Building A Better Ecommerce Brand with Josh Delaney

A strong brand is essential for standing out in crowded online marketplaces. It’s not just about a logo or a color scheme; it’s about creating a compelling narrative that resonates with your target audience. Building a community, a reliable reputation, and doing what you say you’re going to do. Put customers first, put product second. People, Product, Process.

Josh Delaney (Husband, Father of 2, marketing online since 2004, eCommerce Expert, Brand Builder, Inc 5000 Award Winner, Sold 5 Companies in 10 years to both private and public companies, “Milwaukee’s Most Notable Marketing Executive) lists his key elements to building a better brand:

Understand Your Perfect Customer & Their Ongoing Problem:

“Knowing your target audience’s needs, desires, and pain points is the foundation of a strong brand. Ask yourself this question when thinking of a product or brand, “What is the conversation going on in my perfect customer’s head when talking through the problem that my product solves?” What are they thinking about before bed? What are the dumb, annoying situations happening in my life that make this product a must-have now?”. Talk to that conversation, almost like you’re in their head. You would only know to say that on your website or ads if you were in that perfect customer’s head. Does that make sense?”

What is Your Unique Value Proposition (UVP)?

“Clearly articulate what sets your brand apart from competitors. Your UVP should address a specific problem or need in a way that no one else does. Just like the above answer, you need to be able to turn that conversation in their head into a sellable story and offer it to the marketplace. Transition from story to sell in a way that allows them to make purchasing your product their idea. It’s always the best idea when it’s their idea. So make it their idea. Write that down. Use it in your business, your marriage, your relationships, everywhere. The faster you get good at that the more successful you will become and attract.”

Consistent Creative:

”Ensure your brand’s visual and verbal elements are consistent across all platforms. This consistency builds recognition and trust. Learn how to tell your story with multiple mediums of creativity. 2D, 3D, Motion Graphics, GIFs, Photos, Videos, iPhone Videos, High Production Value Videos, try it all to retain different types of viewers on different channels. Cater the creative to the channel you are distributing it on. Then put that creative system on autopilot with a team.

We build in-house teams of creative people for each brand. Some get paid, stay for multiple brands, and some move on to other things. But we always build it out so we can put it on autopilot. A designer, photographer, and videographer all work on that brand daily for every channel. The scale of advertising you can do when you have endless creativity allows you to fly through the levels of ecommerce sales. As long as you have a profitable product that can afford to do so obviously. In the supplement space, you typically want to be 6-8x the cost of goods price. Meaning if the product costs $1 to make, you should be selling it for $6-$8 to run a normal, average business.

The rest of your success and scale will come from your ability to run and grow a business and manage people and money properly.

From day 1, email 2x a week, text every 3 weeks, comment daily, post 2x day, pin 10x a day. Start there.”

Build A Community Group & Engage Often:

”Build a community around your brand through social media, events, and content. Engagement turns customers into brand advocates. There are platforms where very large profitable communities are being built right now. Facebook groups are the easiest, with Reddit Groups, Skool, and Discord following. Whatever platform best suits your needs, find a real community group somewhere and nurture it. Engage with them often, have a customer service rep in there with you to help customers, and answer questions on behalf of the company. Respond to comments and reviews as well as like people’s messages and comments. Others in the group will see that and engage as well. The insane purchasing power of these kinds of groups is oftentimes defined by the highest LTV customers your brand has.

Answer to yourself and the team who the PERFECT customer is. Age, lifestyle, kids, pets, income, lifestyle, car type, job type, zip code, etc. Get it as niche as you can and work backward as you scale. Figure out what those conversations are in the heads of those potential customers about your product.”

Innovate Your Products:

“Stay ahead by continually refining your products and brand experience. Listen to feedback and be willing to evolve. Don’t fix what is not broken of course, but always be ahead of the latest and greatest in your space. If you find yourself not having the mental space to do this as the founder or operator, it might be time to hire someone to help take off some day-to-day so you can focus on leading the vision, people, and concepts. Ingredients, parts, packaging, shipping methods, storage methods, shelf time, average order value, etc. How can you make your product perform better, or speak to people differently? If you’re in a beautiful place where you just need to maintain and scale, then smile and make sure the wheels don’t fall off as you’re going 1000mph.

The product needs to perform when you or your brand are not around to engage and support. Not just a great story but not quite the product to back up the claim.”

Josh continues:

“If you are just a “me too” product or brand it is difficult. You have to try very hard to differentiate yourself. I typically don’t mess with that kind of product unless I am really early in the game or come up with a new application. So I can’t speak to anyone trying to do something really common, it’s going to be tough unless you have a great story and brand.

In regards to those that are in more of how I think about picking a product type to build, I always want to be known for building a sick brand. I want the name, the logo, the colors, and the packaging to make you think “I’m the cool kid in this category”. So you have to really dig deep into your soul of creativity and just don’t be like everyone else. Creative eye is hard to explain, you kind of have it or you don’t. Give two people the same camera and tell them to take a picture of the exact same thing from the exact same place and you can still have two totally different pictures. One of them just has an eye for stuff. I hope everyone can learn and see this way as somehow, it’s so fun to create things and be creative. To be able to really see things like that and just create, I’m so jealous of our designers and creatives. I’m glad they stick with me!”