Verma Neil - Checkout: The Step-by-Step, 7C Method to Build a Dominant Ecommerce Brand

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Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication data

Verma, Neil with Moulton, Ren.

Checkout: The Step-by-Step, 7C Method to Build a Dominant eCommerce Brand, Neil Verma with Ren Moulton.

1. The main category of the book Books > Business & Money > Marketing & Sales First Edition

Dedication

Neil:

To my Mom. A constant source of inspiration, love and life.

To my Dad. An epitome of selflessness, positivity, and strong work ethic.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to our editor, Sinead Donohoe, for her attention to detail, and the constant reminders to diversify our vocabulary and avoid repeating the same words over and over.

Thanks to Kate Trotsenko, our designer, who exercised her creativity and for being extremely patient with our never-ending changes.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Who Am I to Teach You About eCommerce Branding?

Growing up, I always had a fascination some may call an obsession, with brands: the unique personalities behind them and their role in my life. It intrigued me that there were people and things that were somehow universally appealing yet cut from a unique pattern. Then it wasnt a surprise to friends or family when I focused on business and branding in college and later got an MBA in eCommerce Leadership. Nor was it a surprise to anyone that my first gig out of graduate school would be as a corporate banker and brand consultant.

This was part of my 5-year plan at the time, after which Id go out on my own: I just wasnt sure how. Of course, that 5-year plan turned into 6, 7, and then 10 years, but I had established a strong groove working for some of the biggest corporate brands in the world, managing $100 million businesses.

Leaving My Corporate Years Behind

I excelled in this role, helping ensure customers came back again and again, week after week, month after month. But of course, once you get good at something and form a repeatable system, it starts getting mechanical.

But.

I had an itch: an itch to build something from scratch.

To develop a business without the bureaucracy.

To make a difference.

With a core interest in brand and digital strategy, an MBA, and after building the digital strategy for several Canadian financial institutions, eCommerce was a natural calling. I jumped into the fray, head first, thinking I had established multi-million-dollar businesses, how tough could this be? And as Im academically inclined, I took a few courses, thinking I would be well on my way to tasting immediate success. I remember the day I pushed back from my comfy Herman Miller chair, walked into HR with a smile on my face with a freshly printed letter of resignation. My confidence and excitement brimmed over as I walked out the front doors, 20 floors down, to an appropriately springy day.

6 months later, I chalked up my first eCommerce fail.

12 months later, my second.

At the time, my mantra 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, became 3 simple letters: W...T... F?

A year before I had total control: I was bonusing out to the tune of a new house in Toronto after 3 years, a summer house in 6, and soon my salary was just gravy. I was a respected master of brand and digital strategy in the business community at large, but 12 months out on my own and I had literally gone from Real Kobe Beef to Ramen. I had no strategy. I was crouched in a corner reacting day-in-day-out, batting shiny objects like a meth-addicted tabby cat. I remember the many ahas I exclaimed aloud to myself as I discovered the tools that would surely change my fate: a new Facebook Ad technique, a Shopify theme optimized for conversions, a new Messenger marketing template, among others.

Of course, this was all still punctuated by my WTF mantra at the end of each of those days!

And while these tools proved to be useful, and should be used by any eCommerce maven, I found it all meant nothing. None of it moved the needle because I didnt have an identified CORE. A central purpose. Differentiated meaning. In other words: I didnt have a real brand.

I watched as other eCommerce businesses proved themselves in under a year, generating upwards of $1, 2, 3, and 5 million in revenue: what did other eCommerce entrepreneurs have that I lacked? I used the same marketing tactics as they did, and yet, theyd generate millions of unique page views while I was having trouble getting Facebook click-throughs on, in my opinion, some of the best advertising and offers in the broader industry.

But Ive never been a quitter.

My eCommerce Branding Revelation

I dusted myself off, now easier than ever, as Id traded in my Brooks Brothers suits for stretchy-waist tracksuits, which doubled conveniently as pajamas for the many nights I found it easier just to nap in the office. Then, I went back to the basics. I reminded myself that regardless of the nature of the business, customers buy for the same reasons. Buying psychology remains the same, whether its a 401K package or a custom tooled, Corinthian leather bag. I had a store with unique products and marketing, but I needed to establish a (new) brand strategy.

But as I started taking a more formal and focused look at branding for eCommerce, I noticed two very distinct buckets of error. Anything even tangentially referring to eCommerce branding was incorrect or incomplete regarding actual branding tenets and laws. And the handful of eCommerce companies recognized for their branding either stumbled upon their methods from trial and error and a lot of expensive rework and learning or had outside firms, funded by a Series B, do the branding work from the outside. The insight that seemed to be missing was that while the core laws of branding are consistent and universal, the specific implementation steps and processes are different and must be adapted to eCommerce. And the more I dug for any logical and well thought out approach to eCommerce branding, the less I found. I realized Id have to figure out and develop my system in that vacuum.

Which is what I did.

First, I spent 12 months analyzing over 200+ Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) companies (some which I would say qualified as brands or near-brands), companies that had a real impact over the last 3 years. I analyzed their various evolutionary inflections and what worked. I also looked at what I had been taught about traditional branding methods, which worked everywhere else but didnt seem to work in eCommerce. I essentially went through every tool in my branders toolbox and had to determine which ones were viable or usable in eCommerce, what the new eCommerce brand tools were, and what traditional tools could be adapted and applied to eCommerce that had never been used before.