The Dropship Unlocked Podcast

E-Commerce Growth Hacks: What the Best Brands Do with John Coyle (Episode 104)

• Lewis Smith & James Eardley • Season 1 • Episode 104

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🗣John Coyle is an expert in sales attribution and e-commerce growth, and a key player at Triple Whale. John shares his extensive experience in optimising marketing channels, improving sales attribution, and leveraging data for e-commerce brands.

With Triple Whale tracking 10% of all Shopify revenue, John offers insights into what makes successful brands tick, and how you can use these growth hacks to scale your e-commerce business.

👉 Prefer to watch this on Youtube? Check it out here  ➡️ https://youtu.be/BwwRpB70hag

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Topics Discussed:

★ The Evolution of E-Commerce Sales: Why 2020 was a game-changer for e-commerce and how iOS 14’s privacy updates reshaped how brands approach sales and marketing, particularly with platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

★ How Sales Attribution Has Changed: The critical role of Triple Whale in tracking sales across multiple touchpoints.

★ Building a Sustainable Growth Strategy: Why demand generation and demand capture must work in tandem.

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Links and Resources Mentioned:

Follow John on all social platforms: @JohnJHCoyle

John’s Podcast: Dark Mode with John Coyle

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:

★ Demand Capture vs. Demand Generation: Not all e-commerce brands need to create new demand from scratch.

★ Multi-Touch Customer Journeys: The buyer’s journey is complex and involves multiple touchpoints across channels.

★ Leverage Sales Attribution: Accurate sales attribution allows you to optimise ad spend by understanding which channels and ads are converting and which aren’t, allowing you to scale your business more effectively.

★ Reframe and Replace: By reframing products to solve a different problem or positioning them as replacements for a bad habit.

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★★★Dropship Unlocked - Lewis Smith★★★

🌏Watch Our Free Training ➽ https://www.dropshipunlocked.com/training?el=podcast-104-ecom-growth-john-coyle

In today's episode, we've got John Hoyle joining us. He's a real pro when it comes to sales, attribution and E commerce growth, especially through his work at triple whale, John has access to data from over 10% of all Shopify revenue, which is pretty wild when you think about it. He's got a lot of insight into what actually works for E commerce businesses. So if you're serious about growing your store, you've got to want to stick around for this one. That's right, Lewis, one of my favorite episodes to record so far with John. He was great guest, and he could dive deep for us into the world of sales attribution, and he was revealing the strategies that successful e commerce brands are using right now to optimize their marketing channels and boost conversions. So if you've ever wondered where your sales are really coming from, or how to make better data driven decisions in your business, then this is a perfect episode. Yeah, exactly. And by the end of today's episode, you'll know how to apply John's tactics to really drive growth in your own business. So let's dive in. You. 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 figure business, my book, the home turf advantage is your blueprint for launching a profitable online store. Grab your copy@htabook.com today, and let's get you started now, sit back, relax, and let's unlock your potential with the dropship unlocked Podcast. Today, we are joined by John Coyle on the podcast, who is an expert in sales attribution and E commerce growth. John is a key player at triple whale and has a wealth of knowledge in optimizing marketing channels and improving sales attribution for E commerce brands. So firstly, John, it's fantastic to have you with us on the podcast today. Good to be here. Man, thanks for having me. Awesome. Yeah, it's our pleasure. So excited to dive into some important topics around e commerce growth at the moment. But first of all, could you share us a bit of your journey in the E commerce space and how you ended up working at triple whale, yeah, for sure. So, I mean, if you rewind probably 810, years now, I was working at this agency, and we mostly worked with major like car dealerships and stuff like that. And e commerce started booming. So this is probably around 2015, or so, and I brought in some e commerce clients into our agency, and I kind of got really focused on that. And then one day they called me up. They called me in to their my boss called me into his office and he fired me. I had no idea that that that was coming, and it was like a pretty big, pretty big blow. I had a kid at home, and I had another kid on the way. My wife was pregnant with a second and so I just went and kind of like sat in the parking lot and didn't call my wife because I was too afraid. So I made a couple other calls, though. So since I'd been getting into E commerce and more online sales, as opposed to Local Lead Generation, I'd made some connections at events and in in like, Facebook groups and communities and stuff. So I made some other calls, two or three other calls, and I got, like, maybe two or three freelancing clients sort of right there in the parking lot, and that, that sort of started my journey that evolved into an agency, an agency, a paid media agency, that I sold. And then, you know, that was an Acqui hire, so I had that agency, I sold that and then I was the head of performance at an agency called structured agency, which was who I sold it to. Then I've been internal, I've been the head of growth at a couple brands, and I've have my own brand, so I've been doing lots of E commerce since then, I've been at triple well for about a year, and that, I think one of the best parts of that job is just the access to data that I have. I can, you know, we have got probably close to 12,000 stores on Triple well now, and it's like 10% or 12% of all of Shopify revenue, you know, is attached to triple well, so we have a massive data set to see what's working and what isn't. And my main job is to just get on calls with people, Owner, operators and their marketing teams and marketers and people who are just trying to sell online, and tell them how they can do it better, using all of the knowledge that I have in the data that I have. So it's a good time. That's my that's my background, my three minute the three four minute version. Yeah, absolutely. That's a perfect background story. So much to unpack. 10% of all Shopify data goes through triple whale that that's fascinating. I think you'll have loads of data points that we can pull out. Why do you think it's. High at the moment. Well, I mean, if you rewind a few years, I don't know how long most of your audience has kind of been in the E commerce space, but if you rewind a few years back to 2021 there was this sort of like perfect storm of events that happened so throughout the 2010 so 2015 that was like 2015 2016 I would say that was like the heyday of drop shipping. You could, you could drop ship literally anything. It didn't have to be a high end product. It didn't you could drop it, ship it from AliExpress. It could take 30 days to get there. It didn't matter, right? You could just do whatever it got that got harder and harder. 2017, 1819, that it started getting harder. But then in 2020 it took a reverse. It like kind of reverted, reverted back to being really easy again, because of the pandemic. You know, at least here in the States, there was a lot of stimulus money, and people were at home. They didn't have anything to do. They were shopping. And that really kind of like a lot of brands had a big spike in revenue in 2020 2021, things started going back to normal. People started going back to work or just not being at home as much. And another thing that happened at that time was iOS 14. So Apple rolled out and an update to their operating system, so on all Apple devices, iPhones and that, that update made it really hard to run Facebook ads, so Facebook stopped tracking very accurately if you were running Facebook ads before that, that was kind of the main driver of most e commerce for and it still is, but it all of a sudden, you know, you would log into Facebook and your return on ad spend. Would you know before it was saying you were making $3 for every dollar you spent on ads, and you log into Facebook, and now you're making, you know, 50 cents for every dollar you spent on ads. But then you go to your store, and the number's super different, and it was just really hard to tell what was going on. And that's exactly what that update did. So triple whale launched right around that same time, and sort of created a third party attribution tool, which is just a tool that says, hey, it doesn't matter if that applies to Facebook, like, we can still track it and tell you how well your campaigns are doing all the way from you know, your campaign level, ad set level, ad level, because that was the hardest thing, is you just didn't know which ads to turn off and which ads to keep on, what was working and what wasn't. So triple whale came in and solved that problem. And I think that was really a ton of the tailwind that that helped us grow, and that's still a problem today. You know, brands, like a lot of your customers, maybe, who are a lot of your listeners, who are selling higher ticket products. It's multiple touch, you know, they don't. People don't see one Facebook ad and then go buy or, you know, they see a Facebook ad, they get on the email list, they click a Google ad, and there's just, like, multiple touch points. People don't follow the nice, clean paths that we create for them. So that's still an issue. It's like, where are my sales coming from? Everybody's trying to answer that question, how do I spend my advertising dollars more effectively? So that's how triple whale has grown so fast. Now we've got a bunch of other tools and stuff like that, a bunch of other ways that we help, but that's, that's sort of the main thing. I think that drove a lot of our growth early on. Yeah, and it is a huge tailwind, because there's massive growth in just three years to have 10% of all Shopify revenue attributed through triple whale. So it's huge. Clearly, there's a big demand for people, and it's not quite so cut and dry as somebody clicks on a Facebook or Google ad, goes to your store, checks out, converts, and then the Facebook ad is attributed to having that driven that sale. Nowadays, there's so many more touch points, and I guess that's a big part of what triple whale does, just talking about e commerce in general. Now, for people that are considering like, how we sell to people nowadays, and you meant to mention multiple touch points. What's like a typical journey that you think in 2024 people would take to buy a product, particularly if they're looking to buy a high ticket item? Yeah, I think particularly if they're trying to buy a high ticket item, I usually see this is just typical of what I see when I get on a consulting call, you know, a marketing consulting call with a brand, and I look at the mix of where the traffic is coming from, where they're spending money, there's almost always some channel that's leading discovery, and that is usually, it's usually meta still, so It's usually Facebook and Instagram still, and it's usually ads, right? Sometimes it's Tiktok, and specifically, there's been some brands in the past year or so built on Tiktok organic people really kind of taking off on there and with Tiktok shop. Sometimes it's also like podcasts, podcast sponsorships or creator integrations. Specifically, I'm seeing YouTube creator integrations work really well right now. So usually there's some sort of, like, main discovery, demand generation channel, and then there's sort of a, like, a web of demand capture, you might say. So you're getting all the eyeballs you can with some type of funnel channel. And then there's good. Google, and there's email, there's usually Microsoft, which is Bing and text message and all those things that sort of like all of that traffic that comes in, you just don't want to let any of it leak out. And those are usually cheaper and they're higher return. So that's like, what's very typical. I would say there's sort of another path, especially for high ticket, where a brand might purely be a demand capture brand. A good example of this, and high ticket is an ice tub brand or a cold plunge brand that isn't plunge. So plunge really sort of like came in and created all this demand for cold plunging or I do taking ice baths, whatever you want to call it. You know, athletes have been doing it for like, 10 years, but they made it cool because they got Andrew Huberman to talk about it, right? So they've run Facebook ads, they've run podcast ads, they've done all of that. And that's created, like, this massive trend and wave. And then there are some brands that really just, like are an alternative, and they just kind of run Google ads, and they go on Amazon, and they and sometimes run Amazon ads, and they just take a piece of whatever of the pie, however pie, the big is, however big the pie is. They just take a piece of it, and they don't necessarily go out and try and create demand for themselves. The upside there is, in some cases, it's easier. I think there's only maybe two or three or four brands at a time that can really do that, depending on how big the market is and how much it's growing. The upside is, you know, it's a little bit easier for those few that kind of, like, get in at the right time and just sort of ride the wave that's being created by something else. The downside is, you have no control over your own destiny. If that trend goes away, you're you're not creating trend at all. You're not generating demand at all. You can't grow, you know, at what you don't have really a growth so I would say that that's like a lot of what I see now is there's brands that purely live at the bottom of funnel and just capture demand, of like, people who are already interested in grills or ice tubs or, you know, smokers or something like that. And then there's and then there's brands that have some form of, like, top of funnel, we're going out and getting eyeballs, and then they have a whole web there's upsides and downsides to both. And I know your question was, what's a typical customer journey? The answer is, for tide ticket, I wouldn't say that there's anything typical about it, right? Like it's, for example, you might see somebody click on a Google Click on your Google ads like, 30 times in the same day. You might see somebody click on your Facebook ads three times, go back, click again, go back, click again, and you know, then go back and like, click another retargeting ad later, click your email, wait two weeks, then click three Google ads. Like, it's just, it's all over the place, especially with high ticket, I would say customer behavior. When you break it down to a person by person, which you can do in triple whale, you can just pull up a customer and look at their their journey. When you break it down to person by person, it gets a little it gets a little wonky, but, yeah, I mean, super common. I think first touch, second touch channel. So it'd be like a meta first touch with a last touch on, a second touch on either Google or email, and a last touch on either Google or email, amazing, but it's important to have more than just one prong attack. There's got to be some sort of discovery and then something to mop up the, you know, capturing the demand, either from another brand that's created that demand, maybe the brand that you've actually partnered with, the suppliers that you sell, or another brand in your industry that's actually a competitor, you can mop up their demand, or even just retargeting people that have been to your site. Says, mix it, both for sure, and there's, there's even like, a pathway, I know that people become like authorized resellers on Amazon, you know what I mean. So I have a friend who has, like, a pretty large Amazon business by just being one of the five or 10 authorized resellers for different brands, right? So for like, Darn Tough socks, he's one of the 10 authorized resellers on Amazon, or, you know, it could be hokushos or whatever. Those are lower ticket things, but Camp Chef, you're one of the five authorized resellers on Amazon. So that's a whole path, too. And I actually think one of the things that I've noticed at triple well, that I find really interesting, interesting is that I've always, like, been more of a Facebook advertiser, Tiktok, like demand, generation advertiser. And I would say that probably 60. I mean, still 70% of all the spend that we see 65 to 75% of all the spend that we see is on meta, depending on the time period that you're looking at. But I can see brands that are the same kind of brand appeal to the same demographic. They're competitors of each other, but they just have completely different ecosystems when it comes to how they spend their money. One might be like really having Google heavy Google, really heavy Amazon. One might be really heavy meta. And what I kind of think is that it's like and they're like animals, right? So animals live in different ecosystems. You got lions that live in Africa, and they're an apex predator there, and then you have Bengal tigers that live in India, and they're an apex predator there. And in their own right, they're both apex predators. They just live in completely different ecosystems, so they never really, you know, like they're able to both exist in the same world. I think that's true of brands as well. Like there are some that live in this demand gen space, and demand generation space on meta or on Tiktok, or, you know, running creator integrations, or any. Channel like that, and they just live in a completely different environment than the brands that are capturing a lot of the demand that exists in the market. Be the winner in each different environment. So the way that we set up our E commerce browsers give me some more context about the type of marketing we do is we'll predominantly have Google ads running for our high ticket items as our demand generation, or would try and expand the market, because won't necessarily just run for search terms of like the brand names, would also run for like the products themselves, or the problem that your market might be having to drive sales, and then we mop up with meta retargeting as well as Google Display Network retargeting ads. But my question back to you after the initial point you made was if somebody decided that they wanted to really double down on being the apex predator in demand generation for their industry. But they're fairly new to the industry, and they haven't got a lot of experience. I imagine that's more of a harder path to take, rather than just mopping up demand. Kind of, how would you advise them to do that? Would you? Would you say, like, tick tock is the way to go, or learn social media or, like, how could you, how could you improve their skills at generating demand? Yeah, and this is why this has always attracted me. I think there's more skill in generating demand. And I would actually even argue that, like, the like, layout, like, what you just said, the formula you just said, it's still mostly a demand capture formula, unless you're literally going after, like, pain point keywords where you're maybe going after, like, how to sleep, if you're selling cold plunges or whatever, how to sleep better at night. And then you're trying to write an article that attaches that to a cold plunge. That might be kind of demand generation. But like, if you're running p max campaigns or shop campaigns, that's still demand capture. You know what I mean? People are a certain way down the funnel before that's working. So like, truly making demand gen generation work. If you look at some of the examples, I think it's not about a platform so much as being a skilled marketer generally. So what I mean by that is, like, there's a formula for creating an offer that, like Alex hermosi says that I think actually works pretty well. And it's, if you think of it's like a, you know, Dream outcome, times perceived likelihood of achieving the dream outcome. And that's on top of, like a division bar, right? And then on the bottom is, like, the time, how long it's going to take, time delay and effort and sacrifice, so like, price and how hard it's going to be. That's an effort and sacrifice section and time delay, how long it's going to take. So using a simple example of weight loss, which most, most of your client? I mean, some of your clients might be selling exercise equipment or something that are not clients. See. That are not clients. See, keep saying clients. Some of your listeners might be selling exercise equipment, um, you know, if I buy, like, what's my dream outcome here, if I buy this, you know, this at home, like, workout thing, it's, it's, I want to be shredded. I want to be I want to look good, right? What's my perceived like, that drew that's a big dream outcome. I might want to be healthier. Maybe I'm not, you know, maybe I have some health issues I want to, you know, like, do better with the ladies, whatever it is, right? That's a big dream outcome. So that's great. You've nailed that. But what's my perceived likelihood of success? Probably pretty low, honestly, because there's a reason I don't look like that in the first place. And if I had, like, a bunch of willpower, I wouldn't be I would already look how I want to look, right? So I already don't have a lot of willpower, and I already don't really believe that an at home workout thing will make it so that I look good right. Time Delay is going to take a long time, because I'm gonna have to do it for, like, I'm gonna have to work out for three months, six months, whatever, and then effort and sacrifice. Well, not only do I have to pay you for this at home workout thing, but I also have to to use it every day, right? So there's a lot of effort and there's a lot of sacrifice. So what can you sell that for a few $100 maybe 1000 I don't know. If you go after a different market, you know of people who know that they're fit and know that they're active, and just want convenience, then you're changing the dream outcome to convenience, which is not as big of a dream outcome, but you're making all of the other things better, right? So I think a lot of demand generation is just finding the right combination of formula and messaging that is going to work for your product, right? So weight loss, if you take the example of an exercise equipment thing that I just said, I kind of laid out that formula. What about, like a gastric bypass? So just go get have my stomach stayed. Well, I'm gonna get the dream outcome. It's gonna happen. I'm 100% sure it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen tomorrow. So all of it, you know, all of it, is really high, which is why you they charge a lot of money for it, because the only real barrier is effort and sacrifice, and the only sacrifice have to make his money and a little bit of some recovery time from surgery, right? So that's why that's a lot of money. So like, that's the value equation. And the brands that are great at demand gen are just great at the value equation, which happens in your product you're offering, and your messaging. Like, it's this whole thing. It's not just ads, not just the messaging. So if you get really good at that, then I don't. Know that it matters that much what channel you do it through? If that makes sense, right? It could be through tick tock. It could be through meta ads. I think meta ads is usually the simplest place to start. It still has it's still probably the best way to run paid ads and give yourself the best likelihood of success in the shortest period of time, unless you're really good at tick tock organic, if you if your product is the kind of product that can go viral on Tiktok organically, there's a couple examples of this right now, or there are, kind of always, are a couple examples of products that are just going viral on Tiktok organically. If it's that kind of thing, then maybe Tiktok could work for you. But otherwise, I think, and I would focus on organic content then. But otherwise, I think, if you're going to start with paid ads, and you're going to try and do demand generation. Meta is probably the easiest channel, but the more important thing is that you nail the messaging and you nail that offer equation, which is why I like demand generation, because there's more human touch and more kind of like figuring out, the better you get at that, the more of an advantage you have. There's a skill set, you know, yeah, exactly. And it's more of an abundance that you know you can create in your market, if you can be the one that creates the demand, it's that control that you mentioned earlier. You're not relying on there being demand already. So you know that you can write your own paycheck because you can build the demand that's there. I've got some simple examples too, right? So cold plunge is a great high ticket, simple example where ice pass have been a thing for a long time amongst athletes, but they just went and said, like, Okay, how could we make this more like, well, what if we change the dream outcome from athletic performance to weight loss or health better sleep, whatever, all of the stuff that people are into right now? So I think, you know, reframing a product to solve a different problem. Another good example of doing this. There's two that come to mind for me. A good example, a couple good examples, true, classic tees. So they just sell T shirts, plain black T shirts, plain white t shirts, plain gray T shirts. But they sell T shirts for guys with Dad Bod, right? So like this, T shirts gonna make your dad bod look sexy. So it's just this, like a thing that already exists. Reframed, right? Is one, one tactic of that. Another one is hostage tape. These are all those are both lower ticket, true, classic and hostage tape. Hostage tape just sells tape, right? But you tape, they've, they've reframed it to say, you know, if you want to have more clear thinking, better sleep all of these, you know, same kind of things as cold plunge. Then you should tape your mouth shut at night, because apparently mouth breathing at night is ruining your life and you're gonna die young. So like that, they've just kind of, so that's one tactic is reframing. Another tactic is replacing. Then I'm just, I'm calling out some brands that I see doing really well right now in 2024 right? Because it used to be, I think you could add something supplemental, right, where it's like, here's another supplement, or another thing you can take to achieve your dream outcome. But now I think if you can frame it up as, here's a thing that you're already doing that you could replace with this other thing, and it's not going to change too much, and it's not going to cost any extra, but that other thing is going to move you more toward your dream outcome. So any alcohol replacement is this right now, lion's mane is a big kind of ADHD replacement thing where, or like, an Adderall replacement, where people say, oh, like, right now you're taking Adderall and you want this dream outcome of being focused and being successful and stuff like that. You know, take this other all natural thing instead, and you're already paying for this thing. So, like, we're not taking any extra wallet share. There's a brand called breeze, b, r, e, z, that is positioning pretty often as an alcohol replacement, right? You're already spending money on alcohol. Spend money on this cannabis and lions made and drink instead, because that's going to move you toward your dream outcome a little bit better, and you're still going to get that sort of like Buzz effect that you get from alcohol. Bread Roy there's a brand called Royal bread, r o, y o bread that they sell bagels that are, like, two grams net carbs and 70 calories. They're pretty good. They taste pretty good. So, like, here's a thing you already buy. It's horrible for you. Here's another thing you can buy that still tastes pretty good, but is going to, like, move you toward your dream outcome a lot better. So you don't always have to make the dream outcome huge and make them buy this extra thing. Sometimes you can say, well, what are they doing right now? That is like, not moving them like, that's that's kind of like holding them back from their dream outcome. Are they wearing? Are they wearing some nasty, baggy t shirt that's more of a reframe of a product. But like, are they drinking regularly? Well, they know that that's not good for them. Are they taking are they drinking a bunch of caffeine? They know that that's not good for them with something they know they're doing right now that's like, hold back on their dream outcome. How can I just position my thing as a replacement to that so it's not going to cost them extra money, and it's going to move them toward the dream outcome a little bit better. So those are a few tax better. So those are a few tactics I see working right now. I think that wallets are a little bit tighter at the moment. So I think the reframe of a product or the replacement angle works pretty well. From a messaging standpoint, is perfect. That perspective, or that frame of having the value equation is brilliant for people that are unsure how they can make their. Product more valuable, even if another store is selling the exact same product, and we don't have the luxury of tinkering with the actual product itself, because the suppliers are in charge of the products. And so what we are in charge of is the way that we message, or the messaging that we create around our products, is up to us, but to get that message across for people that want to start generating more demand for their products. It's difficult. Well, I suppose it you could do it with Google, but with Google ads, you don't have as much say over life. You can't put a video on there, necessarily, unless, unless you're using YouTube ads. So potentially, meta makes it easier for you to get the offer across, or tick tock. Or is that on the mind, the right the right lines? I think, yeah, that. And that's where I really think, you know, YouTube, meta, Tiktok, like, that's where I really start to define demand generation, I guess, display, if you go into some kind of like advertorial, most people don't do that in E commerce, but yeah, that's, that's where I really start to define demand generation is. I don't know that it can be done with, like a Google Pmax or shirt or search, for the most part, I guess p max. You know, it's all placements, but let's say Google Shopping or search. I don't know that. I don't really think demand generation can be done there. I think that's the man capture pretty, pretty squarely. So, yeah, I think it's, it's usually in video ad, like the bet the best performing banger. Ads that create demand gen are video ads, but oftentimes you'll see better, sort of like a lower seeing high, lower ceiling, higher floor from image ads special on meta, um, not always, but a lot of the time. And that, I think, is because people meta is actually a viable demand capture platform as well. So you know, if you just are, like, showing the product, there are some portion of people who are just in market for the product. So the Great, the greatest demand gen ads, I believe, are usually video ads that start at a pain point. So if you think of people as, like, unaware, problem, aware, solution, aware, product aware, and your product aware, meaning, I'm completely unaware that I even have a problem at the top. That's that, you know, like, that would be like saying, hey, like, Are you a person who takes Adderall every day? Are you? Do you have? You had add your whole life, right? Like you don't even know you have a problem. Now I'm going to educate you on how bad Adderall is. You didn't even know you had a problem. Or a problem where, like, Hey, you take Adderall all the time and it changes your personality, right? Like you're already aware of the problem. You You really have to be starting messaging with that sort of angle in order to be doing true demand capture, I think you know. And then you're moving them into solution aware. Here's a solution, here's a product, here's my product, and why ours is good. And usually you want to try and frame up some sort of unique mechanism of your product, if you can, amazing. Yeah, perfect. So it's good about after a colder audience, but then there's more legwork for us as the business owner to educate. But if we can pull through people from cold audience all the way through to purchasing, then yeah, you can have such a wide net approach, massive market available. And then, to tie this all back to sales attribution, what the work you're doing with triple whale at the moment? And you mentioned that it's difficult to look at individual customers because they're so random, seemingly how they end up purchasing. So triple whale, I guess a big, a big reason why you'd have chipper whale is because it starts to connect the dots when you've got a large enough sample size. Is that kind of the way that chipperware works? Yeah, if we're to use an example here, I know that, you know, we've kind of been using a couple high ticket examples, but let's say grills, barbecue or a smoker or something like that, right? You know, if I were to try and think of just off the RIP like a more of a demand generation type of angle, I might say, well, how much do you spend on DoorDash per month, you know what I mean. Or, how much do you spend eating out per month? Let me tell you why you do that. Xy, like, you know, here's this thing about human psychology that makes it so you have this, you know, whatever. Say, tell some story about, like, why they do that, why that's not their fault. And here's the solution. Of like, if every Saturday you spend two hours or Sunday, you spend two hours using this, you'll have all your meals for the week. They'll be delicious. You'll be looking forward to eating them, and you'll be eating healthier, right? And you'll be and you'll be saving money, right? And so now I've framed up my grill as a solution to a problem, and I've also framed it as alternate like this cost, you know, you're gonna actually save money, even though you buy this grill, right? So that all like, you know, for somebody to consume that whole message and make a decision to make a 600 or 800 or if you're talking about a smoker, maybe a couple $1,000 purchase in one like, once they're scrolling through Instagram, you know, and looking at whatever their favorite creators or their friends photos or whatever, you know, or bikini pics, it's a lot like, you know, they're probably not going to make the decision right then, but you've, you've moved them down the funnel with that message, and if the message is great, some of them will see it and make that whole decision right then, and you'll get some sort of sort of first click return out of that ad. But where the real magic will happen will be that they're just they're moved down a little bit, so maybe they go start researching on Google, and then you're there, right or they get retargeted with other ads by you on meta and you're there, or they're on Tiktok and you're there. Or and, or they come and they opt in to your email list for the promo code for the 20% discount, or 10% discount that you have in your pop up, but they don't buy today. Now they're on your email list and you can nurture them. So that's where a lot of the magic zero happen on a 600 or $1,000 or pound product is, you know, a lot of people aren't going to watch that video. Be like, you know what you're right and buy it right today. Now, the better you can make the offer, the more of a no brainer you can make the offer, the more of them will buy today. And that's what you're after. So what you're after, your life will be much simpler if you can get first click returns. You know, the more first click returns you can get, the simpler your what life will be. That's just again. Like I said, people don't follow these nice, clean paths we create for them. You know, they might be in the bathroom, they might be online at Starbucks, their name gets called and they get distracted, right? And so you that's, you know, you everybody said this, you got to retarget, you got to be everywhere. You got to follow up, right? But the hard part is measuring the incremental value of, like, what did that first ad do, versus what are these other ones doing? And that's, I think, what triple whale really helps clarify, yeah, because otherwise, we don't know where the returns coming from, so you don't know which ads to optimize if you haven't got some sort of system that's telling you what's actually driving the sale, right? And you have that ad that had that message, and then you might have another ad that have has more of a message of, like, you know, hey, do you want to have more, like, quality family time or something like that, right? So you try and some different messages, and you need to get the feedback of like, what is getting better first click returns on like that first, you know, people watch it and buy today, and then also, what's getting better, downstream returns. So what's like building that audience that converts later, a little bit better, right? So you want to be able to look at that data in a couple different ways, which is a big thing. I mean, the platforms don't allow you to do that. So that's a big thing on Triple whales, that you can kind of look at the data like in multiple ways, right? Yeah, exactly. Just to hammer home, like, the importance of actually looking at your data so you can then make decisions. If you don't take notice of the attribution or what's driving your sales from different areas, then where does that? That leave us? Yeah. I mean success, probably in life, but definitely in business. I don't know that I should be giving anybody life advice, but success in business is just a series of good decisions, right? The the you have, if you're a founder, if you if you own a brand, or if you're, you know, a drop shipper, whatever you are, you just show up every day, and you make a bunch of decisions every single day, right? And the the cumulative sort of outcome of those decisions is what your level of success is. So if you make a bunch of like, medium win decisions, then you get kind of a medium outcome. If you make some great ones, some bad ones, you get a medium outcome. The more you know, like good decisions you make, whether that is cutting this ad and scaling this ad, or changing the price from 800 to $849 or whatever it is, the more like good decisions you make, the more success you end up having. And in order to make good decisions, you need information, right? And so that's that's that's kind of what it is if you don't do that, if you don't gather the information, you just don't have that you're making those decisions with your gut. And I'm actually not told it for somebody who works at a data company, you know, I'm not really against. I think, I think people have pretty good gut instincts a lot of the time, but it's good to be able to also look at some data and some information and some more objective, you've got some subjective sort of gut feelings, and then you've got some objective data, and that'll just leads to better decisions, you know? So if you make 810, 10 decisions a day, and then you can, and right now, the average is like, you're, you're scoring a six out of or six or seven out of 10 on all of those decisions. So you're getting a six or seven out of 10 outcome. If you're, if you start averaging seven or eight or eight and a half on those decisions, or you start getting a seven or eight and a half, seven to eight and a half outcome, you know, that's quite a bit better, right? That goes from a business that's maybe barely struggling to get by to a business that's putting up some pretty good profit for you exactly. Now, I like that good way of looking at it, how quality your decisions are can be purely based on the data that you're making those decisions off of, and if it's off, poor quality data, so poor quality decisions, and then poor quality results off the back of it. But just to dive into something that you mentioned, because you obviously get access to loads of data, and I guess I got, I want to pull out some of the tips or shortcuts or tips and tricks that you're seeing work really well for big brands, for for E commerce, specifically, and high ticket, I guess product, if anything comes to mind, like high ticket brands that you can see and the way that they're able to either generate demand for their products or close people. So either, whether that's just the capturing, capturing the demand initially, or it's actually mopping up in the end. So anything that comes to mind that you're seeing high ticket brands doing that's really helping that performance? Yeah, I've covered some of it already. So like, for example, I think meaningful tactic that maybe not a lot of people think about, maybe some of your listeners do, but a lot of people, I think, don't think about, is, like, you don't have to generate the demand it. You catch the trend at the right time, you know. So whatever the the next sort of three to probably three ish, three to four. Maybe ice tub brands were after plunge. They could just exist on Amazon and on Google and do pretty well. You know, there's, there's an essential oil. Oils brand that I consult with, and essential oils is primarily grown. The demand generation for pre for essential oils is is primarily in multi level marketing. So it's direct sales. They don't do that. They just like price a little bit cheaper, and they're huge on Amazon. And because then, you know, all this demand is created for like lavender oil and tea trail oil and jojiba and castor oil and all this stuff. So then people go search it on Amazon and on Google, and there they are, right? So all those direct sales reps, or, you know, whatever you call them, MLM people, the basically, Utah moms are out there just peddling it to their friends on Instagram. And you know, then once their friends actually start to like it and don't want to buy it for$50 a bottle anymore, they go find it for $25 a bottle from this brand. So they don't control their own destiny. Of course, if that market shrinks or grows, that they're subject to that. But I think that's like a very valid tactic that i i have not thought of as much, but you just, you have to be aware that that's what you're doing, and that, like you're not going to project growth. You're saying we're just taking what the market gives us, right? So that's one thing, I think. The other thing I covered is replacement brands. I think do really well. Are doing really well at the moment, or reframing a product to be for a different thing, right? These are T shirts, but they're T shirts for Dad bod. This is, you know, tape, but it's taped for your mouth at night, right? So reframing a product, I think that's probably harder to do than doing a replacement brand. So replacement brands, I see that as a trend that's working really well right now. Another thing, I think, as a channel that's working really well right now for especially high ticket is, uh, pod is podcast advertising, and I'll be more specific, so podcasts that have a significant presence on YouTube, or YouTube creators that specifically create content that is content, you could have a parasocial relationship with them. And so they talk, you hear their voice, and you see their face, and you know some of their opinions, and you know some things about them, and people feel like they're friends with the Creator. So, you know, specifically on the channel of YouTube, I think Instagram's gotten a little overpriced in the influencer space, Tiktok. Scott, I mean, there is a trend around Tiktok too. I'll circle back to but Tiktok is kind of its own thing. But specifically YouTube creators that create long form content, whether it's podcast or some other form of content where they talk and like people listen and people see their face. I'm seeing a lot of high ticket brands do well in that space, and not a lot of and there's a barrier there, though, you know what I mean? Like, you've got to be willing to just spend the five or $10,000 to do the to do the video product integration, and it might totally flop. Like, I've seen people spend three four grand and get two sales on a product that's 200 bucks. So you've got to be willing to, like, take a big risk. And that's actually kind of why it works, because there's still human to human deals. So there's, there's, like, you can find market inefficiencies with human to human deals, and that you've got to be willing to, like, take that risk, where on Google, you can start at 50 bucks a day, you know what I mean. So those are a couple trends I'm seeing. Tiktok is also a trend. I would say the most exciting trend on Tiktok is people who are getting Tiktok creators to talk about their products and as part of the Tiktok sort of affiliate program in link to their Tiktok shop. Tiktok is moving, like pushing the a lot of volume of views and organically into those videos, you know. Or there are some creators who are or there's some brands that are going live, they're creating their own content that goes viral and sells a lot of product in their Tiktok shop. Or they're going live a lot and selling a lot of product in their Tiktok shop. There's one brand. This is not high ticket, but there's a brand called DAP sports, da pPZ. If you look them up on Tiktok, they're just live all day, every day, selling sports cards, you know. So I think there's, you know, that's also sort of a lane or a trend that I see in this year 2024 but, yeah, I mean, a lot of it comes down to, like, the first two things I said, Where can you frame it up as a replacement brand, or something like that? That's what it comes down to, because then you can message it anywhere. You know, yeah, it's pretty I love it. I think the replacement idea is one that stands out to me. And also collecting demand. You don't have to be the one that creates the demand, because a lot of skin in that. And if you haven't got experience, if you can just experience, if you can just see trends, if you're very good at spotting a trend and being the second or third mover in that industry, then you can benefit from all of the demand that that first person brings. Yeah, in terms of quick one of the replacement works, I think people will be interested in trying that. How would you identify a product that you know would be likely for replacement? So if you know that an iPhone, how would you how would you like go into a niche knowing that there is an opportunity for you to replace, kind of the the benefit that you associate with that product? Yeah, so I think that with replacement, what you're looking for is what is the current thing they spend money on that takes them away from big dream outcome for dropshippers, especially, you have actually a little bit of an advantage on this if you're a drop shipper, because if you just go to work at a brand, or if you start like, you're sort of just tied into whatever that is. But the biggest problem, if I back up a little bit, the biggest problem that most e commerce brands have, is that the dream, if you go back to that formula I said earlier, of like, you know, Dream outcome times, perceived likelihood of success, you know, over time, delay and effort and sacrifice. The biggest problem a lot of E commerce brands have is that there's just not a very big dream outcome, right? So this brand, the hat that I'm wearing right now. It's called ondar. Great brand. Used to, I led their marketing team for a while. Awesome apparel hats, they do bags, they do wallets, that kind of thing. Like, what's the biggest dream outcome that you can possibly make around a hat? Like, are you going to be more successful because of this hat? Are you going to make more money because of this hat? Are you going to, you know, have sleep with more people because of this hat? Are you going to lose weight, be healthier, be happier? Like, you can't really tie that big of a dream outcome to a hat. And if you do, and you're saying, well, the hat gives you confidence, and confidence does that like, it's just, it's too contrived. It feels cringy, right? Or, what are the what do the kids say these days? It's chuggy or whatever, yeah? Or they say it's cap. They say it's caps. Yeah, it's Captain. You can't You're capping, about the cap, right? So I think that's like, that's the biggest problem with a lot of E commerce is that it's just like any clothing brand, like, how tied is it to a dream outcome? Really, it's not that tied and and if you try and tie it to a dream outcome, you're like, selling a vibe. You're selling something aspirational, but it's like an unspoken aspirational thing. So there is something there where it's like, oh, I want to look like this person. I want to be like this person, but you're supposed to say it. They're not people aren't supposed to want to keep up with the Joneses. So you can't just, like, overtly state that. You know what I mean. You have to, like, say it subtly. And so that's the biggest problem, I think, with a lot of E commerce, is that you just can't tie it to a very big dream outcome. So the very first part of that equation, you're already hurting. On the other thing is, like most e commerce, like time delay, like, there's an expectation that there's very little time delay at this point in E commerce, perceived likelihood of success, right? Like, again, if you can't try to tie it to a dream outcome, how, how, you can't really even move that lever, so then all people do is they're just like, I guess, let's play with the price, or play with the offer 50% off or whatever, right? Because it's the only effort and sacrifice element is the only thing that they can play with. So if I'm looking at like a tactic, a simple way that I would be thinking about a replacement brand, I would be saying, What is a big dream outcome that people have? Right? Like in health, wealth and relationships, is a good place to start, right? People have, usually big dream out, usually almost all everybody. If I were to ask you, James, like, Are you super happy? Like, completely happy, and you have no goals right now around either health or wealth or relationships, no 10th, there's always goals, always room for improvement. No, like, you've got some kind of pain point around at least one of those things, maybe all three, right? Connor said, yes, absolutely, yeah. And relationships could be, you know, marriages that could be helping people, whatever, right? So health, wealth and relationships, usually people have, like, big pain points that are really on their mind a lot around those things. You can start with what you what pain points do you have as a person, and what things do you spend money on this person, right? So, what are the pain points people have as a person, and what are the things that they currently spent money on that are, like, the things they know hold them back from that stuff. You know what I'm saying. So that's why I, you know, DoorDash, right? Like that might be holding me back in the wealth category, or doing a bunch of like, you know, delivery. I don't know if you guys have DoorDash in in the UK, but, you know, some kind of delivery service. Yeah, we've got one called Deliveroo, which I think is a similar thing, where you can just order for restaurants or even supermarkets. Yeah, that might be holding me back in the wealth category. Might be also holding me back in the health category, right? Like, it might be a double double weather. Like, okay, people do that. Why? Because it's convenient and they can get good food that they know they're gonna like, like, how could I frame something up as convenient and giving them good food that they're gonna like, and just take that wallet share and also position it so that you'll actually probably save money. You know what I mean? Like that. That's like, How can I take something that people know is like just about like, because if you've got goals and health wealth and relationships and pain points and health wealth and relationships, let me ask you this off the top of your head, pick any of those categories. Is there like, why don't? Why haven't you achieved your goals yet? For me, off the top of my head, it's like having the dream physique, physique of being strong and healthy and fit looking. The main reason, I guess, it's probably convenient. Convenience of foods that aren't healthy for you versus convenience of foods that are healthy for you would probably be my number one excuse. I jumped to There you go, and that's why I bet a lot of better for you. Brands do pretty well in food and Bev, so, you know, Royal, Royal bread is a great example of, like, Look, dude, you know you eat bread probably, and you know that that's like, not great, or you maybe try and not eat bread, but it's, it's tough, where you eat that, like, here's like, bread and bagels. That's two grams that carbs. If you're like, a macro person, that makes total sense to you. Like, two grams that CARB is very good. It's only 70 calories, right? So, yeah, like, it's just, uh, what? What are those, like, things that they know are holding them back already? I mean, there, there is one part of that, so dream physique, let's say that's your your goal. There is a possibility that there's literally nothing holding you back. You don't have any bad habits, and it's just time. You're just like, I just need more time, and I will get it. If I keep doing what I'm doing now, for more time, I'll get it. That's pretty rare, if we're being honest. Like most humans have some bad things that they know, some bad habits, or some things that they know are like, man, shouldn't do that. You know that are holding them back from that. You know, Dream outcome. So that's how I would think about is like, what are some big dream outcomes? And what are some, like, really common things that hold back from those and and how could I replace that with something that is like, just take the wallet share from that, and what does that thing provide them? It's convenience and deliciousness of food, right? You know, that's what that provides. How can I provide delicious, convenient food, and, you know, make it better for them so that that health dream outcome, I'm just going to take the wallet share that they're I'm going to take the money they're already spending over here, move it over here to me and move them. I don't even need to move them closer to their dream outcome. I just need to stop moving them further away. You know, if I can also move them closer, that's great, but, you know, at least stop moving them further away from their dream outcome. You know, perfect. Yeah, absolutely. So when we're looking at because we look at different niches that we would go into, the products that we would sell, if we have the choice of different products that we want to go into, start selling, if we can find a product that we know is easily tiable to health, wealth or relationships, and a big dream outcome that people are looking for, then we're onto a winner. Gives us a lot of ammunition for the messaging that we can we could do, yeah, absolutely. And you can tie, sometimes you can tie mundane products to health, wealth or relationships. You know, we use the grill example. I think you could. You could take an angle of, you know, replacing DoorDash with that. You could take a angle of building family relationships with that. But if you're doing the building family relationships angle, then are you replacing anything? You might not be like, that's what a lot of people do, is they sort of, like, make this supplemental message about, like, oh, you can you, you know, grilling time is family time, you know, and that's, that's good. And it's like, okay, so now I've got to, like, set aside extra time to grill. With all this free time I've got laying around, you know, which nobody actually has. So like that, it's not, you're actually not saying, like, oh, let's replace some, like, bad habit with good habit, you know. And it's going to be very easy for you to replace that. Replace it, because it's going to be enjoyable still. Yeah, perfect. No, John, it's been a great conversation to get into this, for people just getting into E commerce, people that want to learn more about you, learn more from you, or learn more about triple whale. Where would you suggest that they go? Yeah, triple whale. I mean, you can Google it. I think it's try triple whale. Might be just triple whale.com now, but try triple whale.com or Triple l.com I should probably know that. But you know, you can Google it. You can find it like, highly recommend it if highly recommend at least demoing it if, if you're not using something already for attribution, if you want to find me, I mean, the easiest kind of like way to find, sort of the top of funnel John, is just go to any social media platform and look for at John, J H coil, and then I've got a link on most of them that will bring you to my podcast, my newsletter, newsletters, breakdowns of brands. Podcast is a little bit different. It's a business comedy pug, where I we do like business ideas, current market trends, breakdowns of brands. But I bring on comedians to do it with me, and that's fun, because they're actual consumers. So you can just get like a consumer point of view. Point of View, and they're funny and entertaining. So it's a little bit different, trying to do something different with the podcast. That's what I'm really trying to build up. So people are trying to follow me. I would really appreciate it follow on the podcast or on any podcast app. You can go just search for dark mode with John Coyle. Dark mode with John Coyle is the name of it? Amazing. Yeah. I'll get all of those links underneath this video and the show notes of this podcast, John, highly recommend the podcast, comedy and business, great combination, especially for entertainment as well as learning things along the way. So yeah, appreciate your time with us today, John. And yeah, speak to you again soon. Thanks for having me. Well, Louis, that was a fantastic conversation there with John. Really enjoyed it, and I think his insights there were incredibly valuable about how e commerce brands can make better decisions by understanding sales attribution, which I think is something that we can all take home from today. And the idea of using data to connect the dots and truly understand the customer journey is something that I think every business owner should be implementing the. Totally agree, James, yeah, in this day and age, attribution is key. And what I loved was how John talked about optimizing your marketing spend by really understanding that data as well, so not just having it, but using it to optimize your data. That is a game changer in terms of using the correct marketing strategies, channels, ad campaigns, even ads that are working best for your brand to your audience, because it'd be different for everyone. So knowing where to focus your effort, you're not just throwing money away at ads that aren't converting. It's like trying to cook dinner with no recipe. You're just guessing and hoping the eventual recipe turns out all right. So really powerful tool, and definitely one I'd recommend using Exactly, yeah, it's bound to be a disaster if you're trying to cook with the wrong ingredients, and it's exactly the same with growing a business on the wrong data. So loads of points we can take away from today. And also John went on then to record another episode for our members only. So that said, that's one for dropship unlock members to check out for more advanced techniques as well, absolutely. And if you're serious about taking your business to the next level, head over to htabook.com when you sign up for the 14 day trial for just seven pounds, you'll get access to our full system for building and scaling a successful dropshipping business. It covers everything from choosing the right niche, setting up your store, working with suppliers, all the way through to really advanced marketing strategies. Plus, if you want to leverage the power of data, like John discussed today, tools like triple whale are a game changer for tracking, optimizing and scaling your e commerce Store. You can actually try triple whale by heading to dropship unlocked.com forward slash triple whale. So if you're ready to stop guessing and start making data driven decisions that actually grow your business. This is the best place to start 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 unlocked.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 we're going to answer a question that we've had in from a listener of the podcast. So remember, if you have a question and you'd like it to be answered on the podcast, then all you need to do is leave a comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode. So we'll answer the question in the comments, but also on a potential upcoming podcast episode. So Roshan has done exactly that, and Roshan has asked, How does VAT impact profitability for those not yet VAT registered, if suppliers charge VAT or VAT, and we can't add it to the customer prices, do we just absorb the cost until we reach the 90k threshold? Great question. Roshan, so here's how it works. Before you hit that 90,000 pound revenue threshold, you're not required to pay VAT to HMRC, but you'll still charge your customers the suggested price from your suppliers, which can be a nice margin boost in those early stages, because that's what all of the other retailers selling their products at now, when you do become VAT registered, yes, your margins will shrink down a little bit, but not As much as you might think. And here's why, when you are VAT registered, you're not only paying VAT to HMRC on the revenue that you generate, but you can also claim back VAT on what you spend, so things like the cost of goods that you're spending with the suppliers. So overall, the reduction in margins is about five to 15% depending on how you adjust your prices. For a really deep dive on VAT and drop shipping taxes, I'd recommend checking out episode 92 of the dropship unlocked podcast. We brought in a specialist e commerce accountant to break down all things you need to know. So line that one up for afterwards. Episode 92 perfect. Now let's highlight a recent review that we've had in from a podcast listener as well. So a big thank you to Luke brown for the YouTube comment. And Luke said, great episode. Thank you for sharing your journey, Lewis, I can completely resonate with your realization of the world through travel. I too, found the same feelings after working in Europe during my 20s. It's exciting to be a part of a community and masterclass that educates us towards a life of passionate work and more travel around the world. Thank you so much for the comment, Luke, it's great to have you as part of the masterclass and to hear about your experiences as well. I'm really excited to see where the journey takes you, and great to hear that you can resonate with my love for traveling and seeing the world too. Before we wrap up, I've got a quick favor to ask you, who do you know that could benefit from hearing this episode? Open up your phone, hit share on this episode and send them a link. Just a quick Hey, I thought you might like this on WhatsApp or messenger. Could be a nudge that someone needs to start. Their own journey into E commerce. Thanks for joining us on this episode of the dropship unlocked podcast. We hope you walk you 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.