Andrew Maff 00:03
That's where you have to realize it's no longer about your business on your website versus Amazon versus Walmart versus Chewy or wherever else you are. It's about your online presence. That's it.
Narrator 00:16
Welcome to the E-comm Show podcast. I am your host Andrew Maff, owner and founder of Bluetuskr. From groundbreaking industry updates to success stories and strategies, get to know the ins and outs of the e-commerce industry from top leaders in the space. Let's get into it!
Andrew Maff 00:31
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the E-comm Show. As usual, I'm your host Andrew Maff, and today I'm going to talk to you about what I see as the future of omni-channel marketing. Now, if you've ever heard me talk anywhere — even just casually — I've probably brought up omni-channel marketing. It's basically all I've ever talked about, and I've had a theory on it for years. As it really started to come to fruition, something new got thrown into the mix, and now it's changing a little bit. So that's what I wanted to talk about on today's episode. Let me give you a bit of background on how I got into the omni-channel side, because I think it helps paint the picture. Years ago — this was over a decade ago now — I was in-house at a low eight-figure brand. I was the only marketer in-house; I was the one overseeing everything. My wife and I had just moved to North Jersey at the time. We'd just gotten a mortgage on a house, all set and ready to go, and I started this job in August.
Andrew Maff 01:50
I think it was the first or second week of November. Amazon was 80-85% of this business, and — typical Amazon nonsense — here's what happened. Back then, Amazon didn't really pull advertising funds directly from your sales; it was typically just through a credit card. We were changing out credit cards because, obviously, in Q4 we were spending an arm and a leg. I can't remember why we switched the card — a normal card, nothing crazy — but for whatever reason, Amazon's bot flagged it as fraud. And instead of alerting us and just declining that one card, they shut down the entire account.
Andrew Maff 02:51
So I'm several months into this job, just took on a mortgage, and I thought I was out of a job. I was screwed — panicking. Luckily, the guy I worked for at the time knew the Amazon space pretty well and knew a couple of people who could help. It took two or three weeks, but we basically had to put together a whole book report on why it wasn't fraud to finally get Amazon to reinstate the account. The whole time, I'm in a straight panic — I'm losing my job, what do I do? We were trying to figure out: okay, our only source of revenue right now is the website. There was really nowhere else we were selling — a couple of other spaces like eBay back then, but that was basically nothing. So we had to lean hard into the website, and we started developing all these marketing strategies to really push it. Then, once we got reinstated, we thought, all right, we don't want to bite the hand that feeds us, but we were also incredibly nervous that it would happen again. So we started developing marketing strategies that would let us have our cake and eat it too — finding ways, within Amazon's TOS, because we were scared to death of them, to drive traffic from Amazon back to our website, so we could use Amazon more as a customer acquisition channel. We'd still benefit from the revenue on Amazon, but then move the customer over to the website.
Andrew Maff 04:26
If you've heard this story before — because I tell it a lot — I'll give you the short version. We did the same thing in reverse with the website: in certain scenarios, like retargeting customers who were at the bottom of the funnel but just wouldn't pull the trigger, we might run ads to push them over to Amazon instead. We were basically looking at how to let people shop wherever they're most comfortable.
Andrew Maff 04:51
Flash forward a couple of years, another story I tell a lot. I was sitting on the couch watching my wife shop — she's probably walking around right now hearing this story. It was Q4, she was shopping for someone, probably herself. She got hit with an Instagram ad — she gets these ads and buys the most random stuff all the time. She sees the ad, clicks on it, it takes her to the PDP. The PDP has a pop-up — something like 10% or 15% off — so she fills it out, which sends the coupon code to her email. She looks at the website, the PDP, the reviews, and isn't totally sure. Her theory, as she told me, was that since it was a newer brand, she didn't know if they could control the reviews on their own website — but she knew they couldn't control them on Amazon. So she left the website, went to Amazon, searched for the product, found it, saw it had a bunch of reviews, and saw they were good. The price was effectively the same, so Amazon verified for her that it was a good product. She remembered the price matched, and since she didn't need it in two days, she went back to the email, grabbed the coupon code, went to the product page, and purchased.
Andrew Maff 06:12
That's a nightmare for a marketer. What do you even attribute that to? This all happened within an hour. The Instagram ad educated and incentivized the original interaction. The coupon code is really what pushed her over the edge to stay on the website. Amazon is what verified the product and built the social proof that gave her the confidence to purchase. So all of those elements were necessary for her to make the decision to buy.
Andrew Maff 06:50
Amazon doesn't share data, so in this scenario, Amazon is going to make it look like you had an impression but no conversion — which isn't what Amazon wants to see, either. Your email is going to take credit, because technically the last click came from the email where you grabbed the coupon code, and Instagram is going to take credit because you clicked on the ad and purchased within 24 hours (it could even be within seven days). So what do you do? Everything takes credit in that scenario except Amazon. That's where I started to realize the average user does their own due diligence. They don't just think, "okay, my Instagram ad points to my website, so that's where they'll purchase." That's not the case — they're going to move on. Flash forward again, now we get into COVID. COVID sped up this whole industry extremely fast — it basically doubled or tripled overnight. But the thing that happened during COVID that a lot of people don't talk about is that a lot of people got into e-commerce because they were all sitting at home, couldn't do anything, and were trying to figure out how to just sell stuff online.
Andrew Maff 08:08
Because of that, it also brought in a lot of junk. There was so much garbage being sold online, and a lot of scams. There were people selling stuff you couldn't get for weeks, or that would show up as total junk — knockoffs and things like that. There were legitimate scams, too, where you'd buy something and then the website would just disappear. It was a real problem, and it made our industry a lot more difficult, because some sellers got knocked off fast, and others ran into the issue of scammers belittling the whole category. Certain products — I forget the exact term for it, but things like masks and hand sanitizer — everyone was afraid to buy online because it seemed like a scam at all times. But because of all those scams, because of everything that happened, the average user's behavior completely exacerbated the omni-channel side — they got heavily into doing their own due diligence.
Andrew Maff 09:19
TikTok had obviously blown up around this time, and it was also loaded with a ton of junk. So people would get educated on TikTok, then leave — they'd Google it, go to Amazon, go to Walmart, look it up on Reddit. They'd do some serious detective-level due diligence just to buy a $30 product, because they were so worried about getting scammed. That trained the average user to look elsewhere: they might get educated about a product on one platform, but they don't have to purchase it there. They might get educated on one platform and pointed toward another, but they still don't have to buy on that one either.
Andrew Maff 10:03
During that time, even during COVID, a lot of people took advantage of Amazon because it was quick and easy — they could get stuff in two days. So many people would see an ad, click through to a website with a flawless UX/UI, and still think, "forget it, I want to buy it on Amazon," and leave. You can't control that — there's nothing you can do about it. We ran dozens of tests where we'd increase and decrease ad spend on Amazon versus off Amazon, and if you ever run that test with your own brand, you'll see it's 100% true — there's definitely bleed-over. You don't always want to kill what people refer to as your D2C efforts, because that's where the spend is directed, but it's still affecting your Amazon sales because of that bleed-over. That's just the nature of it — the average user's journey is so fluid that you can't control it, and because these marketplaces all hide their data, you also can't track it as well as you'd like. You can track it across your own platforms — TikTok, Instagram, everything through GA4 — but the moment they leave and buy on a marketplace, that's where things suddenly go blind.
Narrator 11:19
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Andrew Maff 11:52
Something has changed again, so here we are. It seems to happen about every four or five years — something new comes along. Years ago, back when we got into all that spend and I realized, oh, this is actually how people shop, I'd been pushing this forever: you have to look at your business holistically. You can't look at just your Amazon business versus your D2C business. There are a few exceptions to that — basically, if you're selling different products on each channel. I had this conversation with a brand the other day: they were selling their own branded apparel and hats on their website, but selling other brands' products on Amazon. In that case, you do have to look at it separately.
Andrew Maff 12:39
What was interesting was that we were still able to figure out how to use Amazon to acquire a customer with an interest in that type of product, then incentivize them to learn about the branded product that lived off Amazon. It was a pretty interesting approach, but anyway, I digress. So what's changed that I didn't anticipate five or six years ago — because it really wasn't a thing yet — is AI. I know, everyone and their mother won't shut up about AI. If you're not tired of hearing about it yet, I don't know where you've been, because even though we use it day in and day out, I'm just so tired of hearing about it.
Andrew Maff 13:23
Most people talk about how you can leverage AI to improve the efficiency of your business — how it can do this for you, do that for you, and so on. What not enough people are talking about is how users are using it. How the average person is using it — and honestly, how you're probably using it too, without even thinking about it. This is a problem I see all the time, especially when we're talking to brands: you're so entrenched in your own business, in how you set up the funnel and how you wanted things to happen, that you can't step back and look at it with fresh eyes. You might be picturing someone looking at this ad, then going to this landing page, then getting this email, and so on — but chances are they're not all going to follow that path. There's going to be bleed-out.
Andrew Maff 14:16
What's happening with AI now is very interesting. I talked about this a few episodes back — I think it was called something like "AI Shopping Agents Are Coming." Go check it out. What's interesting now, and what's changing with omni-channel marketing, is that AI is becoming a middleman. Going back to my wife's example: she saw an ad on Instagram, went to the PDP, filled out the pop-up, got the coupon, went back to the PDP, looked at the reviews, and didn't like what she saw, because she didn't know if they were real — so she left and went to Amazon. She was doing her own due diligence. Now, the average user is using AI to do that due diligence for them. So many people have realized they could save 10-15 minutes by just asking AI if a product is legitimate — assuming they've already discovered the product. They saw an ad, loved it, went to the website, checked it out, thought "okay, this looks interesting." Usually, the first thing people do now is leave the website and go ask their AI platform about the product. That could mean going to Google, where Google gives you AI results, or if you use Claude a lot at work, chances are you'll pivot to Claude or ChatGPT.
Andrew Maff 15:49
So what's really interesting now — and there's a lot of conversation around this, myself included — is how you make sure your brand gets referenced in AI when a user is looking for that type of product. How do you get mentioned over your competitors? That's the big question. Years and years ago, when Google first popped up, that was the big thing too — how do you get Google to rank you number one? It's really not that different now. The big difference is that if you're not mentioned, you don't even show up. If you're on page one of Google but not number one, maybe you're in the top five — you're still going to get some traffic. With AI, if you're not mentioned, no one even knows you exist. Instead of Google giving you 10 options on page one and then pages two and three, AI is giving you one — maybe two or three — and that's it. It's really narrowing things down. So either the user has to already be well educated about your product before they go to AI and ask about it directly, or they go to AI and describe a problem they're trying to solve, and AI references products that might help.
Andrew Maff 17:14
So now you have to think about what type of product you have. Do you have a product where users don't even know about the problem yet? Then you need to educate them first, and later they might look it up and ask AI, "does this thing work for this problem?" — and AI will do its own due diligence and tell them. Or is it a case where they don't even know the problem exists at all, and you're telling them about both the problem and the solution? Then AI is going to relay that too. Then there's the other category, usually the more difficult one: lifestyle brands — apparel, footwear, things like that — where you're leaning into a type of person. A shirt's a shirt, right? You can talk about quality, sure, but it's more about the design, and people just want to know: am I going to look good in it, is it going to feel good. In that case, you're still building community like you always have, but you also have to factor in that they're probably still going to go to AI and ask what people say about the brand.
Andrew Maff 18:24
So they're using AI to do their own due diligence. What's gotten thrown into the mix with all this omni-channel stuff is: users are going to shop where they're most comfortable, but they're also going to shop where AI tells them they're most comfortable. If AI can find your product on 10 different websites and Amazon is the least expensive, it's probably going to send people to Amazon. If Walmart or your own website is the least expensive, that's probably where it'll send them instead. Here's an example — I literally did this a couple of weeks ago. I've got the golf bug, and I wanted to get a little putting green. So I told AI how much room I had, that I wanted to use it outside, that I've got dogs who'd be walking on it so durability mattered, and so on. I went through the whole thing with AI, narrowed it down to a couple of products I liked, and then thought, okay, I think this is the one I want — where can I find it the cheapest?
Andrew Maff 19:29
It literally listed everywhere that product was available and which one was least expensive, and that's the one I went with. I didn't shop around — it had nothing to do with the ads any of these companies were running. This was all just product discovery. So omni-channel is going to get that much more complicated, because if you look at your GA4 results — by the way, some of the wildest numbers I've seen in 20 years in this industry — the conversion rates of people coming out of an AI platform, like ChatGPT, are wild. Extremely high compared to almost any other marketing channel, and it's because the user was not only already educated on the product outside that platform, but they came to that platform to validate their decision, and AI basically confirmed "yes, you're right," then sent them to your website, and they converted.
Andrew Maff 20:29
So what's happening with omni-channel now is: you're spending money on advertising — social media ads, Google ads, whatever — and people are going to leave and go to these AI platforms to do their own due diligence, then go shop wherever they're most comfortable. So now you've added a middleman. From an attribution perspective, let's paint the picture: I get hit with an Instagram ad, I like what I see, I click on it, it takes me to the website, looks like a good product. I want AI to help me do some due diligence, so I leave — in my case, I use Claude a lot, so I'd go talk to Claude about it. "Here's the product I found, this solves my problem, is this the best one out there, are there competitors I should look at?" Claude tells me, I evaluate whether I'm still moving forward with that product. Once I decide yes, I ask, "hey Claude, where's the least expensive place I can get it?" It says Amazon. Guess what — I'm leaving, I'm going to Amazon. So your Instagram ad just ended up sending me to shop on Amazon.
Andrew Maff 21:40
So now attribution is completely broken, because how do you even sort that out? Instagram should probably take the credit — I'm still going to Amazon — but Claude is actually the one that told me to go there. Otherwise, I would have gone straight to your website. So you're throwing this new cog into the wheel. I've always had this theory that users shop wherever they're most comfortable, based on their own due diligence, and what's changed now is that they're definitely going to shop wherever they're most comfortable — because that's where AI told them to go. I think that's going to be the biggest thing we start to see change, definitely this Q4. I think it's going to be one of the wildest quarters we've seen in a while for how much average consumers actually use AI for shopping.
Andrew Maff 22:30
But then, definitely going into next year, into 2028, it's going to become a thing where you have to make sure people are mentioning your brand when you show up in AI. You've got to keep an eye on reviews across all platforms, because AI is consolidating all of it. So if you've got really good reviews on Amazon, but your website reviews are bad, or vice versa, AI is going to consolidate those and say, "look, here's what people are actually saying about it." That's where you have to realize it's no longer about your business on your website versus Amazon versus Walmart versus Chewy or wherever else you are — it's about your online presence. That's it. It is your online presence. What are people saying about your brand? Because that's what AI is going to tell customers, and that's what people are going to believe.
Andrew Maff 23:19
So you really have to look at your business holistically now, more than ever before, because there's going to be a real separation — the top products are going to be the ones AI keeps talking about. It's not going to fairly rotate everyone; that's just not going to happen. So unless you're one of the top players in your industry, for your product line, or even for a specific audience, you're going to have an uphill battle. It's going to be interesting, it's going to be fun, and that's all I had for you today. I appreciate your time as usual. Do the normal thing: rate, review, subscribe, all that fun stuff, on whichever podcast platform you prefer, or head over to TheEcommShow.com to check out all of our previous episodes, as well as that AI shopping one I mentioned. I appreciate your time — see y'all next time. Have a good one!
Narrator 24:14
Thank you for tuning in to the E-comm Show. Head over to EcommShow.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, or on the Bluetuskr YouTube channel. The E-comm Show is brought to you by Bluetuskr, a full-service digital marketing company specifically for e-commerce sellers looking to accelerate their growth. Go to Bluetuskr.com now for more information. Make sure to tune in next week for another amazing episode of the E-comm Show!