help customers simplify and appreciate. Someday we will figure out how to muck up the phone as bad as most websites, but that day is out there somewhere in the future.

The limited real estate and smaller screen FORCES great habits for the LEAN marketing Guillaume Decugis discusses at Scoop.it (and we believe in):

http://blog.scoop.it/2015/01/15/lean-content-marketing/

Aspirational

Deserves Special Mention
Aspiration The Jungian Thing
We want to be part of something bigger than ourselves:

From http://www.purposefairy.com/

Description of Jung's Spirit Stage

4. The Stage of the SPIRIT
According to Jung, this will be the last stage of our life, a stage where we realize that none of those 3 stages are really who and what we are. We realize we are more than our body, we are more than our possessions, more than our friends, our country and so on. We come to the realization that we are divine beings, spiritual beings having a human experience, and not human beings having a spiritual experience. We now know this is not our home, and we are not what we thought we are. We are in this world but not of it. We are now able to observe ourselves from a different perspective. We are now capable to step out of our own mind, out of our own body and understand who we really are, to see things the way they are. We become the observer of our lives. We realize that we are not that which we notice but, the observer of what we notice.

Lots of great ideas in there for how to create great online marketing too :).

Why is Apple Great

  • Aligned to Exploration Brand Ideal
  • Social & Tribal
  • Use is PUBLIC So Proxy Marketing via Advocates
  • An UNFINISHED SENTENCE You Complete
The Apple Store
Ever been in an uncrowded Apple store? Not here in Durham. Feels like 100 people sleep there since any hour of the day the place is rocking.

Rocking with possibility. Apple is about helping YOU (the customer) create a better you. Great HIGH GROUND if you can get it :). M
Photo by Xevi V

Know Your Brand Ideals = Read Grow by Stengel 

Important book by a fellow former P&Ger Jim Stengel:

http://www.jimstengel.com/

BTW, Jim's site came up #2 for the search for his book. I remember when Jim could write the book but NEVER rank for the term. Google changed all of that with Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird.

Don't market to yesterday's SEO since it doesn't work and can hurt.

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Start With Why
Another important read for SMBs is Simon Sinek's Start with Why. Every Type A successful SMB we know wants to DO SOMETHING NOW.

We love the sentiment, but redirect that energy into understanding what YOU are all about and why your customers really LOVE YOU.

No SMB we know spends ANY time thinking about their why and the special space their brand creates in their customer's minds, hearts and loyalty. Don't make that mistake. Spend LOTS OF TIME thinking about who you ARE, WANT TO BE and who customers believe you are.

If you find dissonance, they think you are something different, fix it with their help. ASK FOR HELP is always our first idea. Become a NOWIST like Joi Ito is our second:

https://www.ted.com/talks/joi_ito_want_to_innovate_become_a_now_ist

no cure for stupid, so don't be

A friend said, "I'm not responsible for leading horses to water anymore," and we know what she meant. We spend much of our lives on a soapbox being ignored.

Until suddenly there is a mad rush toward us. Here is one way teams I've managed made $30M+ online - we STOP doing things when everyone else is doing them.

There is NO CURE FOR STUPID so don't be. Don't insist you KNOW BETTER. No one knows anything in this space. Your "Better" could be destroyed with the right opposing team.

Don't become dogmatic, don't believe in anything other than your ability to SURF the next wave since that is the only process you truly OWN. Maybe there is a cure for stupidity - listening, remaining humble and remembering that the web makes LOSERS of us all sooner or later.

What matters is always WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW?

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There is No silver bullet, no single tool you can use that makes sense of all other tools. Our company has pivots on our pivots. We are app developers now because that is where the PEOPLE are.

Tomorrow? Who knows. The web has a single time - NOW. And only one gear - FASTER. Stop waiting for someone to grant you something NO ONE other than yourself can grant - the confidence to bite off more than you can chew and do so over and over, faster, better and more.

Don't ask for permission. Don't even beg forgiveness. Just GO and GO FASTER and BETTER and all sins and inadequacies are forgiven.

Greatness In 5 Steps

  • Know & Share Your WHY
  • Push "OLD" into maintenance
  • Test BLUE OCEANS
  • Mobile, Social, Visual or mashup all
  • Fail FASTER.
  • Become a BELIEVER
LOL, yes this slide contradicts every other slide. There isn't a "silver bullet" but there are areas where the POWDER is more combustible than others. I wouldn't want to plan a KILLER print catalog today since it has the half-life of a May Fly.

MOBILE, SOCIAL, VISUAL, MASHUPS and FUN are what is happening now. Make sure those trends are happening WITH not AGAINST you.