Retales: E-Commerce Growth Stories
Welcome to "Retales: Ecommerce Growth Stories," a podcast series that brings you the unique and captivating stories of ecommerce retailers from every corner of the globe.
Each episode delves deep into the journey of different ecommerce entrepreneurs — from scrappy startups to established multinational chains — shedding light on the strategies they deploy to ride economic waves and seize new opportunities.
We feature candid conversations not only with these trailblasing entrepreneurs but also with the venture capitalists who back them, creating a comprehensive picture of the ecommerce landscape.
The entrepreneurs share their stories of innovation, growth, and resilience, while the investors give their insights into what makes an ecommerce business stand out and attract funding.
Every discussion covers topics critical to every ecommerce retailer's success — scaling operations, enhancing customer experience, optimising logistics, leveraging social media, and navigating market fluctuations.
Our guests share their experiences, insights, hard-learned lessons, and personal tactics for achieving success.
Whether you're an ecommerce veteran or just starting your journey, "Retales: Ecommerce Growth Stories" is your passport to understanding the dynamics of ecommerce, transforming modern day challenges into engines for growth.
Join us and draw inspiration, knowledge, and practical strategies from those who have journeyed before you in the exhilarating world of ecommerce.
Retales: E-Commerce Growth Stories
Marketing Mastery for E-commerce: A Deep Dive into SkateHut's Playbook
Are you curious about the strategies behind the astonishing growth of e-commerce brands? Want to get the inside scoop on how SkateHut became a leading hub for skateboards and roller skates amidst the pandemic-triggered economy?
In this epsidoe, we chat to Richard Skidmore, the head honcho of marketing at SkateHut, who spills the beans on the firm's strategic journey and how they've remained resilient in the face of changing tides.
Richard enlightens us on SkateHut's digital marketing strategies, website optimization techniques, and their secret sauce for pushing the business forward. We also delve into how to trim down the escalating costs of Google Ads. Plus, Richard shares insights about the role of YouTube in ramping up brand recognition.
Lastly, we heel flip towards the fascinating realm of chat GBT and its impact on businesses. Richard sheds light on its potential for content generation, technical problem-solving, and even in the gaming industry. He also emphasizes on the delicate balance of using data, creativity, and quick adaptations in understanding audiences and evolving brand objectives. So, gear up for an enlightening ride through the highs and lows of e-commerce growth and marketing strategies with us. You wouldn't want to miss this, would you?
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Hello, I'm Caroline and welcome to the Lightning 50 E-commerce growth hacking podcast. Today we're speaking with Richard Skidmore. He's the head of marketing at Skate Tut. But before we get into the interview, a quick message from our sponsor. We have an exciting sponsor today PeopleVox, the warehouse management system helping ambitious E-commerce businesses scale.
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Speaker 1:So SkateHut was founded back in 2007 when the founder, mark was on holiday in the US and he saw Heelys everywhere, these shoes with a wheel in the back which you can kind of roll around instead of skating. You might have remembered those from the in the noughties and weren't really prolific in the UK and he decided that there was a definitely a business opportunity by bringing that back over with him to start a company, and SkateHut was born. Now I'm speaking to Richard. Welcome, richard. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:Hello, thank you, you're doing very well. Yeah, it's starting to get warmer outside as well, so, yeah, I'm happy.
Speaker 1:Did we change your customers? Are they happy to be getting on their wheels and skating about?
Speaker 2:Definitely, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:So tell us a little bit about yourself and the business. You can perhaps, maybe even give a better example of where SkateHut is today versus where it was in 2007, when it was set up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I actually came on to SkateHut September last year, so I'm fairly new to the business. But the benefit of working on the digital team is that I get to see history dating back to when they started with the likes of Google Analytics, so I can get a really good picture of how they've performed over the past few years. But yeah, so we've really kind of hit the ground running with SkateHut back really a few years ago, I think from 2015, and we saw actually that was kind of the main growth area there for them. But really throughout 2020 and 2022, I think it was during the pandemic we really saw kind of a natural growth there as well, where it's the sales and the traffic really exploded.
Speaker 2:Obviously, we had people who couldn't go on holiday anymore. They couldn't go down in the pub, they couldn't do the things they wanted to do, so they were looking at other activities they wanted to do and SkateHut really kind of fitted the bill. So they were kind of in the right place at the right time there. So you know, skateboards and scooters and roller skates even going into kind of the water categories as well, like bodyboarding and surfing as well as also being looked at by SkateHut. So it's been. The past couple of years has been really good growth for them, I think, so it's been good to get on board at this stage as well.
Speaker 1:Excellent. So you mentioned that 2015 was quite a peak period for growth in 2020 and you've explained, obviously, 2020, covid everyone wanted to get outside when they could. How has trading been since then? Have you seen the demand continue? Have you seen that tail off a little bit? How's that been working for you guys?
Speaker 2:So, going into this year, it has been quite difficult, obviously because we started off the year with the energy prices going up, mortgage rates going up, so the cost of living went up quite a lot. So I think it's been quite difficult for a lot of retailers and a lot of e-commerce businesses during this time as well, especially at the start of the year, so we really had to adapt to that in a lot of ways. There's been a lot of uncertainty and I think it's quite difficult to compare seasonally, year on year, the sales, because it's just a different climate altogether.
Speaker 1:So we're definitely not talking comparing apples and apples. There are we. So talk to me about how you're trying to close that gap at the minute and where are you focusing your efforts to get people interested in again?
Speaker 2:Well, we had quite a heavy reliance on pay per click over the past few years and what we've seen is that there's quite a large contribution from that channel into the digital sales. Obviously, with pay per click there is a cost to that and you can only grow so much. The market is only so big and you can't make the market bigger yourself. You can only really take a bigger share of that market. So it can be quite difficult and I think when you can use the channels, you can basically exhaust the channels to the point where you can't really grow anymore. And I think if we look at the traditional channels for digital, you've got your pay per click, you've got your organic search as well, you've got your referral, you've got your affiliates as well and obviously you're direct. So it's kind of looking at those channels and seeing, okay, so how have we actually exhausted all of them? And I think with pay per click it was definitely kind of the case that we kind of get into the stage now where we've got a good majority of impressions share on all of our main categories at the moment. So really we need to be looking at year on year pay per click is performing as well as, but the cost has sort of gone up on that. So we kind of need to pull back on the cost on pay per click. That's one aspect that we need to look at while maintaining the current level of sales. The other side is, well, if the contribution of PPC is going up, then the contribution from the other channels is probably going down, and those channels are. They don't cost as much. So organic is obviously free. So there is a point there to say, well, how can we improve the sales coming through on organic search? And then there's a few various ways of doing that and a lot of it is a dance and gap analysis. And this is how I always start off with looking at kind of how we can improve any business. You know it always starts with analytics so you could empower yourself with the information to make the right decisions moving forward. So really it was called looking at. Okay. So with organic search it has sort of the contribution has sort gone down year on year. How do we get it to go back? How do we take more of that share going into, you know, to Google, you know Google search, and we looked at the gap analysis and we looked at essentially, you know where we were seeing a lot of traffic coming through from paid search that we weren't necessarily seeing through through organic search. So, okay, well, how do we look at those? Where are the rankings for those? You know, if there are some quick wins there, how can we, you know, change, you know, optimize the content for those pages to push it up? So you know, we're not just relying on paid search. We are getting, you know, a percentage of that traffic through through through organic search as well. So we've kind of been working a lot on that.
Speaker 2:I just really kind of doing a lot of housekeeping on the content on the pages themselves, because content, obviously with SEO, is still king. I feel there are other things. You know, link building is still essential as well. But for me, since I started doing SEO you know when did I start doing SEO? It feels like years and years ago now. I think it was kind of back in 2007, I think it was. You know, nothing's really changed since then. It's kind of evolved and you know, over those years, but really it's it's it's kind of the core of it is really still the same and I've kind of kept those principles as we've kind of gone along and it still works. So we've seen some good, good successes over the past few months really through that content optimization and we're starting to see that shift now going into back into organic search.
Speaker 2:The other thing as well that I found is because we are living in, you know, a bit of a time where, I would say, an uncertainty, but obviously people's disposable income isn't, as you know, it's not there as much as we used to be, you know, because of cost of living and things like that.
Speaker 2:So what we've been sort of looking at is how do we make our prices very competitive while obviously keeps, you know, maintaining our margins, you know, you know, and the other way of doing that is we can create some really good deals and really good enticing offers. What I've been looking at essentially is more into the affiliate channels as well. So, you know, people are looking to get incentivized to shopping more and more now. I think so if we look at like top cashback, quickco and easy fundraising and things like that, you know they're really good sources of getting, you know, plugging that gap really for sales, for people who are looking for really good offers. You know, and I think that's really kind of helped to alleviate some of the loss that we've seen from referral traffic and sort of coming through affiliates now. So with me I can, sorry, go on.
Speaker 1:And how is affiliates working for you in that, and how are you balancing making healthy margins off the back of those things? Well, affiliates affiliates.
Speaker 2:I've grown.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've kind of been manually looking after, and I think that's the beauty of it you can control it a, lot, a lot more.
Speaker 2:You can just switch it on and off as you want to say, well, I want to work with this, I want to work with this partner, or I turn this off. So it does work quite well. You have quite a bit of control over it. The ROI on it is pretty good, I'd say.
Speaker 2:You know, if we look at, say, a 5% cashback on that, and if we look at kind of like the commission of 2% as well, compared to other channels, there is a cost associated with it, but it's lower than other channels overall. So it's quite good in that respect. And especially, you know, if we see the average order values coming going up, you know, and our margins are quite good at around 50%. We can kind of afford to do that really. And so we've also been looking at those affiliates and also looking at discount for carers, blue light card and kind of any other service workers as well that can benefit from those offers. So I think that's kind of. We've definitely seen a shift in behaviour where there is more people looking at affiliates and how they can be incentivised for shopping going into this year specifically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I suppose there's always that kind of bit of concern isn't there with offers and discounts, but doing it in a way, especially in the environment that we're in at the minute. So I think I remember, off the back of the last recession, that it took a while to get customers stopping looking for discounts and not expecting discount at every kind of corner. So making sure that you're doing that in a controlled manner seems to be the very key point for you going forward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. I think that when we're going to any time where cost of living is going up or even looking at recessions, dare I say it is that there's two kinds of markets that do very well during that time and it's the higher in luxury market that would do very well. The kind of discount, kind of low cost markets as well, I think, in between suffers because if people are doing those one-off purchases they'd rather do it as a luxury item that's really good and treats themselves and day to day they'd want those discount and bargain offers down learned. So we're trying to make our office as enticing as possible really.
Speaker 1:No, definitely. And what do you think it is when you step back and look at the brand today? What has been the general factor behind its success? What do you think has got it to where it is today?
Speaker 2:Well, I think, like I said, I think skate has just been in the right place at the right time. Really. It's been in a market, it's got his foot in the door in a market that was sort of growing really well anyway, and I don't think there was anything really like it in the UK before. I mean, if we look at the competitors, we sort of had Halffords who were the main players but mainly looked at sort of bikes, and this was a gun into scooters now as well. But for skateboards really it was kind of you'd go to the brands directly and I think skate has provided just to kind of a one-stop shop for all the brands and all kind of skateboard types and from longboards to cruisers.
Speaker 2:And then we've got the roller skates as well and the roller skate scene has really grown, I think, and it still is growing, even after the pandemic and everything we're seeing, that quad skates and inline skates has really started to see a bit of a resurgence. And I actually did an interview recently for the upcoming Barbie movie about inline skates, because that's apparently a big thing. So I've never done that before but I plan to see it now. Anyway, just for that.
Speaker 1:Not necessarily the brand that I would associate with the kind of skate avoid in an image, but yes, I can see where the quad skates back in the Barbie days I think have happened for the film. So yeah, I can see where that was tying in so clearly. Product has been really important for your growth. You know, I remember as a child doubling a little bit in skateboarding myself and there was just nowhere on the high street and said buy that kind of products. And you're right, halfords was completely trading in a different area. So how about you know the rest of the business has? You know how many people work at the business and when does marketing come in and how many people are working for you and how is that working for the business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, the marketing side of things is predominantly digital, so that's a fairly big part of it. We're primarily an e-commerce business. We do have bricks and water. We have three stores. We have the Hellzone store here and then we have one at Corby and at Greystone as well, but in the office, our HQ is really in Hellzone, where all our team are, and we have, you know, I currently have a team of around four to five people in the digital team who look after, you know, the creative assets, who look after social. They also look after the SEO and the videography and photography as well. But we do have a good reliance on our merchandisers and purchases as well. So that's a key part of any e-commerce business really is. I think it's sort of one of the cornerstones is that you need to have really good merchandising.
Speaker 2:You really need to have a good selection of products, you know and then after that you know, if you have that and you have the pricing structure right, then you need a really good marketing team to kind of get people to the site to see them and you know, purchase.
Speaker 2:Obviously Then we also have, you know, a good technical team here as well. We have a good technical in-house team who look after the website and we kind of all get together. All stakeholders and the different departments all get together and try and pull together our resources and knowledge and understand what works best. So we've been doing quite a lot of work on, you know, ux optimization, you know and, like I said, sort of A-B testing as well. So we're looking more technically at how the site works day-to-day for the user and we're pulling together all of those different kind of KPIs and analytics and kind of pushing that together with the help of the merchandisers, seeing which are the best products for the performing world, then looking at, you know, with marketing team, looking at which channels are performing really well and trying to get the best experience for our users as possible.
Speaker 1:And how are you finding that? Are you using any particular technology to push that forward on your roadmap? Any tricks or tips there that you can share with our listeners?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So with A-B testing I've I use Google Optimize quite a lot, which I think they're actually sunsetting now, which I'm quite excited about. It's been a good tool that I've been using over the past few years and then just allows you to take a web page you know and create a variant and allow you to A-B test it. You know, and you can A-B test it to different segments, personas or anything like that, and then it links directly to Google so you can get a good understanding of how the experiment's performing, so you get a good statistical confidence rating from it. That's really helped us kind of deliver a lot of changes to the sites as well, because my principle is that I don't really like going off-pain. You know I go off-facts and thickets. So if anybody says, oh, we should do this to the websites on my one, no, let's just test it first, see what the winner is, and then we can actually, you know, we'll have the evidence to push it live. So with anything, I'm a really good big advocate of A-B testing and water variant testing. We currently use Magento, the Magento platform, and that has its own A-B testing software integrated within it as well. So we'll probably be moving over to that going forward. So that could be quite interesting as well, but it's definitely something that you know. I've kind of developed an A-B testing roadmap that should help us deliver incremental improvements to the conversion rates moving forward. So that's sort of on the kind of website side of things that we're kind of using. In terms of technology, we've used SEMrush quite a lot for basic search engine optimization, just tracking of P-Word rankings as well. We've transitioned over now to GA4 as well, which is a bit of a controversial thing at the moment. I still think we're still seeing gaps in the analytics it provides. So we're just trying to alleviate that. For example, you know what I do is I look at a lot of the day parting reports, so how the sales are doing on an out-to-out basis, which I sort of made a rod from my own back because I can get a little too bogged down with the detail and I should really probably take a bit of a step back.
Speaker 2:But GA4 at the moment. I know there are issues at the moment with the hourly reporting. So it's whether or not I just buy the bullet and just let that be, or if I find an alternative where I can actually see that in real time, but, yeah, that's going to be a main challenge. I think, well, it's a main challenge. It's going to be. You know, the Google Universal is being sunsetted in July, so I think there's going to be a main challenge for a lot of websites moving forward, and if they haven't moved over to GA4 now, then yeah, they really do need to start moving and getting that done.
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Speaker 2:So during my time at the moment, I feel like the cost of marketing at the moment is quite. I think with Google ads specifically, I've seen the cost per clicks has been rising. I think Google are facing its own problems itself. So it's really how do you find better cost saving strategies around, kind of PPC at the moment? How do you get the best return on ad spend? And we've been using a lot of PMAX, so Performance Max ads for a lot of our shopping as well, which we're kind of continually looking at and wondering whether or not we want to move back to the smart shopping ad format, which seemed to be a bit cheaper in terms of cost per click. So that's something that we're currently looking at.
Speaker 2:There's a big challenge at the moment and, as I've said before, we do want to reduce our reliance on paid traffic and we do want to be looking at more the natural traffic. What my biggest challenge at the moment is getting Skatehut to be more of a household name brand. We've seen the natural growth over the past couple of years because it has been in the right place at the right time. How can we get into the mindsets of people a little bit more readily? And I think that I've been looking at other channels, like YouTube, for example, where we can do bedders, our brand awareness through education, and this is where my videographer, photographer and social media manager really been spearheading that.
Speaker 2:And we've been doing a lot of work with kind of skate crews and getting involved with communities. And the other week we went down to Wolverhampton to kind of promote the opening of a new skate park called Just Framps and it was getting involved with them and really helping because they do give back, and so I feel that that's. I don't want us to be seen as just a business. I want us to be seen as we essentially have a family business and we like to help communities and we like to help people and we like to help hearing charities. We've been doing a lot of work with a lot of charities, like the Birmingham Children's Hospital as well. So I think if we continue to get our name out there, you know we'll see that natural growth as well. So that's one of the main challenges at the moment, I feel.
Speaker 1:That is a really, really interesting part of retail, isn't it? When you look at some of the other sports brands that have created communities, you look at Nike or Sweaty Betty, those guys they really do kind of create like a club mentality and then you become very aligned with that brand. So turning your company at the minute into a brand that houses all of the other brands that you're working with is probably a really clever idea. To get in with a certain group or group or community, absolutely, yeah, fantastic. So let's talk a bit wider. In e-commerce at the moment, what do you think is going to be the biggest barrier for growth for e-commerce businesses over the next 12 months?
Speaker 2:That's a good question, I think, if I really hope we see, you know, a bit of an improvement to the cost of living. Obviously, we've kind of come out of a pandemic, and we're now seeing what's called the catch-up consumer, where behaviors are sort of changing, where you know they might not have been out with, have the big purchases last year or the year before because of the pandemic, which now they're starting to look at. So you know, for example, holidays, and you know going abroad, and you know the things that they've been putting off they now want to purchase, so that will have a shift in their behavior. What we might see, though, is that, you know, people will be some of those behaviors that they saw last year and the year before might continue, just naturally going forward. So people might want to do staycations more than going abroad now, because they actually enjoy it and they actually might want to save a bit of money anyway.
Speaker 2:But what I feel like is that people are becoming more frugal, naturally, anyway, because of what's happened, and I think they've realized that you know oh, this is. I've developed this skill of saving money now, which is absolutely great, and I think it's really good, but I think it just means that retailers might have to work a bit harder to kind of, you know, and it might become a bit more competitive, you know, to kind of get people to purchase more. So that'll be one of the main challenges, I feel.
Speaker 1:That's a really good observation. Getting people out of the kind of frugal mentality post COVID in the middle of a cost of living crisis is going to be quite a challenge for some. And talk to me a little bit about any of the other technologies wider in the business, a little bit maybe outside marketing and the e-com, the subsidiaries, such as how about Warehouse and Fulfillment? How are you dealing with that area of the business?
Speaker 2:Well, this is probably a good question for the operations to Hector, but I know they're using their own systems, which expands to the rest of the company as well, like Peoplevox, and how we manage internal operations through that. It's a vital tool as well. We've currently just recently moved premises as well to a 60,000 square foot warehouse with our offices on it as well, so it's been a massive upgrade for us and obviously the whole logistics around that can seem quite daunting, but actually it's become a lot more efficient and easier in some respects as well, because we do have a wider area, but it's all contained and it's all within one place. So I think that we've got our store here as well. We've got our bricks and mortar HQ store here as well, so it's all here in one place, which is really useful. But, yeah, that's kind of a bit of a transition from Skatehub being almost like an SME in some ways to now growing into a much larger company, and it's kind of reflective in the actual physical presence of it as well.
Speaker 1:Really, yeah, it's quite the house move, that, and reflective of everything that you guys have seen. So congratulations on that and let's look to the future. Let's kind of like get our crystal balls out a little bit, although some of this technology you might even be using now how about artificial intelligence? On this series of the podcast, everyone's talking about chat GBT as well. Where do you sit with those technologies?
Speaker 2:So I have a massive nerd really going to come down to it and I'm really interested in the whole the chat GBT movement and mid journey and how this will effectively it's here to stay. Essentially, I don't think, you know, it's going to go away. I think we all need to work to adapt and work with it. I think you know we have seen people here even and you know we can kind of hear the kind of murmurings through LinkedIn and things as very divisive opinions on it. But I feel people are coming around to it more where initially they saw as a bit of a threat and they were thinking, oh, it's going to take our jobs, it's going to make everybody redundant. Well, actually, I think it's going to enhance people's jobs, it's going to make their outputs and performance a lot better, and I've certainly seen that we've been using chat GBT for a lot of content generation and there was even I went to a webinar a few weeks ago from the tech team at Wix who were talking about this and they were saying that you know, it is definitely something that companies have to harness, I think, to kind of stay ahead in the game really. So chat and I, you know, I've been using chat GBT for, you know, like I said, content generation, but also for technical problem solving as well. So if I wanted to create quite a complex regular expression for Google Analytics, I've asked chat GBT to do it and it's done it for me and the fraction of the time it would have took me to kind of look it up online and figure it out myself. So it's really helped with with kind of time management as well and even kind of you know, data sets and pushing through, you know, a CSV file and asking it to look at, for example, my PBC campaigns, to figure out which ones are performing as well and which needs to improve their return on ad spend, and it's just pulled it out in a matter of seconds and said these are what you need to be looking at. So it's it's great for both that technical side and the creative side as well. So I think it is expanding and it is going to grow. You know we're seeing chat GBT. It's expanding its functionality, it's going into I think it's going into another iteration very soon where it's going to allow integration with API's, is going to allow the data and it's going to be more to date and it's going to be like a browse aspects of the internet, which I think is going to be a complete and not a game changer. So it's going to be it's going to be really, really interesting.
Speaker 2:I think what we need to hope for is that these tools remain open source and they're not controlled by one one company, essentially because it could pose a risk to the information we're fed back. You know where it could be combined and we could go through a whole other round of false information that we've seen previously. So I really do hope it's, I hope it's regulated. I you know, I hope it's kind of observed, and I think we really are in a bit of a turning point, almost like a bit of a golden age. We are looking a bit of a golden age in AI and how it can help businesses moving forward. So I'm excited for it, you know. So, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1:It is really exciting time. I'll be quite terrifying when you think of how intelligent the solution is right now and how you know 10 years ago how, and our smartphones were not nearly as good as they are right now. It's yeah, it'll be incredible to see how that technology improves just in the next six months, 12 months.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, I mean in the last year I remember when it was I was using disco diffusion and there was there was also Dali as well for image, the kind of image generation AI I need to run since last year. You can see the improvements made there and you know you're looking at mid-journey and how that's used for image generation. There are still weird artifacts you might see and what it produces you know, like, for example, the hands that it might create. You know trying to do hands. But it is improving and it's getting a lot, lot better.
Speaker 2:So if you imagine, yeah, in six months time it's going to be, you know it is going to be scary and I think you know you'll be discernible from actual, real images at some point. But we're also seeing that people integrating this AI, like with chat, gpt, into computer games and VR so people could have an immersive real time experience with NBC's and characters within the game. So make it more. You know the. You know the dialogue. When it in it more organic, which I think is, you know it's incredible. We could be seeing that the gaming industry as well is going to see a huge benefit from this with really, really immersive games and programs. So I'm excited.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. So we're coming to the end of our conversation today, richard. It's been really great conversation, but before I let you go, I need you to give me a couple of tips that you would use for someone asking you about how to grow and sale your business right now. What are the top two or three things that you would tell them?
Speaker 2:I think, like I said before, it starts with analytics. I think you really need to look at you know how the numbers are performing so you can decide what works well, what doesn't. Move ahead with what works well, you know, augment that and make it even better if you can. And just if anything doesn't work, just don't feel afraid to drop it and just feel like, no, I can't. You know it's just a time waste. You know the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. So really, I think you need to learn how to look at the data and get the information you need out of that to make the right decisions moving forward.
Speaker 2:And I think, the other side of it. You know that you almost need to come in two sides to your brain and that will be the logical side of your brain that you need to use. And for any marketer, the other side of the brain would be a more creative, empathetic side. You know to how they think and I think with marketing, you really do need to be quite empathetic. You need to understand how the consumers and audiences think, what they're looking for. You need to read the layer of the land and understand what the market looks like and you need to respond to it.
Speaker 2:And sometimes it just means that you have to sort of change a bit of attack on what your brand is and what your objectives are. You know, to see that growth going forward. And I think you know there are a lot of brands and companies out there who might be second-ways and be like well, this is who we are, we're not going to change. You know, and I think you know if they're big enough that might work. But you know, for SMEs, you know it's vitally important that they understand what their audiences are looking for and how they can adapt to that.
Speaker 1:Richard, thank you so, so much. That was a really brilliant conversation. I feel like we learned so much from you. Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:And yeah, so we did learn an incredible amount from Richard just then. I'm loving his excitement over chat GPT. It's really great to hear positive conversation about the way that's going to go forward. Some tips there on building brand awareness through building communities and identifying your customers, as well as tempting backfruge customers back to spending with affiliate programs and cash back sites and things like that. And again, we always keep going back to this analytics and use that information to learn how you're performing and just keep making incremental improvements. Furniture, box, natural baby shower and beyond retail are just a few of the ambitious retailers who have integrated PeopleVox warehouse management system to take their e-commerce tech stack to the next level With lightning fast pick and pack workflows, easy user training and a 360 degree transparency into your warehouse operation. Anyone who has used PeopleVox will tell you that the platform is a genuine game changer. Not only does PeopleVox enhance your customer experience by tightening inventory control and cutting outpacking mistakes, it also boosts your efficiency and unlocks growth for your business. So if you're ready to transfer your business head over to PeopleVoxcom today,