Had a question a few weeks ago, how would I go about promoting and growing a new e-commerce site.

I launched three e-commerce sites over 15 years, the first one was one of the early IT product sites and was successful for attracting customers, but sadly also attracted credit card fraudsters and almost killed the business so we had to shut it down.

The second was a Networking Product store, very niche but just had a lot of technical issues about getting the site live, plus also I wasn’t focused enough on it, it was one of a few experiments I was running so basically flamed out.

The 3rd was a moderate success for a few years in a really tight niche (we sold Google’s Enterprise products the Search Appliance and their Maps products) but I knew that Google wasn’t going to keep selling that product forever so I didn’t invest much time into it, however it was successful for a few years as a side project, essentially a part time business a few hours a week that turned over ~$100k pa for a few years, it was great beer money.

I think the key to success is focusing on a niche and generating and sharing great content that is interesting and building a community around that.

You are never going to be able to compete with Amazon directly on price, logistics, stock or service, so you have to work out how to dominate a small part of the world and do a much better job for the people who care about that world.

SEO is still important but maybe not as important as it used to be for e-commerce sites, my perception is that Google devalued e-commerce sites a few years back in favour of those which are more content rich rather than product listing heavy.

I think if I was launching another site today I would focus on trying to build a really great community around the topic, you didn’t mention what the product was, but I would spend my time writing great stories about the topic, if its possible get readers to contribute their stories.

This blog only took off because we managed to get Startups who were launching to start sending us their pitches, now we get 5-10 a day.

Interestingly when we first put the form on the site it was weeks before we saw the first pitch, then they started arriving every few weeks and then once a week ,then daily, now we get a new pitch every few hours.

But I could have easily written it off as a failed experiment as it took at least 6 months until we had enough volume to make this look like a real thing.

Few people are going to share a sterile product listing on your e-commerce site with all their Facebook friends, however if you write an article reviewing the product or how it might be used, benefits vs the competition etc or a round up of all the comparable products and their relative strengths and weaknesses, there is a really good chance the manufacturer will share it, likewise the community that cares about it will share it with their friends.

Keep doing that on a daily basis and you will have a steady stream of visitors.

So with a single page of text you can easily generate a bunch of inbound visitors and introduced a group of new people to the cause. If its a focused community you can guarantee someone will buy.

Also content is the gift that just keeps on giving. If you are paying for visitors you have to do that constantly, content usually just keeps getting better and delivers more visitors over time.

The thing about creating a content strategy is not as easy as turning on Google Adwords or Facebook Ads.

It takes time and most people are not prepared to put the time in.

If somehow you could convince your tribe to start contributing that content, you could find they drive your content strategy and its much easier to sell to people who trust you.

You could give away a new product each month for people who contribute an article or create a competition for something cool to drive email sign ups.

Whatever you do, don’t forget your email sign ups. Everyone thinks email is dead but they are so wrong, open rates might only be 10-30% but you get your message in their face on a daily basis and it will drive traffic, $ and attention.

You should be aiming to collect an email address from everyone that visits your site and you should be sending them weekly or even daily articles + new products.

5-10 emails sign ups a day and pretty soon you have a very healthy email list which drives even more visits and sales.

My wife uses a site in Australia that sends a personalised handwritten message with every purchase and the packaging and gift wrapping is amazing, in fact so amazing she tells people about it, so your delivery and packing strategy is something to think about as well.

There are a lot of technical aspects you must get right but this is a topic for another article (will write about this in a few weeks) but a combination content marketing + community building seems like a good strategy to get into your market.

Feature Image was my 3rd e-commerce site selling Google Search Products circa 2007-2008

I can’t tell you how many entrepreneurs I meet who tell me all about their new fan-dangled technology but can’t tell me who cares or what problem they are solving.

Often they haven’t identified a problem or are unclear about who will use the new app, device, platform.

They are so hung up on the tech or the science they have completely forgotten the user or problem they are solving.

When I review an invention or a startup pitch the first thing I look at before I worry about anything else is the problem.

If you can’t convince me that there is a real problem and you have a shot at solving it, we won’t even get to rest of the pitch.

If you are doing something which involves early stage science, engineering or technology research and development it may not be clear who the final user is yet, but you should have a clear idea of what specific problem you are fixing and why your solution will be superior, lower cost, stronger, faster, less toxic, easier to make, can be made from cheaper materials or might enable something which couldn’t be done before and who might benefit.

Initially Im less interested in the amazing technology and more interested in how its going to solve someones problem.

The Lonely Guy

Every few weeks I seem to be having conversations with founders about the markets they are attacking and who their ideal customer is.

Often I find they have selected the market based on what I call the “Lonely Guy at the Dance” method.

The Lonely Guy at the Dance isn’t picky and will dance with anyone who will dance with him.

Startups are often similar, they take whoever comes along and asks them to dance and end up working on a market because someone in a potential customer paid them a little attention not because they are the ideal customer in the ideal market.

I see it time and time again, when you ask why someone is working in a particular market it ends up that it wasn’t a strategic choice but instead they bent over backwards to the first company who paid them attention.

It might seem like a good idea but the trouble is it ends up leading you down a path that you didn’t plan and dragging you away from your strategic vision and the problem you were trying to solve.

The startup ends up being beholden to the first customer and I have even seen startups basically doing custom development for these early customers, being dragged completely off course.

The Bowling Alley

Back in the early days of the PC/Server/Network market before the PC margins crashed and Hewlett-Packard was a bit more of a country club they used to send the sales and marketing teams on great training courses.

One of the best courses I attended was Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm & Inside the Tornado. The lessons I learnt have stuck with me forever.

One of the most important lessons was a concept called the “Bowling Alley”

The Bowling Alley is critical to understand for introducing a new tech product.

Long before you experience mass adoption there exists small segments or markets that are discrete and have specific needs.

The Bowling Alley describes a concept where a Set of 10 Pins in a Bowling Alley are a metaphor for discrete early adopter users/markets that could use your product.

If we were talking about Hewlett-Packard Large Format Printers & Plotters their markets might have included

• Architects
• Engineers (and the ~20 different submarkets)
• On Demand Printers
• Graphic Designers
• Marketing Companies

The entrepreneurs key objective is to identify the Pins or Markets that are ideal for your Startup and work out which 1-3 markets have the most desperate need for your product and that you are able to sell and deliver to.

Questions that you might ask to help yourself identify which markets are attractive

• Is the market well served?
• Do they have what they need or are the current solutions broken or inadequate?
• Has something changed in the market which means they are in need of a new solution?
• Is it a growing or declining market?
• Is it a traditionally profitable market and does it appear to be stable?
• Can you afford to sell into this market?
• Does your product provide a compelling solution for this market?
• Can you leverage success in this market into adjacent markets?
• Is the market known for adopting new technologies or are they conservative?

Focus

When you first introduce a product you have limited resources, both human and financial.

This dictates that you should focus your attention and resources on the market which is most attractive given your product and capabilities.

Many startups try to appeal to a wide audience, they spread themselves thin and try to attack every market and invariably they don’t end up being successful in any of them.

It’s essential to focus at the beginning on 1-2 small markets because you can’t hit every market at once, you need to hit the markets that need your solution the most, that are so desperate for a solution they will put up with your rough edges and small feature set and will pay you to develop your product.

Ideally you are successful in these small markets and achieve good penetration and profitability you can move on to attack other similar or adjacent markets.

Sometimes you can use the same product for a series of markets, sometimes you need to make small changes or specific versions.

A few examples

• Autodesk started selling one product AutoCAD software to architects and engineers which they came to dominate, they now have over 104 separate products aimed at specific niches from architects to engineers and all manner of graphics, video and digital artists.
• Adobe who started by making the Postscript language and then progressing to various Type based products basically solving new problems for printers, printer manufacturers and designers who worked with type eventually progressing to become the powerhouse of Design making over 80 products, each addressing a very specific market

We often think an attractive market is a huge market, however I would argue a small group of users that have very similar needs and a desperate need for a solution that addresses their particular problems is an attractive market for a Startup.

By itself this market probably won’t let you build a billion $ company, however if you are able to dominate many small discrete markets one by one you end up with a business that achieves Global scale.

So I encourage startups to identify at least 5 market segments in their bowling alley and then decide which ones are ideal for their startup and product.

Then focus on and sell into their ideal market to the exclusion of others, deliberately choosing their path rather than accidentally working with whoever asks them to dance.

Thanks to Wikipedia for the images