The Dropship Unlocked Podcast

Get Customers To Buy Again with Josh Blackburn with Josh Blackburn (Episode 96)

• Lewis Smith & James Eardley • Season 1 • Episode 96

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📞 Ready to Take the Next Step? https://dropshipunlocked.com/training-watch-apply?el=podcast-96-retention-with-josh-blackburn

Find out how Josh can help you ➡️https://www.blackburndigital.com/ 

Follow Josh on LinkedIn ➡️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-james-blackburn/ 

🗣Hosts Lewis Smith and James Eardley welcome Josh Blackburn, a seasoned e-commerce expert and owner of a leading retention marketing agency. 

Josh shares his expertise on retention marketing and how it can transform e-commerce businesses by fostering customer loyalty and driving repeat purchases.

👉 Prefer to watch this on Youtube? Check it out here  ➡️ https://youtu.be/OcE0_zaMo7Q

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Topics Discussed:

★ Importance of Retention Marketing: Cost-effectiveness of retaining customers vs. acquiring new ones. Building brand loyalty and creating repeat buyers. Enhancing customer lifetime value and overall profitability.

★ Zero-Party Data: Definition and significance of zero-party data. Collection methods such as surveys and quizzes. Leveraging data for personalised marketing.

★ Email Marketing Strategies: Building customer relationships and driving repeat purchases. Effective email marketing strategies like automated workflows.

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Links and Resources Mentioned:

Josh's Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@JoshJBlackburn

Pick up a copy of Lewis’ book: https://htabook.com 

Get Shopify for £1 a month for 3 months: https://www.dropshipunlocked.com/shopify 

Get a free trial with a professional phone line: https://www.dropshipunlocked.com/circle 

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Key Takeaways:

★ Retention Over Acquisition: Retaining customers is more cost-effective and valuable than constantly acquiring new ones.

★ Zero-Party Data: Collecting directly from customers through engaging methods provides accurate and actionable insights.

★ Personalised Marketing: Using customer data to tailor communications enhances customer experience and loyalty.

★ Effective Email Marketing: Automated workflows, personalised messages, and regular updates keep customers engaged and drive repeat purchases.

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FOLLOW:

Thank you for listening to the Dropship Unlocked Podcast! Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review on your favourite podcast platform.

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★★★Dropship Unlocked - Lewis Smith★★★

🌏Watch Our Free Training ➽ https://www.dropshipunlocked.com/training?el=podcast-96-retention-with-josh-blackburn

In today's episode, we are excited to have Josh Blackburn with us, an expert in retention marketing and the owner of a leading UK based retention marketing strategy. Josh brings a wealth of experience from his own e commerce brands, and now helps other businesses retain customers and drive repeat purchases. That's right. Lewis, yeah, great conversation with Josh. So he has his own e commerce experience, and he's put that into his marketing agency, which really comes across in this conversation that we've had with Josh. And we talk all about marketing strategies that are really going to drive that lifetime value and retention strategies, which often gets forgotten when in the realms of high ticket dropshipping, there's loads of actionable insights, things you can take away directly from this episode to integrate into your own business or into your future e commerce business. And so, yeah, it's all put together so you can build a really sustainable, high profit drop shipping business. Yeah, I'm sure if you're listening to us today, then you'll be eager to implement these strategies after you hear what Josh has to say and some of his expert advice, We'll also explore the fundamentals of retention marketing and the power of personalized communication and the benefits that it brings with it, using things like strong email marketing strategies as well. So really exciting topics today, and can't wait to dive into the conversation. So get ready to take your business to the next level with these valuable insights, and let's jump into it. Welcome to the dropship unlocked Podcast. I'm Lewis Smith, the founder of dropship unlocked, and with me is our client, success coach, James Eardley, now, when we're not recording the podcast episodes, we're running our own e commerce businesses and helping aspiring entrepreneurs launch their own high ticket dropshipping businesses keen to build your own six or even seven bigger business, my book, the home turf advantage is your blueprint for launching a profitable online store. Grab your copy@htabooks.com today, and let's get you started now, sit back, relax and let's unlock your potential with the dropship unlocked podcast. So today, we're excited to be joined by Josh Blackburn, who is a seasoned e commerce expert and the owner of a leading retention marketing agency. So Josh, fantastic to have you with us on the podcast today and share your insights on retention marketing and how it can transport e commerce businesses. Firstly, welcome to the podcast. Welcome mate. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Really excited. Fantastic. Yeah, good to Good to have you on So Josh, let us know first of all your journey, little bit about your backstory and how that got you into E commerce in the first place? Sure. So growing up, I was always fascinated about business, and I think I was always destined to some way, have my own business. And then at 1819, I went for a haircut, and had a bad haircut experience where the barber forgot to do one of my sideburn. And I was just so shy in the moment to like, bring that to his attention. I was like, Oh my God, what do I do? But what that led me to do is that led me to go to London. I was like, Okay, I'm gonna next. Heck, I get it's gonna be a high end experience. And I just remember getting to see all these products. I was like, I've never seen these before. What are all these? And that inspired me to make my first ever Shopify business, which was sending men's grooming products with my friend from school, and oh, we started that in 2013 that grew and grew. We had some failures, we had some successes, and now that's grown to be a big YouTube channel in a barbershop in London. So yeah, it feels like a lot, a long journey, but I've seen also interesting, like the golden ages of Facebook and lots and lots of changes. Yeah, no doubt. I mean, starting in 2013 to 2024 completely different scene, which I'm sure we can get into today. You mentioned that you felt like you were sort of destined for business. Were you that kid on the playground that was selling sweets or that kind of thing? If I was allowed, if I was allowed, 100% I remember one of my favorite days in secondary school was in a business class. They gave us, they paired us all up, and we had to make a lunch stand, and it was the one who made the most money at the end of the week. Were the winners. Honestly make my favorite week in school, and it was just that excitement of making something out, something out of nothing, you know, like, could we do this? Could we do that? And to be fair, it's like a challenge as you get older to make sure you maintain that enthusiasm and that curiosity of it, because when you become an adult, it's so easy to take in other aspects of life. But make note. Loved it. Everything about it, only falls and horses was a regular show in my in my household, fantastic. Yeah, no doubt. I mean, the early signs were there, clearly of the entrepreneurship. And then there, sounds like there was a bit of a jump to go from the bad haircut, which we've all had, and seeing the products that were available, and then deciding that, you know, you had the confidence to go out and decide to sell those yourself. How did you get the confidence to decide that? You were going to be able to go out and start running Facebook ads and start selling those products yourself. It's really weird, because I feel when you're young, you kind of don't really know the rules. So like you look back, you think, yeah, we had no idea what the rules either were. And it was really interesting, because we started off selling other branded products as kind of like a retailer. So that gave us confidence in terms of, if this fails, we've not got loads of stock there, and that was a really sensible way for us to do it. It just took us quite a long time to understand what a profit margin was. So we realized about six months a year in yet that we we're not actually making money here. But I'd say it was kind of weird. It was, it was confidence in terms of, well, why the part we do this? I don't understand what the barriers are. And I think the advantage we had was, back then, there was, there was not much spoken about e commerce. Shopify was doing, still new. So also, we weren't overwhelmed with loads of information you put on YouTube. Now, how to start an e commerce Store? You've got like 500 people giving their opinion how to do it. We didn't really have that. So it was just like, well, we'll just do this. Then won't we amazing? Yeah, funny. How you can, you can flip it, especially when you're younger, to instead of asking, Why? Why? Why me? Why can I do it? It's more like, why can't I do it? You've got that inbuilt confidence, and you've not had scars of the the past to hold you back. So you have that, that moving forward. Yeah, I mean, so that, actually that E commerce, visit, I had a similar story. I had that confidence and wanted to get started. But initially, when you're so naive, the mistakes were there. Was the main mistake that you were making initially, was it around profit margins that you'd not really considered. It was profit margins, I think, was the biggest mistake we had. We hadn't considered that really, like our mature business heads hadn't developed yet, and with that comes with cost, because you lose that innocence of we'll just try all that. I think another big mistake we made was we didn't appreciate that it's okay to just master one channel and be great at that at first, and let that build the business. We made mistake of we need to be great at Google as we need to be great at Facebook. Oh, we're getting influences for free. We need to do that. And we just stretched ourselves too thin, not giving us a chance to win at one channel. And I think whenever I see people now that's the biggest thing I say. I say, don't be afraid to just master one channel at first, and then go from there, yeah, trying to be the jack of all trades, seeing all the different opportunities, watching a YouTube video about a certain trending way of getting sales and being pulled in different directions. So is that kind of how you started to become more specialized in the retention marketing angle that you're that you're doing now? Yeah, for sure. So I went through building the business, and then when it got to a point of, ah, you know, I enjoy offering this as a service, the one benefit of this is you're working with different ecom, and sometimes it's nice to see different types of businesses. But I think, yeah, I'm super passionate about businesses that can make a profit. I'm super passionate about sustainable businesses, and I think getting more sales out of your current audience leads straight into that. So it's just something I really enjoy, building up the community, communicating it just all aligns with what I love about business, and that aligns with the type of marketing that you do, creating a community, getting people to come back, and sustainable business. So just for the top level overview of the type of marketing that you're doing, the retention marketing that we're looking at, could you give us a bit of a definition or how you see retention marketing being implemented into a business? Sure, great. So I'd say retention marketing is basically the main aim is, how can you increase lifetime value and your profit per customer with the audience you've already obtained. So retention marketing come under email marketing, SMS, direct mail, and it's basically Okay. We've captured this customer via paid social, Facebook ads, Google ads. How can we get more from them with the other products we sell? Fantastic, because once you've acquired a customer, it doesn't then cost you anything to then sell to them on the back end, other than, of course, like your email marketing fees, is that, is that a real one of the main reasons why you see it being so important to look at the lifetime value, I think, for sure, I think especially post iOS, because the Facebook costs, we all know that it's gone up massively. The competition is more bigger. It's a lot more stuff is commoditized. So if you've worked so hard to get that customer into your funnel, it makes so much sense to be like, well, we need to try and make more out of this. Make the most out of this. But you can also use it to start seeing trends in ah, these 1000 people here have bought six times. What is it about them that's similar that we can put into paid social what's the things that they come in? What do they like? What don't they like? So I think it's also a data plate in understanding your high quality audiences I see. So for people that are already. Have a bit of an audience involved, and there'll be people listening that have already sold a few times. What are some of the strategies that you use to start to look at the data that they've got and start to identify those key areas of opportunities to try and focus on a certain part of your your customers? So I think good way to start is in your email list, in your in your database, you want to kind of split, split out into three core audiences. So you've got prospects, people that may be signed up and never bought with you before. You've got one time customers, they're bought once, they've never come back. And then you've got repeat customers. And each of those core groups can really help you make strategic decisions. So prospects, you've brought them onto your email list. They've signed up for a discount, they've not bought and asking questions. Oh, where was the break in the funnel for that? What? What was the issues there that can help you fix conversion rates one time customer? It might be, is there a product problem? Are we not educating them on how to get the best out of the product that can help you strategically make plans there. And then the repeat customers, they're like your golden gooses, so maybe send them surveys, maybe get user generated content from them. Use these guys to help you push the business more forward. So I think that's a one great step. And I think the second, second phase of that is the rise of zero puppy data and understanding at the front end, what, what is this customers looking to achieve here? Because once you understand that, it's a lot easier to sell them the product and match it to their goals and ambitions. I see, I see, yeah, just want to touch into those three main buckets that you put customers into, because I think that's a really important thing to do, actually, especially, I'll give you a bit of a background on the type of businesses that that I run, and that we run as an audience, probably listening to this podcast today, is high ticket e commerce businesses. So oftentimes we're really focused on new sales, new customers. You know, we're looking at high ticket sales, and sometimes we'd probably be guilty of thinking that customers will only purchase once from us because it's such a high ticket purchase. So with that in mind, a lot of people myself included, especially more so when I first got started was just focus on that first bucket of customers, people that had never purchased to me before. What do you think is the real benefit of splitting, in your mind, your customers into those three different categories, I think it gives you a really clear picture of where your business is at. So I think if you've got loads of emails coming to you and they're never buying, it's a clear signal that something is broken for you and same for you. So maybe with a high ticket offer, if you saw that you've got a big one time customer segment. This really happens as well with sofa brands, because the reality is, is, once you've bought that sofa, what, what can we and it might just give you a mindset and a direction of right? We've got a really big one time customer base here that love the product. What can we maybe start to bring into the business to grow that revenue even more? It's not linked to e commerce, but I find Apple fascinating here, because if you actually break down Apple's products, it's really based on easy entry than a higher ticket. And then how many of us are paying 299 for extra storage every month? And it's like it complements that high ticket, but it's consistent revenue for them. Yeah, brilliant. It's genius, isn't it, to have that monthly recurring retention model built on the back of the initial upfront cost that you pay to get into Apple and buy the product in the first place. So with your example of a sofa brand, perfect place to start. Say, we'll play again. Create this business in our minds as a high ticket sofa brand, and they've always been really focused on new customers, and they're always looking at that pot, and they come to you would one of the first things you'd be would be to look at the data and identify the opportunities that they have, potentially, to look at selling to their existing customers, rather than constantly looking at new customers 100% so I had a real life experience with that this year with a client, And when looking at the data, there was two clear trends here. So there was that 90% of their audience was one time customers that bought a sofa. But when you actually looked at their catalog, they had poofs, they had armchairs, they had pillows. And it's like right natural that someone might buy a sofa. Could we get them any more of these? But alternatively, we saw that quite a lot of audience were buying the freeze fabric swatches, so they was getting free swatches to see. And there was a big gap between people that bought that and then people that come to buy so you kind of try and solve both sides. It's like, right? How can we get those customers to buy more? But also there's, there's a clear gap here with people that are showing massive intent but still not buy them. So with those guys, or it might be that we run them a survey like the customers, and be like, hey, what other products would you like to see us launch? What? What products you think would complement your sofa? And then you can start to build it out from there. Amazing. So you've got two different lines of communication, I guess when you've got the two different buckets, the way that you would speak to new customers, people that haven't purchased yet and people that have just purchased once, so you're talking to them differently, because you're going to give them very different offers. And I think it's one of the things that I think the email marketing world is getting I think businesses are getting better, but the days of just sending the same communication out to everyone, you need to start personalizing it and tailoring it. So a good example there coming back to what was the main goals, we felt that comfort was one of the biggest things for people. But in with the swatches, we weren't actually making them aware that we've got a showroom in London come and sit on that sofa a current customer does not care about that, so I've got my sofa. I'm happy. So yeah, you do need to kind of start splitting it out and the way that you so make this a goal for your business, to start to focus and make more money from your existing customers. Would that be initially, that the survey that we talked about, so send a survey to those people that have purchased just once, and on that survey, are we predominantly asking them about what they would need, or what's the next problem that they've got? What's the next thing they're looking to buy? Is that the sort of angle of that survey, I would say so I think one way to always approach it is more dive, try and dive more deeper into their pain points and what challenges are they actually having? Because I think humans are really interested. Like, we say things sometimes that we don't actually follow through on our meme. So, like, I might say, yeah, do you know what? I'd love a lampshade. But if you go and launch a lampshade, they might not buy so it's more understanding, hey. Like, what pain points you are? You struggling with? What in your home do you maybe not like at the moment? And from there, can you create tailored offers really aiming at those pain points? So it's about really pulling out the desire that these customers have got, what are the pains they're still going through after purchasing once, to find out and that, I guess the sort of questions that you'd ask in that survey would be like, try to pull out what is, what is a pain that you're identifying currently with your furniture at home? Would that be the kind of questions you want to ask? For sure, it could. It could be something like, is there anything in your home that you're still unhappy with or you don't like? If you could wave a magic wand, what would you change about your home? What? What are you struggling with? So one thing the sofa branded really well is they created these jackets, sofa jacket that could allow you to change the color and design of your sofa different seasons. So one pain point they saw was, hey, I love the sofa, but I get quite bored, like once it hits autumn. I don't want a bright summer sofa. So for them, it was like, right, let's make these interchangeable jackets that allows them to change it in an instant. And that's a great example of taking that pain point and upselling them, and making your product have more of a unique selling point, maybe compared to competitors, brilliant. I love the idea of getting them to think about the magic wand idea, because that is going to expand their their mind, isn't it into thinking about things that they would maybe have never considered possible, but it's really tapping into what would be amazing, and if you can deliver on that, essentially you're giving that magic wand back to your your customer for their biggest desire. So I'd actually love to integrate that, that question into my follow up surveys post purchase, because I think that is a great way of finding out what people want next. I'd also say as well, like on the post purchase surveys, something that I've about. Anyways, you kind of and this is when, if you checked out on Shopify, you have some apps now that ask you right at the point of checkout. Is sometimes people can forget why they bought something, or they can forget what they were feeling in the moment of why they made that purchase. So I think with those kind of things, sometimes you might want to test asking them as soon as possible on that checkout experience to really get their true desire, because in six months, I might have forgotten that I hated my current furniture, and you might not get as much of the true answer that you're looking for. So speed are we key in getting on in front of people asking those questions while they're in the market, to find out what their main desires are, and that will inform how you speak to the next customer. You can speak to them knowing that that's a common desire that people have, sure. So zero party day is essentially data that customers give you personally. So if we broke out the different types third party data would be the data we see on Facebook ads or Google ads, this many people clicked, this many people purchased. This was our best performing ad. Then you've got first party data, which would be Google Analytics. This is how people are browsing your web page. But the riser zero party data is kind of twofold, one, because all the other cookies and data elements we're losing through privacy. But secondly, it's data that's solely linked to our audience and what we're trying to sell. So we don't care what business a up here, newcast we're doing. This is what apples are telling us, and the goal is essentially what. Can we get from the customers that can allow us to improve conversion, that can allow us to sell and communicate better, and that gives us a better chance of keeping them as customers? Okay, Josh, so the importance then of zero party data. Why does it? Why is it more beneficial than third party data that we can see on the Google Ads platforms or the meta Rav platforms. So I think the biggest one is because we're losing them, and they're becoming a lot more less trustworthy. I think the rise of apps like triple well and North beam, which is basically saying to you, look, this is your true attribution. And naturally, with anything, anything owned, anything that's reliant on businesses that are not you, you're always at risk of losing that data, like we could lose our Facebook accounts tomorrow. So I think one it's data that is getting lower quality, and we're not going to have for much longer. But I think mostly as well, is that we know that that data on zero party is most relevant to our business and our customers and our target audience. So I would say, Yeah, that's the poor reason. Fantastic. Yeah, something I've seen on work well with my businesses, is gathering data through quizzes on the site, so asking them all about and put it in a quiz way, which makes it quite fun, and they get a product recommendation at the end, and it asks them questions about why they're in the market, what sort of products they're looking for. And it has two benefits. So what is a product recommendation at the start? So they hopefully they purchase that. And the second benefit is all that data that we accrue with the quizzes to find out why people are on the sites. Is that an example that of that zero party data that we're accruing there? 100% it's understanding. Okay, what do people want what to what people want to get? And I think you can go the extra mile as well, which is like a phase two is then start to add context that data. So first phase understand are people that sign up their main goal is to help with their dry skin. That's That's great to know. But then can you start attributing revenue and conversion rates to what people have answered, and then that's when you can start feeling a bit more confident. Of our people with dry skin that have never had a skincare routine before are our highest driver of revenue. So when you then create ads, you want to speak to those people, because you know you're that they're your higher quality audience. Alternatively, like for your example, higher tickets. Let's take a sofa. If a lot of people are saying the most important thing for them is style, but the conversion rate is really low, it might be okay. Let's look at the product pages. Are we getting across the style element of this shit? Are we getting across reviews enough where the style is good, you can start filling gaps. Yeah. So with that data, you start to fill, fill the gaps on what you're unsure about before, but also something I want to touch on with you. Josh is with, with high ticket brands. It's quite easy for us sometimes to disregard the all of these, these techniques, the surveys, because we think that customers will only purchase once a high ticket offer. From your experience working with high ticket brands, for example, for example, sofa brands. Is there a real benefit in people get taking these surveys, following up with customers, and getting them to purchase again, even if it's a lower ticket item? I think so. Because I think twofold, what naturally comes with a higher ticket offer is potentially some more friction. If you're handing over a lot of money, you need to know it's not a spontaneous purchase, like a skincare product that's 20 quid. So when trying to convert that customer, the more data you have and what they want, the better that you've got of converting them. And then, yeah, I think secondly, if you can start getting an idea of, well, this is what they want to achieve here, you might then be able to go back into market and be like, Why don't we link in these products as well, and just see and test as upsell cross sells. Yeah, that's it. It seems like a a wasted opportunity if we get too focused on that new customers all the time and trying to find new customers, because you've got this database already, and if you can sell them again, that's going to go straight to the gross profit margin that you've got instead of having to be eaten into by that cost per acquisition again. So it's an opportunity there to actually speak to these people again. And even if we're in the high ticket world, easy to fall into that trap thinking, Oh, they'll only purchase once because they only need one of these, like a sofa for the next five years. But I think it's yeah, I just wanted to get that across in today's podcast episode, that there are certain things we can do to increase the lifetime value for every customer, regardless of whether that's high ticket or low ticket. For sure, what I would say as well is acquisition is like the father of all this. Like if a company stopped acquiring customers tomorrow, it will, you will soon see that database die out because it's you know, you need to keep replenishing it. And there's a good saying that without great acquisition, you can't have great retention, which I personally believe in. So for anyone listening to the podcast, this isn't to stop your acquisition efforts. Keep going full steam ahead, but I think you can use that effort you're. Julian to get double the value from it. Fantastic. Yeah, great message there. I think people could forget then about the acquisition if they got too focused on the retention. You can't, you can't retain a customer that you've never gained in the first place. So there has to be, it's a cycle, isn't it, to focus on both at the same time. So we focus predominantly on email marketing, playing a huge part in retention. Do you think email is the largest channel that we can use for for retaining customers? I'd say so for sure. I think most people, 99% of the email people in the world, have an email address. And I think the one thing, because I know SMS is starting to get more shout outs now through text messages, WhatsApp, I still think that that can be seen as a bit more intrusive for people I know, even me. Now, if I've got a whatsapp from a brand, instantly, I'd be like, Whoa, wow. We head in there. I think email is still and will be the most dominant. But there are other areas you can I think direct mail is a fascinating one, like postcards. You go through the door, have a personalized message. And for some brands, SMS can work, but email is still king for sure. Yeah, that's it, and I think it's the price of email is makes it so compelling for us compared to the direct mail? Does retargeting play a part in retention as well through through Google and meta, or does that go a bit further down the priorities list? No, for sure. I think one of the biggest values of growing your database with higher quality audiences is you can tap that into your Facebook ads, into your Google ads as audiences. So one thing we do with a lot of our clients is we'll set up those prospect groups, those one time customer groups, those repeat customer groups, make them Facebook audiences, Google audiences, and you've got on there, and that would continue to grow and grow and grow so it can, it can aid all the other channels. I always think email marketing is a great supporter of conversion, and it can support in many channels, as long as you can use it smartly. Yeah, absolutely, it's all part of that customer journey that's getting more and more complex. I guess, over the years, since you first started in 2013 there's a lot more touch points that we have now with customers compared to back in the day, in the 2013 era, when you first started running those Facebook ads, just to touch back on that, Josh, some of the differences that you've seen in E commerce over that long span of time would be interesting to dive into. Do you think the different type of channels that we that we use, is that one of the main things that you've seen as a difference? Great question. I think we've had to get more sophisticated with the channels we use, because it's got so competitive but I also think the effort that goes into those channels has become harder. So back in the day, in 2013 you could put kind of a rubbish image out as a Facebook ad, and you'd most culturally be like, Yeah, this will probably do well, whereas now you look at the effort brands are making with influencer content and UGC and really tailoring it to that audience. So the effort level and the quality level is so much higher than back in 2013 because it's so more competitive. A lot of stuff is commoditized, so bras need to find ways to stand out. I think the basics of business will never change. I think even in 50 years where if we had this podcast reunion, there'd be basic fundamentals that never change, but how we execute on them, I think, is changing all the time. Yeah, though it's interesting to dive into that. What do you think is the key then for somebody getting started now, obviously we don't want to be thinking about the heyday potentially. We want to be think about today. What would you say would be the key for people then, starting today, to compete in today's market? Think number one, know your unit economics, know your margins, know how much you can spend to acquire a customer. Because the reality is, is nowadays, if you get that wrong, you won't be lasting very long. You'll you'll just die out. So I think number one to anyone really know that are the product we've got here. We can spend this much of marketing, and we've got enough room to grow. So I think that'll be number one. And I think number two is kind of find a way to learn quickly back in the day, whether it's higher ticket products, it's our let's order a stock of 5000 units, one fat 10,000 units, if you're if you've got ways to sell small amounts and learn, learn what people like around what people don't like, the amount of risk that you have, and speed up your learning process. I'd also say, as well, another trend that's been fascinating is maybe start a newsletter, a lifestyle email, a blog that's related to your chosen niche, but not the business. So one thing customers now they're getting a lot smarter at are we know your brand. We know you're selling to us, but imagine your high ticket offer was T uh, yeah, sofas, you might want to start a blog. Of that surround home interior, and people that sign up to that just see you as a content creator, influencer, and then you link your business in the background, and I think people will be a lot more receptive, because they don't necessarily fit you're just selling to them all the time. Yeah, I love No, I love that idea. Josh, so that means creating your own blog in the niche that you've entered and subtly linking back to your website. Is that how you would actually operate and actually put that in place? I think it's really clever idea. I'm seeing more people talk about and more people do it. I don't know if you've seen the newsletter, the DTC newsletter. He has an agency in the back end. I'm quite sure that he links into his emails, but on front facing, no one would know. And I think it's a lot easier to gather traction and interest from people. Now, if it's just about a hobby, a passion, a lifestyle versus Hey, why am I product? Because they get that from everyone. So I think it's just a really clever way maybe to stand out, and just allows you to do it, maybe sometimes more profitably, because you're building up a real core audience, kind of like, while we're seeing a lot of influencers now creating their own brands, they've built up that audience. They've built up that they're like, we I don't need to do this by brands anymore. I can just create my own line. It's definitely saying, I think we're going to see more. Yeah, that all ties in with the need for a bit more trust in today's market, with there being more competition around love that idea, and we don't have to just rely on influencers. We can tap into that ourselves by creating our own audience in the niche and subtly linking back to the store. No, that is a that is a great idea. I really like that idea. It's because people like you say that, that when they hear things for a brand, they're always going to take it with a pinch of salt, whereas they hear it from a blog that is an impartial blog, because you're still going to give lots of value. I guess that's the the idea behind it is it's not just taking brands, word for it, for sure. And I think with Facebook ads, I think that's why we've seen the growth of whitelisted as well. Go into influence and be like, Hey, can we run our ads through your profile? Because the ability to convert via the brand's profile is diminishing, because they're getting it from everyone, but if they get it from John, who they've listened to for two years, they're like, Oh my God, yes. Okay, I trust John. Yeah. Why not? So we're even seeing it, I think, in the background, brilliant, Josh, it all ties in for what you said about the reasons you love getting into business, creating things that are sustainable for long term. And yeah, that all came from your initial experience of that extra sideburn that was left on. It could have been a a personal brand marketing player. You could have been known as the person with the one side, but I don't know. I could have sustainably kept it there. Brilliant, Josh. But now it's been fantastic having you on the podcast today. Thanks so much for sharing all of your valuable insights. If there's somebody listening that wants to learn more from you, where would you recommend that they go? Sure, so my website is Blackburn digital.com I'm also i'll post every weekday on LinkedIn, so if you want to fire me, it's Josh, a Blackburn on LinkedIn, and I've literally just launched my YouTube channel as well where I'm posting like videos so same. Josh J Blackburn on YouTube, and I'm post loads of content from free amazing. Thank you very much, Josh, yeah, I recently found your YouTube channel absolutely before jumping on and no amazing content. Would definitely recommend people to go and check that out directly after watching this episode, and we'll link it all in the show notes and the description of this episode. So thanks Josh again for joining us today. Cheered buddy pleasure. Yeah, thanks again. There to Josh. I really enjoyed that conversation there Louis, I mean, with so much value and insights that we can take away to integrate straight away. I know I'll be integrating things I talked about into my own e commerce businesses, and clearly focusing on retention and customer lifetime value is a huge opportunity for high ticket dropshipping business owners today. Yeah, it's a fascinating conversation, and some some really important insights into personalized communication and using data to enhance customers experiences as well. So lots of notes to implement into our own businesses. And yeah, I know if you implement Josh's strategies, you're going to transform how customers engage with your store, and you're going to get a lot more repeat purchases as well, which is not a bad thing, exactly. It's something that's often overlooked. It's not just about driving those initial sales. It's not all about acquisition. How can we turn our attention to attention as well to increase the lifetime value and, importantly, increase the amount of net profit at the end of every month in our businesses. In that approach aligns perfectly with our philosophy of providing value first and really helping customers out. And that's something that we always talk about on this podcast. Yeah, you've got to align that, that strategy with a foundational business model that works well, right? And I know that I lay out our home turf advantage model in my book, which you can get@htabook.com that'll provide you with a comprehensive strategy for getting your business off the ground. And if you can leverage retention marketing, like Josh talked about in today's conversation, whilst also ensuring that you have a business built on solid foundations using the home turf advantage. Model, then you're going to be in a really good place. So for anyone looking to apply these strategies effectively, from today, head to HTA book.com. Enjoying the podcast, we'd love to hear from you leave a comment or a review, and we might just feature it on an upcoming episode, also for detailed show notes and resources. Head to dropship, unlock.com. Forward slash podcast. If you found value from any episode of this podcast, please take just 10 seconds to leave us a quick five star review on your podcast. App of choice. It helps us more than you could imagine. And who knows, you might just hear your comments on the show. Thanks for being part of our community. Your support helps us keep delivering a new episode every week. Now it's that time in the podcast to answer a question that we've had in from a listener. So thank you for your questions. Remember, if you have a question that's come to your mind while listening or watching today's episode, all you need to do is ask that question in a comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode, and we'll get through as many as we possibly can. So that's exactly what Rob CS three, double one two has done. So he has asked, What trust signals can I add to my store to get customers to buy? Great question, Rob. So firstly, I would say customer reviews and testimonials. They're going to be your key trust signals that you can add. There's no better way of increasing trust than just social proof. So showcase your customer reviews prominently. Ask for customer reviews actively. Often, a customer won't leave you a review unless you actually prompt them and ask them to do so. But once you have them, make sure you feature them prominently on your website. The next thing that you can do alongside social proof is things like trust badges. So these might be if you offer something like free returns or fast delivery, then call those things out by using the trust badges. And now they're a really quick way to get really important messages to your customers. And you can achieve these through some apps on Shopify that you'll find in the app store that will put these trust badges and symbols and shields and things like that on your website, on your product page, on your homepage, or wherever you want them. Also some other trust symbols are things like payment symbols that you accept as a brand. So perhaps it's a secure checkout. Secure security checkout, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, whatever payment methods you accept, Amex. Can you showcase those on the site to make customers feel at ease that it's a payment method that you accept and that you have a nice, secure checkout, which if we were using Shopify, then we do by default. There's not much we have to do there to ensure that another thing that will boost customer trust is clearly outlining customer friendly policies. So easy return and refund policies. Make these policies really clear, easy to find. Don't try and hide the details of them. Just put them front and center, and customers will be relieved and realize that this is a brand that they're happy to buy from, or a retailer that they're happy to deal with as well. Try and ensure that your website looks professional, too. I know that it takes a little bit of time, and it can be a bit fiddly, but just make sure that it's clean, professional, functional. You know, if you've got any horrible color clashes, or if it doesn't look right on mobile, this is going to be something that brings customer trust down a level, because they're going to think, Well, is this a professional company or not? If the button kind of appears half off the screen, and, you know, it's not really been designed correctly. So just make sure that you're optimizing your site for mobile, and specifically on mobile fast load times. Now that's a benefit, both in terms of search engine optimization and higher Google rankings and search engine rankings for your site, because search engines favor sites that load quickly, but also just from a customer ease of use. You know you're going to annoy customers if your site takes 15 seconds to load because you've got some really high resolution hero image on your homepage or something. So make sure that those images are compressed, that you've optimized your site for fast loading times. And again, Shopify does this, and some of their their own themes within Shopify, even some of the free themes are incredibly fast as well. So great way of ensuring that you have fast load times. The other things are, if customers are looking at your products, then they'll be looking at the descriptions the images. So make sure you've got really good, detailed, benefit driven descriptions and high quality images of your products. Ideally, the image is in use by people as well. That will really help customers understand what they're buying and know that they can trust you. Perfect, lots of things we can implement there. So thank you, Rob for your question, and definitely implementing all of those is going to impact your conversion rate on the store and help customers to trust you more. So it's also time now to highlight a recent review that we've had for the podcast as well, one of my favorite things to do on every episode, because we can really shout out about the people that have left us reviews. So thank you very much for doing that. Today, we're going to highlight a review that we've had in through an apple podcast, an apple podcast review from Sergei somoviov, so Sergei, thank you very much. Sergey said, Lewis has put together not just a great method and not just a three. Podcast filled with positivity and encouragement. He's also managed to grow a tight community of like minded people helping each other out. Have a listen to all of the episodes. The guy really cares and really shows up. Thank you for that, Sergey. That means a lot. And yeah, great to hear that you found the podcast thrilling as well. It's really, really good to hear, but no, really appreciate your review there. It means a lot to hear that you've been enjoying the podcast and that you are enjoying being in our community as well. So thank you for that. So if this episode resonated with you today, would you consider sharing it with someone who might benefit from it? Your recommendations help us grow our community and continue delivering valuable content. So a quick share to a friend could make a big difference to someone that you know. Thanks for joining us on this episode of the dropship unlocked podcast. We hope you're walking away with insights and inspiration to kickstart your E commerce journey. Grab a copy of my book, the home of turf advantage@htabook.com it's a distilled guide based on real experience to help you build your E commerce venture. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button for more strategies and success stories. And if you like what you heard, a five star review would mean the world to us, and you might just get a shout out on an upcoming episode. And finally, thank you for deciding to spend your time with us today. We can't wait to bring you more insights on the next episode of the dropship unlocked podcast you.