Episode Transcript
Nina Huchthausen (00:05.262)
Hello everyone and welcome to the Makers Business Tribe podcast. My name is Nina, founder and head strategist at the Makers Business Tribe. And in today's episode, my friends, I would like to unpack probably one of the most discussed and asked about topics in the product -based business space you can imagine. And that is why
can launching and selling online be such a hard slog for the majority of brands? And what you can actually do if you don't have millions to spend and a whole lot of followers, what you can do to eventually break through that wall. Now, is this a banger or what? Because chances are, you're a product based business because
This is a podcast for progress businesses. And number two, you have set up a website and you got crickets, no sales, few sales or inconsistent sales. And you have been trying and trying and trying and things haven't been working out for you the way that you see on the internet. Some e -comm brands are killing it.
Let me dissect this for you. Because really, what does it come back to? And that's what I would like you to invite you to feel into as a consumer. What makes, as a consumer, what makes us decide to buy a product? Well, the first thing is I buy a brand that I recognize.
I buy a brand that I've seen somewhere before, that I've heard about before, that maybe a friend has recommended, that,
Nina Huchthausen (02:11.502)
I trust that has a good source, that has a good standing, that in some shape or form that I've seen or heard about before. Chances are probably very slim that I see some ad or some jump or get onto some website and I've never seen or heard that product before. And I just buy right out of the bat. Like there has to be something so magical and crazy and compelling.
out there that I'll be like, okay, I got no idea whether this is even fake or good and just buy. Okay. So, well, what does that mean though? Because if you don't have, if people don't recognize your brand yet, if we can't go out and ask a thousand people about your brand and there's not a bunch of people, they say, yes, I've heard about them or yeah, my friend had recommended them
I've seen that product somewhere. Well, then chances are probably pretty slim that people seek you out and would go to your website and buy something. So that means somehow we need to break through that first wall. that is people need to get to know us. And what does getting to know us
Getting to know us means that somebody needs to talk about your product. Getting to know us might also be that I need to see the product. Getting to know you might also mean that I need to try the product. For most people, it's trying, it's tasting, it's feeling, it's using our senses to see, it real? To feel, does it feel good? Does that resonate with me?
Do I get some internal response that I'm like, this is cool? Trusting and recognizing also comes from people that I trust or sources that I trust talk about this product. So question for you, how many people, trustworthy people or trustworthy sources have something amazing to say about your product?
Nina Huchthausen (04:40.45)
And that's a tricky one, because at the end of the day, I invite you to step back and just remember, how do you make a decision to buy anything that is worth more than a dollar? Online is always shipping. So there's some money involved, right? So we got a barrier. We got a barrier to entry. What is that? Well, and that probably comes back to the same points that I just mentioned. Because most of
Or at least this is how I buy a I want Mr. Google or somebody else tell me this is good. So I need to see your rating. That's me personally. Or I want a friend to recommend it. Trust my friend Heaps. Or so I'm into sports. If some sports person says this is good because I know they have high standards and they got no time for bullshit and they want to get some plays, I trust
That's my source. Yeah. But then I also like to actually really try it out in store because I don't want to buy anything that gets shipped to me. It's not any good. And they have to go through the hassle of sending it back, waiting for my money, all of that stuff. OK, so I need to see it. need to hear about it. And I want to touch it. So that's me. Invitation, ask yourself. But in a nutshell, that's what people want.
when it comes to recognizing and trusting a product to be able to say, I want to go for these underpants versus those underpants, because I know the brand. I know what it stands for. I have experienced it. Or someone of a trusted source has helped me with that. That's the one key thing, the one key wall that we need to break through, recognition and trust.
How we do that, I'll share with you in a second. But there's a second thing. Second point, another second wall that we need to understand and deeply respect. And not many people really understand it and respect the work that is really required to break through. And that is the challenge. The internet is a very crowded marketplace.
Nina Huchthausen (07:06.657)
Yeah. The internet is refined to the screen that you're watching me on, whether that's your phone or listening to, whether that's your phone or whether it's your laptop. If I switch that off, I don't see anything that's there. Yeah. So it's a very crowded space and there are hundreds and thousands of brands that do very similar things to you. Yeah. And you got to stand out. You got to need to be seen.
Nina Huchthausen (07:45.023)
Here's the things that we need to get an order or resolved in order to be seen. And most of the time, when I hear product -based business owners starting off, we don't spend enough time training or knowledge in this space. And that's why you can't break through the crowd at Marketplace. So you have to build the first thing.
It's a really good intuitive website that makes it simple and easy for me when I come to your shop to get to know your product, to get to know your brand, and to make a purchase. The tool in itself is everything. A lot of people skimp on that and hack some site together or don't make the site intuitive. Don't make it on brand. So when I land on that site, I kind of get dubious.
whether that's even for real. Yeah. Or I drop off because it's really hard. So that's the first thing that needs to get fixed. But that does not solve the crowded marketplace. This just creates a good baseline. Now, the second thing is that we need to have sorted out how we are driving traffic. How are we getting people to find this site?
Yeah, because if the site is just floating in the ether, nobody knows about it. We're not breaking through. So we need to either really upskill and practice and understand that it takes time. Or number two, we need to have money in order to invest into skilled people, to drive traffic to your site, to convert people on your site, and
make them come back. And it's so underrated because all we think about, I just put a website out, I set up a social media channel, and I post some random stuff. Why am I not making sales? So in order for you to stand out in a crowded marketplace, here's what you need. You need to make sure that you're ranking on the first page of Google.
Nina Huchthausen (10:08.609)
Yeah, so when I type in anything or everything that is related to your product, that is the solution to my problem, your product needs to pop up. Because most of the time, that's where people start, right? I jump on the internet. I'm looking for oversized t -shirts. I type that in. Your brand needs to pop up. Yeah, I don't want to scroll. I don't want to go onto the second page. Don't do nothing. You just tell me you're here. So that's what we need to get sorted. That requires a lot of expertise.
Yeah, to get right and a lot of consistency in order for Google to keep putting you on that first page to be aware of. Number two.
We want to get our social media following, built out and growing so that we can start reaching people. Yeah, it's not easy. Like, I hate it. My social media is still shit as I'm finally found someone that I trust to just take this on because it's not easy. It's very time consuming and you can waste so much time if you can't.
Get this right. I'm laughing about myself. But I live in the world of business. social media, please don't judge me. But I'm aware of it. And I deeply respect it. Not many people deeply respect it, but then get frustrated with it. But there are trainings out there that I invite you to take if you want to do it yourself to make it good or hand it over to someone. Problem is with social media, only a small percentage
of the people that follow you will see your content. Yeah. Plus we also don't know what Facebook is going to do in the future or meta, whether this might decrease or what will happen. So you need to bring people to you as what we call own customers. Own customers are those that you have their email address from so you can contact them directly or their phone numbers. You can message them directly. So
Nina Huchthausen (12:17.079)
You need to take the time to build out your list. Yeah. How do you build up your list that can be done by your website or by your social media, or you can be running competitions or some gift, keep giving some things of value. So over time, people like, Hey, yeah, for that value exchange, I'm going to jump onto your list. But if you only have a list and you don't know how to continuously and consistently provide value to those people.
Yeah. And keep communicating with them and keep building a connection is also not going to be helpful. So you need to learn that skill too. Yeah. Of email marketing in short. And then of course on your website, you also need to have all of these flows that you continuously see on your website set up so that when people are ready to buy that we don't lose them, that they keep coming back, that they have a really nice checkout experience. And once
purchase that they give us a review and that they keep coming back. There's the science and the art behind that too that you need to acquire and then apply over time for it to work. And then there's the last thing. You can add some fuel to the fire with ads. Yeah. And ads can work really, really well. But number one, you need to find someone who can
good ads because we have met and heard about a lot of people who spend so much money on ads and absolutely got crickets. And that's just so painful to watch if you spend $10 ,000 and there's no return. Yeah. so if you want to do it yourself, you need to really practice and learn this and understand that this takes time or you need to really find a really good person.
that is a gun at this and that can guarantee your results and that you pay based on the results. Yeah. And not just based on doing some ads. It's not easy. Okay. So, and especially if you have a very short runway, because a lot of people, when you, when you launch your product, you've had big product expenses, right? You have created it, you've manufactured it, or you're making it at home.
Nina Huchthausen (14:42.081)
big expenses for the ingredients, for the branding, for the packaging, for the labeling, all of that stuff, right? So you need to make some money. So it's important that we employ a channel that can get you revenue fast. Based on what I've just shared with you when it comes to the online space, selling online takes
Number one, time in order to build your website, in order to build your list, in order to drive traffic to your site, in order to get indexed on page number one, in order to build out your organic following and then convert them into old customers. That, my friends, takes time. That is not just a couple months exercise. And anyone that you see is absolutely killing it has taken the time
has been able to just through their name and their list before, exponentially grow their following and their trust and their knowledge about their
OK, so what can you do instead? Because, it's not all doom and gloom, because this is actually a really solvable thing. And I love selling online. Yeah, and I think, to me, that is the thing that you want to start setting up at the start, but you need to feed it. The key is there is not just the time and skill and monetary investment to online.
But if you can reach your audience somewhere that is not as crowded and somewhere that is fairly cost effective and easy to get into and build like and trust and connection and recognition first, then those people will go online after. So here's the idea.
Nina Huchthausen (16:49.303)
So if you are starting to get out and trying to get your product to the masses,
here's what I invite you to do. So in order to build recognition, literally the fastest and cheapest way to do that is to get your product into retail first. Yeah, because the more you get your product into 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 shelves, the more all those customers that go to those shops, and it's not just one customer, there are thousands of customers.
Start seeing and recognizing your product. If you take the time to really educate the staff in store, the staff will be able to say really good things about your product. And the staff can help you sell and create trust. And the staff can also convert them to try the product, whether that's a taster or sample, or they can do a demo, or you can do a demo for people to try it. Because once people try it and they love
much easier for them to buy it. And there's always when there's one person buying and they love it, for certain they will tell it that their closest five friends that they've discovered a new product. They would drive people back and they would drive people back. So it'll ultimately create a ripple effect. Yeah. So if you are taking the time first and get your product into retail, you get free shelf exposure. It's free marketing for people to not just
for you to having them to open their laptop. But in the real world, it starts popping up in different places. You can get all those people to try it. You can get all those people to convert them into customers if you educate the sales team. That's a very important one. You don't want to underestimate because a lot of people just get their product into retail, don't educate the sales team. And Quikits, you need to make sure that every single person in that store
Nina Huchthausen (18:50.977)
has tried your product and loves your product and can vouch for it and want to talk about it. Very important. But if you can convert that sales team and they love it, that's the first thing they're to recommend when someone walks through that door. And that's what you want. But that doesn't cost you much tech. It doesn't cost you much skill. And it doesn't cost you much money to do it because you only need to create the training ones. You can share that a thousand times. You only need one or two pitches.
need one wholesale catalog, and you need your brain and your feet and your voice to call, to walk in stores, and to share your brand, your brand mission, what your brand is about, its uniqueness with heart and passion. Yes, there is a bit of an art when it comes to selling product, and you also need an intro of a few other things, but that can easily be accomplished within just a month of work. Four weeks of work, I can guarantee you, you can be pitch ready.
Okay, and then you can be out and then you can start selling and that will bring you brand recognition, trust, and it will start bringing you most importantly for you, income.
because if you can make some money
That income you can then use to invest into a skilled team to drive start driving results online. But also the recognition on the shelves and the more shelves you occupy, the more people will recognize and try and understand and connect with you over time. And that ripple effect will multiply. If you take the time to support the store to make sales.
Nina Huchthausen (20:36.001)
you will get consistent reorders. If you get consistent reorders in, my gosh, hallelujah, there you have a consistent revenue stream that might not give you tens of millions, but a really good baseline that you can then reinvest in product, in stock, in upgrades, and in selling
Nina Huchthausen (21:02.891)
And then if you have your products in stores, in shelves, it'll also be much easier for you to find some people with a certain name. You can call them influencers. You can call them people that other people trust. Some people have a negative connotation to influencers, but there are people out there that a lot of people look up to. They will also take note of that
And it'll be much easier for you to connect with them. And once you've built that offline brand for them to be like, I really like that product, I would love to represent
And once they start representing it, then you can use their online channels to get the word out too. And that then ultimately over time will help you massively to break through your wall of selling online. Now, do you need to be in retail forever? Maybe, maybe not, but I think it's a very lucrative space and it also helps you immensely to test new
get feedback to stay really closely connected with your customers, what they're looking for, that they're needing, what they're wanting. You can through in -store demos, you can talk to them. You can see what works, what doesn't work. You can test your price points. There's so many things that you simply and easy can test in the real world that takes a lot of time and patience to do online. And skill, time, patience and skill.
And oftentimes we underestimate the skill that it takes to be really good, to do really good things online and to drive results. Now, I don't want to dishearten you, but I think it's just smarter to stay in your lane and see how can you get cash loan first so you can pay for some really expert people that help you drive results fast online
Nina Huchthausen (23:10.911)
If you can do that through the retail lane first, that exposure and trust and recognition that you will build will make it so much easier for those people to do a really good job online.
So my friends, I hope that answered the question. Why, when you first launch your product and try to sell it online, why it can be such a hard slog and how you can eventually break through your wall? Because everybody can and this formula that I just described is pretty bulletproof. Yeah, there's nothing rocket science about it, but I know it can be hard sometimes to be like, okay,
Do I really want to talk to retailers? Do I really want to do it? Like, I just want to sit at home and make some money. I think at the start, it is very smart to do that because you might have made a lot of assumptions about your audience, about your product, about what people need and want. And if you can validate
with retailers and with customers that you can speak with early, you can avoid a lot of costly mistakes and you can pivot a lot quicker because face -to -face feedback is a lot more powerful than crickets online because it will take a while for you to figure out why there's crickets. So team, people, my health conscious product -based business owners, I hope this was helpful.
and has created some value for you. And if you're like, excuse me, it's raining, but I'm going to do it. Fuck me now. I've been trying to sell my product for six months online and I haven't made any sales and I'm running out of time. How do I do this retail thing? Feel free to have a chat with us. Yeah. I'm so happy.
Nina Huchthausen (25:21.719)
to give you some steps and advice on how you can get started. And of course, if you're like, hey, I need somebody to take me by the hand, we can also do that. Okay, have a wonderful day. And if you love and like this podcast, if you found value in it, please spread it far and wide, share it with your people, like it, leave us a review. It will mean the world to us and you will ultimately help so many more product -based business owners to get the products to the masses.
