Connected Commerce: Never “Set It and Forget It”

Hai Mag 00:08

Welcome everybody to the Connected Commerce podcast, and I have my great friend and the agency owner and the CEO, Andrew Morgans with me.

Andrew Morgans 00:17

Thanks for having me. Hi. I'm excited to be here on the on the podcast. And you know, it's covering a subject that I'm very passionate about. So I'm looking forward to getting into it with you.

Hai Mag 00:27

Absolutely. So I'm also very excited. So today we're gonna talk about a couple of stories around connected commerce because we both Drew and I started from this Amazon thing, but right now it's not anymore about Amazon. There is AI, there is tech, there is Google, Meta, 3PL, all different parts of the things coming together and we're trying to also expand to all of them.

Hai Mag 00:54

So Drew, let's start with the first one. Like what where do you see that connected commerce really adding more value to the brands?

Andrew Morgans 01:02

So, hi, I've been doing this for fifteen years now. You know, obsessively. And you know, I think the old tried and true is still true. Like if a brand is in retail, you see you see overflow, you know, into e commerce. Like and there's a big difference between a brand in retail and a brand not, and you start to see branded search and things like that which help, all the way to the that being a detriment where.

Andrew Morgans 01:26

You know, let's say agencies or can or pros are running so much branded search that they're not even finding new customers on Amazon. But that's also a good thing for smaller brands. And so a smaller brand that doesn't have branded search or top of funnel and starts to see that coming from another channel like Meta or TikTok or you know, even TV or something like that, really creates this effect on Amazon and beyond that.

Andrew Morgans 01:53

They've been recreating for a long time. So what we're talking about now is like White Hat, okay, which is like, you know, running a TikTok shop marketplace or or metads, and there's an overflow halo effect onto Amazon. But before that, in the Amazon world, there was always search find buy or some of these tactics that people use to launch products. And what that was was you're taking someone from off of Amazon, they're coming onto Amazon, they're looking for your product, they're buying it, and Amazon rewards that.

Andrew Morgans 02:22

In the algorithm. And so that's neither here nor there. It's not just about launching products, but it's about it's always been the case. But how does how does one affect the other? How do we track it? If you're a service provider, how do you validate that to a customer? You know, proving the attribution or proving the halo effect or how all these things work together. It's it's been quite the challenge, but it's been fun.

Hai Mag 02:44

Absolutely. Well, I mean, you already talk about this halo effect, you know. I'm sure with market knowledge now you have Amazon, Shopify, Walmart, TikTok, all that stuff. So with Amazon, for example, when people like, I'm sure you talk about the effect, but when it comes to measuring it, of course the brands are super excited, like they understand. They understand the inevitability, like there has to be.

Hai Mag 03:10

Other channels, but how do you measure that halo effect on Amazon?

Andrew Morgans 03:16

So I think this where like the advanced stuff comes in because if you're not like I'm an owner operator, meaning I'm in the weeds, I like to learn this stuff. I I've built brands on TikTok and Amazon both, so I know how they work. Not every business is like that, not every consultant is like that, not every team is like that. And a lot of times we're working with brands that are brand managers or so they're not about the tactics, it's about them managing the brand, right? And so a lot of times.

Andrew Morgans 03:43

How to actually validate that or tell a customer is very difficult because if they have a brand manager on the other side of you, and let's say that you're not, I'm not managing Amazon and TikTok, I'm just managing one. Well, I have to get one, the other vendor or service provider to play ball nicely and share information. It's also knowing how both of them work so you can find the overlapping parts. There, there's software that can help with that, yes, but there's also other things like.

Andrew Morgans 04:08

You don't have branded search on your Amazon listing in your search query performance report or your P P C and then all of a sudden you see some branded search coming. Well, where's that coming from? Well we've been running TikTok or we've been running Meta or things like that. And you know because you're controlling both of them or you're getting those insights. You're you're communicating about it, you know? So there's things like Amazon attribution. I'll tell you a quick story.

Andrew Morgans 04:29

Where you know Amazon attribution gives you a brand referral bonus like on Google Ads or a Metad or something like this. We know we all know that it works a percentage of the time. You know, there's also like buy with prime, other ways of tracking Shopify to Amazon. But Amazon attribution is kind of the known way, or that branded search on PPC, or that increased search on search query performance report or things like that. But here's a real life situation that happened like last month.

Andrew Morgans 04:55

So I'm working as a something I offer is like f a fractional e-commerce director for s for a couple of brands at a time. And where I'm sitting kind of above the agencies or whatever, right? So a company has their internal people, those internal people they have agencies that work for them, even my own company, but I'm kind of above that, saying like how does all the vendors work together? What's our big structure, what's our big strategy, what's our big overarching you know, direction,.

Andrew Morgans 05:22

How's the overall act being connected commerce work, so to speak? Right. So I'm in that, I'm in the weeds there. And a month ago, a scenario came up where the girl that runs Google and Metat their company, we run it together. She's like the on the brand side. She comes to me with our list before our call. We have like a weekly call, and she's like, I think I want to cut this, the ads for this listing on Meta.

Andrew Morgans 05:44

We're spending, we're not getting the return that we need. I don't really see any conversions happening. You know, is among a list of other things. Well, because I'm in the weeds, I know on the Amazon that the listing she's referring to is one of our top sellers. Okay. It's so immediately question mark comes up and I'm like, because we don't have attribution on that, there's nothing that's like connecting it, whatever. And the team is just starting to learn how to look at all of the channels together. So, you know, my first thought is.

Andrew Morgans 06:09

Why is it not converting? Is price not the same? Is the landing page not the same? Is the cart, you know, is the add to cart not working on the website? All of the basic things that you're going to check to be why aren't we getting conversions? But what I found was this a product that doesn't really have branded search. And all of a sudden on Amazon, we have a lot of branded search, right? So I start, you know, kind of piecing together you know, what's happening there. And essentially, meta.

Andrew Morgans 06:32

Should be counting a lot of the sales on Amazon as its sales versus the website sales. There's a little bit of a price difference too on Amazon that was kind of encouraging them to buy on Amazon versus the website, which is I think why we had zero sales. It wasn't a significant number, but enough that, you know, I know people go and search on Amazon once they see an ad or or something, they do that. And if we had just turned off that metad because were just looking in that silo and being like it's not converting, you know, we would have lost.

Andrew Morgans 06:59

A lot of momentum on the Amazon side. And if that Amazon team was in a silo, they'd be like, we don't know what happened. We've been running as the same. We've been like, you know, there's no listing violations, no bad reviews. We have stock good. What happened? So if one hand is not talking to the other hand, like let's say the meta team or the Google team is not talking to the Amazon team and you really start to say what is working, how's it working, what's you know, the changes. That's how you get yourself you know, fixing one problem to create another.

Andrew Morgans 07:25

And and not really understand what's happening in your business. So from there, we dug in and you know, found out all those things and really realized, hey, this spend that's here is actually a very profitable spend. It's just helping us look really good on Amazon. It wasn't an intentional thing they had set up. It was more of like a side effect. Like we knew it happened a little. But that was something I was teaching them, showing them, digging into it and kind of recreating that story. And I that took a little bit of time, but.

Andrew Morgans 07:49

Just like a real life scenario. That's that's how it's working in brands and stuff like that. And so we can be more intentional. We can have the landing page push to Amazon if we want. We can have it there on Shopify. We can encourage them to buy on the site versus Amazon with a lower rate or whatever those tactics and strategies are. But you don't want something happening and not knowing why. I think the goal is understanding what's driving what and what are the ways you can track it and what are the unknowns.

Hai Mag 08:15

Amazing. I mean, this a fascinating story. And as you said, like the metads, impacting the impressions, the conversions on the Amazon, and the meta person probably just looking into Shopify and cannot see that conversion. So that's why the holistic management, the omnichannel brand management makes a lot of sense. Like that is one of the things that we see for the last.

Hai Mag 08:41

18 months, like whenever I look at the brand, and they just work Amazon silo, Walmart silo, the Google, the Shopify, and these silos are even managed by different maybe agencies or internal people, they don't talk to each other. And I mean, you also touched on another interesting thing. You said even the price is different on Shopify and Amazon.

Hai Mag 09:04

And maybe that was done on purpose in that specific case, but you know, when the Shopify guys drop the price, now Amazon is higher. The next thing Amazon is doing, okay, so let's remove the Buy Box. And when the Shopify price is higher, then people buy from Amazon and the customer doesn't see that the because they of course every customer wants.

Hai Mag 09:25

The custom the consumers.

Andrew Morgans 09:26

A few.

Hai Mag 09:26

To use the shopify but why this not happening is another problem and they are together so there are but there are different ways of Amazon to think that the price is the same on a Shopify but maybe on Shopify there is a different way of getting a better discount. So price is another one. Advertising.

Andrew Morgans 09:44

Maybe.

Hai Mag 09:44

Definitely needs to be holistically managed even the budgets.

Hai Mag 09:49

And then the overall omnichannel brand management is another one. So we also talked about maybe the effect of logistics like 3PL. A lot of course, every brand is using in in some way a 3PL, maybe an agency too. But I mean, inventory is like one of the key things. Like, you don't want to be out of stock and everything. How do you see that connection or how do you work?

Hai Mag 10:14

On that one when it comes to your agency.

Andrew Morgans 10:17

So, you know, I would say inventory and inventory management is like the top three things to focus on. Like the same thing. Focus on inventory, supply chain, inventory, supply chain, inventory, supply chain. Because there's nothing worse than launching a good product and then it running out of stock and then you're just fighting back that it's just trying to fight back to get where you were before you ran out of stock or you know, subscribe and save being a major play for a lot of brands and how that's integrated.

Andrew Morgans 10:41

And are you doing that on the website? Are you doing that on Amazon? You know, there's so many ways to integrate, but there's so much margin being taken all the time as well, you know? So I think you have to be you can't just reserve your creativity as a brand operator, just for the images, just for the product itself when you're designing it. You gotta think you gotta be creative in the warehouse, you gotta be creative in your supply chain, you gotta be creative in your advertising strategies. I just mean like.

Andrew Morgans 11:06

Thinking outside the box, bundling things, finding offers, finding ways to provide new value, and really thinking like, okay, this customer is on this channel. Why are they on this channel? Because they're researching or because they came from social or because they're a Walmart customer or because they're comfortable here. Each customer has a little bit of difference of nuance as well. And so trying to figure out what offer is going to get that customer on that channel is a big deal. And I do think on the.

Andrew Morgans 11:31

On the Shopify side of things, that offer is really important. And so, you know, we're talking about inventory, but we're also talking about what works where and why. And I think that you know, on Amazon they have expectations, on a website, they have expectations. And something I've been repeating lately the last few weeks is just this reminder, whenever I'm I'm doing a speaking event or webinar, this reminder to other e-commerce operators like us that this an A-B testing.

Andrew Morgans 11:55

This always an R&D testing industry environment. Like e-commerce is not set it and forget it. It's not an SOP that never changes. It's constantly like that's what makes it great. That's also what makes it stressful and hard, is it's always changing. So you have to be trying new things, you know, and finding new ways to win. For a simple example would be this MCF on Amazon right now. If for anyone listening, is multi-channel fulfillment where you're using your Amazon FBA inventory to fulfill Shopify or to fulfill TikTok shop.

Andrew Morgans 12:22

Whatever it might be. And I own a warehouse. So I want those FBM orders as well or the kitting order, sure, for revenue. But for on the brand side, MCF is offering 35% off on TikTok shop fulfillment or things like that. They're offering a deal right now, you know, an offer for Amazon sellers or or agencies. At least I've seen it as an agency. And even if for like.

Andrew Morgans 12:42

Three, six months, I moved the brand to MCF and they got a thirty five percent discount on their all of their their shipping rates. That's a big deal. So just finding what you can leverage where and like what's gonna be the best for you. You know, what I've found is it's usually a hybrid of options. You know, we've got some in FBA, some in FBM, some in AWD or whatever it is, right? Like finding the best, the best one and Walmart and TikTok shop are.

Andrew Morgans 13:06

Quickly becoming you need to almost use their fulfillment to really be successful also and really pushing brands and operators to use their fulfillment services as well to get the most out of the platform. So it becomes a level of how complicated should I make it? You know, what's the best margin play a lot of times or the best customer service side of it. There there's not really a one answer for all. It's really just try to figure out what works best.

Hai Mag 13:28

Absolutely. Now I think you know you're one of the like at least two agencies now. We're talking to each other right now in the school and we also own the 3PL, the warehouses too. And I always see an amazing advantage of that. And although we see the advantage, I was talking to our supply chain leader now. This promotion that you mentioned.

Hai Mag 13:50

It made a lot of sense for the brand. So although we have the FBM orders like we switched to because we managed the TikTok, etc. We managed to we switch to that promotion, right? But of course, like when it when the time comes there's no promotion, then it's also important to have the flexibility to switch back to your own you know warehouse because.

Andrew Morgans 14:11

That's it to me.

Hai Mag 14:12

Hard to rely on.

Hai Mag 14:15

Anybody at the end of the day, like it's sometimes better that you have that FBM channel. You never know what will happen with the FBA channel. And if there is a problem, you know, it's not easy to call someone on Amazon warehouses and try to get some input. Like maybe they lost your stuff and it will come pop up maybe in six weeks back after some reimbursement claim or something like that. So everything is in a way connected. Having that 3PL is probably.

Hai Mag 14:43

Probably giving a lot of advantage too. Any any other ideas about how this 3PLings an advantage w as an as an agency or.

Andrew Morgans 14:50

Yeah, so let's talk about like.

Hai Mag 14:52

The.

Andrew Morgans 14:52

Let's talk about connected commerce, right? Like it's in the name. But thinking about inventory again in the warehouse play, for me it's always been about I want as many options available to me as possible because business is hard, life is hard, and you need to be able to pivot. And if you only have you've only left your well yourself one way out, well, you don't have options. So it's about creating options and for yourself or your brands. You know, like the pandemic taught us that.

Andrew Morgans 15:17

Right. Like FBA always the way, always the way. I mean, I was a FBM lover way before the pandemic, but the pandemic showed, you know, essential products only. Anyone that wasn't already in a warehouse or 3PL was struggling to get into one. FBM got ranked higher in all the search results for a time why FBA was trying to catch up because they were overwhelmed. And anything can happen. And if we're in business, you know, it used to just be Q four and Prime Day. We had to stress about, but then a pandemic happened and we had.

Andrew Morgans 15:43

We had new challenges, you know. New products continue to get pushed onto Amazon to do well. Big bulky items that now are in, you know, even LTL shipments or FBM. For me, that's a brand builder, I have some of my own brands that I'm you know, passionate about and building. And I like to stay in the weeds, like to be a great agency owner. I like to know what brands are going through and what, you know, what they're working with. You know, being able to, for example, you know, you have a top selling product.

Andrew Morgans 16:10

You can include some inserts and give an offer on maybe some of your not so popular products or new products that you're launching or you know take amazon customers and get them into your your email funnel on the Shopify site or or vice versa, right? So use your email list of launch products on Amazon. And a lot of that can happen that post purchase I call it you post purchase.

Andrew Morgans 16:31

Post purchase optimization where you're really fine tuning everything that happens after the customer gets the item from getting them off of Amazon or off of TikTok shop. How do you get your your affiliates that have made purchases with TikTok shop? It comes to your Shopify, a lot of times you see them there. We're grabbing them. Maybe this a little a little a gray area. You know, but.

Andrew Morgans 16:51

But sending them a text, getting them into our Discord so that we can engage with them and keep them in the community, or else you're just lost in the TikTok shop DMs and you'll never you never find them again. So a lot of that happens in the warehouse. That insert, that sticker, that maybe it's just a hundred at a time, a bundling, an influencer package. A lot of that's happening in the warehouse. And if one of the reasons I have one is it's just a small operation like you know, here in Kansas City, maybe twenty thousand square feet for context. So.

Andrew Morgans 17:18

But I'm able to try things 10 at a time, 50 at a time, 100 at a time, because they're we're all on the same team. We're all working toward the same end, which is like, you know, making brands have a better chance of success, including our own. And to be creative, if you're with a big operation, you need to get a contract, new scope of work, get them to price that thing, get them to say yes or no, or maybe so. You know, on that with my team, we're able to try it quickly, you know, react quickly.

Andrew Morgans 17:42

And that's another area where I was saying be creative in the warehouse and and inventory as well with what you're doing. You can try things and see if they work. There's no harm, no foul, other than a lot of times your time, maybe a little bit of labor with some paper or something, you know. But I do think that it's it's all of the little things like like a good insert or an extra communication in there, letting them know you're a family brand or whatever, that really makes the difference in in good e commerce brands.

Hai Mag 18:09

Absolutely. I mean all these little things that you mentioned, I think we can talk about each of them for ten, fifteen minutes as a kind of a best practice or a practice that brings different channels together. And that's also the reason why I love this having a 3PL because we already mentioned like three main areas, like the brand strategy.

Hai Mag 18:32

Having a single holistic brand strategy for every single channel. That's one area. Advertising, you mentioned about the meta to Amazon. There's also all the other different combinations there, right? So that's one area. And also keeping the advertising budget, also thinking about it at a holistic level. And now you're talking about all this.

Hai Mag 18:53

Having the 3PL or options, MCF, everything, then you know, you can switch the customer from one channel to another, especially if if it's about Shopify.

Andrew Morgans 19:03

You're in short you're in control.

Andrew Morgans 19:04

Of. Yeah.

Hai Mag 19:05

That's the best. Yeah. So I love it. I think we should definitely have another session, Drew. So I'm very, very happy that, you know, we had this conversation and I'm sure that it will help our audience to think about like all these different things that I'm sure they are inspired by this, but we should definitely follow up on this, have another session too. So thank you very much for coming.

Andrew Morgans 19:28

Thanks for having me. You know, this a topic that I'm obsessing about. I'm working through every single day. I think that's this the next the next layer. You know, you've got AI bringing it all together and software bringing it all together as well. But it's really like the human creativity behind that really is what, you know, changes the game, so to speak, for a brand. So there's so many different ways to win. And it's it's like being like Sherlock Holmes, I guess, around like.

Andrew Morgans 19:52

You know, what's the best way to do it for my brand in this moment? You know? So thanks for having me and I look forward to being back.

Hai Mag 19:59

Thank you. Thanks a lot, Bru.