Don't Put All Of Your Marketing Eggs In One Basket | 2019 DMC Speech Ashley Alderson

You'll get a mimosa. But then he's like, are you sure you want everyone drinking while you're speaking? But could get kind of rowdy over here. Does anyone need to get up? Do you guys know there's mimosas over here this morning? Or did you have enough margaritas last night that you don't need mimosas this morning? Is that it? Gosh. Well, I'm so excited to be here with you guys this morning. Honestly, this is one of my favorite parts about my job, is I know how much time each and every one of you spend working in your businesses, but not always on your businesses and seeing things from a different perspective. And I really look at our role at the boutique hub as exactly that. How can we spend our time making sure that we're seeing what's happening in the market space and bringing it to you so that you can do what you do best? And we can get you that information really quickly about how to adapt so that your business can continue to grow. Can you guys all hear me? Okay, Kind of echoey or. You're good? Okay, so before we get into all of that, because I have a lot of things I want to talk about this morning. How many of you guys here were at our meetup last night? I mean, hub members need to be a little bit more rowdy than that. So I get like, a whoop, whoop, whoop. Okay, that's better. Sure. Nobody needs a mimosa. Like, second call. I don't know. So we had an awesome meetup last night, and I love that. Just the community feel and sharing stories and talking about, how do you handle all these different situations that come into business on a daily basis? And one of them that we're really going to focus on today is kind of a current event in marketing. So how many of you guys, three weeks ago, maybe logged into your Facebook account and you're like, God dang it, I'm in Facebook jail. I can't comment. Anyone ever been in Facebook jail? And you're like, I've never been in Facebook jail before, but I can't comment. So then you're like, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna message my boutique bestie. I'm gonna see if they can see my profile, because I think I'm in Facebook jail. And then you're like, oh, dang, I can't even message my boutique bestie. Something is wrong with my app. And then you're like, okay, I'll go to Instagram. And then I'm gonna Message him on Instagram. And then your Instagram doesn't pull up. And then. And then you're like, I have all these friends on Facebook, but I don't have their phone number. I don't have their email address. I don't know how to talk to the world without Facebook and Instagram. Is anyone with me? Yes. So three weeks ago, we in the boutique industry had a bit of a meltdown, didn't we? It was kind of like Black Tuesday, 1929, because you couldn't log into Facebook and Instagram and everyone panicked. Like, what in the world are we going to do? And the reason that is is it was actually the longest recorded outage in Facebook and Instagram history. Three weeks ago. It was down for 24 hours for a lot of users. So how many of you were like, with me that day? And you were like, bull crap. It was like a real aha moment. Right? So when that was happening, we sent out an email through the boutique hub right away, like, hey, this is happening. It's not just you. And here's some things you can do right now to survive the day. Because a lot of people lost a lot of money that day, right? If they weren't prepared, they lost a lot of money. But if they were prepared, they were like, oh, just go over to my app and you're good. And they could email their customers. It was another day as usual. Actually, it was probably a more peaceful day than usual because you were like, I now remember what it was like to have a business before social media. Anyone been around business before social media? Yes. Right. So the reason I want to talk about that today is initially, when we were talking about a topic for today, it was really just digital marketing strategies. What's working in 2019 for boutique owners. But I changed the title obviously, to stop putting all your eggs in one basket. Because you're not the Easter bunny. Right. Too many boutique owners are being the Easter bunny right now, so we've got to change that up. And that's the strategy for today. So what really happened next after the Facebook outage, I thought was really interesting because if you followed the news, you know, Mark Zuckerberg announced a big change coming to the newsfeed. And now internally at Facebook, they're calling the newsfeed the old newsfeed because he made this big announcement that they're going to start pushing to a more encrypted, privacy focused platform, really heavily centered on private messaging versus the public newsfeed. Did you guys follow that news at all? A little Bit alarming if you've been through a newsfeed change. I remember the very first time the newsfeed came out and I logged in. I was in college. Like, what in the world is this? Now everyone can see my stuff. Everyone was so outraged. Like, I just made this comment to my best friend and I thought it was between us. Now everybody can see it, and now we're going to probably going back that direction. So to me, that's a big red flag. We need to start doing something a little bit different in our marketing. So after Mark announces these changes, then what happens is two of Facebook's top executives resign. Chris Daniels and Chris Cox, the head of Chief Product Officer and The head of WhatsApp both resigned because again, the news says they didn't agree with the change that's coming to the news feed. So again, just like warning signals, right? Things that we need to be aware of that are going to be coming in our business. So today we're going to talk about those strategies. How do we really start to secure and build our business for the long term? So regardless of what's happening in California, our businesses really are secure. So we're going to get really specific today about three mistakes that I would say are happening in the industry, but then also three opportunities that you guys can take right now to really build your business for the next several years. How many of you guys had MySpace? How many of you guys had Napster? Like, Napster, MySpace? All the things. I gotta tell you a story. So two weeks ago, I was speaking at a Junior Achievement Day at a middle school, and it was about 400 seventh graders, and it was an entrepreneurship panel. And we were all talking about marketing. And finally I was like, you know what, you guys. How many of you guys have Facebook? You know who raised their hand? The teachers. It was it like two students raised their hand. And I'm like, okay, I gotcha. How many of you have Instagram? Maybe like 60% of them raised their hand. And I was like, okay, who's got Snapchat? The whole room goes up, right? So I'm gonna ask that question to you. How many of you guys have Snapchat? Good. A majority. How many of you guys are active every day on Instagram and Insta stories? That should be every single one of you, right? Because if we don't start evolving for our customers, there's not gonna be any customers left, and we aren't gonna have a business left. And so I don't mean to be morbid, but it's time for us to keep moving past just Facebook alone. Alright, so let's get specific. Let's start with the mistakes first because I think that there's a lot that we can learn from this mistake and the first one is actually quite obvious. And I love gifts. How many of you guys in the boutique hub know my love language with gifts? I could have an entire conversation of gifts so there'll be plenty of them in a slideshow. But mistake number one is relying on one, maybe two channels to get our message out there. How many of you guys have had an Instagram hack so far? Because that number is growing. The Gypsy Pearl girls, probably not here, I saw them yesterday. But the Gypsy Pearl girls from Texas had 75,000 followers on Instagram. Gone, gone, hacked. Now they did end up getting their account back, but that type of thing is going to becoming more and more prevalent. I'm going to talk about cyber security at the end of this and give you some actionable takeaways that you can do right now to protect yourself. But again, relying on those channels isn't going to work. So how many of you are actively collecting email addresses, phone numbers and any type of data you can third party on your customers? Who's got a good point of sale system or some type of great data collection? So system for your customers. Perfect. A few months ago I was in Miami as a part of Brendan Burchard's Mastermind group and Brendan was speaking, he was saying, you know what, Five years ago you would tell someone that having a social media manager full time was going to be the reality. And they were like, no way, like I'm not going to have someone full time doing social media. And now that is reality. So he said the next thing that's going to happen is businesses in order to survive and thrive are going to have full time data managers. All you do is interact with data, your customer data, you resegment your customer data. Because it's not about having more customers, it's about serving the customers that we do have better. Right? And building repeat customer, building average order value because people want to do business with people. So how you build relationships with your customers right now and keep them coming back for more is absolutely critical. So phone numbers, text message marketing, I'm going to tell you how to do that in just a little bit. Email marketing, we're going to go deeper into that a little bit. How many of you guys have an app or some type of other third party application for your business? So far a couple people. That's kind of going to be the next thing. But as I talk about an app, I want to remind you of this. An app is a tool, right? It's like a website. It's not Kevin Costner. Just because you build it, they don't come. You have to have a good flow of traffic before you invest. You're going to invest in an app, so it's not something that you're going to just have have a quick win with, but you have to have a good system built that you can drive traffic to that app and really build that business for that next leg of the future. So let's talk about ongoing email collection and strategy. You guys running contests, you're running opt ins. How many of you guys are really active with those email campaigns on a regular basis? Growing the list, you know, email. Although I think we all find it to be a little bit annoying sometimes our inboxes get like 20, 30,000 emails, emails built up in them. It's a really critical strategy. So having those pop ups on our website, running ongoing contests to build those lists is really important. And then ongoing text and also those push notifications. Stop our push notifications for just a minute. If you have an app, you can do a push notification on a mobile phone, but did you guys know you can also just send a push notification right from your website on desktop? Is anyone actively working with push notifications in that way? There's an app called Push Crew and I know Shopify has got a number of other integrations as well, but Push Crew will allow you every time you upload new arrivals to your website, you can send out an immediate push notification to someone's desktop if they've opted in to receive that. So just another way to not rely on social media to drive that message home. Alright, mistake number two. And you guys, this goes without saying and this is going to be basic for a minute, but if I don't say this message, I will be mad at myself later. There's three types of data. Talking about the data manager that we have to have. There's three types of data and three types of numbers that we really have to get a lot better about digging into. Because so many boutique owners today, especially brand new boutique owners, no offense, but everyone wants to get into this business because they like people and they like fashion and they like the creative side of the business. There's a creative side of retail, but then there's a science side of retail. And without the science, there's no business, right? If you can't pay yourself, there's no business so the three types of data and numbers that we have to be looking at on a daily basis. Inventory turn inventory related to time, right? How many of you guys actively looking at your aging and talking about how can I restyle, reshoot, repost this in a fresh new way so my customers feel like it's new so I can turn this product quicker. Right? Because I mean selfishly, in boutique owner land for all like that was last season. That was actually a month ago. It's old now. Does anyone ever get caught in that rut and you're like, I don't want to punch myself. That's a terrible thing to say. My customer still thinks last season's new and thank God, right? Because that means more margin for us when she pays full price for it. So we can't get stuck in the fast fashion rut of everything has to be new all the time, right? Keep posting aged inventory so that you can take your money home at the end of the day and don't always have to take a discount. If you guys aren't using a great, like I said earlier, point of sale, someone like management one, somebody that can help you really relate to those numbers and let inventory speak to you. There's a big missed opportunity there. I used to be intimidated by numbers as a whole, but once I realized numbers could tell a story and they could tell the artistic side of the business story so well becomes exciting because if you know that certain categories are turning well, how can you double down your marketing in that area? Right? Or if you know inventory's aged in one area, how can you double down in the next? Right? So inventory turn is the most important piece of data to be looking at right now. Second is obvious income and expenses you're operating. If you you aren't taking home a profit at the end of the day, we need to understand why. And that's where we dig in. Now the third piece of data, I'll go a little bit more in depth to. And I know some of you in the Hub have seen this formula before. In fact, there's a whole training on it in our training library. But if you want to take a screenshot of this, it's a good formula to take home and look at. And this is your traffic formula. And this works whether you're a brick and mortar store or you're an E commerce store. These numbers are really important. So what we're looking at here, I'm going to give you an analogy as if you are a million dollar a year business. We'll just Say, for even numbers, okay? If you don't have a good traffic plan for your business, it's like telling yourself you're gonna go on a diet, but then like not having a plan until you're hungry and you open the fridge door and you're like cake, right? If you don't have a plan, you aren't gonna hit the numbers. So first things first, you've got your annual sales goal. I'm a million dollars this year, right? So we're gonna break it down. You can break it down daily, you can break it down weekly, however fits you best. Let's take that formula one step further. So you've got your annual sales goal, you've got divided by 52 weeks, you've got your weekly sales goal. Now you've got your goal divided by your average order value, right? How many of you guys are actively working on your average order value, Understanding what that cart value is? Important number, right? Because an increase in 1% of your average order value puts a lot more money in your pocket at the end of the day. So if you have $100 average order value, now, you know how many orders you need per week. So let's say you're a million dollar store, you've got a $100 average order value, you need roughly $19,230 a week to make a million dollars at the end of the year. All right? And if you break that down by your average order value, that's 192 orders. 192 orders. Pretty doable, right? Okay, so now let's talk about if you're brick and mortar or you're online because your conversion rate is the next number that's important. Who tracks their conversion rate? A couple of you. So online conversion rate in E Commerce average about 2%, 3% if you're lucky. That means 98% of people visit your website and leave. Is that alarming? A little bit. So 2% is what you have to work with if you're a brick and mortar store. It kind of varies if you're a destination or you're a shopping mall. And we're talking like 30 to 50% conversion rate. But you can get.