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Howdy, folks! Hope the summer is treating you well... Had a blast in Dallas doing the keynote at PUBCON. My talk was on how we got $10,354,767.00 in additional sales (over past 6 years) by putting STEVE all over the store, and I've been getting pretty good reactions to that, especially from smaller folks like us. BACKGROUNDAbout 6 years ago, we hit a sales plateau and decided to change the way we approached selling online. In 2004, our family business, GUN DOG SUPPLY, had a sales slump. Somehow we wound up in the ditch! Panic city! We took a hard look at what we were doing online, and we made one simple, but substantial change to our Web site and how we sold online. And the effect? Over the past 6 years? Over $10 million dollars in additional revenue That's ADDITIONAL revenue. Sales ABOVE our normal growth. So what did we do? How did we do it? That's what I'm going to talk about today. FIRST, A LITTLE HISTORY GUN DOG SUPPLY is our family business We sell training supplies for hunting dogs My parents started GDS on their kitchen table in 1972 My dad was unhappy with quality of some dog supplies started making his own collars, leads, and leashes to sell these, he bought ads in hunting dog speciality magazines. pretty small circulation, pretty targetted audience. He expanded his product line to carry more products, products OTHER people manufacture And WE marketed these through a small B&W mail order catalog. At this point he decided to put the family in family business by recruiting Steve and me to help with the catalog In 1979 he quit his job to go full time on the DOG stuff A few months later, we had a major set back when the PEARL RIVER FLOODED and put 6 feet of water in our house. No insurance. We pretty much lost everything. Destroying all of the inventory in our house. Why am I telling you this? You need to know where we started from. So my folks decided to dig in and make this thing work. Anyway, folks knew we were in MS ... local folks wanted to come shop with us, so we added a retail showroom to the warehouse. We started selling premium dog food, stuff you couldn't get Pretty soon we were selling more stuff to pet owners than hunting dog folks -- -- -- GDS GETS ONLINE (1997) -- -- -- And then in 1996, another set back: Petsmart came to town. We knew that would SEVERELY impact the business Went back to our roots and in 1996 rebooted the mail order catalog. for HUNTING DOG FOLKS By then I was out of college, Steve & I had started what's now SNELL BROTHERS, our own retail business up in Starkville but I came back home for several months and we hammered out a catalog. Sent out THOUSANDS of copies and we got bupkiss. Nothing. Zilch. And at this point my Mom was pretty desperate, and she became OBSESSED with getting on the Internet And she said, "Son, I want you to build me a Web site." And I said, "Mama small businesses aren't making money online..." "Son, I want you to build me a Web site..." And I said, "the Internet's all about PORN...Big companies losing money IPOs and stuff" And she said, "I don't care, make me a Web site. So I did. So we did, and long story short it worked. We found Yahoo! Store, and uploaded our catalog and we were off and running -- -- -- JUMP to 2001 -- -- -- It worked so well that Steve had to take over order fulfillment & customer service. Mom was too old to be working 60 hours a week, Steve was tired of selling comic books & baseball cards he said the DOG STUFF was the next big thing So by 2001 ONLINE sales were 4x retail sales my folks were able to SELL THE DOG STORE, and we went Web only I was more interested in Internet Marketing and SEO and Yahoo! Store development, but I worked on GDS as I had time in between other projects -- -- -- JUMP to 2004 -- -- -- Now my baby brother, Steve, was running the company. My Dad passed away 6 months earlier, and we were dealing with all the fallout from that and Steve stepped up to fill some pretty big shoes and things were pretty good... And then, we hit a snag. We started having negative cashflow. Our expenses were growing faster than our sales. And then our sales STOPPED growing And then our sales STARTED dropping And we had our first "down" month in the history of our Internet business... Here's a closeup of a sales graph Every year we have this dip in sales and every May sales pick back up here's 2003, and you see the dip, and then people start thinking about hunting season, and sales pick up Well, here's 2004 and you see the dip And then it DROPS. It DROPS. And Steve's freaking out. And I'm saying don't worry, it's just a blip -- things will pick back up. And I'm digging in our analytics, trying to see if anything broken anything technical wrong and it's not. So I'm freaking out and trying to find what's going on. AND IN HINDSIGHT it's pretty easy to see what was happening: More and more competitors were coming online. All the old school catalogs in our industry now had shopping carts with virtually the same catalog that we had... And all these new school, dot com kids were popping up, too... Selling the same things we were selling... 2004 SEO wasn't new. Competition for those 10 spots on page 1 was getting FIERCE AND Paid Search was coming online then. CPC's were skyrocketing More and more folks bidding on the same keywords It was EXPENSIVE. And all the OLD ways of driving traffic? They weren't working as well as before.. GREAT, SO NOW WHAT DO WE DO? Steve and I had one of our knock down, drag out "conversations" Maybe this is the new reality? Or maybe we're going to have to change how we do things... So I'm sitting in Steve's office WAITING for him to get off the phone. Steve has these MARATHON phone conversations with customers. I'm talking 20-30 minutes... easy... And they're talking about their dogs... and they're talking about TRAINING their dogs... and their talking about HUNTING with their dogs... and their talking about their hunting GEAR ... and their GUNS and their TRUCKS... And next thing you know, the guy places an order. And he's a customer FOR LIFE. FOR LIFE. And it's GREAT, but it doesn't scale. I mean we handle dozens and dozens of these calls every day. There's no way STEVE can do this with every customer over the phone It just doesn't scale. He has TONS of other things he's gotta take care of, too SO I HAD AN IDEA... "What if we do the same thing online that you do over the phone?" What? You know how when a customer calls and you talk to 'em. You find out what kind of dog they have, what they're trying to do with their dog? And then after you get to know them and their situation, YOU TELL THEM WHAT TO BUY TO SOLVE THEIR PROBLEM and then they BUY it? That's AWESOME. What if we did that on the Web site? What if we took everything you ever said to a customer, and put it all over the Web site... Wonder what THAT would do? Steve said,"Couldn't hurt. Do it." And that's what we did. The one single, significant thing we did? We put STEVE ALL OVER THE WEB SITE. We put his recommendations on the site. We put his opinions on the site. We put the experience you'd get on the phone on the Web site. And it WORKED. This graph shows you our sales from 1997-2004 (Rolling 12 month average to smooth out the bumps) And then we "put Steve on the site" Just for fun, I modeled what our sales would have been so I could see what the difference was and over the past six years it's over $10 MILLION. $10,354,767 in additional sales Looking back, it's pretty easy to see what we did: we decided to push three pretty powerful ideas: 1) Steve is an EXPERT on dog training supplies. 2) Steve says this PRODUCT is what you need to solve your problem. 3) Please buy it from US. How did we do that? -- -- -- #1 BIG THING: -- -- -- First thing I had to establish was that STEVE IS AN EXPERT. And he is. Establish that you are an authority in your industry. You're not just some guy on the web hunting dog stuff. You're THE GUY on the Web selling hunting dog stuff How do you do that? Show folks, don't tell folks. STEVE KNOWS DOGS Steve's been doing this awhile. Steve has 16 dogs STEVE KNOWS GEAR He has a truck full of dog gear. He writes reviews about it on his blog, and on GDS. He posts reviews. Annotates SOMEWHAT objective product description STEVE KNOWS HUNTING Spends more time in TX hunting than anyone I know. Takes his staff with him. Doing R&D, and always needs a bigger budget. So now you KNOW Steve is an expert, so we leverage that: We put his NAME and and his face on EVERY PAGE on the site: On the Homepage. Even in the SHOPPING cart. Steve personally signs all the emails. Staff signs thank you notes in the box. -- -- -- -- BIG #2 -- -- -- Tell folks: This product is what you need for YOUR dog Recommend solutions to problems. To help do this, we wrote a buyers guide AND THAT ROCKED! Buyers' Guides have a 50% higher conversions than common section page -- THIS IS HUGE! We pimped our BUYER'S GUIDE. This is preview of what we're about to launch * Quick Picks - Collar Chart (narrow) * Explain Concepts -- more info * Help Me Choose > specific paths for more info folks Express YOUR opinions. Try to put the facts in the CAPTION and mark the EDITORIAL in a STEVE SAYS box or have REVIEW in the NAME of the page. Endorse the products you use. Steve is candid where the manufacturers might fudge a little bit. It's OK to be excited about what you sell. So how do you MAKE this stuff? It's SERIOUSLY hard work! Write unique product descriptions Provide more info than even the manufacturer. Write a paragraph for every $10 in item price Most retailers copy and paste the MFG's description which is HORRIBLE for SEO, and does NOTHING differentiate you from competitors... HAVE MORE PHOTOS THAN ANYONE. Example? * Typical product shot * MOPIX each component * Something for size or scale * Show the BOX shot * Show details of controls or other important areas * Show what you get * Show all the accessories * All the paperwork and books We take all our own photos. Proves we stock it, have it. HOW TO MAKE CONTENT RECORD EVERYTHING -- video AND audio. Interview folks When we're out driving, I ask STUPID questions Play 20 questions with each product. Shoot video of anything you can demonstrate. Example: Musher's secret -- TX -- took 5 minutes 1 minute video on it's own page Transcribe the audio from video for both SEO reasons AND folks can read faster than they can watch the video. STATS -- show people are looking at it also DISTRIBUTE when makes sense 1) I'm buying ads on youtube for traffic 2) then buying an ad on the video that I'm buying ads for 3) then I also do SEO on the Youtube video < that's the traffic CONTENT: Make it. Distribute it. Promote it. Profit from it. Turn customer EMAILS INTO PRODUCT FAQ pages. LIBERATE content that's trapped where search engine spiders can't crawl it. It's either off line OR in a format Googlebot can't get to. And if content's not in a search engine, it gets no traffic. What kind of content? FLASH, PDF owner's manuals, transcribe audio from product videos, text from product box / Point of purchase materials. BIG #3 -- Why should someone buy from us? Well, you gotta be competitive on price. But you also have to SELL YOURSELF -- PICK ME! So we made a page WHY SHOP WITH US. Remove customer risk, make more sales. Tell folks product AVAILABILITY and DELIVERY TIME. I like to show a map. Customers need to know they can get answers fast! Offer talk to human. Respond to emails ASAP. Everyone SAYS they offer "great" customer service. If you're offering an opinion on how YOU do things, let your customers do the talking. Third party endorsements are much more credible than YOU saying you offer great customer service. You need to "FIND YOUR STEVE." You need to COMMUNICATE 3 things: You're the expert, this product will solve their problem, and when they're gonna buy it, they should pick you. We did that. We got $10,000,000 in additional sales. You can do it, too. You have to! best takeaway? 169 slides takes awhile to load! Whew! |
by Rob Snell
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