#106 Adam McDonald: 3 Things Every E-Com Business Needs For Success

Hello Budai Nation! Your favorite e-commerce podcast is back with a brand new episode on how to create a successful e-com brand.

This week we've got serial entrepreneur/growth strategist/angel investor/e-commerce genius Adam McDonald, with our founder and podcast host, Daniel Budai.

Adam has successfully sold 4 businesses and is now investing in several e-commerce projects. His achievements include building the largest sport surface advertising company in Australia, producing a TV show that he sold to Disney, building Australia's largest outdoor event company, and investing in several e-commerce projects.

In this episode, Adam will reveal the 3 things that every e-com business needs for success! So, tune in to The Ecom Show to find out more about:

✔ Adam's Entrepreneurial Journey

✔ How To Grow Your Business Without Returning Customers

✔ How To Improve Your Customer Experience

✔How To Nail Organic Marketing

Adam's Entrepreneurial Journey

Adam's been a serial entrepreneur throughout his life. He first dabbled into selling products online way back in the early 2000s by reselling American shampoo and conditioners in Australia. He did this for a while before the company expanded and decided to take their selling in-house. You couldn't really call this e-commerce, though—it was more of an online brochure to sell the products to other brick-and-mortar stores in Australia.

Things changed when Adam received a call for help from his dad. Adam's father had run into some taxation issues, which led to him having to sell the business. Adam stepped in and managed to find his father a buyer who owned a big sports advertising agency. As a part of the contract, Adam worked with the buyer to revive the business. However, this contract was short-lived because Adam discovered that the buyer was involved in wrongful business practices and bought back his dad's business and all the equipment.

He then continued growing the venture for the next 3-4 years. He managed to successfully grow it to an 8-figure valuation. He used his wealth from this venture to produce a TV show, which was acquired by ESPN.

Since then, Adam has had a successful and colorful business journey, which ranges from building Australia's largest event company centered around fun to acquiring a physical pet collar business and growing it online. He's currently freelancing as a growth strategist, investing in several e-commerce projects, and building his own picnic rug e-commerce store.

Let's move on to discuss the three things that have helped him find success in all these different ventures.

How To Grow Your Business Without Returning Customers

CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) and returning customers are pivotal in growing a sustainable marketing plan for your e-commerce brand. It's what ensures that your brand can survive and scale without solely depending on ad spends. But, what do you do if your product's lifecycle is too long to have returning customers?

Adam faced this problem with his pet collar business, where his products often outlived the pets themselves! However, he discovered a great alternative to returning customers: referrals!

If you're selling a product that doesn't have the scope of generating returning customers, focus your energy on converting your existing customers into brand advocates! When you provide an excellent customer experience, your customers are inclined to talk about your brand, which leads to organic word of mouth.

Both returning customers and brand advocates have one thing in common; they need to be happy customers first! Customers will only trust your brand enough to keep purchasing or advocating for you if they are satisfied. So, focus on your customer journey, engagement, and referral programs to create a strong base of brand advocates.

You know your brand is on the right path when your customers are willing to sell your product for you!

How To Improve Your Customer Experience

The one thing that can help every business become a brand is a genuinely strong network of brand advocates, which only comes when a business can provide a good customer experience.

Between new technology, changing customer preferences, emerging trends, and competition, businesses have to constantly work on redefining their customer journey and experience to ensure that their customers are satisfied.

Adam strongly advises every business owner to conduct a self-audit of their brand to help them consistently improve. He diligently orders through his own business to experience everything from the user experience on the website, to entering the flows, to getting the delivery. This activity helps him discover what needs to be tweaked. After one such audit, Adam realized that their shipping partner provided a terrible delivery experience; this pushed him to find a more reliable shipping service and helped him improve his customer journey.

Conducting a self-audit even once every quarter can help business owners understand their customers' pain points better! Only if you go through everything will you realize what can annoy your customers.

How To Nail Organic Marketing

At the start of the podcast, we touched upon building a sustainable marketing plan for your e-commerce brand. This basically refers to finding organic ways to grow a brand. Anyone can generate 10 million in sales revenue when they're pouring in 8 million on ad spends. The skill is in being able to grow your business using a mix of organic and paid marketing efforts.

This brings us to the third thing every business needs to succeed- a community. If you can build a community around your product, your organic side of things gets looked after. Not only because you end up with a big database, but because you have the power to engage with them. Your community can help you create user-generated content, get ideas on product development, and much more.

The key to building a big community lies in giving. You must keep adding value to your customers' lives to earn that trust and build a community. Having customers sign up to your email list isn't enough. You need to leverage your email list to engage with your customers and work towards creating that sense of community.

On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of The Ecom Show! If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow Adam, and check out his website for more stories to help you grow your e-commerce brand.

Thanks for tuning in; we'll see you again next Thursday!

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