Latest / Leaders on Shopify with John Readman / Forget TikTok Shop: Go live on Shopify instead

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Forget TikTok Shop: Go live on Shopify instead · Leaders on Shopify with John Readman

• speaker-0: Welcome to the Leaders on Shopify podcast, where merchants, app partners and agencies share what it really takes to significantly scale your Shopify brand. So welcome back to another episode of Leaders on Shopify. I'm really excited to have Sharon from SLTC ⁓ on the pod today. And she's ⁓ an expert in scaling brands that are direct to consumer who's joining us from New York today. So I don't want to sort of steal your thunder, Sharon. If for those of our listeners who don't know you and don't know SLTC, can you give us a bit of a brief background on yourself and your business? speaker-1: Yes. Thanks for having me today, John. So my name is Sharon Lee Tony. I do a lot of things. ⁓ one thing that I've done is I founded and now lead an agency called SLTC. We are a, as you mentioned, John, we're a ⁓ we're an e-commerce digital marketing agency that specializes in working with lots of Shopify brands, other brands as well, but we're we're best served when ⁓ our clients are kind of in that growth and scale stage of their business. ⁓ we've been around since 2018. So we've had about eight years of experience in this world. And as you can attest, this world has changed quite a bit. ⁓ we're we're headquartered in New York City. We have a team though that's really kind of mainly in the US but distributed all over the world. Some of our team members are digital nomads and like go hike in the Himalayas and do other things on the side. ⁓ we've had an interesting journey as well as an agency. So In 2020, when the entire world changed and everybody needed a website and Shopify was kind of at at the core of a lot of those business models, ⁓ we were growing really fast and we decided we would sell to a nice company called Fiverr. ⁓ and so for about five years, we were owned by Fiverr and I I too worked at Fiverr as an employee at that time. ⁓ and then in a slight change of events, but in a good way, at the beginning of this year. I reclaimed ownership of the agency. So now we're independently owned again. So I'm I personally am coming to you as somebody who has grown has launched, scaled and grown a business, in this case an agency, sold it, bought it back, and continues to to grow that too. So we really love working with clients who want that expertise, not just as branding experts and marketing experts, but the fact that we have in house experience with transactions when it comes to business too. ⁓ Helps as well as they kind of plan through their whole journey. speaker-0: So there's a there's a lot to unpack in there. I we could almost do a whole separate podcast on speaker-1: Just do a whole separate podcast on that. speaker-0: online. But I suppose in sort of sixty second version, what drove you to buy the business back? speaker-1: Yeah, that's a great question. so I think there's a couple of reasons. One was when I I actually never even knew that I could buy back a business. Let me start there, because I think that that concept itself was was foreign to me. ⁓ I thought that when I had sold my business, I had reached the ultimate, the ultimate destination, right? Exiting a business and being able to build something valuable was more than what I had planned to do when I started the agency. and A lot changed in this landscape in the last five years, especially when we were owned by a parent company. Some great things, some not so great things. ⁓ and I think at the beginning of last year, or sometime last year, before the buyback happened, I was really thinking about what's the future of SLTC and where where do I want all of this to go next? Like will we continue to scale and grow? Will we need to make any big changes? How is AI affecting? everything, which I think is a big question on everyone's minds. And this is so it's a little silly, but it is one of those things where you don't you don't realize you can do it till you see other people do it. So last year what was interesting was Taylor Swift bought her masters back from another recording studio ⁓ and made and that was a big deal for her and for the music industry. Ariana Grande just so just so happened to be another, you know, music celebrity, but Ariana Grande had a line of cosmetics that she had sold and that didn't do quite as well, I guess, ⁓ without with her having exited. And so she decided to buy her business back as well. And I just thought, you know, these other women are reclaiming the brands or the businesses that they've started. I wonder if I too could approach the acquirer, ⁓ who happened to also be my employer, which helped, I think. ⁓ to say, hey, like I think I'd like to take this back and I think I'd like to figure out the next chapter for the business. And Fiverr has always been a such a great partner. They continue to be a great partner for us. And they were really open to that. And so we we were able to ink the deal where I now fully own the company again and where we can continue to grow and scale on on my own terms, which has been really refreshing. speaker-0: Well, well done you. And and if we were to look at your sort of clients now, what's the sort of shape of your client base and and I 'cause I know you work with a lot of sort of scaling ambitious D to C brands. Yeah. ⁓ and what portion of those are are sort of on Shopify and and what sort of size are they? speaker-1: Such most of them are on Shopify. I would say 95% of our clients are on Shopify. ⁓ we primarily work with e-commerce brands and Shopify is the best. We're Shopify agency partner, so I can say that as well. ⁓ Shopify is truly the best ⁓ platform when it comes to that. So 95% of our clients are on Shopify. If they're not on Shopify, then they're usually just not an e-com brand. They might be like a service-based business or a nonprofit or something else. ⁓ the client profile that we typically work with are usually fashion, beauty, health and wellness types of brands as well. So it's a lot of it's it's brands that tend to have a lot of different SKUs and different promotional windows or strategies. And so as a digital marketing agency, we come in and we we either help them to build out the site ⁓ or we or we're typically supporting them with things like performance marketing, paid social, paid search, connected TV. many other th chat GPT ads. We've been running some of those lately for clients as well. ⁓ as well as email marketing, which is a really big part of the strategy, I think, for most scaling brands. and and many other, many other sort of facets of digital marketing. speaker-0: Yeah, and and I and I know you guys are a clavier b a big clavio partner and I I'd reck well I'm assuming that's the the email platform and the customer data platform that you would always recommend. speaker-1: Yeah, we ⁓ I'll be honest. So yes, we are we are cleaving partner, we love them. We're also a MailChimp partner. ⁓ and for for brands of ⁓ like brands that have different needs with segmentation, I should say. I wouldn't say bigger or smaller because I don't think that is that much of a of an impact. MailChimp ⁓ actually their features when it comes to Shopify have have imp have just increased and and actually scaled quite a bit in the last few years. And so for some clients that were using Clavio where it just wasn't working as well for them, we've been able to migrate them onto MailChimp and have seen great results there too. So we are a little we're more agnostic when it comes to email platforms, for especially for Shopify clients, because there are a couple of different options now for them. speaker-0: Yeah, and I suppose that leads us on nicely to what others when you're sort of talking to a brand that wants to scale on Shopify, what are the other sort of apps that you would recommend and what are other sort of features that you think, well hang on, you need to look at this or you need to look at that what sort of on on on your text? speaker-1: We've we've recently been doing a lot of experimentation and seeing a lot of success with live shopping. And so many brands are doing live shopping already on places like TikTok or on Instagram live. So social media platforms, brands going live, has been sort of more popular in the last two years or so that folks have been doing this. We've we last month just ⁓ led a workshop about live shopping right on your shopify website. And the app that we use for that is called Live Me Up. It's really easy. You can install it. The free plan I think includes up to a certain number of seats or a certain number of ⁓ a certain number of features. It's it's pretty affordable. And basically that allows you to go live in the same way that you would on Instagram or TikTok, right on your Shopify store, allows you to stream directly to your audiences. And as you're live on Shopify, links right into your Shopify catalog. So as you're there and you're talking about, you know, the beautiful cup that you're selling, for example, right on your website, that also right right in your feed, you can link that product. People can put that right into their cart. They can check out. And as as you're broadcasting live, the audience also gets to see how many people have added things to carts, how many checkouts have happened. It's very interactive and really engaging. And for scaling brands, especially who are looking to build out their first party audiences, as we say in the nerd world, right? But your direct audiences, it's a great way to bring them right onto your site, capture their email addresses, capture their phone numbers, and then be able to nurture them even after the live feed. So Live Me Up for sure, I think has been a game changer for many of our e-com clients and kind of a newer way. to think about a different channel of reaching your audiences through Shopify. speaker-0: And are there any particular brands where you've done this and it's really taken off and it's really stood out of the particular case study that that you can share? speaker-1: Yeah, we so we've we've seen this on two different levels. One is fashion brands tend to do very well here, fashion and beauty brands, because they lend themselves to actually trying on, you know, if there's somebody f human that's trying on an actual item, whether it's a dress or a shirt or anything else, you can see the fit, you can see how things move. We were working with a client called Mick. They were they are a sustainable clothing brand out of Canada on Shopify. And they're they're really good about this every every other week, and sometimes during the holiday season, I think even weekly, they go live right on their website. They do a fashion show and they have about at least five members of their team that are in the office in front of the camera, runway, you know, that they set up, different and camera angles. They model the clothing, they sit down, they kind of have a little QA about. How does this fit? Where would you wear this? You know, what what types of what do you love about this item, whatever it might be? And so they're talking, they're answering direct questions from their audience. They do it super well. They've been doing it for a very long time. A different client that we recently supported in our live shopping webinar last month is Brooklyn Made. Brooklyn Made is run by the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. It is a storefront and a marketplace for over a hundred different Brooklyn based creators and makers. And so it's everything from clothes, but it's also a pizza making set or, you know, an eggnog set or different pins, different sorts sort of sorts of souvenirs around Brooklyn. So you can like, you know, you can buy something that's authentically made by a Brooklyn creator, or you can kind of use it to shop Brooklyn souvenirs. and we we hosted both a both a webinar on how to do it, but we went we actually streamed it as well. in their storefront. So that's another way that retailers can think about this. If you have a Shopify store, but you also have an in-person retail place where people can gather, do a shop, you can do Shopify Live right in your store, walk through the store, talk about specific items, right? And and we were able to gather people in the store itself. We were able to get over a hundred people on the webinar stream learning how to do it. And then we went live for about ten or fifteen minutes just to demo it and actually got people to buy product ⁓ as it was going to. So it was kind of this multi job approach as an agency. Yep. speaker-0: I supp this is fantastic. We we've not had anybody talk about this on the podcast yet. So this is speaker-1: That's why you invited me. Yes. speaker-0: Aaron has introduced us to something new. So the other thing I think that where this could work really well, if you're ⁓ an online retailer who has a physical, maybe one or two physical stores as well, where you're selling something that is very interesting and maybe luxurious, so there's always been this thing of like Well, it's difficult to explain this product online because there's so many features. Or I can't get across the quality of this handbag by just having a picture. Right. I need to really show it. Right. But also bit that I think could really connect this, if you've also got the Shopify Pause in your shop in your actual store and everything is all linked together, you could potentially almost take something off a shelf, show somebody, demo it. And then they could buy it and it will it will all link together and it will all work nicely. And I I'm I'm automatically thinking about a client we work with that sells very high end cycling equipment and bikes, right? And they're they're struggling with well, there's a lot of education needed to talk about these and this could be a perfect way and they currently do a they have a fantastic YouTube channel, they do a lot on YouTube, but again, it's difficult to get the add to cart button in your YouTube channel. ⁓ whereas this sort of brings that YouTube video content experience directly into into your website and directly onto your product pages and direct into your car. So no well that that's a fantastic and what's the name of the app again? speaker-1: Sure. So the app is called Live Me Up. ⁓ and the brands that we've worked with that have done this really well are both Brooklyn made, which is unique because it's a marketplace representing many different brands. So that's the other way that this could work. If you're a storefront selling on behalf of other merchants, it's great for that. ⁓ as well as Mick, M-I-I-K, and they're a clothing brand and they they stream all the time. The other part about this new way of selling is that that video content just lives on your site. So if you go to the mixed site or if you go to the Brooklyn Maid site, you can actually go and see previous live streams too. So it very much is, as you mentioned, a YouTube channel. It becomes a library of video content that basically helps to to describe the product. speaker-0: If you embed different bits of that into different product pages that then Exactly So y arguably in the past you've spent loads of time in the studio recording video for your product pages. Well just do the live, it's there, you've got it, and it's also gonna sit and live on your page. And it's probably a bit more authentic like U G C again, what we've seen in the past, and I'm sure you've seen this with your clients, actually sometimes slightly clunky U G C works better than that amazing perfect studio shoot because people see an unboxing from someone in their messy kitchen because that's a little bit more human than the perfect thing that people are like, nah, that's just the brand being the brat. speaker-1: Exactly. And you know what else, John, that it does? It it invites people literally right in front of you. Right. So I think especially for for brands where this your sales process and your your your customer experience is very high touch, then it allows them to actually get that brand experience directly because they're there. And and so they're watching it as it's happening. But if they ask you a question, whoever's in front of the camera will be able to give them that answer. And just that interaction itself can convert someone from being skeptical about the brand or maybe they're researching you against your competitor. They'll they'll feel a connection to you more authentically, like you're saying, than they would if you had pre-recorded a demo where it's just it it's just a one-sided conversation. So I do think in this new age of video, like every brand does video content now. Not that I'm disputing that. I think it's very important, but authentic video content and almost like a peek into conversations, much like this one, right? That's why we love podcasts and we love watching conversations. It's it gives you a really good sense of who are the people behind this brand that I that I'm considering supporting and how will they respond directly to me. And so I think it's just it's really fascinating in that way. speaker-0: And I often see as well as people are someone will ask a question and it might be a question that someone else has asked. And actually, if it's just a static video on YouTube, they're probably, yeah, I've got the information I need. Whereas if they're then, ⁓ I'd have asked that. ⁓ and then they'll it'll keep them engaged for longer ⁓ and potentially move them further down the funnel to to towards p a purchase. So that's a great we'll we'll share all the information that I probably should get them on. speaker-1: Actually, just a little thing too about our agency. So leading up to the holiday period for the month of September, we are offering free ⁓ consultations for any Shopify brands that might be interested in live shopping. ⁓ and what we'll do is we'll take a look at the brand's product catalog. We'll be able to recommend a collection or a set of products that would be great for live shopping. And then we would be able to build out the before, during, and after for them too. So it's pre promoting the live shopping event itself. It's if they wanted help with going live, if they wanted us to help them, you know, actually be on camera talking about it, or if it's just coaching them on key message points, we'd help with that production of that. And then afterwards helping to nurture through email and SMS and other methods to convert that audience. So I'll I'll give you that link too and ⁓ we can offer that to all of the listeners. speaker-0: Yeah, no, that that's super cool. And we'll put that in the in the as well, we'll share that on social because again, I think that often people are when they see a new bit of technology or a new app, they're a bit nervous about right, yeah, that sounds great, but how am I gonna make that work? How am I gonna get the best out of that? Whereas you know what you're doing and you can sort of help bring that to to life for people. ⁓ and what other super interesting apps or other things have you or your clients been playing with that our audience might be interested in? speaker-1: You know, like I I would talk about AI left, right, and sideways. I feel like we've all been experimenting with every kind of AI app. I have to say, I'd almost pull it back. So I think that there's a place for experimenting with new channels and platforms. And I think, like we just talked about at length, the live shopping thing is great because it's a new way to engage with audiences. I would actually advise that most brands and businesses now Go back to the drawing board and take a look at things like brand strategy and marketing, ⁓ just traditional marketing strategy. What I'm noticing more and more about the output of a lot of these AI tools, so whether it's apps or platforms, is that everything is starting to look and sound generic. Because if you're using ChatGPT, then it's doing things in one way. If you're using Claude, It's doing things in another way. And many brands have lost their voice. So even if you are taking your brand Bible and your brand book and you're uploading it and you're training the GPTs to sound like the brand, I'm finding that the actual strategy of all of this is breaking a little bit. And I'm almost yearning for more brands to think about what are the clever ways that you can really lean into articulating who you are that. That speaks directly to your audience, right? And it's just, it's little things like Groons recently, not maybe not so recently, but you know, was purchased by Unilever, kind of blew up the whole idea of w going from zero to a hundred. I think they they sold within three years of esta being established for billions and billions of dollars. Right. And we've everyone in our space has probably w heard about it, seen it, other things. One thing that made Groons so successful. was that they decided to package their products in these little packets of like five to ten. I forgot the exact amount, but it was like these little travel packs of these gummy vita vitamins, right? That you could take with you everywhere you went. And their audience is such that they they are like their audience is typically ⁓ athletes, it's parents, it's people that tend to go out and engage in a community aspect. So by being Bundle by packaging their product in these little to go packages of more than just one serving size, right? Typically it's like maybe four to five servings of your groom's vitamins. They were empowering their consumers to share it. Because who doesn't want a gummy vitamin? You know? When you're out for a run, when you're at the playground with your kids, when you're doing other things, you're like, Hey, I'm gonna take my vitamins now. Hey, John, would you like to? Sure, I'll sure I'll pop a gummy with you. You know, whatever that means. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. But like speaker-0: Where are we going here? speaker-1: I'm talking about vitamins. But thinking about I guess so my point is that was that was a product strategy, but it was a product strategy that really was if you think about it, it was a brand and a marketing strategy. speaker-0: No, well I you're absolutely right. I was having this conversation. I'm a performance marketer, as as are you, and I we we come from this background where we you spend a pound and we can make or spend a dollar and we can make ten dollars, right? Right. And we've all got a little bit obsessed with the numbers and data. We're a data business, right? We love all this. But actually the challenge is I think that's made quite a lot of marketers lazy. And I think they've s so it's like who's actually the copywriter? Who owns that ho's writing that who's genuinely writing that email newsletter that is a story that's interesting? Or are you just throwing more products at people? So I I completely agree. Is now the time and is there gonna be a rebirth in proper, genuine, useful PR? Right. And actually who's telling your story? 'Cause w and again, and I'm not just talking about mass spam digital PR, right? That's not what we're talking about. But it's like why are you special? Why are you different? Why should you be newsworthy? And actually if you see what's happening in the broader sort of LLM visibility world, it's your site isn't appearing that much. Although you can get it to appear, it's other sites talking about your site. And it's a bit like actually, if you can get your brand featured, I don't know, on CNN or in Forbes or wherever then you're more likely to have visibility and and your brand's gonna stand out. And then actually that's probably more a traditional PR, but you can't do PR if you don't have a story and you're not authentic and you don't have your own visit sort of vision for your product. And I and I I also think the interesting thing, which like brands we like you work with and I work with Sharon, is the challenger brands, the whole AI search and visibility can potentially level the playing field a little bit. 'Cause in the at the moment, if you look at Google, it's really pay for play and the person with the biggest budget's gonna win. And arguably the person who's been doing more SEO over time's probably gonna win. Whereas now it's a bit of a level playing field and actually the people who pick the right tactics and the right approach ⁓ have the opportunity. So no, I'm I completely agree with you. I think ⁓ Well, first of all you need to have a good story that ⁓ a good product that you've got a story around that you're passionate about. But also position your brand. Yeah, I completely I completely agree with agree with all of that. Yeah. So I speaker-1: But I do have if you wanna talk about apps, I do have some favorites as well, in addition to that. So I would say ⁓ Okendo is a great one. Have you guys talked about Okendo here or know a lot about Okendo? Okay. speaker-0: has mentioned it in the past, but we haven't got into it in detail. speaker-1: So Okendo is great because it is an all-in-one CRM and retention tool in one way or another. It it it integrates really well with Clavio. And so we use it for rewards programs, referral programs, loyalty programs. ⁓ it also collects reviews and it's a really nice way to be able to track people coming in and and how they're responding to the product, but to then be able to leverage all of that as assets for. retention and other marketing as well. So it's really easy to use the the Okendo team. I feel like a salesperson for Okendo. We are an Okendo agency too. But yeah Yeah. Their team is great ⁓ and really, really ⁓ supportive with customer service because that's that is the other thing in this space, John, I'm sure you'll agree. There are really good apps, but when the customer experience for those apps is poor, like if the agency or the brand isn't getting enough support on how to use it or how best to implement it. speaker-0: This is fascinating. Yeah, the biggest thing I took from the recent Shopify conference in Toronto, that everything they were saying, especially in this world of vibe coding and the number of apps being released on the app store is at an all time high. People are doing these sort of copycat apps where people are just spinning up new apps all the time. Yeah. What Shopify are actually saying is it's more about your people behind the app. Right. It's not just about the app itself, right? speaker-1: Point up. speaker-0: So we've actually changed on our app store listing. We have real human customer support. And I never thought I would say that. But actually, people want to know that that there is somebody at the end of the email or at the end of the telephone who can jump on a T and Score Google me who actually understands the problem and can help you your business rather than get stuck in some AI death loop chat thing where they're just it's a bit like Years ago when we they started automating like telephone services or they started automating like outsourcing call centres. Yeah. People are not saying onshore call centre or real humans answering a phone as a benefit because it's sort of almost gone too far one way in certain instances. And I think what we're seeing is the successful apps as you've talked about are the ones that hey, they've gotta it's gotta work, it's gotta be good for your business. But when there is a challenge, they do have people who there who can support you. And I I think that's A really big thing. So if we take a step back and a a brand approaches you and they're sort of doing three million dollars or five million dollars and they want to scale, yeah, what are the sort where are the first places you go to look to help them grow their business? speaker-1: Yep. So we typically start every engagement with an audit. ⁓ so if we if we meet them, even before we sign a contract with them, ⁓ we we we like to take a look, a peek under the hood. And we'll be honest too. Sometimes we take a look at what they've been doing already with either an existing agency or sometimes not so much at the three to five million angle, but some some some founders and some owners are running their own ads. I'm sure you see that too, which frankly scares me. Because it's a little bit like, okay, unless unless you have that background, right? To be to be running your own ⁓ to be running your own campaigns. ⁓ but we'll take a look at their entire ecosystem. So we take a look at their website analytics, we take a look into their Shopify, we take a look at their performance analytics, email marketing, ⁓ and get a really good sense of what's working, what isn't working. And then from there, we'll usually prescribe some combination of services through our agency. Most of our clients are working with us on performance marketing because that's so critical for e-com, ⁓ as well as retention, ⁓ retention services like email marketing and SMS services. ⁓ a growing segment of things that have sort of really taken off more than I would have assumed is ⁓ UGC and affiliates as well. So We've always done social media management for clients. We've always sort of done we've always done influencers too, but honestly, in the last six to twelve months, we've had so much ⁓ influx of brands really wanting to get more people out there talking about them, probably to your point, because AI is so dependent on what are all of the third party, you know, ⁓ testimonials or content that's out there. So ⁓ that's been a growing segment of services for us too. And so that's allowed us to develop partnerships with other agencies that specialize in this because we aren't we're not an influencer marketing agency, ⁓ meaning we don't have our own like talent in-house. We're not a talent management agency, but we often partner with ⁓ agencies like that to be able to source talent. ⁓ so it's looking at a combination of that and then and then we're typically working with clients and are, you know, that are able to spend somewhere. to start ten to twenty grand US. ⁓ I know you're in the UK, so t ten to twenty thousand dollars US ⁓ in investing and marketing and that's a combination of both ⁓ ad spend and agency fees and then we take it from there. speaker-0: Yeah, and so if somebody this is this is a hard question to ask, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. ⁓ someone comes to you and they say, Right, here's fifty thousand dollars, ⁓ and we want to increase sales, where where should we spend that? speaker-1: So I think I would so if it's it depends on the category. ⁓ I do think that we would probably recommend some kind of ads to drive traffic into the into the site in one way or another. Meta, I I I can't believe I'm saying this publicly, but I've been saying it to all of our friends and networks. Meta has not generated as high of a return or as great of results for a lot of our brands. We have That's not to say that it doesn't at all. I'm actually we're about to submit for an speaker-0: Are you saying that Meta might be over reporting how good a contribution it makes to your business? speaker-1: It could be that. I think it also could be that maybe people aren't engaging on Facebook and Instagram and all the associated meta platforms as much as they used to. So I think it's a little bit of both. I think in the olden days, and I can say this because we've been doing this since the before times, ⁓ literally before I don't know when that big privacy shift happened, but ⁓ in like even before twenty twenty. We were able to target so specifically, right, John? Like I would have your social security number basically, like all of your pets names. I would know what you had for dinner last night. I'd be able to find you no matter what if you were the audience that we were trying to track. And nowadays it's not as visible because of all of the different privacy parameters. So meta was real meta ads were really dependent on that level of ⁓ insights. into their own audience, but then advertisers were dependent on Meta to be able to furnish those insights to them as well. And that has just changed over time. So I would say, but despite that, advertising in general is critical for any e-commerce brand. So most of our most of our clients are seeing results, if not, if not from Meta, then from some combination of paid search, connected TV. ⁓ we've also been looking at depending on the brand, Pinterest, ⁓ Snap as a ⁓ advertising platform, especially for brands that Skew Younger. TikTok ads have gotten better, especially with all the support around TikTok shop, at least in the US. TikTok was a little bit scary for us in the US, also a couple of years ago in the olden times, but also a couple of years ago for different regulation reasons. But so Other social media platforms are growing. ⁓ depending on the product type, if it's a product that requires a lot of research or that is kind of health based, Reddit ads actually have been speaker-0: Just I was waiting to see we've seen tons of engagement recently in in Reddit ads. And it's often landing straight on your product page and the conversion rate is pretty good. It's low volume, low volume but highly targeted. speaker-1: Yep. And and there isn't a lot of competition on there now. So it's also it's so yeah, it's so cheap. It's so much cheaper than trying to buy traffic from from the the bigger players. ⁓ so we'd always kind of start with that. And then typically we're also then looking at the website because if you're driving traffic into the site, you want to make sure that the site converts. Right. So a lot of our work also is around speaker-0: Yeah. I I spend hours talking to brands and people about who owns the conversion rate number. And it's so often people own that conversion rate number and they sort of look around the room and go, ⁓ well, it's e commerce, ⁓ it's marketing. It's like, well, someone needs to own that number and you're spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on driving traffic to this website. Well, who owns the number? And it's often people just get obsessed with maybe the car or they get and and they And then the the funny one I had recently was, ⁓ well, we've done conversion rate optimization. We've finished. And I'm like, How can you finish? Surely it can get getting better. It's a bit like say I've done getting fit. I'm gonna go back and eat loads of pizza. yeah, it's just an ongoing permanent thing and mindset of improving if improving your site. And improving that experience. So I could talk all day about ⁓ DTC e commerce with each other. Yeah. The the one thing a lot of people are talking about at moment is like a gentic commerce, right? So actually we're gonna tell our agent to go on buyers products. Right. And if we're as we are all in the Shopify world, Shopify is making that relatively easy and straightforward to list our products and they should appear. And this, that, and the other. And and you mentioned you've been playing a little bit with Chat GPT ads, which is I know is different to agentic commerce, but we're seeing good signs from ChatGPT ads in in Europe and that is working very well. But I suppose from your point of view, is agentic commerce right now a bit of a hype? Because everybody's saying, ⁓ the numbers have gone from this percentage to three hundred percent to eight hundred percent. If you're starting from one, it's very quick. So you can get if you get to three, that's three hundred percent. If you get so there's a lot of talk about these massive numbers. ⁓ I've no doubt it's part of the future, but what's your stance and what you're seeing and what would you recommend to clients? speaker-1: Yeah, I think I think it's here. I won't even say it's coming, right? It's here. And I I I like to think of it as the same way that we would talk about the algorithm, like in air quotes, right? Like before AI became what it is today, we would always kind of refer to this thing called the algorithm, where especially to brands or to clients, where maybe some of us, especially in the performance marketing world, understood what that meant and how it worked. But we just kind of refer to it as a thing. That would kind of help the platform to decide what content, what ads, what types of assets would be shown to the users. That's how I think of a agentic comment ⁓ commerce to or does anything agentic, whether it's agen agentic ⁓ customer service or AI or coding. It's humans that have programmed platforms to behave as humans to support human behavior, which is a I know it's very kind of meta in in how we think about it. And and the way I like to think of it is the same way that so the way the way that we work with that and to be successful with that is to just treat it like it's another algorithm. How do we allow a platform that has been both programmed by humans and being used by humans on both sides, right? From the beginning to the end. How do we empower that platform to connect our brand to the right people at the end of that. And the same practices that are were used to, you know, help things to show up in the algorithm, again, right? All the same terminology from the last four years that we could apply, just substitute that now with how how can we allow agent age agents overall, so not even just a genetic commerce, but how do we allow any kind of AI agents to be able to know who we are so that it can then help us to connect. To users. what I do find fascinating is your point that smaller brands and challenger brands now have a leg up over the brands that traditionally have had the biggest budgets. Because the brands that are going to win in this agentic world are the brands that are approaching this strategically, approaching it with great stories, like you said, and approaching it in a way that is valuable, useful, educational, and entertaining to the audience. Because The agents are are are measuring and the platforms really are measuring engagement the same way that they were measuring engagement through the algorithm previously. ⁓ so it's a lot of that. I think it's sort of the the beauty of having worked in the marketing space for over 25 years, John, which is crazy. But like it is seeing that the platforms totally change. You know, back in when I first graduated out of university. The three channels that we had at our disposal were television commercials, print ads in magazines, and radio ads. I would say none of those even exist anymore, really. I mean, right? Like, I mean, they they kind of still exist, but really not not in a major way. And but those strategies from even twenty five years ago are still relevant. speaker-0: The messaging, the positioning. And this goes back to what I was saying before. It's like you would hire the best copywriter in town to write your billboard or write your your press art. Right. Right. Whereas now people are just relying on AI or the grad in the corner using AI to write the hook. And it's like, no, we've lost that art of of and arguably we've lost that essence of good copywriting, good content and and good marketing. But no, we we could I'm gonna just quickly we're gonna have to wrap up. But ⁓ One question it would be wrong of me not to ask of a founder who who's grown their business, sold their business and bought it back, are you now building SLTC to sell again or are you gonna keep it? speaker-1: I am definitely building it to sell again. I would like to sell the business again. ⁓ probably not for another three to five years. So some things that we are doing is we're intentionally growing and scaling. We are thinking about partnering with other agencies, maybe even acquiring a few businesses along the way so that we can grow our services, grow the team, grow the portfolio. ⁓ and then obviously using a ton of apps and AI and technology to fuel. the work that we're doing too. So yes, a founder never stops building. And so I am now that I'm now that I'm back in the founder seat, we definitely have plans to keep scaling and growing and then reselling again one day. speaker-0: Yeah, no well, it's been fantastic having you on the show. That's been really useful. We'll summarise all your recommendations and that link to the ⁓ audit for live shopping. That's a wonderful offer for our listeners. So thanks for being on, Sharon. And ⁓ yeah, we'll have to get you back on in in in a few months and get enough. speaker-1: I'd love to be back. Thank you so much, John. speaker-0: Thank you for listening to today's Leaders on Shopify podcast, which was sponsored by AsBosco AI Analytics and Insights. To find out more about AsBosco, visit Asbosco.io or search AsBosco in the Shopify App Store.