Southern Fried eCommerce Podcast Episode #28 Recap

Southern Fried eCommerce Episode 28 Recap

Hey, y’all and welcome back to episode 28 of the Southern Fried eCommerce podcast from EYStudios! We are joined by our two, currently exhausted, co-hosts Jay Brimberry and Emily Faulkner.

Emily has been waking up every few hours thanks to a nightmare about her house being robbed. Jay, however, is simultaneously exhausted from both being a dad and having very rude construction folks loudly deliver sod to his neighbor’s house at nearly midnight. They’re hoping to get more sleep before they head off into their respective weekend plans. Emily is heading off to the renaissance fair for pirates weekend while Jay will be celebrating Mother’s Day with his wife. He claims he used to be good at planning surprises and buying gifts but in his elder years (he’s not yet 40 but acts as though he’s a senior citizen) he’s found he just prefers to ask, “what do you want as a present?” With such sage marriage advice, we move on to the eCommerce news of the week.

New From EYStudios

We began close to home by going over some EYStudios’ most recent blog posts:

May is Omnichannel Month at EYStudios and in addition to a slew of omnichannel-focused blogs we’ll be hosting “eCommerce Omnichannel: Strategically Sell Your Products Via Multiple Channels” as part of our Make It Make Sense webinar series. 

eCommerce Spending Declines As Money Struggles Continue

The first article we dove into this week was, E-commerce Stocks Plummet as Consumers Pull Back Online Spending from CNBC. The article details how the continued economic struggle from numerous causes has led to eCommerce spending dropping significantly. “​​E-commerce transactions have declined 1.8% from a year ago, while in-store sales rose 10%, Mastercard SpendingPulse said in a new report.” Some of the major players affected by the stock market fall on Thursday were Etsy, Shopify, Poshmark, and Wayfair. 

Emily says she’s not surprised by Wayfair’s overall fall from grace as public opinion has also fallen when it comes to the furniture and home decor retailer. She references a recent online conspiracy theory where people believed that the names of certain cabinets referred to human trafficking victims. Jay wonders how a PR firm would even combat such a ridiculous theory and Emily answers, “Exactly! You can’t stop the crazy.” This theory has caused damage to Wayfair’s overall reputation but it looks like this recent drop in shares may have more to do with the current economic climate. 

Jay believes that this is the pandemic coming to an end and people heading back out into the “real” world with brick and mortar stores. He says he’s noticed more vehicle traffic, more pedestrian traffic, and just overall more people outside doing things, and this, he says, is going to lead to less online shopping. He attempts to find a nice way to say this but ultimately comes up with, “shame on you if you haven’t been planning for this.” He says that the pandemic was an unprecedented time where more people were shopping online but that was not going to last forever. It may change how and when people shop online but now that people are getting more used to the idea of shopping in person again, there is going to be a dropoff. And Jay says you should have been expecting this. “If you rest on your laurels just because a pandemic happened, then you are going to be out of luck,” he said. 

Emily agrees and points out that as a consumer you can help some of those small businesses through this transition back to “normal” times by supporting the stores you want to stay in business. She says she and her boyfriend have been doing this throughout the pandemic by shopping at different stores or ordering from specific restaurants because they wanted them to survive. And she points out, for businesses, this is where branding and the relationships you build with customers can really shine. 

Amazon Launches New Streaming Tech Integrations To Lure Content Creators and Branding Deals

Next, we dove into “Amazon Looks To Lure Brands With New Streaming Tech Integrations” from RetailDive which discusses the tech giant’s latest news from the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s NewFronts conference. Amazon announced three aspects of their new focus on video: Freevee, an ad-supported streaming service, Twitch, a live streaming service, and their new rights to streaming NFL Thursday Night Football. The first aspect, Freevee, was of particular interest to us as advertisers look for new ways to reach their audience.

Currently, Prime Video in conjunction with Freevee is working on a plug-and-play product placement technology. Jay doubts the success of product placement and says he’s never wanted M&M’s because a character he liked in a movie ate M&M’s. (Go tell that to Reece’s Pieces after E.T. though…) Emily says that she finds that the most noticeably egregious product placement concerns cars. For instance, she’ll be watching a tv show and then be wondering “why are they talking about the features of this car?” or “why are they showing me the front logo?” and then she realizes its product placement. She says Avengers: Endgame did this a lot by featuring several picturesque close-ups of a specific brand of vehicle. She can’t remember which car make or model so I guess the product placement wasn’t that successful.

Jay goes on to say that obviously not every business is going to have the capital for product placement in the Avengers or through this new Amazon product placement tool, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore this technology. He says, “never rest on your laurels,” or you’ll be left behind if and when the next big thing does happen. He also recommends testing the waters out with Twitch to see if you can find a niche audience via a smaller streamer. 

Emily agrees and says, in short, you should be trying to test out as many advertising platforms as possible so that you can make an educated decision about strategy and budget to reach the best customers for a great price. “It takes a little bit of mad sciencing,” she said. “But you might just find that perfect audience for you.”

Survey Says: Omnichannel Is The Way

The last article we discussed during this episode is from Furniture Today, Survey Reveals Why Omnichannel is the Key to Retail Success. This really builds on what we’ve already discussed in this episode in that as a small or medium-sized eCommerce business owner you need to be trying every platform available to you while also branding cohesively across these channels. 

Some stand out statistics from this article include: 

  • Omnichannel retailers outperformed overall (61% in the U.S.), celebrating the largest year-over-year revenue growth vs. just e-commerce merchants (47%) and brick-and-mortar merchants (41%).
  • 63% of consumers felt supporting local, independent businesses was either important or very important, with 37% planning to shop local more often in 2022.
  • A majority of survey respondents (60%) also affirmed that shoppers have become less patient since the pandemic
  • 74% said technology adoption had a positive impact on their business over the past two years.

Emily says she’s not shocked by these figures, especially the ones focused on social media. She says that above all developing a social strategy is essential and vital to success online these days. Just having a website isn’t enough anymore. Just having a brick-and-mortar store isn’t either. The businesses that will come out on top are the ones that strategically weave their brand into various platforms’ zeitgeist. “You need to be doing it,” Emily says simply. And with that, we say goodbye for now. Join us next week for another healthy helping of Southern Fried eCommerce from EYStudios. 

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