Matt Edmundson (00:00)

Now we're recording, okay. You'll see a little upload on your screen and you're 3 % uploaded at the moment. So your internet's a little bit slower than maybe it likes. It'll start to warm up. The trick is not to close this browser window until that is, well, one, until we finished, obviously, and two, until it's fully uploaded, okay. Now, if at any point...

Tony Conte (00:22)

Yeah, of course.

Okay.

Matt Edmundson (00:29)

the internet dies, the star back in with the same link and we'll just hopefully be able to rescue the stuff we have done in the past. So it's not too much of a drama. That's the technical aspect of it. Now the rest of it, I just record the podcast in one take. Okay, so I do the whole intro outro thing in the same podcast. Now what this means for you, Tony, is very simply this. You are gonna be on screen.

Tony Conte (00:36)

Okay. Okay.

Matt Edmundson (00:55)

all the time, including when I'm doing the intro and the outro. So you may not be saying anything, but people, if they watch the video, will be able to see you. And that's important because we have had guests forget that. And so, you know, by all means clean your ears out, but it will be on the screen. Is the only thing that I'm going to say. At some point towards the end of the conversation, I'll ask how do people reach you? How do they connect with you?

Tony Conte (01:11)

Fair enough.

Okay.

Matt Edmundson (01:24)

You can share whatever mechanism you like. Because you are new to podcasting, the only thing that I would say is about 50 % of our guests will give an email. When I go on podcasts, I don't because I don't want to get more spam, if I'm honest with you. And so the bots pick it up because AI now transcribes everything. And so it is what it is.

Tony Conte (01:27)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yes, does.

Matt Edmundson (01:53)

And so,

Tony Conte (01:53)

Okay.

Matt Edmundson (01:54)

but it's up to you. You know, I just don't. But if you want to give an email for the freedom, like I said, about half the people do. But people give out things like LinkedIn. Here's our company website, fill in this form, you know, that kind of thing and just go to them.

Tony Conte (02:05)

Yeah.

Do they do they

give their personal kind of profile for me on LinkedIn? It's just Tony Conti UK

Matt Edmundson (02:16)

Yeah, just tell people what that is

and if they want to they'll connect with you through that. People like to connect with people rather than just websites and so they like to be able to get hold of you but the best way I think to do that at the moment is through LinkedIn. That's where most people connect with me if I'm honest with you.

Tony Conte (02:23)

Yeah.

Okay, I'll just say.

Yeah, I'm just checking

that people can actually find me on LinkedIn with Tony Conti. There's a few, believe it or not.

Matt Edmundson (02:43)

we'll put a link in the show notes yeah yeah we'll link to it so it's not gonna be a problem so

Tony Conte (02:45)

Yeah.

All right.

OK.

Matt Edmundson (02:52)

But yeah, that's just share whatever story you like the way you went on a podcast Okay, if this is your first podcast the way you win the audience over

Tony Conte (02:58)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Edmundson (03:04)

is you deliver value rather than try and sell. And so to be honest with you, we've had a few people come on the show and try and sell and I've just never aired those episodes because I just think it's just, one cares. But it's like writing a blog post rather than just writing about you, you're actually gonna deliver some value. And when you talk about that kind of stuff, people really resonate well with it. So that's how you win the audience over.

Tony Conte (03:07)

Yep.

Yeah. No.

Right?

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. just making sure because I've because I wanted to kind of go through the value add a bit would be just just the feed the information that we garnered from other digital marketers really for that from their brands really. mean, like, you know, it's in terms of some of the stats were kind of related to what we

Matt Edmundson (03:33)

Does all that make sense so far?

Hmm.

Tony Conte (03:56)

As an agency, but as most agencies should be looking at, which is going back to the whole CX and customer experience, I expect the data in there, the pullout quotes that I've got, I might sort of throw some of those in. I think, just make sure.

Matt Edmundson (04:01)

Mm.

By all means. Yep, by all means. And obviously you can reference

your report and all that sort of stuff, because inside that there's value. And if people want to get hold of it, they'll just go to the website and get it, which is great.

Tony Conte (04:19)

I'm going to have that up

on screen to my left. I've noticed there's a reflection on my glasses, but I think I'm going to struggle to see.

Matt Edmundson (04:30)

It's one of those things, as you do more more podcasts, you'll move the lights. It's just, yeah, yeah, yeah, just go into dark mode.

Tony Conte (04:35)

But it's my screen. It's the actual bloody screen. It's, yeah. I may

actually do that now. Let me just do that now quickly about this. Just in preferences.

Do you do a lot of these? know. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (04:53)

yeah.

Yeah. Lots of podcasts, thousands of podcasts I've done over the years.

Tony Conte (05:03)

bit better.

really change much but let me have a look

Because it's my first one, obviously, I've just got some notes I just thought get in front of me. Sorry, I should have, I was on back-to-back calls. Let me go.

Matt Edmundson (05:28)

No, no, no, don't panic. Don't panic.

So yeah, it's very much a conversation. And if you treat it like we're just having a conversation down at the pub, it always works well. It's not a presentation. It's not, you're not delivering a keynote or any of that sort of stuff. You're to make some kind of statement and I'm going to go, that's interesting. Can I ask you about that? Or do you what mean? I'll dig into some stuff. If I ask you questions, I'm not trying to trip you up in anything, by the way. The questions that I tend to...

Tony Conte (05:42)

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Okay.

Bye.

Matt Edmundson (06:08)

collect, get people to clarify as if they use three letter initials or acronyms. Um, just because people listening to the show might not have a bloody clue. Um, so you, for example, you might say CX and I go, well, what's that? Um, I'm not being thick. I'm just, I'm not trying to trip you up. Do you mean we're just, it's just clarifying terms as all makes it accessible for everybody. Um, but yeah, that's about it. It's going to be a conversation. At some point I will, if I remember

Tony Conte (06:15)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Matt Edmundson (06:37)

and I'm about 50-50 at the moment. At some point, I may ask you for a question for me, which sounds a bit odd, but this is where I take the question that you ask and I answer it on social media. I'm not on the podcast, whatever you like, So I have no hard and fast rules about the questions. Sometimes people ask me about e-commerce. Some people ask me about AI, which is very popular.

Tony Conte (06:44)

Okay.

What would that be then?

Matt Edmundson (07:05)

somebody asked me what the last book I read was, somebody asked me how I do my barbecue, because I'm a big fan of barbecue. Do you know what mean? I could care less, Tony, if I'm honest with you. They're just fun questions to ask, really. Good. Any other questions or comments?

Tony Conte (07:13)

Okay.

Okay.

I mean, what's, what is the structure? Generally speaking, how do you, is it, have you got a chat? Have you got like a structure to it? What are you? No. Okay.

Matt Edmundson (07:34)

Beginning middle and end you're in

the middle and I do the beginning in the end. So It's literally a quick intro and we just get straight into the conversation I've no idea where it's gonna go. I'm just gonna ask you an opening question at some point when I figured out what that's gonna be And it's just that we'll just go back and forth and it's about what time is it now? It's 2 45 So we'll probably go for about 30 minutes

Tony Conte (07:50)

Okay.

Matt Edmundson (08:02)

And then I'll start to shut it down around quarter past three, 20 past three, that sort of timeframe.

Tony Conte (08:08)

Okay, okay, okay, just making sure I've got.

Do you slice and dice it?

Matt Edmundson (08:24)

No. Well, I say that we take snippets and we put them on LinkedIn.

Tony Conte (08:30)

Right, okay, got you.

Matt Edmundson (08:32)

Um, but I don't edit it. It's all the same thing. I mean, we're going to cut all this preamble off. I say we, Josh, the guy that does that, we'll, um, we'll do that. Uh, better than that. Not really. Um, it's just a conversation. So don't worry about silences or errors and ums and all that sort of stuff. Cause just, I think it just makes it a bit more authentic.

Tony Conte (08:37)

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, and is the quality okay? The sound is okay. Okay, cool. And the picture is okay? Because we've got gigabit here. It should be right now.

Matt Edmundson (08:54)

It sounds brilliant. Yeah, sounds good in my ears. Yeah, yeah, no,

yeah. And your internet speed's good. You're all warmed up. So everything's good.

The only thing you might want to do is pull your camera down slightly so you're more in the image. A little bit like that, there we go.

Tony Conte (09:27)

Like that.

Matt Edmundson (09:27)

Yep, very good. Okay. So let me find my... There it is. Let's get this party started as they say.

Like I said, don't worry about anything Tony. It's going to be fine. It'll fly by a million miles an hour. Trust me. This whole thing. We'll be finished by 3.30.

Tony Conte (09:47)

How long is it for again?

Matt Edmundson (09:53)

Awesome. Here we go. Welcome to the eCommerce podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmonds. Now this is a show all about helping you deliver eCommerce. Well, and to do that today, I'm chatting with a fellow Brit, Tony Conti from Brave Agency. And we're going to be talking about marketing, everything to do with eCommerce marketing, which I know is a topic we're all interesting because why would we not be right? We all want to know how to market our businesses.

better. So make sure you stay tuned for that. Grab your notebooks, grab your pens, because you're definitely going to want them. Now whilst you're doing that, if you haven't done so already, make sure you sign up for our newsletter. Yes, because every week we are sending out some amazing stuff, tips and tricks from the podcast with some of the bits and bobs as well. But all the show notes, all the links, they're also in there. And so you just get it straight to your inbox totally for free. So you can get a hold of that at eCommerce podcast.

So make sure you do and I will see you over there. Now, before we get into the conversation, I just want to give a little bit of a shout out to my mate Darren Hickey, who connects us from fellowship. If you don't, if you're regular to the show, you may recognize the name. Darren was on it back in November and we talked about WooCommerce. He's a bit of a WooCommerce expert. And so Darren introduced both Tony and myself. And so Tony is here because of Darren. Yes, he is. So just...

Say thanks to Darren, because Darren's a legend. There you go. Thanks, Darren. Let's meet Tony, the founder of Brave Agency, a digital pioneer in brand marketing and e-commerce since the mid-90s. Did a decade even exist? We don't know, do we? In 2000, he launched Brave from his garage with zero clients and a big vision, an integrated agency where creativity, tech, and strategy unite for client success.

Tony Conte (11:22)

Thanks, Tara.

Matt Edmundson (11:49)

Today, Brave turns clicks into loyal customers and helps ambitious brands push boundaries and thrive. And you know what, Tony, the thing that I love is you've been doing this since the mid 90s. Now I started my little journey around 1997, about a year before I got married. And so, and I started an e-commerce in 2002. So I often refer to myself as an e-commerce dinosaur.

Tony Conte (12:10)

Yeah.

at all. don't think we're dinosaur. We're not a dinosaur. We're the pioneers. If it wasn't for us, then there would be no internet. No, no internet, but commerce.

Matt Edmundson (12:22)

That's true.

That's

No, I'm gonna take the internet as if it wasn't for me and you tiny there would be no internet everybody you're you're welcome That's all I can say

Tony Conte (12:35)

Yeah,

we've both seen the dot-com bubble haven't we? saw it burst.

Matt Edmundson (12:40)

I mean,

we did, it came and it went really quickly and everyone's like, what is going on? To be fair, and we've seen everything. I mean, there was no mobile phones. You didn't have to worry about mobile commerce. was basically you just had a website and you can, it took us a while to even figure out email marketing, you know, it's like, well, Google just seemed to pick you up because it did.

Tony Conte (13:00)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (13:05)

And

then it was a few years later, Google AdWords came in. So I mean, all these things, you've sort of seen them come, and a lot of things you've seen come and go really. So it's cool that you've been around, you know, a hui huail, as they say. And you've obviously, must have enjoyed it.

Tony Conte (13:21)

Yes, there's, it has its ups and downs. Um, and a lot of changes, a lot of challenges along the way. Um, but the way that everything I'd say just the way that people interact with, you know, online channels, it just has changed so much over the years. Um, but that means that you have to be kind of thinking about what the next way, shape or form of, of, of a website should be, or in terms of how they're going to interact with that, that, um, advert, et cetera.

Matt Edmundson (13:26)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (13:51)

The fundamentals are still there. You've got to attract, engage, persuade them to purchase. It's just the speed at which now we can develop marketing in general online is just, literally, it's too quick. I think we're finding that the technology is, although it's helping us to speed up the processes and that...

Matt Edmundson (13:55)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (14:19)

analytics, etc, etc. It's even faster now. And obviously, with AI, it's ballooned now to a crazy level. So yeah, it's exciting. It's certainly, I'd say it's not for the faint hearted for sure. But yeah, it's been enjoyable, he says.

Matt Edmundson (14:24)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

He says sweet gritted teeth. It's funny, isn't it? Because as I'm talking, I'm getting all nostalgic now, but as we're talking, Tony, I'm kind of thinking, you know what? When I launched my first website back in 2002.

Tony Conte (14:41)

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (14:55)

marketing was literally launching the website, right? And search engines managed to pick it up. And there was, there weren't that many websites back then. So you tended to get on page one and people were, were sort of, would buy it and then they would call to make sure you were legitimate because they, you know, they felt twitchy about giving you their credit card details. But marketing in some respects, as we know it now didn't exist that whole

you know, the whole realm of digital marketing. But what did exist was the fundamentals, as you say, sort of old school principles. The website had to attract people, it had to make sense. You know, you had to deliver a great service for those people to come back and buy again. These things have always been sort of timeless, haven't they? Even sort of pre-internet. And one of the things that sort of strikes me about a lot of e-commerce entrepreneurs, a lot of conversations I have,

In essence, I can summarize in a single statement is that a lot of people are looking for the silver bullet. Like if I just pull this one lever, like if I spend 10 grand on Facebook ads or if I do tick tock or whatever it is, you know, whatever the latest thing is, I'm going to pull that lever and it's going to make me a millionaire. Right. Do you get a lot of these inquiries?

Tony Conte (16:14)

Yeah, hell of a lot. get yeah, I think generally speaking they think one channel will save it all and and and the reality of it is is that it's it there's got to be there's got to be about 10 channels you could there's 10 levers you can pull that's just you know, but each one works in its own way, but how it contributes to each one basically you can't run

Matt Edmundson (16:31)

Mm.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (16:39)

You know, you, you can run paid advertising. That's fine. But if you put your edges in one basket, then your e-commerce brand is only as worth as much as a paid ad campaign. If you're not generating content or social proofing, SEO, et cetera, you know, I personally wouldn't buy any commerce brand. If they didn't have organic traffic sales attribution attributed to SEO, because anybody could, any, anybody can throw money at it. So.

Matt Edmundson (16:50)

Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (17:09)

Yeah, they'll come in and say, okay, we need to do TikTok. Well, yeah, you need to do TikTok, but where's the brand? Where's the positioning? Where's the social proofing? Is the product fit for the audience? So there's, think it's become, yeah, I don't know if that answers the question, but yes, lots of times. Can we just do SEO? No, you can't just do SEO. Or can you do, can we just do TikTok shop and forget about anything else? Kind of.

Matt Edmundson (17:15)

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Mm. Mm.

Tony Conte (17:37)

is possible, but there's a ceiling on that as well. I think it's just got a lot more mixed, you know, it's now, you know, multi channel, I'd say, I thought you can't, you know, that's most of the conversations now are we're running five channels, we think one or two are potentially not working, or we're leaving money on the table. And that's where, you know, we would get involved and say, Okay, let's look at the numbers. Let's look at the audience. Let's look at the

Matt Edmundson (17:50)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (18:06)

the attribution, make sure everything's firing all cylinders. But normally you can't, there's no silver, no silver bullet. No, there's no silver bullet. No.

Matt Edmundson (18:17)

No, I would

agree. think you get to a stage where you hear stories of somebody on YouTube who managed to pull off a miracle and then they do a YouTube video about it. But I think for most people, actually you're right, digital marketing now is evolved and is evolving to such an extent that it is impossible, I think, for a solo...

entrepreneur who is doing e-commerce to keep up with what the changes are and to keep up with the demo. Like if I was just running my e-commerce business, we have a team of people, but how would I find the time to do the SEO, to do the blogs, the content, the social media, make the videos, do the run the paid ads, make sure my email marketing campaigns are up to date, do the abandoned car flows. Do you know what mean? Do my silly dance on TikTok. I appreciate that's not just TikTok.

Now I'm being facetious. we've all done them to be fair. But you know what mean? There's so much going on that it is, I think it's almost impossible now to try and...

to keep up with it as a solo entrepreneur. You genuinely need help, I think.

Tony Conte (19:35)

think the key is prioritization because you could just go at all of those, you know, all 20 elements that you just mentioned, but it's prioritizing and put it in an order. You know, I think that's the key really, because there's two, you know, and looking at every single channel and reviewing actually what's, what's the potential return on investment from that channel. And can I put the investment from that channel into the next channel or, know, and then dial everything up. That's where, that's where I've seen most e-commerce.

Matt Edmundson (19:40)

Mm.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Tony Conte (20:04)

businesses that are thriving is that they've, they've had a clear analysis of all the channels, all the tactics, and then gone with quite a methodical path there in terms of how they reinvest, cetera. mean, some of our early clients from sort of from 2000, 2005, they're really early and they went from mail order, you know, ordering stuff in magazines.

Matt Edmundson (20:18)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (20:32)

cutting all the magazine spend and saying, right, what's the internet all about, Tony? And they said, Oh, I was thinking of God. Okay. So basically it's an online catalog, you know? Um, and okay, well, how do I, number one in all the magazines because I'm spending, you know, 20,000 pounds on a, on a, single month. And mags then was quite, quite, quite significant. Um, but the ones that kind of not, I'm not saying like the listened, but the ones that actually started thinking about this is, this is, this looks like a potential. This is, this is where my mail order is going to go.

Matt Edmundson (20:50)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (21:01)

They

literally, they literally launched their websites in a catalog online point of view. It wasn't actually commerce at that point necessarily. It was all about getting online and they would get the phone calls, keep getting phone calls from it. Um, and they soon realized that the more they put into paid ads, was like the more exposure they were getting in magazines. It's the same principle. Um, that, that, that worked. And don't forget, uh, Google ad PPC then was impression based from

Matt Edmundson (21:11)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (21:30)

2000 to 2000. And yeah, exactly. And it Yeah, not like it is now. But yeah, I mean, the whole the whole kind of click, you know, pay per click, didn't really I don't think it came in until about two, I think it was something like 2002 2004, maybe something like that. But it was all impression based before then. But I think it's it's, it's the fundamentals, I keep saying it, you know, to, to, various kind of brands that

Matt Edmundson (21:30)

Yeah. And it was cheap.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (21:57)

come on board, especially challenger brands, the fundamentals of advertising hasn't really changed. It's just the channel by channel and prioritizing and prioritizing the numbers as well.

Matt Edmundson (22:03)

Mm-hmm.

So let's talk about that. How would you go about prioritizing? So here I am. I'm an overworked, overwhelmed, probably a better word, e-commerce founder. It's okay, but I feel like my life is non-existent in many ways. How do I prioritize? How do I look at what I'm doing and go, right, this is the best way to prioritize my marketing.

Tony Conte (22:35)

I guess, obviously, we can't control the operational side of a business. We can forecast sales increases so they don't buckle under the load. That's one element. But in terms of prioritizing, there's quite a few that we've met that are seven days a week. They're in the business. They've got maybe 10, maybe 20 staff, something like that. They're constantly in the business all the time.

Matt Edmundson (22:46)

Mm.

Hmm.

Tony Conte (23:04)

introducing automation when it comes to, a lot of their activities is key. and helping them, helping them sieve through. I mean, there's the technical sides of a website. So you automate a lot of the activity as well. know, email automation is one, so they don't have to do anything manually there. we take away a lot of the stress in terms of, whether it's content.

Matt Edmundson (23:11)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Tony Conte (23:32)

you know, cut the content strategy and actually delivering that strategy for them. So the key is to kind of work out what their strengths are and work alongside their, them or their existing teams really. Cause it is tough to kind of pull away and give everything to an agency. And we never say that to a client. never say, I don't think anybody should say like, here's everything crack on. I think it's the kind of understanding what they should and shouldn't be doing in house at that given moment in time.

Matt Edmundson (23:44)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (24:00)

I'm, I'm always one for actually having the conversation to say like, we want to get you to the X level. We want you to be in the position where you can actually, you know, get your own team to do X, Y, and Z. We still want to be here. We still want to be helping you run the strategy and the real technical pieces, but we see you kind of growing your content team. Cause I think the, the, the, and it's a slightly off tangents, but content has always been king for many, many years before I was born. You know, it's always been about, that's where.

Matt Edmundson (24:11)

Mm.

Tony Conte (24:30)

advertising and engagement comes from the creativity, the content, and it still is to this present day. And brands need to bring a lot of that in-house, comes an overhead, but the control of that, it makes our lives easier as agencies as well. We run the strategy, we will share that tactic with them and come up with a content strategy, but everything comes from that content. SEO comes from content, paid ads comes from...

Matt Edmundson (24:47)

Mm.

Tony Conte (24:58)

from content as well, Meto, et cetera, digital PR, it's all content driven. We see a lot of brands bringing that in-house and I applaud that. I'd say I'd encourage it more and more so. But there's no silver bullet when it comes to, how do we destress an e-commerce entrepreneur? Well, they're either surviving because some of them, well, a lot of them have launched post-COVID thinking they can

Matt Edmundson (25:03)

Mm.

Hmm.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Tony Conte (25:28)

sustain

that level of revenue. And that's where we give them a bit of a reality check in terms of, okay, you're wasting time in that area. That's not focus on that area. Let's go for the low hanging fruit, as they say. And yeah, I dare say that, but there are quick wins. There are quick, there still are quick wins. And that comes back down to prioritization.

Matt Edmundson (25:31)

Yeah.

Quick wins.

Mm.

Yeah, I find that actually that...

Depending on who you talk to depends on where the quick wins are. So there's no, can't write a book and say, these are your top 10 quick wins because every business is different, right? Every business is unique. but I, I could, I could quite easily write a book, go, these are the principles of marketing, read through this and the quick wins will become obvious. You know, that, that kind of thing it's, which I, I, I think is, is probably a more successful route forward.

But I like how you talked about figure out what your strengths are because I have this, I have a manifesto, Tony, because I like manifestos. Actually, it's just a fancy name for bit of writing that I did once. Where I liken most e-commerce entrepreneurs, I call them digital Davids, you the David and Goliath story. And I paint Amazon and Walmart as the Goliath because, know, I can make them the bad guy.

And David won the battle with Goliath because he played to his own strengths. one of the questions I get asked, you know, a lot, and I appreciate on the podcast, I use this for, I get asked a lot of questions and you can, but this one I do get asked a lot is like, how do I, how do I beat Amazon? Right. And I think actually you've got to play to your strengths is the answer. You know, you've got to, you've got, cause the one thing Amazon can't be is you.

Tony Conte (27:25)

No, they can't be you and your brand.

Matt Edmundson (27:27)

They can't be your positioning. They can't be your brand, what you stand for and all that sort of thing. can't, they don't have your values. They don't have your tone of voice. They don't have your ability to tell a story. You know, they're just a big machine which sells stuff, but you've got stuff that's got a story. And so how do you bring that out? And so I like what you say, know, play to your strengths and everyone has to think about content.

Tony Conte (27:42)

Yeah.

Yeah.

And brand, you just hit nail on the head as well. I've seen a lot of e-commerce brands now building their brand more so than ever before. So building the personality, getting that personality in the forefront, a huge amount of kind of brands that I'd say 90 % of them have come to us. And actually they've come to us thinking, I need paid ads. I need meta, et cetera. And we've like, no, you need to get your story.

Matt Edmundson (28:05)

Mm.

Mm.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (28:27)

actually above, I'll call it above the fold because that was a thing, you know, it's not in, you know, they're not selling their story. And there's so much more kind of engagement when it comes to consumers these days, customers these days that they want to, they want to know about the founder of X brand that is, you know, that came from such and such fashion brand originally, and they stand for X, Y, and Z. A lot of this information is hidden on websites sometimes.

Matt Edmundson (28:31)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Tony Conte (28:56)

But especially with the independent brands, don't think that actually I need to bring that to the, to the, to the top, um, as a story. So, so once you bought into it, you've kind of, you've, you've bought into their story, bought into them, you bought into the brand, you bought into the product and you've basically bought something in the checkout, out of the checkout.

Matt Edmundson (29:08)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. No, no, it's totally true. I'm with you all the way. And I think, you know, I see a lot of websites which are cookie cutters, you know, that they're a carbon copy of somebody else's in their market, because they feel this is what I need to do. I mean, we were joking before we recorded can you know, can you build me a Banggood website for five grand or whatever? It's like, no, no. But you kind of have the sense is what my website should be. Website website should be sorry, kids.

Tony Conte (29:22)

Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

The

bad ones.

Matt Edmundson (29:42)

Yeah,

the bad ones. Yeah. But at the same time, this this tension of brand of your voice of telling your story well, I think I became more aware of it when Tom's became a thing. German and you you looked at that and you thought, well, blimey that they've they've managed to use this brand this story so well.

Tony Conte (30:01)

yeah, yeah.

Matt Edmundson (30:10)

that it kind of threw the world upside down a little bit at that point. And I know that there were other brands around at the time, but that was the one that stood out for me. I don't know what stood out for you.

Tony Conte (30:20)

I can't think now actually put me on the spot.

Matt Edmundson (30:24)

This is

what we do. Well, let's take you off that spot. Let's talk about this report that you guys have put together, 2020x. Tell me about that.

Tony Conte (30:33)

Yeah, so last year, we reached out to CMOs, ecommerce brand managers, etc. and asked them to fill out a survey around their challenges, what they see next, etc. what they see is, yeah, basically what they see as the next big thing, and really what they're doing and what they're not doing, etc. So we collated all this, this information together. And the the general consensus was that

Matt Edmundson (30:51)

Yep.

Tony Conte (31:03)

Everything, everything seems to be coming from a central piece of work that they're not doing enough of, but they're aware of. it's, it's looking after the customer journey and the customer experience on whatever platform and the website. So everything's like customer experience or CX is just the website, but it's not, it's every single platform basically. pretty much everybody knows that they knew they need to.

Matt Edmundson (31:12)

Prime.

Mm.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (31:32)

increase the customer experience to increase the conversion, but they were focused so much on short term wins rather than looking at the long term strategy, et cetera. But they know they need to do that. And I think that's the pressure that brands are under. know, within the report, it kind of goes on about what sort of what their biggest challenges are. It's the fragmented of data. So they're so stuck in data.

Matt Edmundson (31:42)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (32:02)

they're spending more time knee deep in the data and actually not thinking about the customer experience where in actual fact, it's equally as important. get data is important. Don't get me wrong. We live by it with the campaigns that we run. But that was one fundamental challenge that they know they need to resolve, they're admitting that they're not doing it fast enough. They're just not reacting.

Matt Edmundson (32:08)

Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (32:31)

And game changing kind of insights that they were thinking of, you know, the likes of obviously, TikTok shop, live shopping as well is something that came up as well. Well, I believe that as well, you know, terms of I agree with that. think certain countries out there, I think China, sort of smashing it from that point of view, it is coming here and it is, you know, basically QVC on steroids online. And I think it's going to bounce quite high when

Matt Edmundson (32:39)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

It is. Yeah.

Tony Conte (33:00)

when it really takes off in this, I know it's already here, but it's, it's, don't think we've seen, you know, enough of it. And I think it's coming and that's an area that.

Matt Edmundson (33:07)

No, I'm

always surprised at how little it's been done here considering the success of QVC and considering the success of Live Shop certainly in Asia, like you say. I was always surprised that Instagram never figured out that if it did live streams, it could have a buy now button on, what mean? And you could integrate that somehow with social selling, which TikTok obviously, they've done that.

Tony Conte (33:19)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (33:35)

So there's a lot of questions I have like, why is this not taken off? But I'm with you in the sense that live shopping, think, is going to become one of those things, which is more and more of a bigger deal to the point where I've been talking to the guys in our team. Like, can we carve out space in the warehouse to create a studio, like a live TV studio? It doesn't have to be big. We have a podcast studio, obviously, down there. I'm in the podcast studio at my house.

Tony Conte (33:56)

Mmm. Nice.

Matt Edmundson (34:07)

but having a podcast studio and a live TV studio, I think those two things are fast becoming like non-negotiables, if that makes sense. But so I'm intrigued that you mentioned that.

Tony Conte (34:13)

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, the other aspect as well as if we're, if we want to see a survival of retail, independent retails, let's just take them for an example. As an example, I see no reason why on their slow days, you know, whether it's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever, that they shouldn't have a pop-up in their shop of a live piece, you know, out the back, et cetera. Those, they can, they can

Matt Edmundson (34:38)

Mm. Yeah.

Tony Conte (34:43)

create that commerce on those days with their live feeds. Because all we're doing with the live feeds is we're pushing ads to the live feeds. It's as simple as that. Get a live feed, get an agency, if you can do it yourself, and promote the hell out of that live feed to that audience, which we know we can get you in front of. It's a no-brainer. For me, if it's an independent retail, it's thinking, okay, these days are really slow. We hardly get that many sales on

Matt Edmundson (34:45)

Mm-mm.

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Tony Conte (35:12)

on Mondays, we'll turn it into a live shop day and just get a cube and get filming or get a counter, whatever it is. It doesn't matter if you sell ice cream, not ice cream, it doesn't matter if you sell.

Matt Edmundson (35:17)

Yeah.

Yeah, Yeah. No, I'm gonna sell ice cream

and start doing live show and I'm gonna use it as an excuse for my wife that I have to go and eat ice cream.

Tony Conte (35:30)

Exactly, exactly, exactly.

But I think that's an opportunity, I think, know, for independent, it wouldn't cost them that much to kind of get set up.

Matt Edmundson (35:34)

Mm.

No, especially like you say, if they've already got a store, whereas I don't have a store for my Ecom sites, it's just a boring warehouse, I have to build a studio. Whereas you're right, I think for a lot of people, they don't actually have to do that. And you can use what you've got. I mean, you don't need the fancy, I was watching a guy who set up a YouTube studio, spent like quarter of million quid on the studio, you're just like, holy moly.

Tony Conte (35:49)

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (36:06)

You know, I think you can do everything on your iPhone these days.

Tony Conte (36:09)

Yeah, I think that's, that's, that's a really good point because I think some of the best raw kind of footage that you see these days that goes right or is off an iPhone anyway. So yeah.

Matt Edmundson (36:18)

It's interesting, isn't it? How this sort

of, and what works well on TikTok shop and what works user generated content works well. It's not polished. It's not like the pot. know what mean? These are just, and you get that best off your iPhone rather than the 7,000 pound Sony camera.

Tony Conte (36:30)

Yeah.

Yeah. It's almost as if it's authentic because you've kind of, it's a bit raw and it's a bit, yeah, it definitely is that we've, we've, we've had a lot of success, from a user generated content. def it's yeah, it really works. The, the raw are the better because it just looks like it's not, it's, it's natural and it's authentic as such.

Matt Edmundson (36:50)

Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, how long that trend lasts for? I've no idea. But while it's there, use it because chances are you've got the capacity to do it in your pocket, right? So get on it. What other things did your report bring out that were interesting?

Tony Conte (37:05)

Exactly.

well, I'll be honest with you. Everything was, you know, everything seems to, it kept pointing to CX really. I think, know, that, that it pretty much cemented, you know, that, everyone was aware that lack of content was key. They need to bring content in-house to, to, to, to, get the kind of

Matt Edmundson (37:21)

Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (37:40)

To get the control, I'd say, that was...

Matt Edmundson (37:41)

Yeah, and the brand

voice, isn't it? The story, the tone and all that sort of things which you can't outsource.

Tony Conte (37:47)

Yeah, that was, that was really key. The need, like I said, knee deep in data was stifling them. that was another area as well. just try and think off the top of my head, actually the, the, but the, the, I think the customer experiences everything and they just, they, think they all, they all sounded like gutted basically that they weren't on top of it. All thinking out, you know, I think the big thing is it was the fact that they know

Matt Edmundson (37:49)

Mm.

Mm.

out massively, yeah.

Yeah, on top of the customer.

Tony Conte (38:16)

they need to be thinking further ahead for longevity and sustainability. That I think is key, especially for a brand that is trying to compete in a saturated market as well. The only way of doing that is thinking ahead and showing that the brand and the...

Matt Edmundson (38:24)

Yeah.

Tony Conte (38:42)

that the personality is there. think off the top of my head is that, you know, I think it was about 60 % said that, you know, customer experience really matters to them the most, but only about, I think it was only 30 % actually doing anything about it. But that, yeah, yeah.

Matt Edmundson (39:02)

Which is fascinating, isn't it? But

that's, I think that's a common trait amongst business people, certainly in e-commerce. Yeah, I know what I'm supposed to do. Are you doing it? No. Why not? Well, I'm busy, ain't I? Is a reality of it all, you know?

Tony Conte (39:14)

Yeah. And it

comes from the top as well. If you've got a financial, whoever's in charge of finance, you know, if you've got the FD breathing down your neck and like, we've to get more, et cetera, et cetera. And, and they're trying to fix cashflow with paid media. That's generally the but pain media is going up. So had you thought about the customer experience and the, maybe the content, et cetera, back, back a year ago, it would be reaping its rewards now.

Matt Edmundson (39:24)

Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah, that's so true.

Tony Conte (39:43)

And that's something that people, can't,

you, get that taken away from you. Cause once you've got built the brand and built your authority, then you've got that stability. Then it's about protecting and growing there again. Whereas we're paid, just throwing money at paid isn't always just, you know, it's not the silver bullet or such. It's a bit, it is a bit risky, but don't get me wrong. It absolutely works. But you know, you can't control what Google wants to charge you for a click.

Matt Edmundson (39:50)

Mm.

Yeah, yeah.

No, and you're right, it's only gonna go up. I've never ever gone into it and gone, we're paying less to Google, how nice. That just doesn't compute really. But I totally get what you're saying around the customer experience and just making, because again, this is where I think you differentiate yourself. This is where you become different to Amazon, you become different to your competitors is actually that customer experience.

Tony Conte (40:39)

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (40:40)

I mean, I've told the story before on the podcast. And if you're new, you won't have heard the story. If you're old, you well, here's a friendly reminder. But I remember when we actually, we had a beauty company, which I sold a few years ago, but we had a beauty company. And we were sitting down and we were looking at, we wanted to understand why customers bought, you know, the average order value was like 75 quid on beauty products. Now, of course, I'm a fella. I'm the wrong target market in many ways. I, you know, I spend four pound 50 and think I've been overcharged on beauty.

As you can tell, right? So the fact that people were spending like 75, 80 quid just astounded me in many ways. And that was the average. And we quickly realized that the customer was buying themselves a gift, a treat. It wasn't just skincare. was like, this is self care. This is a gift for myself. And so we thought, wouldn't it be interesting? And we bought products from all of our competitors to see how they turned up.

Every single one of them came in a jiffy bag, you know, the padded envelopes, for those of you don't know what a jiffy bag is outside of the UK. So the boxes around the skincare were all bashed up. Not that I cared because I'm taking the skincare out of the box and putting it in the bin. So we put the skincare in a box to protect it. And we stopped wrapping it up in the air bubble things. And we started to use popcorn because the brand we wanted to be fun, we wanted to be seen as eco.

So we thought, well, let's do popcorn. Took us a while to figure that out. We wrapped the whole thing in tissue paper. So it felt like when you open the box, you were opening a gift. Do you know what mean? We added a bit of extra stuff to the box. The whole exercise meant that every parcel cost me another two pence to send out. But that's when return purchase rates started going through the roof. It was just crazy. And so we were like, well, this is interesting, you know, because...

Tony Conte (42:31)

Right.

Matt Edmundson (42:38)

It worked well because we thought about the customer experience, as in what are they experience? What do we need to help them feel more of for them to really connect with our brand?

Tony Conte (42:41)

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think whether, you know, if you're an e-commerce brand and you're running all the main channels, think if you ask each channel, each channel head and say, you know, understand the, if you're understanding the customer experience and you're in SEO, you have to, you have to, and I think if everybody understands what that customer experience is for that brand, then everybody can.

work in unity and it all has this compounding effect, think, because, you know, anybody working in SEO, anybody working in paid, anyone working in social, they should understand right now that there's an increasing competition all the time. understand the customer. Cause that's going to win you more hearts.

Matt Edmundson (43:17)

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (43:39)

It's, know, the rising costs of, of acquiring sales is getting more, but, know, and again, you can counter that to a degree by customer experience conversion on website. You know, if we can increase that, that's going to help, um, making sure that the customer realizes. Okay. It's a customer all the time. It's a customer in the middle, but, uh, creating the differentiation as well with your brand as well. Is it different? Is if it's not, then what's the point? Um, and.

Matt Edmundson (43:49)

Mm-hmm.

Mm. Mm.

Tony Conte (44:08)

Yes, you can drive new customers, but you have to be really good at customer experience because you want to drive those repeat sales back again. And it's all about sustainable, efficient, know, efficient growth. And that comes back down to knowing the numbers really efficient growth. And the FD at the top then is going to be happy because, they can, you can fork, you can start to forecast at least when you've got repeat customers, can't you? You can get a pattern.

Matt Edmundson (44:16)

Yeah.

Mm. Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah, you can. Yeah, you can.

Yeah.

Tony Conte (44:36)

Whereas

with if you can't forecast the FT is going to be pulling the hair out.

Matt Edmundson (44:41)

Well, once you've got the patent, then you've created value for the business, right? So I go out, I don't know if you do this to me, but I go and acquire other Econ businesses, right? So I do that and I'm an equity partner in a number of businesses now. And we're always looking at, once I get involved, I'm like, how can I increase the value of this business, right? So if it was sold to whoever, from private equity down to whoever, how do we maximize the value?

Tony Conte (44:45)

Yeah.

All

Matt Edmundson (45:11)

that predictable cash flow is quite extraordinary. So if I took a business, just a standalone business that sold one offs widgets, it would be worth probably at the moment, if I'm being totally honest, maybe two or three times EBIT, right? It's just, that's how you would value a business at the moment. It's not what it was at all. But if I took those same customers, made the same profit, but did it on a subscription business as opposed to a one-time purchase business,

Tony Conte (45:37)

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (45:40)

Well, I'm starting to get multiples instead of two and three. I'm starting to get multiples of four and five. Do you see what I mean? So I've doubled the business with it or doubled the value of the business without really massively increasing anything else because of that predictable income. And so now you're totally right. That whole value side is interesting.

Tony Conte (45:45)

Yeah.

Yeah.

I

mean, I think I read somewhere that acquiring a new customer pretty much costs you anything from five to, I think five to 25 times more than retaining the current one. So why would you not invest some time in terms of understanding your existing customers and trying to flog to them again and again and again? And again, think it's common sense. go into it, you used to go into a shop, you'd get a customer, you get a good customer experience, you'd go back.

Matt Edmundson (46:07)

Yeah.

Yeah, no, you totally would.

Mm.

Tony Conte (46:25)

It's just because it's online doesn't mean it's any different.

Matt Edmundson (46:28)

Yeah, yeah, that's very true, very true. Tony, listen, but I'm aware of time and it is fast approaching the end of our recording session. So let me ask you, if people wanna reach out, if they wanna connect with you, I think actually people need to go download this report, which is on your website. So maybe tell people how to do that.

Tony Conte (46:47)

Yeah.

Yeah, sure. If, well, to reach out, probably easiest way is LinkedIn, just punch in Tony Conte, Brave Agency. I'll be able to see my profile. I've got a little lion next to my name because the lions are brave. That's it. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (47:05)

Is that what it is? Little Leo the lion's nice and brave.

Tony Conte (47:11)

Our report is you can download the report at I won't even bother with a www dot because that's old school, isn't it? Yeah Brave dot agency. There you go

Matt Edmundson (47:19)

It is, but you've done it now, so.

It

is funny actually when it comes to using these non-usual domains like .agency, .digital. I feel the need to put www just to make it really clear to the person in front of me that I'm talking about a website. So if it was braveagency.com, you would never do it, but because it's brave.agency, like, I just feel I need to say www just to clarify it's a website, just in case you don't know that .agency is a website.

Tony Conte (47:30)

Mmm. Mmm.

Yeah, that's-

I

wonder if some people actually know what WWW stands for.

She knows everything! God! Yeah!

Matt Edmundson (47:57)

We should probably do a certainly with that I should ask my kids kids. What does WWW stand for?

Tony Conte (48:01)

Yeah, I think

half of them don't know.

Matt Edmundson (48:05)

When was the last time you typed in www.toad search browser? I just don't even remember. Yeah, yeah. That's a whole, whole nother topic of a whole nother podcast right there. But Tony, man, listen, it's been great to connect and great to meet with you. Thanks for coming on and enjoyed the conversation and going down memory lane a little bit with another e-commerce dinosaur. No, pioneer. I think it's the...

Tony Conte (48:08)

Yeah. No. When was the last time you used the internet? The website. Now there's a scary thought.

It is. Yeah.

Thanks. And you.

Cheers.

find a stuff.

Matt Edmundson (48:35)

But there we go. What a fantastic conversation huge round of applause. Let's do this. Yes Massive round of applause for Tony for that's enough applause Massive of applause to Tony for joining me today now Be sure to follow the e-commerce podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we've got some more great Conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss any of them and in case no one has told you yet today Let me be the first you are awesome. Yes, you are created. Awesome. It's just a burden. You've got to bear Tony's got to bear it

I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. yes. Now the e-commerce podcast is produced by Pod Junction. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. The theme song was written by Josh Edmondson. And as I mentioned, if you'd like to read the transcript, the show notes, all that good stuff, they're available on our website at ecommercepodcast.net, known www required. And incidentally, you can also sign up to the newsletter.

But that's it from me. That's it from Tony. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week. Wherever you are in the world, I will see you next time. Bye for now.