Chloe Thomas introduces the eCommerce MasterPlan Podcast (episode 000)

16th June by Chloë Thomas

Welcome

Today has been a very long time coming, so if you’re listening to this – thank you, I am truly grateful. And I would love to know what you think, and what you’d like to hear more of.
This is podcast zero, and in this one I’m going to explain what the eCommerce MasterPlan Podcast is all about.

All the eCommerce business owners, managers and marketers I speak to are concerned with the same things:

What don’t I know about that I should know about?
Is what I’m already doing what I should be doing?
What should I do next?

That’s why everything we do at eCommerce MasterPlan is with the aim of helping eCommerce business owners and marketers make better decisions.

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With the podcast my aim is to answer those questions by interviewing an interesting eCommerce business owner, manager, or marketer each week. Helping you discover things (marketing methods, efficiency tools, ideas, tips etc) that will work for your business, some you may already use, some might be brand new.

Why have I chosen to do this? Well first let me tell you a bit about me.

I’m Chloe Thomas, the author of 3 books on eCommerce:

eCommerce MasterPlan: Your 3 Steps to Successful Online Selling – which takes you through the 3 fundamental steps you should follow if you want to grow your eCommerce business fast and efficiently
eCommerce Marketing: How to Drive Traffic that Buys Your Website – this one explains what each of the key 9 marketing methods are and how to approach them (it’s not a click here do this!)
eCommerce Delivery: How your Delivery Strategy can Increase your Sales – your delivery strategy is critical in getting you the first order, and the all important repeat order. This little book explains how to do it.

The books (and everything at eCommerce MasterPlan) are based on my 10+ years working in the UK eCommerce sector – client side, agency side, as a consultant.

I’ve worked with all types of eCommerce business from high street retailers launching their first online site, and wholesalers trying to go direct to market; through to start ups, and massive mail order retailers. You name it, I’ve probably helped someone sell it.

So who is this woman behind the book and the microphone? You can probably tell I’m British – but I’m not English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish. I’m actually Cornish – Cornwall is a tiny county in the far South Western corner of the British Isles. One of the most beautiful places in the world, and I love living here. (those of you lucky enough to have seen the excellent Poldark – which I believe is showing in both the USA and Australia as I record this – that’s where I live).

Don’t go thinking I’m always hanging out on the beaches, and around the old tin mines – I’m frequently in London and travel internationally several times a year in order to keep my finger on the pulse of the eCommerce world.

I spend my winters watching a lot of rugby (union not league), and during the summers I’m learning to paddleboard and play golf. With the occasional bit of sailing too.

I’m incredibly lucky to spend lots of my working time meeting, learning from, working with and advising fascinating eCommerce business people all over the world. And I want to use the podcast to bring those ideas and conversations to a much wider audience. It just seems selfish to keep it to myself!

I want to do this because I meet so many eCommerce businesses who are wasting time, energy and money on the wrong things, or in total ignorance of the marketing method / idea / software that would instantly fix a pile of their blockers to growth. Or centres of stress.

My job is to bring you podcast interviews from a real mix of business types, products, and countries. To inspire and guide you to make your business better, whatever that means for you. Whether you want to get from 2 orders a day to 4 orders a day, or grow your turnover from £250,000 to £500,000.

Not every interviewee’s story will resonate with you, which is fine – eCommerce is a wide sphere, and success comes from focusing on building what you have – not from getting distracted by the irrelevant.

Some interviews will make you feel a bit smug, “cool, I’m already on top of that” or “why on earth would anyone do that!”. It’s excellent to get this reassurance that you’ve got that bit covered – means you can get on with the next thing.

Some of the interviews may leave you feeling a bit overwhelmed, and like you could never hit their heights. Again, this is a good thing – it gives you an idea where you might choose to aim for, and if you want to how you can get there. I always find in those moments of overwhelm that looking back at what you’ve already achieved (and never would have thought you could) helps!

One of my core principles is efficiency – how we can achieve x with the minimum of effort. And the first step is always to work out what you’re NOT going to do – so please listen discerningly and pick the lessons and ideas that fit your business now.

Of course, if you listen along and think you’d make a great guest – please contact us via the website eCommerceMasterPlan.com I’m always interested to hear from you.

The types of businesses I’ll be talking to have one of these 3 eCommerce Business Structures:

Bricks and Clicks – so they have at least one physical store and a transactional website
Online only – they just have the website – no catalogue, no physical store. This is going to include a lot of wholesalers, whose products are available in physical outlets run by other businesses.
Mail Order – businesses with a website and a paper catalogue.

The eCommerce Business Structure concept is of my own invention and you can find out more about it, work out what your business is, and why it is so essential to your growth strategy at eCommerceMasterPlan.com.

We’ll be chatting to people from eCommerce businesses in their first year right up to those who’ve been around for a long time. Their turnover will be from £50,000 ($80,000) to a couple of million – so we’re talking the small to medium sized end of the market.

I’m also going to throw in a couple of much bigger, more complex businesses who are doing some element of eCommerce so well that it would be criminal of me not to share it with you. It’s always good to see what the people nearer the top of the ladder are up to! And we have 2 very interesting ones lined up for the first couple of months.

I’ve got lots of ideas for future guests, and extra episodes where I chat to experts in specific areas (like CRO, Adwords, copywriting, or catalogue design), and podcast episodes where it’s just me answering your questions. But I would love to know what you want to hear so I can make the eCommerce MasterPlan Podcast as useful as possible for you my audience. So please let me know what you’d like to listen to and I will do my best to bring it to you.

Just go to eCommerceMasterPlan.com and you’ll find all my contact details – or connect with me on Twitter @chloethomasecom

To sum up into a nice little nutshell:

If you want to spend about 30 minutes each week listening to an inspiring story packed with tips on how to get new customers, tech you should be using, and ways to grow your business and save you time – you’re going to love the eCommerce MasterPlan podcast.

I’m the host, Chloë Thomas and I look forward to hearing from you.
Cheers

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