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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, for anyone watching as
opposed to just listening. Yes, I am wearing a winning wish
off a T-shirt. How cool managed to get them in
the exact pink of our brands. That is absolutely awesome.
Although as many people will tell me, pink is not my colour,
but it's fine. It's on brand and it's bright
and more people click on it because it's bright and on
brand, which is excellent. That's what we're all about
here. We're all about the customer and
you guys listening are our customers, our audience.
So if it works for you, it works for us.
Anyway, such an exciting episode today.
I'll tell you about it in a second and then we'll cut into
today's episode so you can hear what amazing things we learned
from George, from Snaffling Pig. He's telemarketing there, which
is super exciting. Just before that, I plug this
every single week. Come and join the Growth Hub.
It is completely free to get involved, fill out your e-mail
address, your name on the website, go to wwspodcast.com,
click on Growth Hub, click on join, fill out that form.
We'll get you a link to join it as fast as possible.
And we have quite a backlog of people that want want to join
and we're trying to fix things on the platform and get people
in, but go and join that list. There's been so many good
conversations in there. It's only for Shopify brands and
it's an opportunity to talk to other brands, ask questions and
say, hey guys, I'm really struggling with this.
There'll be a challenge every single day that you can post on
there. We're also running little
roundtable sessions. We've done one on e-mail with
people sharing their insights, their thoughts and asking
questions about e-mail. And as a result, somebody
doubled the amount of clicks they were getting on their
emails. And the revenues been going up
as well. Just off the back of that one
little session we've done one on influencer marketing with one on
PC, one on SEO, and we're about to book a load more as well.
So go and check that out. Right?
Today's episode, what an exciting list of things we
discussed and it is quite funny. So the first we're going to flag
is naked selfies from customers 70s pubs in the UK being
indulgent. How to build a brand personality
NAFT design. Good customer feedback versus
bad customer feedback. How to look at what your review
score is and get information from reviews.
Putting jokes and kisses at the end of your emails to customers.
How to create passionate customers de risking your
business. How to win on Dragon's Den.
These guys have done it. They are UK Dragon's Den
winners. They got the funding and it's
been a big part of their story and social content since advert
calendars that are full of pork as in pig because of their
product, which you'll find out a minute and rebranding into
barbecues of all things, even though they're a food product.
Keeping your customers on retention, feeling good about
finding customers and how your customers are interacting with
you and also how to get all of your integrations set up so all
your systems talk together for big successor customer interacts
with you anywhere and gets a good response today, as always
is not to be missed. George was absolutely fantastic.
I hope you enjoy today's show. So, George, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much, Nick. Thank you.
Nice to be here. Well, it's great to have you on.
And as any of our listeners will know, my first question to every
single guest we ever get on here is tell us a little bit about
yourself, George, and also about Snuffling Pig where you are the
Head of marketing. That's right.
Yes. Well, again, thanks for having
me. So yeah, my name is George
Wells. I have been in marketing for a
good 20 odd years now, but I have been with Snaffling Pig as
head of marketing for the last five years.
I joined from a a big, big, big hairy marketing agency, well
known one in the middle of in the middle of London and felt, I
kind of felt it just felt a bit sort of it felt it was a bit
soulless in a way and, and not sort of rewarding.
And this opportunity at Snaffling Pig, which is this
kind of plucky start up snack brand doing something a little
bit different and full of character, full of great
personalities. This opportunity came up and I
felt instantly at home there and I've kind of never looked back.
Just been loving, loving working for the brand and really sort of
feeling very much part of it. So yeah, it's, it's been a, it's
been a roller coaster. Yeah, well, that's good.
And it's someone who runs their own agency.
I can vouch that. I used to have all these
aspirations of having like 1000 staff and being the best in the
world and all this. I don't want any of that now.
I actually quite like the fact we're small, we're nimble, we're
growing slowly and steadily and as you say, still got that soul.
And I think it's the same for any organisation, whether it's
an agency or or brand. But yeah, I think obviously
you're working within a company now where you've got quite a lot
of control, I imagine actually over marketing in the direction
and it's probably people you still have to report into and
get approval from. But it's like one or two, not a,
you know, prove it with data so everybody accepts that it's no
one's fault if it goes wrong. Yeah, well, there's also nowhere
to hide. I mean, again, sort of
reflecting back on some of what clients client side and agency
side over the years sort of for big and small companies.
And I really found my sweet spot with a for exactly those reasons
you just mentioned it just being able to everyone's kind of
honest and on it and there's nowhere to hide.
And I, you know, I was attracted to work at my previous role to
work on some really sort of big shiny, sexy brands like
Coca-Cola and PlayStation and you know, all of these really
cool places, cool, cool brands to work for.
But you were just, I was just lost in a Galaxy of 1000 other
people working on that account and, and, and just, you felt you
had no real impact. So to go from that and then to
go to actually a really genuinely interesting brand
products and work for a great team and and actually feel that
what you are doing and the decisions you are making are
actually having a direct impact for better or worse on on that
on that brand. So you really kind of get, well,
I personally get a lot of buzz out of that.
So yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
And as I say, I think it's, it's nice to be able to get hands on
to something, actually put your heart and soul into it rather
than as you say, it's certainly the more corporate clients we'd
work with. It's like you're just pushing
paper around. And I, I, I do find that like
this, and I've said this a few times on the show, there is this
kind of, I would say kind of like mutual moan between small,
little nimble brands and big corporate heavyweight brands.
The big brands are like, oh, there's all these tiny companies
popping up out of nowhere with no stability, no proper
marketing strategy and they're eating into our market.
Plus you get the small guys going, Oh, I've only weird, the
budget of Amazon like, isn't it? And you're kind of going, and I
kind of said there's a, there's a flip side to all of that.
You are the big corporate machine.
Like you do one small thing really well, no one can touch
you. Whereas if you're the small
nimble brand, you can change your whole strategy in like 24
hours and really impress customers.
And actually, if you hit the headlines, it terrifies the big
companies. Sometimes it terrifies them into
making a mistake as well, which actually gives you a bit more
market share. Or you can offer something and
enter a space that they don't want to be in.
And then then you can start to become your own corporate one
day as well and starts growing. So that's basically if that's if
that's what you want and but tell us what the brand actually
sell. Like what do you guys actually
have on the store? Like what are the products?
So Snappy Pig is essentially an indulgence brand.
It is a, it is a snack brand primarily.
And at its very core, it's, it's taken the pork, the humble pork
scratching and, and brought it kicking and screaming from the
70s into the, into the, into the 21st century.
And it was essentially started by our founder Nick Coleman.
And he, he's, it is a, it's a, it is a very emotive product.
It is a product that gets people talking.
We know as a, as a product, a pork scratching or pork
crackling is, is not everyone's cup of tea.
And we're OK with that. You know, we're, you know,
we're, we're not the healthiest brand.
We're not certainly not vegan and you know, honestly with, you
know, our sort of our carbon footprint's probably not as as
good as, as other, as other brands and other products out
there. But what we are is we're honest
and we're humble and we all about getting people talking and
bringing people together. The emotive side of it is, is
really sort of harking back to sort of simpler times, as it
were, but again, adding a bit of sort of 21st century humour and,
and colour and, and, and, and fun into it and bring it to a
whole new audience. So yeah, that's, that's kind of
the ethos of the brand. The product itself is
essentially flavoured pork crackling.
It's available in pubs, it's available in supermarkets, but
it's also gift able as well. So you'll find it in your, you
know, your gift shops, your John Lewis's and your, your
Selfridges and and of course, online on Shopify, funnily
enough, so good. Good, absolutely.
And I don't know if I've shown you actually, but I am actually
wearing our new shop Winning with Shopify T-shirt, which will
be available on a Shopify store soon.
Yeah, one of my colleagues was running around wearing this last
week. And but no, just just a, just a
comment on the product. And I think it's a really
interesting product. As you say, it's literally it's
being dragged out the 70s. It's the kind of thing where
you'd get a beer at a pub in England or in the UK somewhere
and you'd get either some pork scratches or some crisps.
Crisps if you want the slightly healthier, lighter option.
Pork scratches if you're hardcore, but they're not good
for you. I I'm a massive fan, but they're
not good for you. It's, yeah, it's true.
It's true. I mean, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, we always think that, yeah, you can get like crisps in
a meal deal and everything, but who wants that when you're, you
know, once a week as it is an indulgence and it's not
something that we would recommend eating every day, but
it is an indulgence. It's not.
Part of the five a day is it? No, it's about embellishing
those moments that you do have, those rare moments where you do
get to catch up with your mates, be it down the pub or in the
cafe or, or wherever it is or the picnic, whatever.
And you just kind of, but it gets you talking, it gets you
smiling. So no, exactly, exactly that.
It's just that kind of to celebrate those, those those
joyous moments in life where we're just connecting with
people. Absolutely, absolutely.
And this isn't a question I've got written down, but you've
mentioned it and I know my listeners will probably want to
know this. And the context of this question
really is I and lots of others have been on a mission for many
years now to try and make websites, specifically
e-commerce sites look less like an Amazon marketplace and more
like a brand. And I think the really the
really hard bit of this, and I say hard is strategically in
terms of like a tactic, it's not hard, but deployment is really
difficult. And that's bringing, as you say,
that emotive side into this of how do you bring that kind of
21st century branding make it fun.
You mentioned like John Lewis, which if I said to my wife,
which I'm going to when I get home to see what she says today,
you know, like honey, did you know you can buy these lovely
premium gifting pork scratchings in John Lewis?
And for all of our American listeners, I, I don't think
you've got John Lewis in the US, but it's like it's one of the
more premium retailers in the UK.
So they have their own brand, but they mostly sell the brands.
It's all quite expensive, but they, they always have like a
bit of a price match thing going on.
It's always extended warranty, the customer service and the
stores and the quality of product is always incredibly
high, which is the reason I'm saying that as well as it's
completely counter actually to getting that product in a pub.
So I guess the big question, George, I know it's like this is
almost like the secret sauce of any business.
How do you bring across that emotive It's an indulgent
product, it's fun, it's 21st century branding.
It's not the back shelf of a pub covered in dust behind the beer
barrels anymore. How do you bring that across in
pixels on a web page? Well, it's interesting.
First of all, the we, we try our, I guess our roots and our
soul is, is the pub, right. So that's where that's like the
mothership, if you like, in terms of the experience and the,
the, you know, trying to invoke that kind of emotional side of
things. So it's kind of that sort of
sense of humour as well that we, we, we, we absolutely try to
inject in every customer touch point to be on the packaging
with the bright, bold colours right down to the copy on the
back. The it's kind of like a cheeky
the tone of voice is often described as more easily sort of
identified as sort of cheeky early to mid 90s schoolboy sort
of playground humour, but less but not in a kind of a boy that.
Is my era. Yeah, well, that's that's me.
I still am, but it it's not very so, you know, almost naff.
In fact, the fact that I've used the word naff is also it's it's
we need we. Need our marketing and branding
to be naff. Guys, yeah, I mean, it's kind
of, but we, yeah. But even the word naff is just.
Oh, good. Yeah.
I mean, even that just dates me as well.
But it's kind of it's it's the throwback.
So again, it's all that kind of nostalgia piece.
So whether it's on the packaging, whether it's in our
gift boxes and when you find it in John Lewis, it's important
that it's recognised that it's clear that it's a premium brand.
It's not a cheap, there are cheaper alternatives out there
and there are sort of options that you can go if you just want
a plain, if you're a die hard pork scratching fan, you
probably won't be coming to us. But if you're someone who's
like, oh, I remember those and actually this is fun.
That's that's where we play so and how we communicate on the
website And in fact, every digital touch point, every every
sort of line of communication we have with our customers, we make
sure that that that tone of voice and generally that
attitude is, is sort of come across.
It's got to be fun. Otherwise, what's the point?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it reminds me actually
quite, quite a lot of brands. And ironically, they're all like
vegan health brands as opposed to your brand.
But I, I love that you're almost trying to play in that same
space, but with a, an alternative product to the, you
know, like I'm thinking oat milk, for example.
The amount of oat milk brands when you read the back and it's
like, hey, what do you mean no cow?
And and it like it uses quite very conversational branding and
content in that certainly. I mean, I'm thinking, thinking
about there's at least I won't mention them on the show today
still about you guys, but there's at least two other pork
scratching brands I remember. And again, I mentioned earlier,
like back of the pub covered in dust.
That's how I think about the product.
When almost when you say to a bar, you know, the bartender
these days and say, like, Oh, can I have a packet of pork
scratchings? They're like some what?
And like those things like, Oh, no one's ever bought those
before. It's.
Like it's literally been when I was a kid at the pub.
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I remember going with
with dads and it was like, you can have a lemonade Nick, but
you can also help yourself to these.
And I'd be like, wow, they're so salty, dad and all this and
like, but I was like, I'm an adult now eating adult food.
And it's funny, that's how. I remember them.
It's funny to say that our Co founder, sorry, our founder Nick
also, he essentially that's what he's based and that was the
dream of the business. And he he the only difference
between that story and and yours is that he had a pint of Coke
and he was, but he had the pork scratchings.
He said the same thing. He felt like a.
Coke is fuzz well behaved that week.
I think. Oh.
OK. Otherwise it was lemonade.
Yeah, Yeah. Other other Kola brands are
available. Yeah, yeah.
And so I guess like, I love your answers that by the way, I think
it's a really good way of looking at the brand and going,
OK, what actually resonates with customers?
I'm going to ask you a really, really hard question now.
How do you track if the branding is working?
Like how do you know? Then you make a change to the
content, you change the colour, you update it a refresh.
How do you, rather than just looking at bottom line and
going, well, it went up so it must have been a success, which
quite frankly, I know a lot of big corporate brands and
agencies would just look at that.
How do people like you and I actually get more into the
detail? Like what do you guys look at to
go? Are we resonating with our
customers at the moment? Well, I would argue it's
probably easier for a larger brand to do that, who have the
resources and the dedicated teams and, and analysts to, to,
to, to do that. We, we, we don't have that.
We're, we're just, we're a small, plucky brand.
We don't have that available to us.
But we do, of course, test and learn and look at content all
the time. The way I say it is it, it's, it
might be boring, but or it might be time consuming, but we sort
of boring in terms of a response, not in terms of what
we do is we just speak to our customers and we speak to them
on a daily basis through our. And so we get all kinds of we,
we monitor feedback right across the web and it's all qualitative
feedback. And the joy that we get from
customers who you'll look on our Trustpilot scores.
And I'd say 20% of them are referring to the giving us five
stars out of five purely because the, the little joke in the
transactional e-mail, like the e-mail confirmation that went
through to them made them smile or the subject line of an e-mail
made them smile or, or some, some comment we made on it.
It's, that's the bits that are telling us that it is working.
And when you look at those customers specifically when you
dig down into the data go, so what's that profile?
You know, they're customers that have, have come back to us two,
3-4 times. So really it's just, we've also
seen our customer satisfaction scores grow over the past sort
of four to five years. We've been, you know, we, we
were on around sort of when you look at the, the Trustpilot
scores, we were around sort of three, 2 1/2, three out of five
at one point when we first started.
And then, you know, now we're kind of 4.54 point 6, I think
last time we checked. So you know, just just that.
And it's and it's the, the touch points that are are really sort
of helping, helping drive that. Yeah, I love that.
And we had a client recently that basically said to us, like,
how can we hear from customers without talking to them?
Just as a quick, what have we got?
And you mentioned reviews and reviews are such a powerful
place to do that. I think 1 issue I found is
sometimes I don't know if no one's got the attention span of
me, which is like, I, I aspire to have the attention span of a
fish. At times I look at like 3
comments and trust I go, I've seen enough.
Like I know exactly what I'm doing.
We actually got for a client, we got Ava, just a virtual
assistant on board for like a week.
They weren't based in the UK, costs weren't astronomical at
all. And we just said to them like,
look, we've got 2000 reviews. We want you to on every single
review, just get a spreadsheet and add a new column for a new
thing. If they spoke about delivery and
no one else had and delivery in a column.
And then just, you know, tally up how many people have
mentioned good delivery, bad delivery and just tally up kind
of, you know, red crosses, green ticks.
And we use that just to create some quantitative feedback.
And one of the things we noticed actually is about 70% of the
reviews just said like, great product, great service, it
arrived on time. Thanks guys.
Five stars. And it's like, that's cool.
But actually we weren't getting enough from those guys.
So we went to Trustpilot. We got a really good partnership
with them here and we went to them and said, can we adjust the
emails to try and incentivize them to do something else.
So then we started trying to get we, I mean, we managed to get 5%
of customers to actually upload a picture of the product.
That was incredible. the VA, we needed them for two weeks this
time. So just to look at those to then
tally up like, you know, what room was it in?
What colour was the carpet? Was it a well lit room, a bad
lit room? Were they using it for what
seems like the products intended use here or not?
Obviously slightly different with food and drink because I
mean, you're going to take a selfie or somebody's mouth like
that's not a good, that's not a good look, but.
We've seen some, we've seen some pictures in our time.
I hope I can tell you, I'll tell you about one of those in a
minute. But yeah.
It's always when the waiter comes over to the table, isn't
it? And how's your food?
And you've just put a mouth for and you just.
That's the kind of response to the waiting.
Yeah, that, that that's a, that's a real gripe of mine when
that happens. Like I'm, I'm a grumpy kid when
it comes to that kind of thing. I know I now I've worked out a
trick, just make I contact with other people on the table and go
like has anyone has anyone not got a mouth full of food?
Otherwise just thumbs up good. But yeah, we got them to then
look at those and we tried to incentivise people who,
especially if they reach out to customer service.
We, we then said, if and if we've resolved your query, could
you leave us a review, please? And then they said, oh, these
guys, customer service is amazing.
And then it went, OK, let's put great customer service on the
site. We did that on an AB test.
Revenue went up slightly. Then we went, how do we really
bring that to life? Like do we use live chat?
Do we say like 9:00 to 5:00? We guarantee to reply within a
minute. Like we put that on the little
speech bubble, like get, you know, guaranteed one minute
reply or 20% off. Your options and it was like, we
never gave a 20% off because somebody in the team was always
around. And what the owner did is his
customer service team had 20 people in the team.
He said to them all like, look, I'm giving you all an extra 5%
salary if you install, if you let us connect to your WhatsApp.
So even if you're making a coffee or something, just get
back to that first message as fast as possible.
Even if it's a thanks for your query.
It's going to take me a few minutes to look into this, but
I'm on this Regards Dave. You know, like even if Dave's
actually on the loo or making a coffee or he's nipped out for a
vape or something, like there's something then going on.
So you got that response. But we realised that customer
service was so important to the products.
People wanted to ask questions. Do you want to up your
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With Shopify, we have teamed up with a fluencer, which is an app
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So there's no excuse go and install the app, start the 30
day trial and give it a go yourself and see how you get on.
But go on. You've seen some things what
what was what was the most memorable thing that you've been
sent by a customer or. Seen on.
Social. We've got some, I mean one of
the wonderful things about our customers is that they are, they
are very loyal and they are very passionate about, about their
products. And so they will equally,
they'll tell us as soon as they, you know, in no uncertain terms
if they're unhappy, which is absolutely great because that's
what we want to hear from them. You'd rather know.
But also, but also they act proactively, tell us when
something was great. And I, I, it gets me thinking, I
can't remember the last time I actually just told a brand,
unless they've gone above and beyond and tried to, you know,
but but someone who, who anyway, they, they, they send in stuff
about them enjoying their products.
And we've had so in our advent calendars, we have these sort of
smaller packets. Obviously they've got to be
small because they've got to fit in the, the little advent doors.
But one one was such a die hard fan of these these products that
he he ordered, he wanted them ordered by the case.
So not not about the advent. He just wanted lots and lots of
little packets of this crackling.
And OK, fine. So we sorted that out for him.
And then, you know, he took a picture really, which was was
both disturbing and hilarious at the same time.
Just completely stark naked. But just the only thing, the
only thing covering his his dignity was I don't mean to
insult him. It was a small packet of
crackling, but you know, all I'm saying is it was the only thing
that was covering his dignity. And God love him, it was, it was
one of the most wonderful sort of, you know, spill your, spill
your coffee out, you know, these moments where you're like.
OK. As Head of Marketing, your work
here is done, George, I think you've made it.
It would have been lovely on social media, but I thought
that's. Not, no.
Yeah, there's a line, isn't there?
That's a line, I think. That's private.
Private use only, not. Yeah, it was private news, just
to be clear. We did there, we did have a
client recently, actually did a feedback survey and the owners
were like in two minds about this one mind.
They were like, it's good that we know that it's basically ad
female adult performers are our only target audience.
We thought we were sending stuff out for like, you know, a wife
to impress her husband in bed and whatever.
Actually it was adult performers and whatever else.
So they changed their photography to reflect that and
sales went up through the roof. And it was like, from a moral
perspective, I, I did have to kind of spend 5 minutes at home
that night just thinking like, is this something we want to
really help with? Do I even like this industry?
But it was I think it was just the the better.
You know that that was their whole customer base.
Hopefully what you got was just one customer having a laugh.
But it but then when you were saying about like last time you
went over and above to like reach out to brand say that was
just great guys who who thinks to go?
Do you know what naked selfie Let's go.
Send it to the brand. Yeah.
I mean, a Trustpilot review would have been lovely, you
know, give us a 5 out of five. But you know, anyway, some they
say, they say feedback's a gift, don't they?
So. There's so many jokes I could
make, but I won't. We'll move on.
But no, I appreciate that. We've all, we've all had stories
like that for sure. I mean, talking, talking about
the brand and the evolution. Then like in in the early days,
and certainly, I mean, you said, I think it's five years.
You've said you've been there, haven't you?
So in the early days, like what, what were some of the key
challenges you guys had to overcome?
Like what were some of the things that you knew and had to
deal with? What were some of the things you
eventually found out? What kind of didn't know
initially? Like what?
What were some of those early hurdles?
Well, I guess early, early in my time at Snaffling Pig, it wasn't
long after that that COVID hit. So obviously that was a big,
that was a big challenge in many ways.
But I think because we are and initially, you know, we, we are
a pub snack brand essentially. And then when all the pubs
closed, that was that was both unexpected, unprecedented and
all those other and. Shops.
As well, supermarkets as well, who were also a big part, you
know, so you had like some Tesco and Sainsbury's who were unable
to, to, to sell our stock and, and, or, or to, you know, there
were backlogs and all kinds of stuff.
So all that stuff which we don't need to necessarily go into
again, but it, it was, it was a challenge, but it was actually
Shopify that came to the rescue for us in terms of we already
had that and it was well established.
We've had Shopify for, you know, for like 9-10 years now.
So early, early adopters of it. So our D2C has always been very
strong. So while those parts of the
businesses sort of stumbled or, or, or, or shut down for a
period of time, you know, everything kind of went all
Shopify really. So I think my, my advice would
be that don't put all your eggs in one basket and one channel if
at all possible. And Snaff and Pig is fortunately
a brand that can kind of, it's been designed to sort of span
everything from gifting to FMCG to, you know, to say to pub
snacks and to fitness snacks as well.
So it's kind of it's the risks in that kind of way.
So I'd say if, wherever possible, that you if you can be
multi channel and you can definitely use online as your
call if you can. So you have most control.
But yeah, I think just kind of keep, keep, keep keep spreading
risk in in that respect, because it means that you can keep going
beyond any any hurdles in the in the road that, you know, it
doesn't even have to be as big as COVID.
It can be, it can be anything that comes up.
It just means that you can kind of, yeah, de risk.
Yeah, and I think one of the most stressful things, like, I
mean, I run my own business here.
It's it's the stuff that you can't control.
Like when I think COVID was the, I don't want to say the only
time, but one of the times I started using the phrase like,
we're really lucky. Like I've always taken the
approach like you make your own luck.
Like you work really hard, you make connections and oh, look,
magic. The phone's ringing.
Someone goes, oh, I met you. You left a good impression on
me. And I know someone who needs
your help. So here's an opportunity for
you. And the phone rings.
But I do think during COVID, it was one of the only times I've
actually said like we were lucky to be in a digital space.
And as you say, brands like yourself were like, suddenly we
obviously not work with you guys, but the brands like
yourselves were like, well, we need to, we need to go so much
harder online now and go hard digitally.
And we actually quite a few clients that were working on web
migrations or Shopify theme rebuilds, we actually said like
March, COVID hit. So let's wait until after
December, after peak if peak, if peak was Christmas for that
particular brand, wait till after that to launch anything.
We just optimise the get out of everything we've got right now
and just go for it because we launched a new site and
conversion drops like it's going to have a massive impact.
But I think I really, I really appreciate what you're saying
actually about de risking. There's a brand we're talking to
at the moment about potentially working with which they're
really well known for all their kind of heaters and other stuff,
which is good for the winter. But all their air conditioners
and coolers, well, they're good for summer and they're not very
well known for that. But that is part of their new
three-year plan to start that, as you say, de risking process.
And I think it's, it's certainly a good move.
And I used to run my own sunglasses brand and guess what,
8 months of the year, no one was buying sunglasses.
Well, hardly anyone was buying sunglasses.
So we basically just put the whole business on pause and
suddenly it was like, oh, sun's out today, turn Google Ads on
and obviously, you know, kind of start selling stuff, but.
It's true. I mean, and actually funny
enough, you know, we spoke about the Advent calendar and
obviously that's, that's that's how we we got famous because
we're on we're on Dragons Den and we won investment on Dragons
Den about 8-9 years ago now. And that was a great PRPR moment
for us. Yeah, it's kind of it's money
comp by PR basically. He just, it was just fantastic.
And we're still kind of riding on the the coattails of that.
Essentially people know us. And there's this long tail of
those kind of videos because some some guy on YouTube is now
making a lot of money out of the kind of these.
He was one of the first to upload like the best of clips
and and he's making a lot of money out of the the Snapping
Pig brand, which is, you know, that's yeah, early.
Fair enough, fair enough. The git, the little git.
But no, but it's good. But yeah, so it's a kind of long
term, but actually it helps us as well because it's always it's
you know, it's it's on there quite, quite regularly.
But so the advent calendar was, is what we were kind of, we were
famous for. It was our kind of, it was the
thing that gets people talking the most.
Obviously very seasonal. So we're thinking, well, you
know, people go on holiday in the summer and they're probably
not, yeah, they might go to the pub and have a bag of crackling
or a bag of scratchings. But, you know, if as an
indulgent snack, it tends to lend itself more to the autumn,
winter and Christmas sort of periods.
So we thought what any other snack brand should do is, well,
we'll sell barbecues then. So we still, we've branded
Kamado barbecues. So kind of like there's another
brand out there which is green and there's, there's, there are
various Komodo type brands out there which are like the leading
sort of market competitors. We, we created our own, we
branded our own and actually we got some fantastic reviews and
we, you know, went head to head against them in the like the
market leader in, in, in a review by the independents.
And we actually came out as a much better value option than
actually just goes, goes toe to toe with the competitor,
something that we don't even specialised in.
But again, that was us sort of de risking and also trying to
kind of iron out some of the lumps and bumps of the year
where you're just like where the more kind of quiet moments.
We've got other things where, OK, there's other bits that can
kind of keep going. And the BBQ is still, is still
going good guns. So it's it's, I'm pretty sure
we're the only company in the world that sell snacks,
calendars and barbecues is. A very random mix.
Yeah. But it kind of.
Yeah, it works. Yeah, it does.
It works. And that's part of the silliness
of the brand, which we love. So, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, a couple more
questions, then I think we've got time for at least two more.
One of them is about customer retention.
Obviously, we spoke a lot about brand, about DE risking
products, about having a good range of products without
actually, I mean, barbecues and avid cannons.
You've not deviated from pork scratchings really.
You've evolved into other spaces.
And I think it's a good way to do it.
But how do you guys retain customers?
Like do people just love the product?
Do you do some really smart e-mail?
Is it social? Is it the jokes on the back as
you say? Like is it that you've created a
community behind it? Like it might be a mix of all
those things. But yeah, tell us it is, it is,
it is a mix of all those things. I don't think so.
We see social media very much. We are not content creators.
We don't we, you know, we're a small leading team.
We focus on selling a good product and and good customer
service. So social media for us, it's in
in and of itself it's fine. But we use it very much as a
more of a channel, another channel just to talk with our
customers directly. And actually it's the kind of
offline or the kind of the private messages, the sliding
into the DMS bit, which is where the pig in magic happens, as it
were. We are very much it's, it's with
it's conversational. So we take that conversational
approach through our emails, through our website, for our
online chat, through our social media, through Trustpilot
reviews. People can get in touch, they
can just say the word and we'll get, we'll end up getting in
touch with them and then we'll have a proper conversation with
them as humans. That's why.
And, and as I said before, the, you know, the SAT, the customer
satisfaction has, has, has gone, you know, through the roof.
And I truly believe that's why people come back to us.
It's yes, they love the product and they think it's a fun
product and a fun experience. But if you can make you see
here, The thing is, our website is primarily a gift, a gifting
website. And we believe that, and this
is, this is true. We believe that buying a gift
should be as fun as receiving one.
In fact, I'd argue actually, I, I find buying gifts more fun
than receiving. I hate receiving gifts.
But if you can buy a gift and make the person who's bought the
gift feel good about buying that gift, that's the, that's the
sweet spot. So that's why in the transaction
emails we make it, we celebrate the fact they've got this and
they've done this, you know, they've done a good thing for
their mate or their husband or their wife or whatever.
And yeah, we kind of, we celebrate that.
So we really believe that kind of experience has been key to
key to attention. But yes, we use Clavio, we use,
we use Gorgeous as well. Shout out to those guys as well.
The Gorgeous app is is fantastic.
Yeah, they've sponsored the podcast before as well.
We love. Gorgeous, yeah, yeah.
No, they're they're really, no, they have been yeah.
As a tool, it's just, it's just incredible.
And yeah. So we just use a mix and
everything, just make sure that everything, everything kind of
works and things together. We sync everything we can, but
any kind of data points we can sync and make sure that it's all
available and across all touch points.
But it's, yeah, essentially it's just it's making sure the
conversation keeps happening. Just talk to the customers.
So you know, it doesn't have to be fancy.
Yeah, and I think just just add on the point about gorgeous as
well. We we had them on a year or so
ago, but they sponsored I think 3 or 4 times the show and
they've been on quite a lot. So if anyone listening is like
what on earth is gorgeous? It's GORGIAS and I think it's
dot IO be a gorgeous is it's such a good tool because you're
probably using it for exactly the same thing, George.
You can connect up like literally everything.
Customer sends an e-mail, a DM on Facebook Messenger,
Instagram, TikTok. Yeah, whether they send you a
WhatsApp, an SMS, even if they phone up, Gorgeous can know
about all of that. It has AI, you can have
prewritten responses. One point I would make about it
is, and in a way I think to use it really effectively is I read
a study a couple of weeks ago when I was sitting on the train
just browsing LinkedIn, Study popped up of how to nail
customer service. And one of the things it said is
even if you have say the customer, there's 8 messages in
this thread with a customer. Even if eight different people
in your team reply keep the same name.
Because one of the things that customers hate is when it's
like, oh, Sam's messaged me and you go the customer, especially
when the customer goes, hi Sam, thanks for that.
Can I ask then about this or when's it going to arrive?
Whatever the question is. And then Janet responds and
you're like, oh, sorry, I was talking to Sam.
Oh, hi, Janet. And then Waheed comes back next.
You're like, oh, now I'm talking to Waheed and I was talking to
Janet. And before that it was like,
it's a mess. Even if it's different people,
gorgeous, you can put the same signature, can't you, for that
customer just to say, regards, Sam.
So you're like Sam at snuffling pit.
He sorts me out. He knows exactly what I need to
do and I talk to him all the time.
Yeah, exactly. And I just keep it, yeah, we
just sign it off Team SP, like team snapping pig, and we sign
it off with a kiss and it's done.
And they just know that it's the same.
Signing up for the kiss is a nice touch as well, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, there's there's times to not do the kiss and
there's times but but the guy with the.
Product put me in hospital. Hope it goes well.
Kiss. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, the guy, the guy with the the Advent packet covering his
dignity, he he got a couple of kisses.
So yeah, he's OK, Yeah, God forbid what he'll send back
next. Cool.
And the last question, which you kind of started to cover a
little bit anyway, I was going to say, what are some of the
apps you can't live without? You mentioned Clavio, of course,
we don't know Clavio. Our shout outs Saguno because
they are our sponsor and I genuinely believe they're better
and I like, I prefer to them to Saguno than I use Clavio.
But Clavio is a very popular tool and it does work very well
and obviously gorgeous. What other apps could you guys
not live without on your Shopify store recharge?
For subscriptions, for sure, smaller lesser known one
perhaps, but it's orderly. Check those out.
So, so they're very simple, like a really lovely, again, I've
spoken a lot about customising transactional messages or any
kind of form of communication, but it just it, what it does is
it just enables you just to take the Shopify standard template
and, and actually just make it a bit more fun and engaging.
And that's been absolutely key. Yeah, absolutely.
Because those messages. Can be very dry as well.
I mean, we're talking too much today.
But yeah, just just to make a point, you can be so dry.
Like your order is confirmed and then you get a delivery
notification from the brand, followed by one from the
delivery company, followed by one from the local Courier, and
you're like, who's got the package?
And that's and that's something, yeah.
And I think, you know, to your point earlier about sort of
Amazon, if you want the kind of the dry utilitarian approach
show with Amazon, that's fine. If you're an Amazon Prime
customer, you're not expecting any love, that's fine.
But that's where we have a point of difference.
And, and, and those kind of apps bit gorgeous or, or Clavio or,
or or orderly or, or any of these kind of little apps, big
and small. Some are free, some are
expensive. Some, yeah, but that all I, I, I
choose which ones to use based on OK, will it add, will it
sprinkle some of that love for the customer?
And that might sound a bit cheesy, but doesn't mean that
they'll get oh, I like that they'll get a little kick out of
it. And if if the customer sees it,
let's do it, great. Cool.
No, I absolutely love that. And I think I mean, certainly as
someone who works in SEO, first thing we do on on page speed on
on Shopify is go like, right, let's have a look on Google
Chrome, inspect what bits of JavaScript are firing.
Oh, look, 45% of your JavaScript is failing.
I wonder what apps you've got and you go in the apps in the
back. And I mean, we found one for a
client. I, I, he's called James.
I know you listen to podcast, James.
Hello. But we flagged it to you last
week, James, about page speed. And actually these guys had an
app that like puts a countdown on when a sale's ending, but
they don't do sales very often. But the app's always running.
So it's always in the page load and that adds like nought .7
seconds and like 2 seconds is the target.
So it's literally something we don't use.
So that and we also say to people as well things like Hot
Jar, Microsoft Clarity, like to monitor how people are using the
pages. And I would recommend Microsoft
Clarity of a Hot Jar. I love Hot Jar, but you have to
pay for it. Microsoft Clarity's better and
it's free as you say, like some of them are, but only run that
when you're going to look at the report.
The rest of the time turn it off because it does Mics of clarity
seems to have a much lower page load than than hot job.
But yeah, certainly mics of clarity, everybody use that.
I'm a massive advocate of that tool and also like Bing is
growing so like Microsoft, you've got Bing there as well.
So get get involved in the suite of things.
There are some good opportunities on there.
But equally, Microsoft Clarity don't have it running on your
site all the time. Just put it on maybe like two
days a month or something. Monitor what's going on.
Take it back off, keep that page, be nice and quick.
And also like if you look at your sales data, if you know, on
the 9th and 10th of the month, you're miles from payday, so no
one's buying anything or actually AUS brand.
So you've got kind of two paydays going on every month.
Yeah, look at when it's at its lowest and turn it on those two
days when it's going to have less impact.
And ideally early in the low impact, say Google's got time to
go. Oh yeah, the pages get faster
again so you can see what's going on.
But I certainly. Yeah, there's so many.
You guys probably do do it. I'm afraid everybody seems to do
it, but it's like, oh, there's an app for that, add that.
Oh, there's an app for that. Add that and next thing it's
like. And if you can have one app that
does 5 things like like Gorgeous does, that covers like 5 bases
from live chat to all your social, use that one in as many
places as possible because then it's one app that's loading.
Every every app adds a little bit of code onto the site and it
just slows it down a little bit. And to be honest, I do need to
get onto the snafu pig one to clean up some code because it's
it's probably a bit like a Petri dish of of code at the moment.
But we can. So maybe, maybe I'll give you a
shout after this. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely fine.
And the last tip, I'll give you, George and everybody listening
as well as if you put all your analytics and tracking tools
into Google Tag Manager, you load one code then fires off to
all the other places rather than you're loading like Pixel from
Pixel and you're loading Google Analytics from Google Analytics.
And then even Google Analytics and Google Ads tracking tags are
different and they come from two different Google servers.
Actually if you use Google Tag Manager and put it all in there
just loads it loads them all in one go through one thing which
again saves on page. The only thing I would say is
just be really careful of cookie banners these days.
We've had clients where the cookie in fact 6 clients are.
Fires before the cookie banner. Yeah, some of those it fires
before they've accepted cookies, and other times whether they
accept or the client cookies, it doesn't fire either way.
So. Then you have no analytics,
which is a bit. Of a oh wow, so it's one or the
other. It is indeed.
And also like, we don't know exactly what yet, but there's
going to be a big change that in December this year.
So don't worry guys, we'll be talking about loads on the show.
It is my bread and butter. So I will be doing episodes on
it as we did with GA four and everything else.
But yeah, there's going to be a big change to cookies.
It looks like Google Chrome might actually go cookie lists
in December, which could have any number of effects on things.
They normally announce the date and then knock it back at least
one, possibly three years. So we might be fine.
But the EU, who is waging war on cookies and no one understands
why still no one's personal data has really been lost anywhere
apart from hacks, and they're still happening.
So anyway, we could talk about that all day.
But look, George, I really appreciate your time.
It's been so good to have you on the show.
I've got, I always show everybody this at the end.
Like I've got a massive long list of notes, which I'm also
would have read out in the intro having recorded that after this.
But George, I want to say a massive thank you.
Thank you for joining us. Thanks for being so humble,
sharing all your insights and I really appreciate your time
today. Thank you, Nick.
Thank you so much. All the best.
Great to have George on. We'll have another guest again
next week. Everybody apologies this is
going out slightly late. George and I are recording on a
Friday and had another guest cancelled so this might have
gone out slightly late. So we might not be posting on
Friday, but we do generally post every Friday.
So if you haven't already hit subscribe, please leave us a
review and come join the growth hub as well.
It's completely free. Talk to other brands like
yourself and and get advice and see what other people are up to.
Thanks for tuning in see you again next time.
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