Offer Grid Premier Newsletter Issue #1

Hey everyone.

Welcome to the premier issue of the Offer Grid Weekly Newsletter.

Whether you’re new to retail or you’ve been selling stuff since your first paper route in first grade, there will be something here for you.

You are the authority in your business. You’re already an expert there. You’ve already done the hard part. I’m not here to try to teach you something you already know. 

All of my clients have been experts in their own thing. Yet I’ve helped a bunch of people achieve millionaire status.

Now, think of your toughest problems in business. Think of the topics you’re embarrassed to talk about at the Chamber meeting… that you wish you had answers to… that you can’t even phrase…

This newsletter is my ambitious attempt to tackle these issues. After all, it’s just you and me here. No one else is listening to your inner thoughts and fears for your business. It’s just us. So let’s keep going.

Ready for some ecom and retail talk? Let’s dig in.

The ecommerce retail industry is on fire. At the risk of being accused of starting this first issue hot out of the gate sounding like one of Aaron Sorkin’s listicle, “West Wing” scripts, I want to provide some context for all of the positivity around ecom. And then we’ll get to what we can do with this information in our own little day-to-day world.

Some stats that will blow your mind:

• Global Retail E-commerce Sales

In 2024, global retail e-commerce sales reached approximately $6.3 trillion, marking a significant increase from previous years.

• E-commerce Share of Total Retail Sales

E-commerce accounted for 20.1% of total retail sales worldwide in 2024, highlighting its growing dominance in the retail sector.

• Mobile E-commerce Growth

Mobile devices contributed to 77% of online retail store visits in the first quarter of 2024, emphasizing the shift towards mobile shopping.

But it’s not until you break each of these down that you realize how quickly the ecommerce retail industry is really growing:

Global Retail E-commerce Sales

This is an impressive stat at face value. But what’s 10x more impressive is the projection that global e-commerce sales will reach $8.5 trillion by 2028.

That’s a substantial increase, signaling a robust upward trajectory for the industry.

E-commerce Share of Total Retail Sales

The last time an industry saw growth like this, it was in 2020 when e-commerce experienced a surge due to the global pandemic, leading to a significant shift in consumer shopping behavior. 

We’re in the “new normal” now. And included is the instant shopping experience for nearly everything you can imagine.

Mobile E-commerce Growth

As if the above wasn’t impressive enough, this stat is just mind-boggling. To give you a sense of how big this area is, mobile is equivalent to nearly 8 out of 10 of all shoppers using their mobile devices to browse online stores.

Also, considering that there are billions of smartphone users worldwide, a significant portion engages in mobile shopping. Reflecting the convenience and accessibility that mobile devices offer, leading to higher engagement in online shopping. 

Think of that next time you’re in a packed big box retail store, dodging the carts and other shoppers. Realize that these are only a fraction of the shoppers in that moment.

While these big numbers are cool and everything, all of this growth stuff doesn’t move product off of your shelves though.

Macro doesn’t translate to micro most of the time.

All of these impressive predictions and excitement about ecommerce simply show that the environment for sales is ripe for the picking.

But each store owner has to do her own selling, her own marketing, in order to put all of this magic to good use for her store.

So let’s take a micro look at one example, because it will highlight many of the problems of the individual retailer.

I was on a call with the owner of a candle store a while back. She was working all day, every day, to promote her candle sales. She was also the only one making products. Seriously, I don’t know when she slept. 

Smartly, she started the business online. But when she wasn’t making sales online she opened a physical store. Uh oh.

After all, why worry about a physical store in a small town. The higher overhead costs could become difficult to pay for without good control over sales.

She booked a call with me to figure out what she should do to keep her head above water.

Even with the uptick in ecommerce, she was having grave difficulty. She couldn’t afford to pay for help. She was a one-woman show.

There are solutions to her problems, but she hadn’t found any of them. She thought the online store would solve her distribution and traffic and sales problems. 

She thought the brick and mortar store would keep her going until the online store got some attention.

That’s a rough start, having a product and not knowing how to sell it.

But I knew she was down for the count when I asked her, “What makes your store or products different? Why should people buy candles from you?”

She answered, “Because it’s me. I made these.”

Oops. Sorry. People won’t open their wallets for that.

Candles are a commodity.

We talked for a bit about market differentiators and how to stand out. We reached the end of the call.

We didn’t end up working together. She wasn’t willing to pay for help. She was too pressed for cash, anyway. I wouldn’t have taken her for a client. I have a policy of not taking clients who have to choose between working with me or buying groceries.

I gave her some tips during our time together.

But I don’t know where she ended up. She didn’t stay in touch.

The point of my story is that all of the shouting about ecommerce doesn’t mean that everyone in the industry will succeed.

The environment is friendly… to a point. Anyone can subscribe to Shopify. Every drop shipper everywhere will tell you it’s easy to stock a store. And stocking has nothing to do with selling.

There are even companies that will set up your store for free, and stock it with a small number of drop shipped products. That’s how disconnected stocking is from selling.

Ecommerce has become a central part of our culture in the U.S.. You can buy anything, anywhere.

You can test it now. Open your Google machine and look for a product. Within a fraction of a second your browser will serve up a row of images with links to “Buy Now”. Those are Google Shopping results.

You’ve seen them before. They’ve been on search engine results pages (SERPs) for quite a long time now.

Shopify has an app that makes setting these up nearly automatic.

That automatic, friendly offering of places to get exactly what you want, exactly when you want it… that’s our world.

Because of this ease of use, after so many years of adoption, this is how we shop.

People will give up email addresses and credit cards online faster and more easily than they did, say, 10 years ago. We live online, so there’s less friction.

The technology used to sell products and services is the most user friendly it’s ever been. And it gets easier to use with each software update.

Shopify offers a super low barrier to entry. Nearly anyone can start a store in a weekend. And it can be pretty.

The American and growing global need for instant gratification will keep supporting ecommerce.

But it’s been nearly 15 years since you could just slap up a t-shirt store with pictures of your designs and a “Buy Now” button on a page.

Those Google shopping images in the search result were selected from hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of other similar images in that exact second you spent on that search.

Buyers are far more sophisticated now.

For now, let’s focus on what smart marketers in all niches, all industries, all verticals focus on, which is this…

Use methods for selling that are slightly unconventional (but we’re hardwired to respond to them).

Let’s go back to candles.

A commodity item if ever there was one. 

I can get an OK candle at Walmart, any grocery store, any big box retailer.

If I want this candle to do something special (ward off bugs, hide cigarette odors, burn for 24 hours) I may have to look around to find such a special beast. And I will expect to pay a small premium for the extra features.

But at the end of the day, wax with a wick and some scent can be had on the cheap just about anywhere.

Ecommerce makes the shopping and the delivery easy. Just point and shoot. Well, click. (I can’t resist references to ads from the 70s.)

My candlemaker friend was on the right start, starting her business online. The Shopify store is super cheap, and it’s easy to set up. I covered that.

I could list 10 ways she could have de-commoditized her store, her product, her systems.

But let’s focus on just one… one simple (not necessarily easy) method that could sell more candles than she could make on her own… a method that would support, nay, nearly guarantee sales over and over, with a nearly unlimited reach. 

This method ensures that the company / brand / store (you get it) is never again stuck in mediocrity. The product is never again relegated to commodity status. 

Using this method she’s swimming in the deep end of shopper psychology. You’re going to lead your customers into a warm and safe environment they already know. Get them to buy in a familiar environment and you’ve got ‘em.

If she connected her candles to people, to a certain kind of people, to a use that people have over and over, then her days as a commodity seller would be over. Because…

Relationships > Commodities

She could have her choice of connections. She could even choose many types of relationships (a harder approach, but it can be done).

She’d become the “meditation candle” lady. A bazillion people meditate. Or she could do “bath candles”. Or she could do “award candles”. Or what about “decluttering candles”. (Please, no “hoarder candles”. Those houses are too easy to burn down).

Whatever it is, find a community, a gang, a reason to connect. Go hitch your wagon to that group. Become an essential part of that group’s experience. Share worlds. Create a feeling of a giant and loving merging and melding of the worlds.

Create an experience of, “How on earth did I ever live without these candles? They’re a huge part of my after-yoga ritual.”

Choose a party and invite yourself to the middle of that party, and make everyone wonder what they ever did without you there.

Once that connection is made you can sell in bulk to others in that world.

Yoga mat seller? Here, bundle that with our “Three Pillars of Yoga: Scented Pillar Candle Basket”.

Or whatever.

Now “that” world is “your” world.

Ideas relate-to and people connect. 

When you hitch your product and even your brand to another you create a relationship between two things. When you do this relationship connecting well enough you create a weld that’s hard to break. 

Now, for my friend the candlemaker, she could choose to connect to another store—let’s say an already successful yoga store. 

(Hint: the relationship with the store owner is part of the relationship building.)

She could approach the owner with an offer to sell her candles in the store. She’ll need to promise a beautiful experience. Something that the store owner will be proud to connect with. 

Suddenly all of the yoga store traffic is hers, too. With proper displays and signs and store placement she can do very well. 

And remember: traffic is people.

When she develops relationships with the customers she gains from her yoga store association, she will find gold.

But on another level, let’s say my friend doesn’t approach a local store owner, but instead pursues and captures the enormous ocean of internet traffic that is the yoga industry. 

At the start of this epistle, her sale logic was, “Buy my candles. I made them.”

Now she can reach new corners of the interwebz because her candles are yoga candles. 

When she tells stories about users achieving a meditative flow state supported by the candles in their yoga space, she can create more desire for her products. 

The connection can even validate a higher price than the commodity wax-and-wick price. 

She has elevated her product to the premium grade levels.

Whether she goes the local store route, or if she chooses to connect to another big industry and Venn diagram her way to loftier heights, she has forged great opportunities to make more sales she didn’t have before.

It’s not only small businesses like the tiny candle startup in my example, that can leverage connections through the power of relationships to make more sales. 

More and better relationships to other businesses and their customers could help her reach new heights faster than she ever could achieve on her own. And she’ll arrive there at lower operational cost, and with less advertising. 

We actually see this effect all the time. We’re swimming in it. We humans understand connection. It’s innate. 

We don’t even question the oddest links. Branding often makes connections in completely ridiculous ways. 

Through the magic of the American Way, we now associate massive numbers of junk food brands with sports. 

Watching sports could have elevated our national fitness levels. But instead of watching football from the seat of a rowing machine, we’re encouraged to watch incredibly fit athletes perform unfathomable feats while we try to kill ourselves sitting on the couch with massive quantities of nutritionally void edible products.

At this level, branding relationships have formed the behavior of millions upon millions of people.

How can you accomplish this with your products?

Anytime a brand needs to crawl out of the commodity bucket, ask yourself, “What concept can I pair with this thing, to create the response I want?”

And that concept can be a kind of person, an activity, a successful idea that has already grown legs.

One of my favorites was when eggs became “the incredible, edible egg”. 

Simply by becoming incredible and singing a 4-second song about it, they aren’t any longer “just” eggs.

No! Now they’re little single-serve power houses of nutrition!

I hope produce growers everywhere don’t go in the same direction. I don’t need turnip jingles stuck in my head.

Imagine what would happen if the broccoli lobby started pushing “eat a tree”. Lemon growers could jump on with their own version. Soon every bin in the produce section would have branded signs, anthropomorphic characters, and cute little tunes. The produce section would look like the cereal aisle.

So let’s not go too far with this concept, ok?

The good news is that you’re the one who decides what’s too far. 

When I have used the relationship exercise with clients we explored Facebook ad audience to find new way to connect with people who would love them. Then we’d create ads around those relationships.

So my candle friend could work on as many connections as she could muster. Or manage. 

Relationships take work.

Any creative relationships she could build could be the limit of her growth. Yoga, meditation, bath, awards… and keep on going.

Latch onto one relationship to the people in the connected industry and court away.

Well, I think that’s a wrap. So much more to say, but I want to make sure you read this thing, not just say, “Oh, too long, maybe later.”

And I want you to be able to use this stuff.

Next week, more good ideas about ecommerce, retail, and how to succeed using some innovative thinking. I can’t wait!

Until next time,

Amy

P.S. Always feel free to reach out ([email protected]) with ideas or comments.

I’m also curious to know what you think about the newsletter. What do you think? Too long? Too short? Have you created any themed relationship connections to sell your products? Reply to this email and let me know.

P.P.S. If someone forwarded you this email you can subscribe yourself at https://newsletter.offergrid.co