Toilet Seat Marketing, And How We Miss The Other Perspective with Matt Edmundson – 286

In episode 286 of the AM/PM Podcast, Tim and Matt discuss:

• 05:45 – Matt’s Backstory And How He Got Started E-commerce
• 08:00 – The Most Interesting Thing He Sold Online
• 09:00 – What Is Toilet Seat Marketing?
• 14:35 – Marketing Is The Management Of Perspectives
• 17:00 – How To Apply These Concepts To Your Business
• 20:30 – Using Real Popcorn For Their Packaging
• 28:40 – Rewards From Understanding The Customer’s Perspective
• 33:10 – Is The Customer Always Right?
• 38:10 – Finalizing The Concepts And How To Merge Both Perspectives
• 41:00 – Take A Look At Your Competitor’s Customer Experience
• 43:00 – How To Get In Touch With Matt

Transcript

Tim Jordan:

We are customers. We buy things online, but most of you that are listening are also sellers and brand owners. So you, your brain, your persona is two different things, a buyer and a seller, but understanding both of those perspectives and understanding where they collide and intersect is an actual art. A, our guest today who’s been selling online since 2002 has a really great, I don’t know, piece of advice or several pieces of advice, I guess I would say that help us understand where that intersects and what to do with it. It’s gonna be a great episode. Listen to the end. Here we go.

Tim Jordan:

Hi, I’m Tim Jordan and in every corner of the world, entrepreneurship is growing. So join me as I explore the stories of successes and failures. Listen in as I chat with the risk takers, the adventurous, and the entrepreneurial veterans, we all have a dream of living a life, fulfilling our passions, and we want a business that doesn’t make us punch a time clock but instead runs around the clock in the AM and the PM. So get motivated, get inspired. You’Re listening to the AM/PM Podcast.

Tim Jordan:

Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of the AM/PM Podcast. I’m host Tim Jordan. And as usual today, we’re talking about business us today. We’re talking even more specifically about e-commerce. I know sometimes we get off on some tangents that are related to us as an audience, but not always about directly selling. And we are going to be thinking big today, right? Some kind of principles, some dynamics, some theories that really cover marketplace sellers that cover D to C sellers. They cover brand developers. They cover digital marketers, like everybody that’s listening to this, this should apply to when we think about selling something. A lot of times, we, as e-commerce sellers, we dive too deep into the tech. We dive into what keywords we’re targeting. We dive into how to rank for Google, or rank for Amazon, rank for Walmart. And we’re thinking about algorithms when we should think about actually selling.

Tim Jordan:

I know too many people in this space that try to put lipstick on a pig, so to speak, right? They’ve got a crap product, they’ve got a crap brand experience. They’ve got something that they’re trying to sell that nobody actually wants, and they need to step back and think like, maybe it’s the sales pitch. That’s the problem. And not the paid traffic. That’s the problem. So today we have a guest, his name is Matt Edmundson, and he’s in Liverpool. And he has been selling, like I said earlier, since about 2002 online, directly and indirectly, either his own brands or clients that he works with, he’s responsible for about 150 million in worldwide sales. He still has I guess currency as an active seller, he was just telling me that he just exited another brand last year, but he also works for a lot of e-commerce brands, figuring things out. And I love the perspective and the advice from agency owners because they’re not just giving the perspective of their one brand. They look at a lot of different brands, so they get a really good like holistic overall view. So Matt, welcome to the episode. We’re super glad to have you here.

Matt:

It’s wonderful to be here, Tim. Thank you so much for are having me. And I have to say right here at the start, I have never heard that phrase lipstick on a pig before, and I am totally stealing that. I’m gonna be using that a lot. So that was worth the price of entry right there.

Tim Jordan:

Well, what I love is I can say a phrase like that and everybody knows what it means. Like maybe you can’t articulate it at the moment. You’re like, I know exactly what this means, right? exactly. It’s some of those old Southern sayings I worked for 10 years as a firefighter. Full-Time firefighter here in the great state of Alabama. And I worked with a bunch of older country, redneck hillbilly firemen that had some of the greatest expressions and sayings I’ve ever heard in my life. And I wish I could go back in time and have started a journal and wrote those things down, cuz somebody would say something, it was descriptive and I’d laugh for four days about it and then I’ve forgotten about it. It’s just gone forever. Right? It’s like a dying art, the Southern expressions.

Tim Jordan:

But anyway, I appreciate you joining that. So today we’re gonna talk about the confluence, the intersection of two different perspectives, the buyer and the seller, and how understanding that can unlock some potential for us, right. Can help us figure out ways to sell more. But before we get into that, I want to hear a little bit of your story. What were you doing before eCommerce? How and why did you get into e-commerce in 2002 before anybody else think about it? And how did that get you to 2022 where you’ve had multiple brands and you’re providing services for others?

Matt:

Well, it is an interesting start. I started on the web sort of in the midwest sort of the late nineties, really a friend of mine came to me and he said that he wanted to do a website for his church. And did I know anybody that could do websites? And I was like, sure, but this was in the late nineties, I mean, these things cost a stupid amount of money. There was no square space. There was no shop. There was nothing back then. And so I said to him, listen, but if you give me the software, I kind of knew that there was some software around that could help. I said, I’ll figure out the whole website thing and we’ll go from there. And so we made a little deal and he bought me and some of as I may remember back in the late nineties, we used a piece of software called Dream Weaver.

Matt:

That’s how we created websites. Before they were bought out by Adobe. And so I wrote my first website and it didn’t take long then to sort of go, well, hang on a minute. People are now starting to buy things online. And so we decided to–, I approached a friend of mine who was some products. We were buying them from him, actually some consumables and for our customers. And I said, well, can I just start selling these online? And that was 2002. We launched our first website in 2002, selling these things online, six months later, he bought that website off me. It was doing great. And we learned quite quickly that actually, geez, you can wake up richer than when you start going, when you go to sleep. And so that was a beautiful thing.

Matt:

And so, yeah, that’s when I got hooked onto this whole concept of doing stuff online. But when I started, when I did it, it was a side hustle. And it was a side hustle for a little while we were doing saunas and steam room installations. I was selling saunas and steam rooms as a, sort of a, was my main role. And we, the whole internet thing was something that we did on the side. And so, yeah, eventually it grew to be a full time career. And like you say, here I am 20 years later, waxing lyrical about e-commerce and still got the passion for it.

Tim Jordan:

What was the most interesting thing you’ve ever sold online?

Matt:

The most interesting thing I’ve ever sold online? That’s a really great question.

Tim Jordan:

I can’t believe you weren’t ready for this. Like no one’s ever asked you this.

Matt:

Yeah, honestly, no one has ever asked me this at all. And I’m just trying to think through the back catalog of products that I’ve sold online. I have to say the thing that I’m probably the most proud of that we sell online. And I still sell it online, it’s an Omega-3 capsule like a food supplement type thing. And the reason we’re proud of those is that they’re manufactured in a way that the Omega-3 is not extracted from fish. The science guys behind it kind of went, you know what fish don’t make Omega-3. The Omega-3 that we get from fish comes from the algae that they eat. And so there are these huge tanks which grow these algae and manage to extract this Omega-3 from it. So it’s pure. And every time someone takes, you know, one of our Omega-3 were like, Hey, you’ve just gonna save the lives of sort of 40, 50 fish or whatever it is. And so that’s probably one of the products that I’m most proud of. I dunno, if it’s the most interesting cuz  Omega-3, is not really that interesting.

Tim Jordan:

No, but the fact that you moved up or down up or down the food chain, I’m not sure which direction that is and it saved some fish.

Matt:

Yeah, absolutely.

Tim Jordan:

That’s awesome. All right. So you have a theory that has been talked about before. It’s one of, kind of the things that people like to pick your brain about it is this concept of toilet seat marketing. And even before we start recording you didn’t actually explain what toilet seat marketing is. I’ll tell you what popped into my head,

Matt:

Go for it.

Tim Jordan:

Right. When I think of toilet seat marketing, I think of like catchy appealing, like in impulse purchase type ads that I see while I’m scrolling through social media, while I am doing my morning business, while I’m sitting on the toilet seat, because most of the day I’m running around. Right. But like toilet seat time is mine. And that’s when I think of like the most compelling ads or like the things like, oh, this is interesting because it’s the time that I actually disconnected. I have some peace from the kids, hopefully, if I remember to lock the door and my five year old didn’t need to have a long discussion with me. Sorry buddy, I’m talking about my morning poop. But that’s what I think of toilet seat marketing. Now I know that we’re gonna get into the convergence of perspectives and I know you’ll explain that, but let’s go ahead and dive into this up, the toilet seat marketing, what that is and why it is applicable and important for us to understand.

Matt:

Yeah, no, let’s do it. In our house, we call it the throne room time. We’re going to the throne room. We’re gonna sit on the throne. And just needs to be fair. My kids are a little bit older than yours. Tim, so I’d be–,

Tim Jordan:

It’s not as cute when a sick 16 year old kid walks in on you.

Matt:

No, it’s a little bit more shocking. Actually. You’re a little bit slightly, a bit more disconcerted. You’re like something is very wrong right now. And so, so yeah, I don’t have that problem anymore, which is great. So toilet seat marketing, the idea came from, I totally plagiarize it. I’m not gonna lie. I stole it off a friend of mine from Texas. He was telling me the story about when he was working a job when he was in college cleaning toilet stalls. And he consistently won the award for the cleanest toilet stalls. And so if you’re picturing your mind how somebody would go in and clean a toilet store, all it’s not the most interesting picture, but you can picture it. You can, you can open the door, you can see someone cleaning the wall on the left.

Matt:

You can see someone cleaning the wall on the right, giving the, you know, the toilet, a little bit of a cleaning and then leaving, right. You don’t wanna hang around, do you want to get out? And so the question was, how do you consistently win the award for the cleanest toilets, that’s how Rich broached the topic with me and what he did, which was fundamentally different. The reason why he kept winning the award much to the annoyance of everybody else was simply, he did one thing. He won’t hit, he cleaned the wall on the left. He cleaned the wall on the right. He gave the toilet a little of clean, and then he did something that nobody else did. He simply turned around and sat on the toilet seat. And he said it’s interesting because from this vantage point, you have the most important perspective of the whole thing.

Matt:

You have the perspective of the user and that story has always kind of stuck with me because when it comes to business, when it comes to running an e-commerce business, especially because everything is so viral and everything is so shareable there are two perspectives that you have to think about. One is your perspective as the business owner and the other is you have to turn around and sit down on the toilet seat. You have to look at your business, your product you’re offering from the perspective of your customer, because that’s actually the most important one. It’s not the only one, but it’s probably the most important one. And so that’s sort of the story of toilet seat marketing in a nutshell.

Tim Jordan:

Well, I’m just gonna warn you. You can tell your friend from Texas, I am also plagiarizing this cause this is amazing. And I can honestly imagine this, cuz if, if I’m a janitor and I step into a toilet stall and you’ve got a few things, right, like I’m standing in the stall, but I don’t see the back side of the door, the stall door. If I’m looking at the toilet paper dispenser, I don’t see the other and see if it’s dirty or it’s got dust on it. Right. So like literally turning around, closing the door, sitting down, looking at different angles, seeing the different nooks and crannies that you wouldn’t see from the other side. Wow. That’s like super impactful. Like I wanna put that on my wall, like sit on the toilet occasionally and see the other side.

Matt:

Well, to be honest with you, Tim, I’ve talked to various people over the years using this story. And during the lockdown, we did a story with a bunch of doctors actually talking about this concept of toilet seat marketing. And so the idea was that we would send everybody there a toilet seat. So during the presentation, we physically made people sit on the toilet seat, just put it, turn around and put it on their chair. And actually, we’ve I know people that have ’em there hanging in their office just to get people, just to come and sit on there and go, let’s think about this from a different perspective. And I think it’s quite an interesting thing to do. Amazing

Tim Jordan:

Love it. All right. So let’s talk about what that means. I know that when it comes to marketing, you use this term, I’m gonna say it right now, but you said it before we started recording marketing is the management of perspectives. Right? Explain what that means and give us some more insight on understanding perspective and how that applies to marketing.

Matt:

So again, totally stole that off Rich when he was talking about it, that marketing is simply the management of perception. And I think it actually fundamentally is you use marketing to manage how people think about you, your brand your products and so on and so forth. So, and this is a really important distinction. Marketing is not just about getting another 20,000 people to my website, cuz if it is it’s fundamentally broken and it becomes more and more complex and it becomes quite dull and dreary. But when you think about marketing as management of perception, it’s like, yes, I’ve gotta get more people to my website, but how are they gonna feel when they get there? What’s their experience gonna be like, what are they gonna perceive? What are they gonna see? What are they gonna think?

Matt:

Well, then you start to go down little rabbit holes, which become, maybe they just become a lot more interesting don’t they, and a lot more impactful and actually have a massive impact on your business. So so that’s what we mean by the management of perception. That marketing is the management of perception. It’s more than just traffic generation, which is what a lot of people in eCommerce think, you know? And I get asked all the time in effect in many different ways, they’re asking the same question, which is what is the latest silver bullet that I can use for my e-commerce marketing that’s gonna generate for me another a hundred thousand visitors, which is gonna generate another 50,000 bucks, right? What, what is that silver bullet? I need that silver bullet because there has to be one because there was one last month and then there was one the month before and before that, it might have been TikTok before that, it was in Instagram reels. But what is it now? Because everything changes so quick. And I think the basic thinking behind toilet seat marketing behind this whole idea of management of perception is silver bullets are good, but they’re rarely brilliant. What is brilliant is doing the fundamentals of business really well. And if you get the fundamentals right, then maybe you can find one or two silver bullets, but there’s no point in looking for the silver bullet until you’ve got the fundamentals. Right.

Tim Jordan:

So how does that apply to us? Right? Like I understand the concept, but what are the implications of that in our everyday life? Like cuz we’re from building our brands to setting up daily marketing initiatives, what are the implications of this concept?

Matt:

So if you for example, on our own e-commerce website, one of the things that we asked was exactly the same question. Well, what does this mean? And so we did this sort of simple exercise is we were like, well, let’s look at the way a customer feels when they get a parcel from us, right? Because I can manage a fairly easily how it works online, it’s digital and I can move pixels around and I can change website designs, but what, how do they actually feel when they, when they get something that they can touch, you know, as opposed to something that they can see. And we looked at this, so we were like, what’s the customer’s perception on this? Right. So what are they thinking? What do we need to look at here?

Matt:

And so we were selling beauty products and we quickly realized actually customers when they were buying products from us, they, it felt like to them, they were buying a gift for themselves. It was quite indulgent. When you looked at the average order value, it was like 60, 70 pounds, which is what, about 90 to a hundred dollars. Right? So it’s a, it’s a reasonable sum of money to in effect, spend on moisturizer. I mean, it’s, you know, you’ve gotta make a decision to spend this amount of cash. And so we were like, well, what, what are they thinking? What are they feeling? And we came to the conclusion actually that they’re buying themselves a gift they’re spoiling themselves. They’re being slightly indulgent, they’re pampering themselves. And so when we understood that when we understood the customer’s perception, we were like, well, what do they feel like when they get our parcel?

Matt:

Well, our parcel came in a brown box, just like Amazon. And it was full of it, had the product in there and the packaging, you know, surrounding it to protect, it was the big plastic bubbles, which were cheap and lightweight. You know, we could whack them in the box, in the warehouse, no problem. It would make the box lightweight. The shipping costs were down and it keep the product safe. And so we looked at our parcel and then we looked at what the customer’s perception was. And we saw that there was a huge mismatch. And so we were like, well, how do we make our parcel feel more like a gift? And so we did two simple things. We added an extra layer of cardboard into the box, so it made it a bit more complicated to open. So it felt more like you were opening a gift as opposed to just opening a cardboard box.

Matt:

And we printed a lovely kind of message on the inside saying that whoever was opening, it basically was amazing and wonderful and so on and so forth. Just celebrating their humanity. And then in, when you open that piece of cardboard, there was tissue paper, which had wrapped everything around it. And we took out the plastic bubbles and we put in something that resonated with us a bit more, which was a bit more kind of, you know, we wanted to be seen as a bit more fun, a bit more quirky. And so we put in their popcorn and so we changed our packaging material to popcorn, which is quite–,

Tim Jordan:

Like real popcorn?

Matt:

Yeah. Real popcorn. It was a crazy idea and trust me, we did so many experiments. What was the best corn to get, you know? Cause there is a whole lot of different popcorn out there apparently.

Tim Jordan:

All right. So you’re packaging this yourself in your own warehouse. Yes, sir. So first off who came up with the idea of popcorn?

Matt:

I genuinely can’t remember. It was either me or it was a member of the team.  I’m gonna say it was a collective team. It came out of a team brainstorm that much I can tell

Tim Jordan:

You. So were you pack popping bags of microwave popcorn for the tests to fit, to do the drop tests, and figure out if this is suitable? Like how, how did you go through the R and D process of popcorn is packaging,

Matt:

You know? Yeah. I dunno, when I used to go to the cinema as a kid, they had these sort of popcorn machines on the side. You know, these sort of popcorn machines. And so I just went out and bought a few of those and we’re like, right, well, let’s just go get a few of those popcorn machines. And we bought different types of popcorn from different manufacturers. And I mean, we didn’t intend to try different types of popcorn. We just assumed that pop that corn is corn. So we just ordered some corn and started making it. And we’re like, well, this corn kind of burns really easily. And it’s like, and then we got it more and we’re like, maybe there’s some better corn and so on and so forth. Of course, we didn’t do things like cover it in butter and all that sort of stuff. It was just popcorn

Tim Jordan:

Yeah. So you kind of Def what I was imagining was this wonderful smelling warehouse, but it’s the butter that makes the popcorn smell good.

Matt:

Yeah. But it did smell like popcorn and we had on taper like calorie snack, you know, if you were hungry, you’d just go get some popcorn. Amazing.

Tim Jordan:

Oh my gosh. All right. So wow. This is like I wanna talk to you for 20 minutes about the popcorn is packaging, cuz I used to own a prep center myself in under packaging. And I’m wondering like how many drops does it take to actually compress the popcorn and stuff that, but we won’t go down that rabbit trail, but you had popcorn is the packaging. I love this. Now let me ask you this. You’ve got well. Was there anything else to the packaging that you added?

Matt:

No. There was one, I suppose after a while what we did because this thing really caught on, and customers were loving the popcorn. It was on social media. Everyone was, you know tweeting or posting on Instagram about the popcorn. The one thing that we had to do was we had to then start to put some stickers on the tissue paper. So before.

Tim Jordan:

Say’s don’t eat the popcorn, not food safe.

Matt:

Basically, yes. We just basically said, this was not produced in a food safe environment. It’s biodegradable so you can put it in your compost bin, you can feed it to the birds, but we probably don’t advise you sit down in front of the TV and eat it with your grandkids. You know what I mean? So we were a bit playful with the language be, cuz the amount of people that were saying, man, that popcorn tastes delicious and I’m like, you do not wanna see what the popcorn is.

Tim Jordan:

All right. So, so let me ask you an operational question here. You were selling a product in a box. You decided that you’ve gotta up the opening experience and the perceived value and all that stuff. So you added another printed layer of cardboard. You had to physically wrap in tissue paper. You had to do the popcorn thing. When you broke down the labor and material cost, how much extra did it cost you to increase this packaging quality per unit?

Matt:

It was pennies. It was just a few pens. It wasn’t. By the time you, the tissue paper was as cheap as chips. That’s a phrase that we use in Liverpool all the same cheapest chips meaning it’s not very expensive. And so the tissue paper was, was fractions of pens. Especially when you bought it in the quantities that we did, the cardboard boxes, there was no real cost because we were getting the cardboard boxes manufactured anyway. It then came down to the popcorn packaging. Now popcorn was more expensive than the plastic bubbles.

Tim Jordan:

The material or the labor too. Cause see a lot of people forget labor. They think, oh I can wrap my packaging in this tissue paper, but they forget is it actually takes human time to sit and wrap each one of those, not rip it, put the sticker on it. So–,

Matt:

That’s why we didn’t, we didn’t wrap the products individually. We put a tissue paper lining inside the box, if that makes sense.

Tim Jordan:

I gotcha.

Matt:

And we had the tissue paper precut to be the exact size that it needed to be. So it was very easy just to you know, you had to build the box and it was like a, a second or two then to put the of tissue paper inside it. So yeah, I mean the labor costs went up in terms of popcorn production. But again, the guys in the warehouse are amazing, they just get into a routine. It’s like–,

Tim Jordan:

Yeah, they Assembly line it.

Matt:

Yeah. Yeah. It just goes. And so, but then you’ve gotta think about the, the stuff that it, that you saved. So, and we are not using plastic bubbles. So that was good from a sustainability point of view, you know, I desire to be more ethically and environmentally sustainable. But that was also the fun element. People were talking about this and it’s not just

Tim Jordan:

Yeah.

Matt:

The warehouse we’re talking about

Tim Jordan:

The social media exposure and like the whole thing. Because, and we know it marketing research that especially my generation, right? Like we prefer sometimes experience over quality. It’s not about staying at the nicest hotel. It’s about staying at the cheap Airbnb with the best experience, right. It’s about not the shoe. Right. I use Tom’s shoes all the time. Like Tom’s shoes, people buy Tom’s shoes of the experience. They love that idea of buying a pair, giving a pair. It’s not the actual shoe itself. So if you had to put a number on it, let’s say this increased the cost with labor and materials of $1 a unit. How much do you think that it increased the perceived value of this product in a monetary fashion? Is there any way to guess that like, did people perceive this is, oh, this is worth 20 pounds more or five pound more?

Matt:

What I can tell you is from the data that we saw when we started doing this, our repeat customer rate went up by about 20%. So–,

Tim Jordan:

So your LTV went up massively per client.

Matt:

Yeah, exactly. So we had a disproportionately large amount of revenue from repeat customers compared to other customers from our competitors. And so, I mean, disproportionately large. So our repeat customer rate was really really high, and part of that was the story. Now don’t get me wrong. There were some customers that absolutely hated it. They were just like, why, you know? And we were like for here’s, you know, go shop at their website because they’re probably better suited for. In fact, what we ended up doing was we ended up giving people a choice on the website. You can either we defaulted to popcorn, but you could choose the plastic bubbles if you wanted to. And maybe two, 3% of customers did. But yeah, our repeat customer rate won it by 20%. And when you are talking in the numbers that we are I guess if it costs $1 to extra to do it, we were probably making another $20 return, based on what we’re doing at the time.

Tim Jordan:

So that was a pretty good test for you like that. That was a big success. Did that teach you any lessons about perspective? Because I imagine, and I could be wrong here, but I imagine that that just continues opening up different viewpoints when people are posting on social media, right? Because like when people still art posting and people start becoming basically megaphone holders, instead of just people in your funnel, did you continue with that additional interaction, additional feedback, continue to learn marketing lessons that you apply to other brands too?

Matt:

Yeah, totally because you go, well, hang on a minute, we’ve connected with something here. This whole thing makes sense now. How do we think about, and so what you then do is you then look at every touchpoint the customer has with your business. And you go, right. I understand the business case here. I understand my perspective, but what’s the customer’s perspective? What are they seeing here? What are they feeling? What are they sensing and how can build on that? And so that success, and I mean, there were many of those types of successes. They sort of all build on top of each other, but it comes down to a simple thing, understand every touchpoint that a customer interacts with you think about it from your point of view, think about it from the customer’s point of view and where those two circles interact, there is some really interesting areas to play with.

Matt:

So another example, the same website I built that first website in 2006 when we launched that business I built it, I designed it, I, I did the layout. I did the colors, I did the way it worked, the whole checkout process. Everything, a few years later, there was a big redesigning. We got quickly into the idea that every two years we needed to have in our heads that we were gonna need a new website, new way of thinking about it. Shopify, Magenta, wasn’t really players at this point in time. So we had our own team building this website as we went along and then it struck me. I still can’t believe it took as long as it did, but it struck me probably about six, seven years after we’d launched the website.

Matt:

I had done three designs for that website, three iterations. And we were coming up to the stage where we’re going, you know what? We need to rethink this again, cause everything’s moved on and everything’s changed. And we were like, well, hang on a minute. The website is one of these massive touch points we have. So let’s think about this from the customer point of view. And so it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the majority of our clients were female. And what we understood the age range that they were in, but 95% of our customers were female. And so I just asked a very simple question of myself. I’m like if I have a website that is 95% female, why on earth

Tim Jordan:

Are you the one designing it?

Matt:

Am I designing this thing? I have some understanding of e-commerce. I can seep from past data, how people use the website, but I’m fundamentally not the user of this website. And so we reached out to a friend of mine, funny the same guy, Rich in Texas. And a reason I went back to rich was because he had a design agency that was predominantly female. And I said to rich, I said, I want your team to design this website because they’re my users, they’re my target market. And I want you to come up with something some concepts that we can maybe use to sort of drive this thing forward. And you know what Tim, the sort of the designs that they came up with were so far removed from what I’d previously thought about. It was wonderful.

Matt:

It was phenomenal. It was beautiful. And I was like, they changed the logos. They changed. I mean, everything about it changed the colors, the way we used images, the way we sort of played around with different concepts and ideas, they changed the whole design thing. And I thought, well, there’s a lesson right there. And again, conversion rate goes up, customer retention goes up every time there was one of these step changes where we brought in the customer thinking and the other one was a language. So the first iteration not only did I design it, I wrote everything on that website. Like and then we had this wonderful lady working with us at the time, Naomi who was just like, I need to rewrite a lot of this because it doesn’t make any sense to the female of the species. And so she rewrote it. We had a verb for it to do justify to just take some texts and just make it sound and attract sorry, sound attractive to target customer. Not to me do, I mean, who’s a bit dull and dreary when it comes to skincare. And so, yeah it had a massive impact on everything. Every touchpoint we then started to examine and look at.

Tim Jordan:

So I get it right. I understand. Like you have to go from the perspective of the customer to try to increase the value, the perceived value, the everything, right. The whole experience, but we’re also in business to make money. And I feel like there may be a slippery slope that we can get onto by just focusing on like, making this experience as amazing as possible because we could outprice ourselves to the market. Right. Is that possible? So is that part of the convergence you talk about between, you know, the buyer and the business, you know, us as the seller, like we have to find balance, right?

Matt:

Yeah. You’re exactly right, Tim. And you have, so this is where I think phrases like the customer is always right, is utterly wrong. That’s because they’re not I’ve talked to these customers. They’re not always, right. In fact, they can be incredibly wrong, but marketing is about managing perception. And I think yes, we have to manage their perception and yes, we can make it better and yes, we can be creative, but we also fundamentally have to understand the business case for doing so. And we, we, and involved in that is understanding our perspective. And it’s not just about, like for me, I had to understand what it meant from a profit point of view, but I also had to understand what it meant from a values point of view. You know, there were certain things that I wanted us to stand for as a company. And so certain things that I was prepared to compromise on and certain things that I wasn’t, and I needed to understand where we were playing in that field. And so, it’s not just a case of putting the customer first in everything, but it is saying that actually, their perspective is probably one of the most important, it’s just not the only one. And so we do have to weigh things in balance. So I could have gone to town. I could have had every item in that parcel gift wrapped I could have thrown.

Tim Jordan:

You could have bought a hundred dollar bill and each one of those packages make them super happy. So, so the customer’s perspective is important. It doesn’t mean that the customer’s perspective necessarily has to dictate every decision that we make.

Matt:

No, I think it has to be considered in every decision that we make. And I think creative people are very good at finding ways to enhance perception without necessarily having to enhance costs. So last night we were out to dinner with some friends of ours, married couple and financially they’re struggling a little bit at the moment. And so we were talking a over dinner and she was like, it would be nice if he was a little bit more romantic. And, but in his head, he’d equated romance with cost. I need to be more romantic. I have to buy flowers, but I’ve not got the budget to buy flowers. And so I just said, Tim, listen, be creative, man. You’re a creative guy. You can be romantic without spending money. You can just leave a post-it note on a mirror, can write a little letter. You can do this. You know what I mean? You don’t have to be restricted, I think is probably the best way. So when considering the customer aspect of things, it’s a bit like my friend in the restaurant, sometimes we get, we get so tunneled vision, that to do something for the customer means I need to spend a lot of money. And my council’s always been, Nah, that’s not necessarily true. I think we can just be creative and we can be surprising without necessarily having to spend a load of cash.

Tim Jordan:

Man. I love that. I think that so many times, in fact, I spoke about this recently at an event in Vegas. So many times we look at what other brands or we look at other companies are doing, and we feel like their path to success is the one we have to follow. Yeah, we have to follow this exact path, right? These are the seven steps they took. We have to take those. But a lot of times we’re looking at companies that are VC backed, or we’re looking at companies that a ton of budget to spend or even a different category that needs to be sold differently. And the idea of being able to stay, I don’t know, nimble and use creativity, like you said the post-it notes, as opposed to lavish dates and vacations. Like we can do that as business owners too, because you know, in everything you’re talking about, I love, but not everybody that’s listening to this episode has their own warehouse and they can go out and buy popcorn machines and fill our box with popcorn.

Tim Jordan:

But I think the lesson here is like, we can think outside of the box, we can get super creative. Another thing that you mentioned on where did this idea of the popcorn come up with? Like, it was just a brainstorming session for all of you that are listening. If you do not have a team to brainstorm with you do have a team. One thing that I absolutely love about this community. In fact, I was talking to one of my good friends in the industry this morning, right before this interview. And we talked about like this community of entrepreneurs, right? Whatever your business, whether it’s affiliates or digital marketing or services, or e-com, whatever, it’s like entrepreneurs. Sometimes we get in our own heads and we think that we’re all alone. We think that we’re trying to figure this out on our own. We have to figure this out on our own.

Tim Jordan:

We have to follow somebody else’s path that may not be the right path for us. Like there are communities, there are Facebook groups, there are, local meetups, and like, man, have these brainstorming sessions with each other because there are resources and there are people that wanna help you. So, sorry, getting off on a tangent here for second, I’m pulling out so many great little tidbits. In fact, if you look, if those of you that are watching us on YouTube, like I’m making copious notes that Matt has dropped here more so than most episodes recently. And I’m gonna steal these ideas and figure out a way to put those into content. So how would you finalize the synchronization? Like I understand Matt, that we have to look from the other perspective, the toilet, the perspective is sitting on the toilet, right?

Tim Jordan:

We have to increase the experience to stand out from our customers and make our customers and raving fans. We also have to balance our capabilities and our costs and our resources, because we can’t always, you know, do things right now. It might have to take a little longer, we’re gonna try things that are not going to work. And we have to realize like, Hey, it takes several rounds to get it right. And sometimes we have to try, you know, we have to get up to the bat and strike out five times before we had hit a home run. So what other kind of closing piece of advice would you give to people on how to sit down and contemplate and strategize how to actually tactically merge in an operational way, both perspectives from the buyer and you as a business owner?

Matt:

Well, to round the analogy off, there’s something else you have to think about. If you ever go to a bathroom, which let’s just face it, everybody has, you know, if you’re a human, you’ve gone to the loop and you walk in the toilet store and you can, you can see it from your, you turn around, you sit on the toilet seat, you can see it from the user’s perspective, but there’s one other aspect to this whole experience that is worth drawing out. And it’s the sink where you wash your hands. And this is really important because going to the toilet is it sort of has implied into it that I, I need the facility, you to wash my hands. Do you know what I mean? It’s one of those things that’s not talked about.

Matt:

It’s not vocalized, it’s just, it’s just expected by the user. And one of the things that we have to do, I think is e-commerce owners. When we’re thinking about these things, when we’ve made a list of touchpoints everywhere, a customer is gonna interact with us from advertising, our social media, to where they engage on our website and understanding how they engage with our website. What does it feel like when they receive a parcel? How do they engage with our customer service, all of those aspects, follow a female campaign, remarketing, you know, every single touchpoint we’re looking at. We have to see if, from our point of view, we have to see it from the customer’s point of view, but there are always these little things that customers expect they don’t vocalize. And if you don’t deliver on them, if you don’t have that sync there, you’ve got a fundamental problem.

Matt:

And one of the best ways to figure that out, apart from talking to your customers, if you’re not already doing this is to find out who your nearest competitors are. In terms of what you’re selling online, who are the websites you’re competing with every six months, if it’s possible, it depends on the products that you sell. I would be going onto their website and buying from them and I would be getting those delivery sent to you. I would then send them back. Some of them, what does they do with refunds? I would call customers, do you know what I mean? And I would be, I would be looking at the experience you have from your competitor and going, how is that different from mine? Is there something here that they’re doing that I fundamentally should be doing that I’m not, right?

Matt:

That can surprise and delight the customers? So what I mean by that is yes, I need to be able to wash my hands at the sink, but I can put in there very nice smelly soap. I can make the paper towels a little bit. Do you know what I mean? There’s things I can do to make, even that feel like a great experience rather than just something that I’ve added on and forgotten about. And it’s out then thinking about the experience as a whole, the whole customer journey, the whole customer cycle. So it’s very exciting to get a parcel that’s in popcorn, it’s novel, it’s unique, but that’s not the whole experience of dealing with that company. And so I have to look at their whole journey, every single touchpoint, and go, what can I do at every single stage to make this complete? And if you do that, it can take months. It can take years

Tim Jordan:

So much to take away from this episode. I absolutely love this. Man, I wish that I could go for another 45 minutes and talk to you about this stuff. I feel like I got hung up on the popcorn, but the popcorn is like such a catalyst for so many other thoughts about creativity, and like even little things like you said this is, you know, good for the environment, which adds a little touchpoint with more, more social media love. It’s so much stuff here. I appreciate you being on. It sounds like you’re a busy guy and we, myself and the listeners appreciate folks like you that get on and share your knowledge. You’re not asking for anything in return. But you’re one of the OGs in this space and, you know, getting to learn from you and understand some of your perspectives and some of your lessons is super valuable to all of us.

Tim Jordan:

So thank you so much. If any of you are listening and love this episode, make sure to do two things. One, leave us a review, whatever podcast platform you’re listening to. And if you wanna show Matt some love, just tell him you love the episode or see some more of his content. He has a lot of content. He actually has his own e-commerce podcast. And you can find all this stuff by going to mattedmundson.com. If you go to mattedmundson.com, he’s got links to his podcast, all of his other content, as well as his e-commerce services company, right. I can’t even call it an agency cuz they do everything from fulfillment to digital marketing and all sorts of crazy stuff. So make sure to check that out. mattedmundson.com. Matt, I have to ask you a question that I haven’t asked a lot of our get slightly. I’ve kind of gotten into the habit of it, but as you were figuring out life, as you were figuring out how to succeed in business there’s probably a book that stands out in your mind as one of the most impactful and influential books that you ever read. What is that book and why?

Matt:

The most impactful book that I’ve ever read? That’s a really great question, Tim. I could say the Bible from a faith perspective, I think it’s probably got more wisdom in it than I know what to do with and I’m a big fan of it. I appreciate that. It’s not for every reader. How to Win Friends and Influence People was probably of the first sort of self-help style books that I read that actually had a massive impact on me and changed how I interacted with people when I was about 18. That was massive. And I still think it’s got a lot of lessons for e-commerce entrepreneurs. Even today. You can learn a lot from that book. And then there’s Rich Reising the guy who I stole the toilet seat marketing thing from, he’s got a book called Church Marketing 101 which I think is, if I’m honest, I’ve said this to Richard. I think it’s a great title for a book, but the content of the book is phenomenal. If you wanna learn about marketing and the management of perception. I think there’s so many great lessons in there.

Tim Jordan:

Amazing. Well especially the last one, there is not one that we’ve heard suggested on this show. So that’s great. I appreciate you sharing everything with us. Let’s stay in touch because I feel like I could talk to you forever and keep learning from you. So I appreciate that. So all of you that are listening, we appreciate you sticking through to the end and we’ll see you on next week’s episode.

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