How to Reach 8-Figures with Ecommerce — Talal Abulshamat | How to Achieve Product-market Fit, Why Omnichannel is Crucial for Reaching Eight Figures, Why Diversifying Advertising is Important, Why Focusing on Logistics and Service is Important (#293)

Please support the show if you liked today's episode:

• If you love the podcast, please get someone else to listen, too!
• If you enjoyed this episode of the Ecommerce Coffee Break podcast, please head over to Apple Podcasts, leave a rating, write a review, and subscribe.
• Share the podcast with your family, friends, and co-workers.
• Tag the podcast on Instagram @clauslauter and let me know what you like about it.
• If you like the content and would like to support the podcast, you can buy me a coffee here.
• Become a guest on the show or sponsor an episode.

Claus Lauter [00:00:00]:
Welcome to episode 293 of the ecommerce Coffee Break podcast. This time we discuss strategies to achieve eight figure success in ecommerce. Joining me on the show today is Talal Abulshamat, founder of Tas digital agency at tas-digital.com so let's dive right into it.

Voice over [00:00:18]:
This is the ecommerce Coffee Break.

Claus Lauter [00:00:23]:
A.

Voice over [00:00:24]:
Top rated Shopify growth podcast dedicated to shopify merchants and business owners looking to grow their online stores. Learn how to survive in the fast changing ecommerce world with your host Claus Lauter, and get marketing advice you can't find on Google.

Claus Lauter [00:00:43]:
Welcome to the episode of the ecommerce Coffee Break podcast. Today we want to find out how you can reach eight figures with your e commerce business. Now, obviously, for a lot of small and medium enterprise, eight figures is a huge goal and we want to dive into marketing strategies, into the tactics, into experiences that help you with reaching this goal. With me on the show today, I have Talal Abulshamat. He's the founder and executive manager of Tas digital agency at tas-digital.com Talal has always been passionate about marketing and design. Started in advertising six years ago and never looked back. He started learning about Amazon ecommerce, built and grew ecommerce stores, and then decided to help other ecommerce stores scale from what he has learned. He now leads a team of 25 people with expertise in social media advertising, ads, email creative design, email marketing and retention marketing.

Claus Lauter [00:01:33]:
So let's welcome him to the show. Hi, Talal. How are you today?

Talal Abulshamat [00:01:36]:
Hey, I'm doing great. How are you, Claus?

Claus Lauter [00:01:39]:
I'm very well. Great to have you on the show. Let's talk about growth. When it comes to ecommerce growth, in which areas do you see brands and merchants struggling the most?

Talal Abulshamat [00:01:53]:
Mainly brands or ecommerce brands are, of course, mainly looking to make more sales. Right. I would say that the founders struggle on what strategy to use. They don't know how to basically grow from a certain number to the next number to the next level because there's a lot of information in the Internet. So they know that there are the advertising methods, there are the search ads, the retention marketing, there's the branding, there's the social media marketing. But they don't know, I guess, what they should focus on and how to start. And when they focus on a certain, or when they think about a certain platform, I would say they struggle with the details on how to scale it, which is normal. They don't have to do everything.

Talal Abulshamat [00:02:59]:
This is the main idea.

Claus Lauter [00:03:03]:
Yeah, I think you're quite right. I mean, there's so many different options out there and there's more options coming every day. And obviously nowadays it's all about omnichannel advertising. And then finding the right channels that work for your brand can be quite difficult. Now, what gets you to five figures does not get you to six figures. And what gets you to six figures doesn't get you to seven or eight figures. So what would be your strategy when it comes to marketing? To build up a reliable structure and strategy for a D to C business that, let's say, has a six figure business at this point in time.

Talal Abulshamat [00:03:38]:
If a brand is already doing six figures, I would say, and they want to scale the, they should really look at all of the platforms that they are advertising in. And first of all think, are they doing the whole thing right? Are they utilizing all the platforms in the right way? Do they have the right experts put on these platforms to scale them and look at the missing ones? So when I mean platforms, I also mean the strategy in terms of, for example, influencer marketing is a really big and a totally different kind of strategy that you need a full team to manage that, right? If you want to scale as well, if you need to kind of set up a strategy and a team for a big influencer marketing basically plan, you need at least two to three people just to contact influencers to structure the costs, how these influencers should post. We don't do that in our agency, but we see other clients do that. And it's another kind of strategy by itself because it's called platform. Then you have the platforms. So thinking about organic SEO and social and then influencer marketing and then really thinking about each platform which is the advertising platform by itself. And then looking at your retention, are you really taking advantage of every retention platform? There is email, SMS, push notifications or retention apps that will help you gather more data. And plus there are the other factors which you could think about.

Talal Abulshamat [00:05:35]:
It's a bit like smaller adjustments, but like improving your AOV by using a lot of tactics to do like upselling, crossselling and all of that. When you increase your average order value 20% to 30%, it makes a difference in the scale.

Claus Lauter [00:05:56]:
In high scale, what I understand from you, it's more important to focus on retention instead of getting new clients, new customers on board, and just focus on customer lifetime value, average order value, and just make more out of what you already have in your customer database. When it comes to that, you have different tools. We're talking about social media marketing. We're talking about email marketing. What would be the first one that you look into to increase customer lifetime value? Aov.

Talal Abulshamat [00:06:31]:
So definitely it's retention, right? Customer lifetime value is retention, is email marketing. So this is the main platform. But I am not saying that the client should ignore top of the funnel and cold audiences. There should be always cold traffic coming to the website and understanding the first conversion rate number and the first return on ad spend from the first customer. From the first purchase. For example, we have a client and we are doing two X on the first purchase. Right. A two X is not profitable for the client, but they're in the coffee niche.

Talal Abulshamat [00:07:12]:
So our strategy is how can we get this client to buy more and more and more within one year? They've already bought, hopefully twelve times. Like let's say every month they're going to get a new coffee. So mainly when we look at the ratio of customer acquisition cost to CLV, then it's a healthy ratio. Then we know that grabbing the first client is important, the first purchase, but also how to retain them. And retaining comes with the email marketing. So both of them are really important. But I mean, if a client is doing really well with cold traffic and they're not doing anything with email marketing, then that is a problem in my opinion, because why don't you use this email marketing tool or retention strategies to get more out of one customer? Double, triple, more than that.

Claus Lauter [00:08:08]:
That makes perfect sense. What's your approach? And I think it's in marketing, it's almost a surgical approach to look into a new client, an agency of client of yours. When they come to you, where do you start? Which bits and pieces do you look at and then create a strategy out of that?

Talal Abulshamat [00:08:28]:
I love this question. So when we work with clients, usually we don't work with startups. So like really new clients, I want to see a bit an established brand. What I mean by established is that the first thing I ask is of course show me the website and show me your social media. When I see the social media and I see this brand has already worked hard or worked a bit on their content, on their brand presentation, basically on the visibility and how they structure their messaging. If the website is nice and beautiful, it will show on the Instagram and vice versa. If a client have worked good on their product, to show it in a nice way, you can see it already immediately from social media and from the website. So the first thing I look is the website design and social media, mainly Instagram.

Talal Abulshamat [00:09:38]:
Right. And of course TikTok is important as well. The second thing is I want to know the product. I want to see is this product special? Does it solve a really important problem that is in the market? And hopefully there is data to prove that. So the data that I look at, I would say the most important data is conversion rate. Like what is your conversion rate in the last year or so? And I want to see a good conversion rate compared to the average order value. For example, if the client is selling for a hundred plus dollars product average order value, I think health conversion rate would be 2%, right? Or a bit more. If it's less than 100, I want to see the same or also more conversion rate.

Talal Abulshamat [00:10:27]:
So conversion rates kind of proves the product. But then sometimes clients come to us with a really bad website design and not an amazing social media, but I see great conversion rates, which means that, okay, there is really big potential if they fix these problems. So these are the first things I see and then later on I understand. Okay, how are they bringing traffic to the website? And are they retargeting this traffic through the retention strategies and. Yeah.

Claus Lauter [00:11:03]:
Hey Clausia, just a quick one. If you like the content of this episode, subscribe to the weekly newsletter at newsletter ecommercecoffeebreak.com. I score and create 50 news sources so you don't have to, saving your hours of research. Grow your revenue with ecommerce news, marketing strategies, tools, podcast, interviews and more, all in a quick three minute read. So head over to newsletter ecommercecoffeebreak.com to subscribe as at 100% free. Also you will find the link in the show notes. And now back to the show. No one gets from zero to eight figures overnight.

Claus Lauter [00:11:32]:
So it's a process that takes some time. And in these different stages, obviously the brand grows, the social media channels grow, the marketing grows. Where do you help to scale profitability? So is meta ads? Is TikTok ads? Is this still a channel that is worth spending money in because that's become more expensive? Or are you looking in other channels to drive traffic and conversions to a store?

Talal Abulshamat [00:11:58]:
To be honest, all platforms are important. But mainly, mainly what we focus on is meta, right? Of course, we do everything so we do from meta to TikTok to Snapchat, Google, Bing as well. But we look at Meta at the beginning because meta still is the beast in the market, to be honest. They still have the most data and they're not slowing down, actually growing more and more, especially after competing with TikTok now. So meta is still the top in the market in my opinion. But then there's also, it depends on the niche and depends on the product price and depends on the audience that you would target. For example, if the product is a product that is under $50 and it's kind of easy sell, and the target market is Gen Z millennials, TikTok could be a good option, but still meta would be really good. So we want to see where the brand is basically advertising.

Talal Abulshamat [00:13:06]:
We want to start mainly with meta to scale it and then look at the other ones. Right, TikTok and Snapchat. Snapchat is surprisingly doing well, sometimes better than TikTok as well, which is interesting. But yeah, so mainly when a client, as I mentioned, wants to move from like six, seven figures to eight figures, they are already doing that in the platforms, they are already testing different platforms, but probably they're struggling with scaling. And the scaling strategies are a bit different because if you're scaling hundreds of thousands of ad spends, it's also a big part of it is creative. So having a full team, their only purpose is to create basically, I mean write ads, design ads, find UGC creators to talk about their products, manage a bunch of UGC creators month by month, getting a flow of UGC content and testing out these ads, testing out variants of ads. So you are talking about almost 30 to 50 ads every month to test. And so you need a full team to do that.

Talal Abulshamat [00:14:17]:
And this is where scaling different. But the good thing about it is that this team also is working on a content that could be utilized for the organic as well. And then of course the email marketing is really important to scale an email marketing. If you are not starting it, you should. I feel any six figure brand is already doing that. However, sometimes they don't have the experience to know how to segment people, what to send out campaigns are the flows or the automations, are they called, are they set up in a good way to gain the most potential revenue from it? Mainly looking at a month by month plan for email to get the most revenue out of your segments and customers in a way that you don't bother them as well because they are your subscribers, because they trust your brand and like your brand.

Claus Lauter [00:15:10]:
Okay, I want to dive a little bit deeper into the content creation part of it because I think that's very interesting. As an agency partner, obviously you know how the meter platform, the ads platform works and what converts the best might be reels, might be videos, might be static images, long form content, short form content, all of these things. But obviously as an agency partner, you need some time to learn and understand the customer brand. How long does that take? What's the process for you with a new customer to basically get the understanding and then convert that into a campaign.

Talal Abulshamat [00:15:47]:
So the good thing is that because we start with established brands, we already have a bit of data to look at from before we analyze this data. And we kind of take decisions according to that data. Most of the time, we see that in terms of creatives, there's a lot of angles that are not thought about. There's a lot of ideas or content types that are not thought about. Creative is so important nowadays, especially because of the lack of tracking. Tracking actually is just going down month by month, year by year. And it's hard for you to track exactly the people that you want to target. So the only way to kind of reach this target market is by your messaging and by your creative.

Talal Abulshamat [00:16:43]:
Right. And your angles. So if you are targeting certain audience, we need to make sure that our messaging is really clear and it's targeting them. And this messaging or this kind of targeting to these people should be also tested out in different ideas, in different angles. Like for example, let's say we are testing out kids toys, right? Children toys. So the children toys would be targeted to the parents, right? But then this certain toy, what's the solution of this certain toy? Let's say it's more educational to the child and it gives maybe some cool stuff, colors, music, whatever. So we want to target the parents, right? So how do we talk to the parents? Is our messaging clear that we're talking to them in a way that this product will benefit your child and maybe segment. Right.

Talal Abulshamat [00:17:52]:
Let's talk to mothers. Let's talk only to fathers, right? And then let's maybe try different ideas by showing a picture or by showing carousel or by doing UGC content or know a mashup of videos and UGC together. So a lot of content all the time. Each content has different messaging and different angle. And we see what fits. Sorry. We see what sticks to the audience and we do iterations and iterations from there.

Claus Lauter [00:18:30]:
Okay. I think you mentioned something very important there. Know your audience because you might be tempted to write something that addresses the kid as I'm selling you toys, but that's not your customer. And from time to time, I see stores who completely get that wrong. It's like, yeah, they don't know to whom they sell. So it's very interesting that you mentioned that, that you really need to understand who is buying from you, who is your audience, and then target your whole marketing or your segmentation, if it's more than one group towards these people. So very interesting. Who's your perfect customer? What kind of brands do you work with?

Talal Abulshamat [00:19:06]:
So we work mostly with ecommerce. We don't have a certain niche. We see great results, always with the consumable, whether it's like skincare, whether it's coffee, whether it's certain consumable products. Because with these kinds of products that are kind of getting like usually they have a good kind of customer retention. So bringing cold traffic in and then retargeting them with the retention strategies work really well. If of course the product is good, the product has a good conversion rate and a good market fit, then you just need to push it, to push it more and it will scale. I heard something recently, I don't remember where, in a podcast is that usually with advertising. Advertising is not really the reason of selling the product.

Talal Abulshamat [00:20:21]:
It's just amplifying a good product or amplifying a good solution that is already a good solution. So it's not like a bad solution and you are doing advertising to sell it, to try to sell it. If it's a bad solution, it will not sell. So the scalability is not hard. If the product has a market fit and there's a proof that this product is selling, then it will sell. Just do the right strategies and it will grow and grow. The most important thing of course is what a scale of eight figure brands or eight figure brands need to work on is their logistics and their after sale service, their customer service. This is crucial if they are not setting it up in the right way.

Talal Abulshamat [00:21:30]:
Like one of our clients needed to basically rent or not rent. They bought a totally new warehouse in another state and it took them a while to change the full operations from their warehouse, current warehouse, to the other one. And when we were scaling, we had to pause a bit or not pause, we had to be careful a bit because they couldn't handle the operations in the small warehouse. And because of this, the customers were not happy because of shipping. Just today we had a meeting because they were trying another shipping, basically operations or company from Amazon. It's basically Amazon shipping. And it's really bad that clients are complaining and they are stopping their subscriptions because of the scalability is not only the marketing side and of course you have the logistics side and you have to hire a team to take care of warehousing, shipping, customer service, after sales service and all of that.

Claus Lauter [00:22:48]:
I'm so glad that you mentioned that and that you gave some examples on that, obviously, yes, you're growing to eight figures, and marketing and sales can help a lot with that. But if you can't deliver, if you can't ship, then you're obviously in very high waters and your customers won't stay long with you. So I think that's a great example that you really need to think it through, which kind of speed you want to go when you grow your company. Now you have the finger on the pulse of ecommerce, obviously. What kind of emerging trends do you see right now in the online retail landscape?

Talal Abulshamat [00:23:22]:
We see that authenticity is selling more than, much more than used before. What I mean by authenticity is after what we call the tiktofication, is it called after the TikToks and all of that, brands are shifting more towards being more authentic, filming the operations, showing what is their story behind the brand, talking about their story and showing basically clearly what's happening behind the scenes. And because of that, the trust of their customers will grow. And we see that trend. I'm sure you see that and I'm sure you kind of relate when you see these kind of small business owners or even bigger brands are kind of like right now, really, the expensive production in terms of content is not required. The thing that is more required, I would say, is like, just be yourself, just tell your story, just show what you do, show your solution, and people will relate to that and people will back you up, back your story, back your product. This is why, for example, UGC content is still working really well. Of course, I would say real UGC is different than the fake UGC because you have real people talking about your brand and basically your customers like your brand talking about it is different than you hiring creators.

Talal Abulshamat [00:25:20]:
But still, the idea of people seeing other people talking in an authentic and simple way about the solution works. It really works. We see that everywhere. Even as business owners like in the B two B as well. On LinkedIn, you see how the people stories go more viral than companies sharing whatever they have.

Claus Lauter [00:25:57]:
Very true. And I think, I'm a big fan of AI, but I'm with you. What's saying is like, be authentic. And as a small business, it's actually your big advantage that you can be authentic. I remember I've spoken to a wine seller. So they were running a vineyard and selling wine, and he would do on his cell phone a thank you video for each customer that's coming in. Standing in the vineyard next to the grapes, took him 15 seconds per video. And that can't be more authentic as a seller than being that it's like I get a personalized video from the guy that I just sold a bottle of, bought a bottle of wine from.

Claus Lauter [00:26:38]:
So I think that gives just a bit of an idea. What you just mentioned is being authentic, having user generated content or even company owner generated content to put your brand out there. Before our coffee break today comes to an end, what's one final thought that you want to leave our listeners with?

Talal Abulshamat [00:26:59]:
So I would say that for any brand that they want to scale, especially when they're doing six figures and they want to scale to the seven figure or eight figure mark, they should really think about the omnichannel strategy, starting from all the advertising channels, then from the search, if it's Google or Bing, as well as awareness. So YouTube is a really good place for awareness. It's not for sales, it's awareness. And then really seriously about their retention. And they should basically set it up perfectly in terms of segmentation, planning month by month of campaigns, if it's either email, SMS or push notifications. And they should be really serious about organic as well. So all of these platforms, like from organic to advertising to retention, should be perfect for them to scale to the next level. And I would also say that, yes, first purchase return on ad spend is important.

Talal Abulshamat [00:28:13]:
But also think about probably if your lifetime value is short or think about how you can shorten the lifetime value of your customer. So instead of your customer buying again after 90 days, maybe you can let them buy after 60 days. This way you are getting return back much more faster. You have more cash flow to reinvest on scaling faster. So it's about these funnels and if your product is a good product and you see good conversion rates, you just need to amplify your messaging and you will reach.

Claus Lauter [00:28:56]:
Okay, good point. Now, small businesses, medium enterprises with six figures obviously don't have the capacity. So they would need to reach out to an agency. That's what you do. Where can people find out more about you?

Talal Abulshamat [00:29:08]:
So the website tasdigital.com is out there. We are actually redesigning the advertising pages of the website. But also they can reach me personally on LinkedIn. Talal Abul Shamat, I guess in the podcast the name has been shown or Tas digital on LinkedIn as well. My Instagram Talal digital is active. They can reach me there. That's it. These are the places we are in.

Claus Lauter [00:29:46]:
Okay, I will put all the links in the show notes and you just want to click away. Talal, thanks so much for your time today. I think that was a good overview of how complex marketing is nowadays and what you need to focus on. And that marketing is not the one and all, but operations need to grow as well. So thanks for chat today. It was very insightful.

Talal Abulshamat [00:30:05]:
Thank you, Riel. It was great chatting.

Claus Lauter [00:30:09]:
Hey Claus here. Thanks for joining me on another episode of the e commerce Coffee Break podcast. Before you go, I'd like to ask two things from you. First, please help me with the algorithm so I can bring more impactful guests on the show. It will make it also easier for others to discover the podcast, simply like comment and subscribe in the app you're using to listen to the podcast, and even better if you could leave a rating. Thanks again and I'll catch you in the next episode. Have a good one.