Top Content and Marketing Advice for Your Online Business This Christmas

welcome to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson a show that brings you regular interviews tips and tools for building
your business online
[Music] let me take just a few seconds here to tell you about my brand new e-commerce
eCommerce Masterclass (Sponsor)
course that is perfectly designed for those of you who are looking to build your own online business right i know it's
going to work well for you guys because we deep dive into the process that i use to build my
own e-commerce businesses we're gonna look at the six key elements that you need to be aware of for
building a successful online store i'm utterly convinced it'll make a huge difference
to your business i am super proud of it let me tell you and it is brand new for it's called
the e-commerce master class you can check out what other people think about the course you can find out more information
on my site at matt edmondson.com
Introduction to the episode
well hello and welcome to the ecommerce podcast with me your host matt edmondson
a show all about how you can grow and develop your own online business that's right how to grow
and develop your e-commerce business now every week i get to talk to amazing guests from the world of
e-commerce i get to ask them all kinds of questions about what they know and more importantly how what they know
is going to help us uh with you know our own online businesses for us who are e-commerce entrepreneurs if you're like
me and you run your own e-commerce business the stuff we get is just brilliant let me tell you
now historically we have had one guest per show but this is christmas and if you've been
following along so far you'll know we've been doing things a little bit differently oh yes we've been doing something called
the mashup which is basically where we've contacted all i guess from the last months we've invited them back to share their
top tips on how and on how to do basically e-commerce at christmas and today i asked them specifically
about how to do content and marketing for your e-commerce business this christmas season
now this is part three of our christmas mash up series so if you haven't done so already make sure you check out parts
one and two because yes they are good as i know today's show
is going to be because we've got some great tips let me tell you from the amazing jesse schoeberg we've got
neil roberts we've got kath pay we have got tim hughes oh yes this
is another jam-packed show that we have got in store for you now uh i always say get ready you know
for the show get get yourself prepared whatever you use to take notes get that out if it's a pen and paper
awesome if it's your computer awesome but of course if you're out and about if you're driving in the car if you're running or you know
being super healthy and fit whatever it is uh you'll be pleased to know that all of the notes from today's show will also
be available for a free download on our website just head on over to ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
because that will take you straight to this episode which is episode okay again this is not rocket
science uh hopefully uh we've made this super straightforward that even i can understand it oh yes
ecommercepodcast.net number forward slash now without further ado let's get started with our first
guest today we've got jesse schoberg who heads up a company called drop in blog
Jesse Schoberg, CEO at DropInBlog
which is basically a professional blogging platform that you can literally drop into any
website without any code hence the reason they call it dropping blog it's actually a brilliant little system and i know a lot of people use it on
shopify sites and other e-commerce websites and so i was keen to talk to jesse about this topic because he knows
a thing or two about content and content marketing especially for
e-commerce businesses right so here is an excerpt from our conversation with jesse
so i am back with jesse schoeberg now jesse uh thanks for coming back last time we
spoke you were in manila and i'm looking through the window behind you it's very green
very sunny are you still there uh no i i recently made a little migration and
uh can be hanging out here in mexico city for the rest of the year so just got down here a few weeks ago and
uh it's lots of beautiful open green spaces and it's kind of eternal spring weather here
so wow uh really nice so i've been doing a little bit of uh walking around outdoor i got a little
rooftop here it's it's a it's a nice spot to be so this is this is gonna be home base for
the the rest of the year i think you're an expert in blogging and with a drop in blog and content what are some of your
ideas around doing christmas content well i think that the main thing is you
know as content is kind of a long game it's kind of hard to say oh write a couple of quick articles top
gifts for whatever i mean of course you can do that but you maybe already have those articles or that kind of thing and you know it's got
since it's kind of a long play it's not guaranteed that you're going to rank for those things if you start writing them now although we're in october you know you
still have a chance to start writing those kind of gift guide posts so now's a good time for that but if you
already have any content that's ranking for any of those search terms that you think people might
be looking for for christmas so they might not necessarily search you know top gifts for dad or something they might search
the old the normal search terms you know like uh you know best pillow for something or you know
whatever you're already ranking for so now is a good time to go into those articles the ones that are getting
traffic and ranking because you know they're going to get more traffic as christmas comes and people are looking to buy and beef up the articles you know go
through make sure that they that they sound right that that all the information is accurate make them a little bit longer a little more beefy a
little more in depth and then putting calls to action so uh you know link over to your store link
over to your product whatever it is make sure that it's very easy to find a big button that says
view product or add part or or whatever because a lot of times people originally write those articles and then they have a little link that goes to their product
and so now's the time to kind of go through those and think as the buyer like you want it as easy as possible to get them over so the main theme here is
if if you're not going to be writing new content it's double down on the content you have that's already ranking and you
know okay you're going to get a influx of people there for christmas and so it's time to make those articles more
user-friendly and basically convert better you know that's fantastic that's such a great tip so it's not like you say so with content you're
playing a bit more of a long game so for now double down on what you've got get that ready for christmas
beef it up have really clear call to actions and make sure it's obvious what products you're linking to
yep that's that's the best takeaway for christmas actionables i think big thanks again to
jesse always good to hear what he has to say as well as find out what part of the world he is
currently living in all the links of course to jesse how to connect with them and the notes from my conversation will
be available at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash so make sure you check
that out make sure you connect with jesse and check out his uh his system his dropping blog system
uh if you are looking for a new blogging platform be well worth a look let me tell you now it's time for our next guest the
incredible neil roberts now if you remember i spoke to neil back in episode
where we talked about customer focus so i had a question how does customer focus work at
christmas time neil well here's my conversation with neil as we find out the answer to that question i think really talking
Neil Roberts, CPO at Papier
to a lot of peers um and i think is the imrg as well they do a
lot of sort of retail market insight so getting some information for them and trying to understand
um how everybody is seeing trading and what they are forecasting to see it's going to be a very business busy
christmas i think online so i think so suggestions are they could be up to
of christmas shopping happening online because obviously the coping situation um so how are we preparing we're
preparing early preparing our suppliers for the so forecasting the volumes that are coming through because
the vast majority of the products that we produce are produced on demand so there's not not high levels of stock hanging around
so all of the printers that we need to work with we're so again right this is the level of demand that we're seeing based
on current trends um prepare yourself so we've been having those conversations
for a couple of months um i think also looking to see how we can flatten out the demand as well have the
conversation earlier so i think everyone that's in the e-commerce business that's that's pushing a physical product are probably
going to be using the same [Music] shipping companies and they're they're
having a tough time already they are aren't they bless them um and i think it's even gonna be even more
challenging over over um over the christmas period so we're looking at what we can do in terms
of making the messaging clearer looking when our last shipping days will be in different regions because we're in
the us um the uk and australia and that all varies so that we can be clear to
customers so that if they are buying something for christmas that fingers crossed
we can do as best we can to get it to them um we've also improved the way that
we've done the shipping tracking on the site so that we make it clearer when it's
gone through production and then when it's in the hands of the shippers and the shipping companies so that they can so customers can get
a little bit more surety that it that it's gonna arrive on time um yeah and looking i think black friday
i think is going to be a big deal as well um potentially doing that earlier than i think it's been historically happening
so that that's more to try and i suppose bring demand earlier into november um and then off the peak peak so all of
those things really yeah i mean that sounds fantastic very wise neil i'm not gonna lie uh very very wise
and so um so what kind of is black friday's quite kind of
interesting at the time we're recording we are pre-black friday i don't know when this you know when people are going to hear this um and then obviously we've got the
run-up to christmas and like you say the the online demand is just going to go crazy over the christmas period
how are you helping your suppliers prepare for that in terms of your you
say you're giving them you know some projections have you have you figured that out are you just
are you going on previous years are you looking at demand and going let's double it we're looking at general stats how
are you figuring that out um well i think it is difficult because we're only five years old so there's not
there's not a lot of back catalogue to go through and i think that you know from you know the first couple of years
you can't really um learn a great deal from that trading um so yeah projecting based on i suppose
from kovid really because the world changed quite considerably for us and so you can see over the last sort of
six months how we've traded against different product lines and give a forecast for growth look at the seasonality from last year so
we have a product range that that seems to peak during gifting periods so basically then
just doing a high mid low and giving them a view you know this is the very lowest estimate that we think
we're going to get to and it could be as high as this based on previous years and i think it's it's very different
from businesses i've worked in before where they're experiencing maybe three or four percent growth annually
and we're looking at sort of to percent growth and on top of that the um i suppose
the covered effect if you like which is driving accelerating the movement from from offline onto and to online so yeah trying to give
them as much information as informed by as much relevant data as possible um but i don't think we're going to see
a christmas like it it's not i don't think we have so far um so it's quite difficult and i think time will
tell whether we get it right yeah time will definitely tell it's
gonna be like you say there's never been a christmas like it and i do wonder what's gonna happen as a result
and i think we're starting to see some of the effects of that like um amazon moved forward or background
which one which way around prime day recently haven't they and they've started to draw that out a lot more
and whilst i'm not necessarily a big fan of amazon they they obviously are a domination in the market and so they
do set a lot of the trends how are you how are you communicating then to clients to help them
bring forward their purchase what sort of ideas do you have around that um i
think it's just the the normal kind of marketing so changing changing the marketing messaging on the site
so that it's clear around when we've got sales dates um and then yeah triggering off um email
and social media activity and changing the messaging in ppc and so on things so all of the things you would expect for
an e-commerce business there's no no secret source just making sure that the messaging is clear
and timely just learn the fundamentals really really well yeah yeah starting the conversation
early so that we're getting it consistent across all channels um and that we are thinking through because there's quite a few
messages that we need to to get across in the next two months because there's kind of a
black friday that then goes into cyber monday and then very quickly you're getting into last orders and christmas and then
shipping communication and all those sorts of things so um yeah just planning a little bit more
than perhaps i think we have in the past and to make sure it's you know everybody knows what they're doing everybody's
lined up and and that it's hopefully clear to customers thanks neil always always love catching up i always
get a million ideas when i speak to neil take lots of notes that's for sure and of course if you've liked me you've been taking notes as you've been going
along but of course if you can't you know the url by now you can get them on the website ecommercepodcast.net
forward slash where we'll also include all the links to neil if you would like to connect
with him and and just you know have to start a conversation with him and see where it goes now before we bring on
our next guest let me just take a minute to thank this week's show sponsor
Kurious Digital (Sponsor)
let me give a big shout out to one of our show sponsors curious digital you know what i love its flexibility it's such a great
platform you know how when you start out you might typically use an online platform because they're cheap
they're easy to use super accessible but you know what they aren't that flexible and as your business grows
you end up moving to an agency right because that's just what you do and at some point you're gonna have this
nightmare to deal with and it can be incredibly expensive and the thing for me that i love about
kd is it will grow with you you can start out on the platform easily and as your business
grows then kd will adapt with you now i don't know of any other platform that does
all of that so if you're in the market for a new e-commerce platform make sure you follow the links from matt
edmondson.com take advantage of the offers that they've got for you and let me know what you think
[Music] okay now for our next guest the fabulous
kath pay who was back on the show in episode and we talked about lifestyle marketing
Kath Pay, Founder and CEO at Holistic Email Marketing
uh so i was definitely keen to talk to her about email marketing at christmas because that is her expertise
email marketing and so here is my conversation with kath what advice would you give to
people leading up to christmas for their online business what would be some of your top tips to think about the top things
on your on your little list yeah um okay so
definitely a b testing a b testing um probably more
you know because i'm crm oriented um definitely be testing your emails because they're driving the traffic
right yep what i would advise and recommend is yes um with your crm with your email
marketing i would be very much focused on doing some a b split testing
this christmas and holiday period is going to be different yeah
so basically you can't compare what you did or you can't pull out your formula that you used last
year and just you know know that it's going to work things are so up in the air it's like
treat it like it's a blank slate as such therefore what you really
you don't want to just be creating this is this what worked last year let's just do it all and you know press
send and done adjusted you're going to be wanting to test you're going to be wanting to see okay
so is this working or is this a better route um and and just sort of be taking learning so
not just be testing for that you know that uplift and to find out which one was the winner but
also to be you know putting the hypothesis in place and actually understanding why
that one actually achieved better results because then that can you know enable you to apply it to all
of your further campaigns throughout the uh the holiday period yeah so i think that for me is the is the biggest one
because i think a lot of people are just gonna go okay this is what we normally do at christmas
and i think they might be in a little bit of trouble if they do that that's top advice i like that so um
you know split testing is one of those things a b testing um you know is is is is is sort of the
lifeblood isn't it you've got to do that with your email marketing but i love what you said there about understand why why is that one pulling
more than that one because that's going to help you going forward um i think that's really good have you
got any good examples of that well i like to do for my testing
i mean you can do the basic things like you know frequency and and everything but i like to do more
than that i like to do it so that we're understanding the motivation and
so therefore you'll be calling upon emotions you can be saying you know um
a time limited offer versus a benefit driven one you could be going
with the giving of the gifts versus a bargain offer you know things like that
so start to sort of um define your hypotheses based upon those kind of motivations
because that's what's going to give you those insights and learnings into into the future campaigns um and also
understand when you're doing things like this if you're testing in email marketing
and you're using a hypothesis and you're testing a motivation
such as any of the ones i said there or you know many more you can be testing the subject line the
call to action the first paragraph the offer the imagery everything as long as it's supporting so
you'll have the first couldn't say so you your control one and that could be what you traditionally would do at
christmas so let's call that your control and maybe that's just here's an offer here's a great bargain
right um and then you can be comparing that to um or you know testing that against a i
don't know a gift one or something and so everything that you're doing in the
control one is supporting the hypothesis and supporting it and saying okay this is what we would really normally do
this is the kind of typical subject line and everything the next one is all about gifts gift
giving you know during this hard time doing this so you you doing it that way yeah um and
and so subject line call to action imagery everything can follow suit so don't be
limited to thinking that you only have pin test the subject line or you can only test the call to action
that you can only test the one factor because when you're testing using a hypothesis
such as this then you can be testing the multiple ones and it actually will make the results more robust yeah that's
fantastic that's fantastic and you said right at the start there you know because this christmas is different uh to last christmas for
you know covered reasons i mean you know it's unbelievable how different it is
um you said start with a blank slate does that kind of thing excite you or does that kind of thing fill you with dread if it's like jeremy
if if you've got the blank slate like where do you begin versus uh oh well we just kind of mash it what
we did last year because we know that kind of worked i actually get excited by it because um
but i'm the sort of person that likes challenges and i don't mind change so um
you know me personally i get excited by it because it fits in with my personality but for
all the other marketers even if they're not that way inclined i still
think it's exciting because it actually means that they really have to
start from scratch and think it all out and plan it and look at it from a different angle you
know and start to see things in a different light not just
sort of okay you know here we go along just doing the same we've got the pressure and everything
they've probably got more pressure than before yeah you know performing during this time because
you know report after report after report have been stating that you've got more
competitors online now than ever before most people are going to be buying your presents online or
you've also got locals so now you're competing with the local market you know shops that they can you know um
buy from walking to and also everyone's wanting to support the local you know little businesses and
everything um so and then you've got like a budget because people in the uk are currently
on furlough um any of them are so you've got lots more challenges it's not just a simple
this is what we know so you've got to take all of those into into account and and really come up with
a totally different strategy and that's why the testing is so important uh such sound advice
search sound advice i like it it's um everything is different and actually i i even if covered wasn't
happening it's almost a good idea every now and again isn't it just to start again from scratch just to reinvent everything and kind of go well
why do we do it that way why do we know do you mean rather than just building on the same old same old
yes as a consultant that's what i always do so i will go in and i'll say okay so find out what their processes
are and then i ask them why
you don't know we always used to do it we've always done it has it ever been tested not sure
maybe maybe a couple years ago don't really know don't have the results so we do tend to have accepted norms
you know and a processor sometimes they're put in place because of the limitations
set by the business you know maybe a restricted color palette or something like that but still
work around with that um but yes you know when we're talking about strategy
absolutely that's what is exciting for me because it's a case of marketers and and this is why i i'm
known for saying this phrase let's bring in um email marketing or let's bring marketing
back into email marketing okay as email marketers we tend to be more
designers coders campaign managers you know it's very very sort of get it
out the door it's very you know functional strategic and that's what i think is
exciting because now we're calling upon all email marketers to understand you
guys know your audience yeah you have studied your audience
you understand innately what's working so let's go and put that to the test let's go and and i can guarantee you
there's meetings that you guys are having where you're sitting there and you're disputing and you're just
you're discussing you're sometimes arguing about no we should do this now we should
do that what don't keep arguing just say great let's turn that into a hypothesis and do a test
you know again so innately those questions are actually coming about but they don't
always end up having a a good solution put to resolve them yeah
no it's very good very good so start with a blank state let me say that again start with the
blank slate they probably won't cut that out of the video they'll just leave that in there to make me look full
um so we start with the blank slate and redevelop for what we've got now and
thinking about the customer is that where the customer is at now because like you say it's such a different time um i think is is is top advice top
advice and i like that consultants they basically come in they look at what you do and they go why why why and
it's it's so true it's so true too why yeah i don't know i just i i genuinely
don't know but it comes sorry sorry go on i was just going to say
it reminds me of the simon sinek you know the golden circle the start with why
you always start with why and um understand why so why why do we do email
marketing why are we connecting with our customers why are they buying from us why are they buying from us in a time of cobid
let's understand that and let's put that in our email marketing absolutely because now by doing that
we've actually become customer focused and more than ever before we need to be
focused on the customer and i said this in the last podcast with you i think
it's it's a it's basically it's two sides of the same point that's right yeah neither brand need to
make sales the customer wants to buy things they've got gifts they've got reasons they they need a new
tv whatever the story is right so let's help them to achieve their objective the more we understand their
motivations and why they're doing it the more likely we can help them
and if we help them then we're helping ourselves it's really really really simple um but i
think too many brands particularly with crm and email marketing because it's a push chain or we just go
oh okay so let's just push our offers out you know we're thinking only of our
brands our kpis our our targets and everything like this and not so much
but but going back to the consultancy side of things too it's i'm not blaming
the marketers at all for doing that because often if they do ask why when they first then that
normally will happen when they first come on as an employee yeah and then they'll be like
that's it they don't necessarily unless you're like a marketing director who's being
given the remit to overhaul everything right you don't often get that
um i don't know ability to really question you normally get shut
down in some it could be nice way but you know that's just what we do whereas an independent consultant coming
in we've got this kind of weird authority that
we've been so true it's so true you know and so i get to do things that
the employees don't do and that's why i get to do that questioning and get them to really start thinking and and to start also changing their
mindsets that is exciting yeah that's very good i love that i do love that and i've found actually
when it comes to hiring staff when when new staff come on board i think you get about two or three
months out of them where they're full of good ideas where they see what you're doing and they're kind of like what happens if we did it this way why can't we do it that
way or would it be better if we did this and some of those questions are the same questions every time but actually for
those first three months we've always i find it very
very helpful just to nurture them and just go tell me everything right because you are seeing stuff that
i am not seeing just tell me everything absolutely because they they
they're not sort of you know what's that saying you know can't see the forest for the trees type
thing they're not in there and and sort of like um messing around with all the details
the new person is coming in seeing it from a different perspective and that's basically when we go in and
do an audit that's one of the reasons why we can see what we can see is because we're not there in the trenches
and caught up with everything and we've got that different perspective so absolutely nurture them listen to
them um go and say okay if you could do something different what could you do where do you think
that we could be making you know some improvements some of them might be silly ideas but you know what
you can always test hey no idea is a stupid idea right just you just
a stupid idea is one that we don't say is you know something that we think and it's and i do think you've got about three
months and after that they start to get into your routine they start to get into your weight the default way you do things and
so you kind of lose that that ingenuity sometimes now big thanks to kath
oh geez she's fab isn't she now the good news is since we've recorded this interview with kath
she has released a brand new book that i can highly recommend reading it is called email marketing uh
holistic email marketing let me get the title right uh a practical philosophy to revolutionize your business
and delight your customers it says on the back here it's time to put the marketing
back into email marketing so that's what it says on the back of a book love that she's got some great recommendations i've enjoyed reading her
book and can highly recommend it to you so if you'd like to know more about email marketing check out her book we will of course
link to kath and to her book in this week's show notes which you can get at e-commerce podcast forward slash
now it's time for our final guest of the show tim hughes the
Tim Hughes, Co Founder and CEO at DLA Ignite
social marketing guru and you know what i just asked him a simple question at the start of this conversation
but it kickstarts well i thought it was really fun actually a really great conversation so without further ado here it is
what content would you create over christmas
um i think that uh
the content i would create over christmas i think needs to be empathetic i think you need to uh put
down the barriers of selling and actually create something which was relevant
to that time of year depends on your market because in um america for example they don't it's
happy holidays they never say happy christmas yeah so you might need to make sure that you're you're not necessarily being
um you're mentioning a particular religion yeah but yes be um the other big thing that
always happens and it's just about to kick off i'm looking at my seeing it's the th of october when we're recording this sorry
one of the things one one of the things that one of the things that really kicks off um around about this time of the year is
predictions okay and everybody is producing predictions and i've got
i actually got a blog that i wrote um last year which i forgot to put out
which i think i'm going to use again this year i'm going to repurpose some old content yeah but predictions is another big one
so what do you mean when you say predictions um the top um
the top pieces of technology that will take off in um things in sales that will
happen in that sort of stuff you know digital marketing the hot technologies that all of those sort of
things everyone loves that sort of thing and it it's it you get loads of it at this time of
year yeah you do even i mean from an ecommerce point of view a lot of websites the top gifts you can buy
your yeah partner you know when they're age or something whatever you know whatever the answer is
uh whatever the question is and you're right that kind of that kind of content really really does well
but when you say um switch off the cell and become more empathetic what do you mean by that
i don't think that uh people round about to to december to about
probably the first week in general i think people just switch off yeah and um you know it's
it's for me chris christmas or the holidays is about family it's about um seeing people that we
don't usually see during the year and making time for them um and um and i think that's really
important i think that this year has been very difficult and um you know my my father's in um is
in nursing home um he's looked after very really well but it's it's really difficult to see him my
mother's in um in isolation um so again it's difficult to see her um
but and do they struggle to see each other they at the moment they don't um well
they had their th winning anniversary and he had to be socially distant so they were certainly
when that happened yeah yeah yeah you know years i mean the nurse went out in the room and my mom got up and stood next to my dad she said quick take a
photo and then sat back down again and i pretended not and then pretended to you
know like when the nurse came in and with their arms folded it's like you know um it's been a really difficult
year and i think that we you know sometimes there was one guy who who he was going to do he was doing a podcast every day
and he wanted to interview me on christmas day and i said no and he put out a blog saying it's one of
these things where he put out blogs saying you know some people just don't have the commitment um it's like
no oh hold on a minute it's
and i just think that people you know it's it's it's it's kind of time to put down the the this it's time to stop selling yeah
um and and and actually be um be empathetic with people yeah so would
you um i mean uh thank you for sharing about your mum and dad i mean that you know hearts out to them genuinely
would that would you write about that kind of stuff in your christmas content because somebody else somewhere is going to be
going through the same thing um yeah i i think nowadays
um sharing some vulnerability is is actually a good thing um we've actually done some research
around what content works uh or what content gets the most engagement and we've created a pyramid
of content starting off with advertising at the bottom and the and the content that gets always
against the most engagement is humanized content this is on i'm talking about linkedin
now i'm not saying that you need to put out humanized content all the time but it it will get you content
we obviously then teach people how to harvest or monetize that content now i'm not saying that we i i need to
be i'm going to be putting out things about my mother and father and then exploiting that um it's
it's no different from um content that we may have we may have used before yeah um but
um it's just using it in a different way um you know one of one of my team um the piece of content
that's got him the most leads and proposals is a blog that he put out about
led zeppelin [Laughter] put that in your prediction uh content
yeah yes um he put out a note on a saturday saying so the story is is that
friday night he and his wife led to happening on friday night you know it's about and he's
working at his um uh computer and he's his wife saying come on eric it's time to
start the weekend um he said no i've got to do this kind of this and she puts led zeppelin on as soon as led zeppelin comes on
um uh it's he knows he's got to finish up what he's doing i know he then asks the question so what's your favorite let's have been fun
and and and some people say linkedin there's nobody on there on saturday but this just blew up
um and um you know it um loads of people are putting uh putting
their led zeppelin songs on there and of course what that does is that that um
gives you an excuse to have a conversation yeah because um if you're a led zeppelin fan
like me you would immediately go in and and start talking to people oh yeah you know
oh yeah i really like that and and um you know there's certain songs on ledthat you may like because
i can't remember the name there's a particular famous folk singer on there uh who unfortunately is is
is no longer with us but um um you know it's an excuse to go in and have a conversation
yeah um which is important yeah that's really good that's really good that's really really interesting isn't it and i think again
around christmas people they want you to be real they want you to stop selling and actually we've found
that um a little bit of joy a little bit of festive joy we we try and be with our content we try
and be a little bit more silly um silly's not the right word a bit more joyful
so um the one of the most popular videos we ever did at jersey was we we actually had this christmas carol
that beth who he worked for us at the time before she um before she left to become a full-time
mom loved best she's awesome she wrote the words to this sort of christmas carol
and we drove around in cars you know a few of us in each different cars rotating people around singing this
carol we just videoed the whole thing and then the josh edited this entire video
with all kinds of various clips of different people singing the different parts you know uh just driving around with tinsel on
and just having a right old ball it's just good fun and that kind of thing i thought was you
know it's a great example matt i love that i mean it's a great you know i think you do you need to drop the pretence and i think that you know where
what people buy into people by people by people yeah um and uh what they're looking for
is mostly in the business of business spaces that you're looking for a long-term relationship with the organization and it's great to see that you can have
a laugh and and also laugh about yourself yeah but it shows values doesn't it it shows who you are as people
and actually like you say the um connecting with people over the long term they want to see your values don't they
you know they remember that video much more than they remember the offer
it just it sticks in people's minds so how do you take advantage of the christmas season to connect with
people i i think that the christmas is a time
for family it's about it's about stopping selling and it's
about working in a
environment which is different from probably what you've been doing over the last year so uh this year has been hard for
everybody yeah um you know we haven't been able to see i've not been able to see my father who's in the home
um we've not been able to do a whole load of things that we we would have done normally have done um and i think
that we need to um actually drop the the pretence and actually um connect
with people connect to people as people um rather than necessarily try and
selling all the time yeah um and i think there's a lot of things about
christmas or holidays if you're in that if you're in the us where what we can do
is um probably do something that we're a lot where share our vulnerability share our
beliefs um um my business partner and i have been
doing an awful lot of work around um we've actually proactively gone out and recruited black people
um because um we feel that they're they um they've um
um because of the black lives matter thing so and we we sat down one day and went there's no black people in our company
this is wrong um and our company is far better for the diversity yeah and the the exchange of ideas
um and um the same with having um making sure that all all diversity is is
covered um and i think it's probably time to kind of celebrate some of those things
rather than saying we're the best at this or we can sell you that um is celebrating some of the
things in terms of the life your belief systems um and um and connecting with those
connecting with those things on a on a personal basis that's really interesting um one of the
things that we associate with christmas and sorry if i carry on thank you for sharing that and
you know and and and the changes you're making in your company and actually the the benefit of being a much more diverse
company um one of the one of the things that i see
around christmas you know we talk a lot about the christmas spirit don't we and um and actually how can i
how can i bring the christmas spirit out now i appreciate this hasn't got anything to do with e-commerce but in some respects we could we could tie
it in i'm sure um yeah we're clever blakes uh but it's kind of like this christmas
spirit and connecting with people via the christmas spirit what does that mean to you
then um i think that there's a whole bunch of
things that i i remember from as a child um what christmas means to me
um and i think one of those is that comes off the top of my head is is charles dickens and a christmas carol
i just said and it's a great music christmas carol one of the best films ever anyway carry
on yeah yeah and it's and it's one of those um you know it's a great film and it and it
for me it's uh um dickens was great at
um creating in effect it's a it's a metaphor for the time which is that um it's at
times also to look at people that are probably less advantaged than yourselves you know i'm a white
middle-aged middle-class privileged person and i what i should be doing is actually
looking around and seeing what i can do you know i have certain superpowers what
can i be doing to use my superpowers to actually help other people yeah
um and and i must admit we we actually as a business have been trying to do that as soon as we went into lockdown in
march i looked into my network and connected to a whole bunch of people i know there was a whole bunch of people that were
either laid off or for example that i've got a friend who the whole of his business was digital marketing around
travel oh wow and and and they then he just his phone just went with counselling with counselling with
counselling no money coming in um and so you know what can i do to to
to support him um but and i also think that you know that the time is where
we should be looking around and helping people that are less unfortunate themselves i did a um
one year i did um i worked with crisis with homeless yeah and it was if if you
said to me what was probably one of the most satisfying things i ever do in my life
was which was serving uh breakfast to um to a whole bunch of homeless people
yeah um and seeing their faces of uh light up in terms of actually having
a cook breakfast um they shouldn't have happened but for some reason either somehow i actually sneaked in and actually then
served them lunch as well i shouldn't have it it was um they'd actually had a lot
of people there was a it sounds ironic but there was actually a bad flu going around at the time
and a lot of people didn't turn up so i actually had the opportunity to serve them lunch again it was just fantastic yeah just
doing something that i wouldn't do normally but actually realizing that you were
probably brightening people's lives and that's kind of what life christmas
is about that's really interesting you say that one of the things that we've done um as a with our e-commerce businesses over
the christmas period is we've always tried to use profits and raise money to give to charity around the christmas
season because for me christmas is quintessentially giving isn't it it's gifts it's
being with family it's being with your loved ones but it's also gifts and given to people who may be
marginalized or vulnerable or lonely um around the christmas period and
um one of the things one of my favorite charities that we give to uh is called imagine if and it's a
charity here in liverpool right and it works um one of the things it does is that on
christmas day um it transforms the church that i go to it transforms their building which is this huge kind of
warehouse building it transforms it into a restaurant and christmas day right and it's staffed
by volunteers and you have loads and loads of volunteers and literally a hundred two hundred three hundred people
the lonely the vulnerable the elderly um people low income that kind of for christmas dinner come in with the kids
and hundreds of people get fed and have a proper christmas dinner but it's more than that i mean it's like
their family together there's games there's presents and all sorts of stuff and so we love to be a part of that you
know and just remembering that outside outside of my four walls the rest of the world carries on
um and to give to that and to help to that i think um it's not just altruistic it's
actually our responsibility and duty isn't it to to do that yes it is i
agree yeah yeah yeah it's it's um this is great this is not what was planned and i've really enjoyed that
conversation so thank you thanks tim it's been great to get to know you a little bit more over the last
Close
few months if you don't follow him on social media make sure you do because he is always posting stuff
and one of the things he posts a lot are pictures of his early morning runs which
i find kind of inspiring a little bit insane but inspiring all at the same time so i know he's a fit guy
as well as a business smart guy we will of course link to tim social media in the show notes at
ecommercepodcast.net forward slash so a huge huge thanks to today's
guest to tim to kath to neil and to jesse thanks for being on the show i loved love love catching up with all
of you always great to reconnect now i say every show that you know what my
aim whenever i do one of these shows whenever i talk to people is i just i'm i'm always searching for
that real sort of practical advice you know the nuggets that i can use in my own e-commerce businesses and i
would say today again mission accomplished so i got i got lots of notes i don't know about you
if you did uh if you got some great stuff out of this and i would appreciate it if you could rate the show on itunes
or wherever you get your podcast from it would be good to if you could do that would really appreciate it and also while you're at
it why don't you share the podcast out with people that you know that could benefit from what we're talking about
it's always great when we connect with more folks around the world as i said at the start
all of the notes links and the transcript to today's show are online you can get them for free at ecommercepodcast.net forward
slash so that's all from me thanks for listening and come back next time as we get to
interview some more great guests yes we are carrying on our mashup series and we're going to look at how to grow
your online business into you're not going to want to miss next week's episode
thanks for watching i'll see you again very soon
you've been listening to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson join us next time for more interviews
tips and tools for building your business online