Today on the Winning with Shopify podcast, Today though,
we're talking about AI. Accurate representation of our
customer base is the heart of who we are as a brand.
I'm now having conversations with my car more often and my
wife's like I'm sitting here, can you talk to me?
Let's just try it and experiment and if they understand what's OK
and what's not, then you can trust them to do that.
Google grabs content and puts content in those AI results.
Now for FAQs for information. So everything you've ever said
about your brand is being. Boarded brands really are
exposed hello and welcome to another episode the winning
should fight podcast. If you're not cheating before my
name is Nick and I never wear yellow.
My wife has left the door this morning said have you borrowed
someone else's T-shirt? Like, no, I'm wearing yellow.
It's not my colour. But hey, it is the middle of
summer here in the United Kingdom and it's absolutely
miserable today. At the time recording this, so I
thought I'd brighten things up. If you haven't already, please
go and subscribe to our newsletter and also check out my
little tea break episodes. They're called Tuesday's tea
break talks. That's the one we keep changing
the name Jeff. I don't know what business
Jeff's from, but Jeff reached out on e-mail, Jeff something
something, something at Gmail and suggested the name.
So it's Tuesday's Tuesday tea break talks with a tongue
twister. But I'll get it by the time we
change the name to something else.
So super excited for today's episode.
I've got a guest called Janice Thomas and Janice has been on
the show several times. And I was just joking before we
start recording. Janice is our, I think second
most featured guest now. So Janice, I would normally say
welcome, but I'm going to say welcome back, back, back, back,
back. Welcome back to the show.
Thanks for having me, Nick. Well, it's a pleasure to have
you here and if anyone's like, OK, Nick, this person, Janice,
obviously you are an absolute legend in the e-commerce world.
Janice, I'm a massive fan of your LinkedIn posts.
I've watched a lot of conference talks.
We've also done a lot of things together.
And when we grab 5 minutes at the odd conference to have a
chat, it ends up being 50 minutes talking about e-commerce
and everything else that's going on.
So if anyone's not come across your name or heard of you before
or seen any episodes, give us an overview to where you work, what
the business does, and also your role within the organization.
Yeah. So I'm managing director at a
direct consumer beauty brand called Look Fabulous Forever.
We manufacture and formulate makeup and skin care, and it's
all designed for the unique needs of older women.
But typically in the beauty industry, an older woman is like
somebody over 25. But all of our products are
specifically designed for women post menopause.
So our customer base is typically in her sixties, 70s
and 80s. Amazing.
And I mean, you've got that to a tee.
I think the first time I asked you about 3 or 4 years ago, it
was a lot longer than that. But I think because you do, you
do so much in the sort of speaking circuits, which is
which is part of the business exposure because naturally
anyone over the age of 25 who's a woman is a potential target
customer. But I always love the way you
drill straight into that. These are the people we're
targeting, what we're doing. And today though, we're talking
about AI. And you and I have had quite a
few chats in odd round tables and over e-mail and other stuff
and in a little forum as well about about AI and how it all
kind of plugs together and how brands are using it, not using
it. And even a couple of things
we've mentioned before, hitting record was like something I
didn't know, something you didn't know about AI.
That's changing. Give us a quick overview and
then we're going to dig in some of the more kind of areas you
guys are using it, some more sophisticated, some you're just
sort of starting out and trying it.
But give us an overview to how does AI fit into the look
fabulous forever business and and a kind of internal workings
of the brand. Yeah.
So we originally, I think it was nearly 2 1/2 years ago now, just
as you know, ChatGPT was really taking off and all of those
things. I've heard of it, Yep.
I was thinking this is going to be a, this is going to be a
fundamental shift within our industry and the careers of
everyone who works in this organization.
So I said, look, everyone go away and play with ChatGPT, see
what AI tools we have within our existing marketing, you know,
tech platforms, all of those things go experiment and come
back and share. And that has been kind of our
philosophy on AI is let's just try an experiment.
And there have been things that it really, really doesn't work
for and things that it works really, really well for.
But from my point of view, it's really important for me as the
managing director of the organization to set that
culture. And that expectation is that
you're going to experiment with that AI.
It's not going to work, but this is the way forward.
And this stuff is really important.
Yeah, And, and my first note I've written down here is you
were right, Janice. It's, it really has taken off.
One thing I love about obviously your managing director.
I, I think you would, you would you had a marketing job title
previously, didn't you, a few years, a few years back.
But what I love is the way that whenever you talk about your
team or when we talk about the way you do social ads and other
things, that really inspired me over the years.
When we talk about those things, you always talk about having a
very proactive approach and actually even saying to the
team, go away, do some research, find how this new AI thing could
support your job function or the company as a whole.
Come back and report that to me. I think it's the opposite to
much less progressive brands where they would almost go.
They're asking people like me and saying like, oh, do you guys
use AI for stuff? It's like, yeah, like, I mean,
I've literally got voice activated chat TVC in my car now
and ALDI have released that into cars.
And so the other day I asked it something like, where's this
restaurant? It's like, here's something I
found on ChatGPT. Like whoa, whoa, whoa.
I'm now having conversations with my car more often and my
wife's like, I'm sitting here, you can talk to me, but talking
to the car would chat to me. But I think that proactive
approach to go and find some stuff and bring it back rather
than relying on, I don't know, systems to start using AI for us
and speeding things up. I'm going to ask you a massive
question now. This might be the next like two
or three hours of conversation, which I don't think I've even
got that long. What were some of the initial
things they came back with, especially the ones that have
actually been embedded that you've kept long term?
Yeah, so funnily enough, the first thing that came back that
was really like, this is a total game changer win for us, which
is really then gone on to be the case is really around images.
And I think for us particularly that ability to take a flat
product image and turn it into a lifestyle image being like, oh,
do you know, it's really sunny this week, Let's show this
lipstick on the beach, you know, oh, you know, all the spring
flowers are out. Let's do a lovely image with
spring flowers. Like that has just been things
that would previously either we wouldn't have been able to do be
that creative because we wouldn't have had the time and
the resource to go out and do that shoot at all.
Or it's like, oh, well, it's going to take this much time and
then we're going to have to edit the images and all of those
things just being like, bang, it's done.
That was like the first thing that was like, yes, this is the
thing we absolutely need to be leaning into.
But because of that, very early on, because of our brand, and we
have a really strong brand and I think that's really important in
the age of AI. We very, you know, right off the
bat put some like really clear guidelines around those images.
It's like, yeah, it's great for product based stuff and we would
absolutely use it. And we use it, you know, to help
with, you know, editing and cropping and, you know, kind of
things like that. But we would never use AI to
create an image of a woman or a woman's skin because for those
that's like the accurate representation of our customer
base is the heart of who we are as a brand.
Therefore, that is something that we would never do.
And I think that strong brand is really important in the age of
AI about what you do and don't do as a brand, because your team
are going to be off doing a million different things with
AI, whether you endorse that or not.
And if they understand what's OK and what's not, then you can
trust them to do that. But if they don't have that
clear brand and anything is, you know, on the table, then that's
where you're going to get things.
You're like, that's just wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And again, I love that proactive approach to saying, and I'm sure
there's more categories than just the weather or the seasons
or something. But it's a sunny day and then
posting something on social by ten, 10:30 in the morning in the
UK, obviously where your main customer base is.
And posting something is like, wow, it's a beautiful spring
morning. And then when they're doing some
doom scrolling later, it's like, oh, that's really nice.
You know, that's that's the perfect lipstick to wear in this
weather. Or, you know, the perfect tone
to be or this type of tone to be using.
So you're providing some information that you've written
1000 times, but now you've just changed the context of it used
AI we use, we use the AI within Canva and Photoshop a lot to
remove backgrounds. I'm sure you do the same things
even with a white flat pack image.
That background remover is absolutely amazing.
And certainly when I guess in my world, I'm putting it on like
the spec red background in a pitch deck or something, but
just making it look really, really clean, like putting
somebody's, I don't know, say it was a pair of glasses.
And we we're actually working with a couple of glasses brands
as of the last few weeks to put in glasses, especially where it
removes the background from within the glass is, is amazing.
Our partners at Saguna have released a brand new app for
Shopify and it's called Shopify Connect for Canva.
You can essentially look at all of your product images from
Shopify directly in Canva and export them straight back.
This can save you a lot of time. If you want to find out a bit
more about this or go and find the app yourself, you can go to
saguna.com. Canva, enjoy with with the AI as
well. You touched on this and we said
we were going to talk about this today as well about the brands.
Like I use the word exposed. I think brands are really
exposed now because it's not just like the SEO crawlers and
then going, oh, this stuff here is populist.
Let's put that up as a page listing on Google and they land
on the page and you're in control of the journey.
Google grabs content and puts content in those AI results now
for FAQs, for information, brands really are exposed.
Like if you put something hidden in the depths of your website
and someone puts the right search in, you know, Gemini's
going to know that and Google's going to go right, here's an AI
result with that on. How much, how much tighter do
you think brands need to be now with controlling that story,
that positioning? I think it's absolutely vital
and I think it's wider than your website as well because
increasingly those LLMS are using your social post copy to
learn about your brand. So everything you've ever said
about your brand is being recorded.
And I think particularly from an organic social perspective, how
you talk about your products and your USPS and all of those
things and the sort of content that you're sharing.
If you're just sharing the latest, you know, viral meme
about the guy at the Coldplay concert, what is that teaching?
About that a minute ago, yeah. About your brand.
So I think being like increasingly clear about what
you are and what you stand for and what you talk about and what
you don't talk about, rather than just jumping on, oh, this
is a viral trend. Oh, we think that we should have
a, you know, blog post about, you know, whatever's, you know,
hot right now match a coffee or something like that.
It's then teaching them the wrong things.
And I think brands that are really focused on what they are
and what they stand for are going to win.
Because I think it's not just, oh, you're talking about like
search snippets. It's like being the right search
snippet is increasingly important because like, if you
know, like previously, I'll like, I'll, you know, I want to
rank for, you know, number one for digital marketing agency.
Oh, I can do that by spending enough money on PPC, but being,
you know, saying, oh, actually we're the best, you know,
digital marketing agency for brands on Shopify between 5 and
10,000,000 LB revenue being the number one result for those that
kind of multifaceted search, particularly in LLMS, you know,
that is where they, they really excel is in that multifaceted
environment that Google isn't, is getting better at, but isn't
brilliant at. So really being clear about who
you are and who your customer is and what you do and what you
don't do and being single minded about going after that.
That's where you win across the board, both in terms of search
and LLMS. Absolutely. And I mean, just just to give an
example of how to work that out in e-commerce, so many brands
that we're working with, we started looking at things like
loyalty programs and a massive 1 is then rewarding people that
and Block your Ears, trust Pilot, Judge Me and all the
other review players rewarding people when they leave a review,
which is against some of the terms and conditions, but it's a
third party rewarding. And I'll let the lawyers discuss
that one. But companies are doing it.
I'm not, they are. So you can have an argument with
them, but the rewarding people for leaving a review, especially
one with an image and giving them more loyalty points or
bigger reward if they leave an image.
The same with posting on social with their product.
Suddenly you've got access to actually look at your customers
like you would in a physical shop, but without having a
physical shop and then understanding who they are.
I mean, immediately you said actually for older women, but
we're talking 25 plus. It's one reason I love talking
to Janice is you've you've drilled down so tightly to who
the customer is, which which I'm going to say it's easy, but it
it gives you more of a laser focus, doesn't it, when it comes
to creating content and what audiences to use.
And actually TikTok probably is a big platform for you now where
when you first said it's, you know, make up for older women
you wouldn't necessarily associate with TikTok, you'd go,
well, it's Facebook and some forums, isn't it?
But actually, Tik Tok's relevant to a 27 year old, isn't it?
It is, which is why we're we're still on there.
And one of the things that we do is we regularly talk to our
customers and we ask them things like, are you on TikTok?
And one of the things that I find fascinating about that
platform in particular because we have been monitoring that
over probably about two years. And I can't remember the exact
stats, but with ballpark, the first time we asked, it was
about 2% and it went up over time to about 5% and then it's
dropped back down to about 3%. So within our demographic, which
is very, you know, very much in that kind of, you know, 60s,
seventies, 80s, there was a kind of level of interest, a bit of
experimentation. And it's dropped off, I think
for mainstream brands, you know, in a mainstream demographic, I
think TikTok has been such a game changer because of the fact
that it's all about discovery. It's less about, oh, these are
the specific people I'm following.
It's like these are the people I'm, this is the stuff that I'm
interested in. And then I'm naturally being
served stuff that I am interested in.
And I think that whole kind of AI algorithm stuff around social
is really interesting, being really clear about, again, what
you are and who you know, who you target, what you stand for,
all of those things. And using that to reach more of
the right person is just a really interesting proposition.
Yeah. And I love that.
And I've just drawn, I'm not going to show it because I have
the handwriting of a three-year old on the best of days, but
I've just written down a quick process actually of what what
we're talking about here. So it starts with the
understanding of who the existing customer is.
So there's a bit of chicken and egg.
You've got to get enough customers if you're starting out
to, to have them it's and I'm going to ask you a question on
how to get more information them in a SEC.
Think that that's where it starts.
Now we've got that. Now you can try some creative
executions and it's a bit clearer which platforms to go to
because you're, you know who they are because you've spoken
to them. And then you have those
platforms, which then means that when the AI kind of LLMS. And if
you, if you don't want any LLMS, guys, go and check out the Yost
episode we spoke about a few weeks ago.
Because I, I spoke to Yost, who are the biggest plug in used in
the entire world on any website platform for their WordPress
plug in. They've got a Shopify plug in.
You get a discount through US and everything else.
So check out that episode we spoke, I spoke with a couple of
their colleagues about LLMS and these guys are writing articles
in all the biggest SEO publications like search engine
journal and other things about LMS at the moment.
So check that out. And if you want to, if you want
to create a little file on the site, you can also go back and
check out there as fun to a sales pitch now it's really
good. I work in SEO and it saves so
much time for us on the free plan of Yost.
You can also get an what's called LM LM TXT file and that
tells the the LLMS, those AI bots from Google, Bing and other
search engines, what to look at on the site.
And you can just take a box and it would do that on your
WordPress site also on your, on your Shopify store.
So you check those out. But so we got the content
because we know who the we know who the customers are.
We know what platforms are targeting and then we can start
testing creative content, which naturally then means we're doing
fun AB test of like this campaign versus this one, which
so many brands I found over the years start at that point.
And we come in and sort of say, we don't really know what you
stand for. There's no USP here.
Your delivery's fast. So is everyone else's.
Your reviews are good, so is everyone else's.
You've been running for over 10 years.
You're actually one of the youngest brands in this space.
And yeah, and your your products are cool.
That's relative, isn't it? That's like an opinion.
So finding things we can fight on, which might be this is just
the products that I, as a consumer, really want at this
moment. And I'm buying it through
TikTok, which is where I want to shop or whatever that space is.
I think so powerful. My question Janice is going
right back to step one and the irony how we're talking about
AI, but we're going back to actually sending out like a
feedback survey. How do how do you slash how can
other brands get customers to provide feedback to them?
Because I know lots of brands try and they don't get many
responses. How do you how do you make that
happen? I think it's a number of things.
I think fundamentally, I think it starts fire up the funnel
with that stuff that you were talking about, like who you are
and what you stand for. Because I think particularly,
particularly with with the way that kind of TikTok and
Instagram are running, it is actually really, really easy to
go viral. You know, any brand can go
viral, but unless you're clear about your brand and what you
stand for and why people should buy from you and why your
products are different, it's really, really hard to people
get people to come back. And if they don't feel invested
in your brand, then they're never, you know, you can survey
them, but they're never going to respond because they don't care.
You don't have, you don't have that.
You don't have that relationship.
You don't have, you haven't bought the permission for them
to spend their time giving you that data.
So I do, you know, I think increasingly you've got all
these different facets that play into being really clear about
who you are and what you stand for.
And if you build a relationship with customers where they do
understand what you stand for and why you're why you exist and
why your products are different and you know, they do come back
and buy from you multiple times. Then typically when we send out
a survey to our customers, which we do every quarter, we get
about 10% response rate and we've been you know sending
those for every quarter for five years.
So a lot of customers have been getting those again and again
and again and they're still responding to them.
And part of that is also the contract with our customers is
that we always feedback to them when we send out every, every
survey being like thank you for responding in the past.
We are launching this new product or we are doing XY and Z
because you told us in previous surveys.
So they don't feel like they respond and then nothing
happens. So.
And that must encourage people to want to fill out next time
because it's like, I could have had an impact and I didn't.
And now they're telling me they're launching this.
That's a great product. I'm going to help out next time
because I think they could have changed something on it.
Exactly, exactly. So you know, it's very easy for
me to be glib and say, oh, you just ask your customers, but you
have to have the right relationship with your customers
1st to get meaningful data. And you know, if you're a huge,
you know, if you're a huge household brand, there are
obviously other ways of, of doing that.
But if you're niche then you you need a relationship with your
customers. Yeah, and I think probably as
much as everyone else, I've ignored so many surveys over the
years thinking I bought from that company because they're the
only one who had that product in stock or they didn't want the
next day delivery. I don't have any clout with
them, any relationship. And if I never bought with them
again, then fine. And I used to site recently to
actually wholesale loads of drinks and chocolate bars and
crisps for the office. And I got an e-mail from them
this morning, which I thought was really powerful actually.
And I must have spent about 500 lbs over the last few months
just ordering stuff for the office.
And they sent me an e-mail saying, oh, you've got 12 lbs of
cash back sitting in your account here.
And I thought everything like I bought wholesale to save some
money and also order in bulk like from a supermarket or
delivery. I couldn't get the quantity that
I wanted. I wanted to just click a button
and get tons of long life stuff that would just be here for like
8 months, nine months. That was the plan.
And actually then then saying you've got some cash back, come
spend it. It suddenly created this
relationship where it's like, I bought from you and you're
giving me something back. And actually the thing you give
me back, I can now come and spend and I had, I think it's
£12 cash back. And yes, I spent about 70 lbs on
my next transaction. But now I have that relationship
with like, as soon as I made that transaction, like, well,
how much cash back have I got now?
And it was like suddenly I, that engagement with the brand
suddenly increased. But that's their, their model,
which I thought, I always think cash back's a nice way of doing
discounts and loyalty without actually going here's 50% off
because then you're like, well, I'm never buying a pizza from
Domino's full price again, which I think they've got one of the
worst models and they're just stuck in a loop.
Now Domino's, they're same with a lot of pizza places.
They're never going to get out of that, which has led to other
more premium pizza places opening up and going.
Our pizzas cost $30 a pizza and it's like, and they're never
going to change and we never discount them, but they're
delicious and it's painful enough paying that much for a
pizza that people go, well, it must be good pizza and then
therefore enjoy it more. So I think I think you're right,
that whole kind of brands clout is really, really important.
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Now back to the show. Let's talk about something else
with AI then. How much do you guys use AI?
We spoke about images. How much do you use it for other
types of content like text specifically?
So text specifically is we use it a lot for, you know, subject
line ideas a lot for things like getting started with, OK, why do
you use this type of product? And, you know, kind of the, you
know, the shorthand for getting that article started for
actually writing like whole pieces.
Because we're in such a niche, there isn't actually a lot of
content about it about specifically designed for our
customers, talking about the products that we sell.
So there's, you know, a million pieces about mascara, but
specifically like mascara for, you know, women in our
demographic much less so. So because of that, the quality
of the the on it from a text point of view isn't always
great. But what we can do is take, you
know, well, here are the, you know, 3 reasons why you need the
right mascara, you know, from ChatGPT.
But then we can take it and we can then make it appropriate to
our demographic and the specific things that they have about it.
So, but yeah, for things like, you know, subject line ideas,
it's like, I'll use it being like, you know, my CRM team will
send me an e-mail and I'm like, I don't like this subject line,
but I don't want to spend 5 minutes thinking about it.
I'll just be like, you know, give me 10, you know, subject
line ideas about free lipstick and like would OK, that's, you
know. And ignore the one with the word
elevator and I think that got voted like AI word of the year
so far 2025 is the word elevate. You see that it's like it's
ChatGPT and then people who like using that word, sorry guys,
you're stuffed. You cannot use that word anymore
but. Absolutely.
So yeah, think things like that, ideas and getting started.
It's really brilliant for whole, complete, finished content.
It's just the fact that we're in a niche where that content is
lacking, which is why we're creating it.
It doesn't necessarily have the stuff out there, but I think
from a broader content creation point of view, it's, you know,
really interesting. And I think particularly one of
the things that YouTube has recently launched around these
are the videos we think they should be making.
Is is going to be massively useful to us.
And yeah, so some of the suggestions are just, no,
that's, you know, rubbish. But there's some real gold in
there because they're looking at what sort of videos are, are
other people who watch your videos watching And it's really,
that is really helpful. And that's something that we,
you know, it's comparatively new and we're already really leaning
into because it's that coming up with what should we create?
And is it, you know, is it going to work?
Because that's the nature of content creation is you're
creating loads of things and some of it's going to work
better than others. Having that insight about what
you might be missing that could be really successful is really
helpful. Yeah, yeah.
And I love that it's almost using it for the research phase,
isn't it? And I think we, we use AIA lot
here for number crunching. And the good thing about number
crunching is it can't lie. But we also still still use the
spreadsheet and do a couple of sums and go, is it right?
Yes, great, let's all move on because we have had some
scenarios where it's not right and then we've gone back and
gone, hang on a minute is use the different, I don't know, a
sales channel source for example, when it's switched to
round for the same piece of data.
And it's like, no, no, no, I'm trying to compare those two and
you've given me the opposite of what's correct.
So got to be a little bit careful.
But that research phase of, you know, what are the hottest
topics right now? The YouTube one's really
interesting because it did suggest that I made some make up
videos for people in the e-commerce space.
And I thought what on I was like, I couldn't I'm I'm not
qualified for a lot of things in life.
That's that's in the top 10. But again, what you're talking
about, it goes back to what you said right at the start about
we're in a niche. We know our target audience and
there aren't many competitors to what we do.
And when people find us, it's like, I never knew I needed
this, but this is fantastic. This is exactly what I need.
Which makes it difficult for a compass to come into that space
because you are so ingrained in your foundation, so deep in that
niche. Which as you say, when it comes
to writing content, it's like, OK, we could talk about the same
thing as everybody else with our niche captured on top.
And actually, when you look at the demographics across the UK,
25 plus, you've actually got a massive part of the UK anyway,
which means it's a fantastic piece of marketing to say you're
all in this niche and we've got something different that you
will actually need that you won't find necessarily in boots.
And I think it's a really, really powerful way of looking
at it. How much do you guys use AI in
terms of actual customers talking to AI like chat bots,
customer service, e-mail responses, delivery fulfilment,
all that sort of stuff? Has that come into play in that
section of business? Yes is the short answer, though
not in a massive, massive way for us because our entire
philosophy around customer service is that we try to solve
your problem upstream so you don't have to, you don't have to
get in touch with us. So for example, we have a
brilliant third party logistics partner and typically they will,
if you place an order before about 4:00 today, they will ship
it today. And that makes a massive
difference in how likely you are to receive your order within the
expected time frame. Because if, if you order today,
we ship it today, you get the shipping confirmation, you're
then tracking it. You know what, you know what's
what's happening. So you're very unlikely to get
in touch with US versus my experience as a consumer where
you've ordered something and it's 3 days later and they
haven't even shipped it yet. That's when you're getting in,
getting in touch. So we we do a lot to solve
upstream problems and a significant amount of our
customer service is actually people wanting a one to one
conversation with our customer service team who are women in
their 60s and 70s about right, what product, what shade, like a
really in depth conversation, an experience they wouldn't, you
know, can't get on our website. But having said that, because we
do have this, you know, UK based, you know, very, you know,
kind of in depth team, we use chat bots for out of hours
service. And you know, for all that
that's that easy to answer questions, you know, that works
really well for us. And we're the next stage of that
is our like we've set up, you know, standard answers.
But the next stage of that is that the software is now able to
interrogate our website and get get answers without us having to
have created canned responses, which I think is really useful
because, you know, when our philosophy is a business is when
somebody asks a question and we don't have the answer to it on
the website, we try to then put it on the website.
So in theory, chat bots, particularly for that easy to
serve stuff, kind of fills that niche really well, which means
that our team can focus on the stuff that they do really well,
which is providing like really one to one personalized advice.
One thing I love about just taking a step back for a second,
Janice, I love talking to you on the show and my guests will
recognise this. I have like 20 questions to
every answer you give me that I could ask now.
So I'm having to be so selective.
What do I think the biggest opportunity for our audience is
and for you guys listening at home to ask, I mean, some of the
routes I could go down here from OK, that's fantastic SEO content
connecting your customer service team and what people ask post
order, pre-order. It's A to website content.
I think the chat bot actually looking at in the AI box,
looking at website content to answer questions means your
website content has to be amazing.
So no excuses, no stone unturned at this point.
There are so many positives that comes out of this, but equally
some of these things, I almost feel like you either have to do
all of it like you guys do. You can't just do one or two
things because otherwise there isn't the profit available at
the bottom line of the PNL to cover the cost of these things.
We have to do the whole process or nothing.
We have to be an amazing, super lean, super tight operation
because if one bit falls down, like say you get all of it
right, but the customer service team aren't your target audience
and can't give that advice, suddenly you need 20 or 30 times
the amount of people in that team to answer those questions.
The whole business model falls apart.
Say, I just love the fact you got this well oiled machine all
the way round. Just talking about the content
for a second. So you use customer service to
create some of that content to answer those questions and do
all of this. I, I mentioned to you before we
hit record that one of our clients, they are a client.
They weren't a client when they did this.
And then they came to us and said all our rankings are down.
Why they use Google Translate to translate the whole site and
then use AI to rewrite the UK as well.
Launched it all. And then we're like, why does
Google not like us anymore? And it's like you've actually
used Google's own Gemini AI bot and you've used Google
Translate. So Google knows it wrote all
this content itself and then pumped it out there.
By contrast, we, we almost with almost all clients now having
tested this about a year ago, we rewrote a load of descriptions
for some products and the categories or collections on
Shopify those products are in. We rewrote them by hand and we
did a bit of a mind map on each one, which is 2 ages just to go.
We're just going to spend like a day and a half, just let's nail
these 10 products in these two collections and let's get this
really, really good. And we did that and we ranked
number one for almost all of them overnight with lower domain
authority, lower trust, lower history, lower clout with
Google. We ranked number one overnight
because we create a lot of organic unique content for those
audiences saying if you're buying this particular product,
we're going to make these three assumptions based on the names
and locations of people that have bought this, looking at all
the data, we call it data mining, did a bit of data mining
on it. And when this is what we need to
do for all of them, to which the business owner said, well, we're
now making so much profit on those 10 products across those
two categories that I can now hire a content writer.
And we did the interviews with his agency.
So we interviewed the person that is now joined going, this
person's on brand, they get it, they're process driven, which
means they can pump it all out. We can SEO it quickly and then
it can go live on the sites. But also they are your target
demographic, exactly the same as your customer service team.
And again, it's, I think it's the third time of saying how
ironic that in the world of AI on an episode about AI, we're
like, do it manually, kids. This is the way to go.
But it's just that quality is, I think it will slowly get better
over time with AI. But you've got to remember AI is
learning from us. So we need to be doing it first
for the AI to understand what's going on.
But I guess to kind of ask, sorry, go.
On I was going to say and I think AI can speed that process
up because you know, it's so much easier to get a first draft
from AI, which you then refine, you know, so I think there is
still a role to play rather than like, oh, it's got all got to be
handcrafted from scratch. It's like no AI can give you the
jumping off point, but then you can make it specific, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think like I said earlier,
that research piece as well when we we did it for a product that
was for iPhone and we started with like the iPhone 15 going,
it's a bit of an older one. We're not getting many sales at
the moment. But I don't even know what the
latest iPhone is or what I've got at the moment.
But the 15 wasn't the latest is all I know.
I used to be one of those like the Elevens coming out in
September, I'm going to save my pennies and get one and they're
all the same. Now apparently there's one this
year is going to be different. I've seen actually seen some
pictures of it from our clients. They make products for the
iPhone and it does look very different this year.
So spoiler alert, do you have a look at in September and see
what the new iPhone looks like? If you're into into your
iPhones, but just we did it with the 15th.
It was an older model and was like the sales are quite low on
it. People are buying later products
now or maybe it's the 13 or something and people are buying
later products. So there was nothing sort of
lose from it. But we still used AI to say how
many people. I mean, we can look at the
keyword research, but how many people do you estimate still own
this model of iPhone? How many are probably being sold
every year? Like because Apple do release
some statistics on it and AI just found it all instantly.
And it was just like, we reckon there's this many.
And I little tip, and I'm sure you guys this as well in your
team, Janice, I always ask it for the source.
Where did you get some information from?
And that's one thing I do like about the Google AI results is
it will have the like these two logos are where I got this data
from. And you look and go Joe blogs,
his blog about iPhones. I'm not trusting that.
But actually, if it says Apple released the report through
Gartner and here it is, you're like Gartner's a trusted
resource and it's from Apple itself.
So the Apple team have released the data on this, which is quite
interesting. So, but also means when you're
writing an article, you can actually use the sources.
I don't know if you guys use that at all in your your team at
the moment. Yeah, I think it.
I think it is. It's really interesting and
useful and helpful to be like, Oh yes, that's reliable and
that's not and I think that is going to be the next facet of AI
search is that it's all about the credibility, not just a what
results were ranking highly, but what are the most credible
results. So in increasingly that leaning
into what you do and making yourself a credible source, and
I think you know, we are and you know, we're doing a lot of
interesting stuff around apertorial to give yourself the
credibility. Like we aren't just talking
about how to apply makeup for older women, but we're the most
credible source of content about how to apply makeup for older
women is is becoming increasingly important.
So your credibility as a brand and the things that play into
your credibility is going to be Google.
You know, the AI search result is not just about, oh, can we
answer this question? It's going to be what's the most
authoritative answer to this question?
Yeah, absolutely. And again, bringing it back to
kind of where we almost started with this, that credibility then
raises your profile as a brand on SEO.
We always want to be the most credible source of everything
because otherwise we're not going to rank #1 the most
credible person is. And that's why I, I say this so
often the podcast. But that's why sometimes you
look at your competitors in #1 you're like, this website's
awful. It's like, but it works.
People buy from it, they trust it, they don't trust you, they
don't buy from you, and you don't have the same authority.
And so actually lots of big brands, that's why they do go
for fairly boring websites. It's like 1 brand I absolutely
love here in the UK just purely from their website point of view
is Zara. Zara always have a look and feel
on their site that feels a bit like their stores there.
Everything's a little bit unique and that's what I and I, I've no
idea what their brand positioning is.
That's what I take from it and I think a lot of people would
resonate with that. When you go into the store, it's
like it's a T-shirt, but there's a slight difference to it.
It's like, and their website is like it works normally.
You can find everything and it looks like on a website, but
there's a slight difference and desktop, I don't know if it's
still there, but the NAV used to be on the left hand side rather
than across the top, but it just still look like a normal NAV.
So you're like, it's a normal NAV, but it's just in a
different location, which is where they would put a pocket on
a T-shirt in a slightly different location, like put at
the bottom of the T-shirt rather than across the chest where
you'd normally find a pocket on a T-shirt.
And say, I think it's having that like you were saying about,
about you guys having that brand positioning so locked down and
so tight of going every we all do the same thing here, but this
is where we niche. This is where we're different.
And let's talk finally then about search.
I know we've spoken about it quite a bit, but you guys are
specifically doing a lot of work around search at the moment,
aren't you? And as I mentioned, you search
for a product, you get Google Shopping text ads into SEO.
The AI snippets don't tend to appear on on products yet.
How, how are you guys approaching?
How are you getting featured in it?
How are you approaching it? What's the focus internally of
optimising that new space that is available to brands?
Yes, I think we, because we've always had this really strong
brand positioning, We've always been about content creation and
all of those things. We really in the last year or so
have suddenly been like, and I think particularly because the
Google algorithm is really about helpful and useful content now
and all of those things. So suddenly our rankings were
rising like organically quite a lot.
And I think we're much more conscious of, oh, actually all
of these things that we weren't really thinking about play into
SEO. Like one of the things that we
were talking about just yesterday is that we've got some
data on our PDP's about our shade.
So we might have a like eyeshadow shade called Forest.
Now Forest is dark green. So actually having somewhere on
the page that says Forest dark green from an SEO perspective,
there are lots of things like that that we're just like, oh,
actually do you know what they're housekeeping things that
are just really easy to forget to do when we launch a new shade
being like, oh, actually, no, we've got to have this stuff
internal linking. So actually being like, oh, when
we're going to talk about this topic, you know, how to apply
eyeliner, then you know, we should link to a related, you
know, makeup, eye makeup tutorial and thinking about that
kind of stuff. And I think particularly the
idea that your organic social is going to play into your search
rankings in LLM. So being consistent about what
we say about our products, remembering to always be clear
that we're about older women. I've just done a big piece of
work in our Google Merchant Center, going in and adding.
Not just the product description stuff that was pulling automatic
for the website, but actually adding in all our brand
positioning stuff. So that from a Google Shopping
point of view, it's got that underlying metadata about this
is a product specifically for older women and all of those
things. Because one of the things as a
shopper I have always found really frustrating about Google
Shopping is if I show shop, if I search for a red dress, it will
show me Primark and New York New Look and, you know, half a dozen
brands I would never buy from. And I think it is going to
become smarter and all of those things.
So it's like, well, actually I don't want to rank for mascara.
I don't want to appear in a Google Shopping search for
mascara, but I do want to appear.
If someone's searching for mascara for older women, then I
want to appear. But if I'm not giving Google
that data, then it's not going to know that about my product.
So I think thinking a little bit more completely about all the
things that we do and connecting them up and being consistent is
really where we're focusing from an SEO perspective.
Absolutely. And I mean, we, I was talking
about it on our Tuesday episode earlier this week as well.
Just the fact that we're putting things like bestseller at the
beginning of an advert or a Google Shopping listing, we used
to go very heavy and we and the data suggested it was its most
effective way of doing it, of saying like, OK, this is a
bottle of rose. So we're going to call it a
bottle of rose. But actually when people see
wine, if you take a step back and again, like you say, look at
the bigger picture, red, white and rose or even amber wine,
which I drank loads of that in Georgia, a few a few or last
year and that was delicious. You can see the colour
difference. Amber is like a orange colour.
Roses are pink and got dark red and you've got and you've got
almost almost transparent kind of yellowy colour for white
wine. Fine.
You can see the difference. So why would I say it?
And actually, yeah, putting like 25 plus or something, or 50 plus
in the beginning of that Google Shopping listing going, they've
searched for mascara. It is a mascara.
But let's emphasize the bit that they haven't searched for.
The thing I find mad she's just highlighted.
I've never even thought about this.
Yeah. Why does Google serve?
And I should know, this is Google.
Why does it serve so many brands I don't care about, especially
as it can see what I'm buying because I'm logged into Google
and I use Google Mail for all my shopping.
So it should know that when I'm searching for a shower gel,
that's the one I always buy because I buy it from a brand
online. It should know like that's the
one to put first and foremost. But still, Boots come up all the
time and I don't think I've ever bought a shower gel from Boots
online. And it's like fine to show it
every now and then, but like at least three of the listings for
me will probably be Boots. I do shop at Boots a lot, but
not for shower gel. So when I'm searching shower
gel, it should put other stuff and I think it's it certainly
one of the things that has changed recently that I'd
recommend to you and to all brands is on P Max, especially
as you can add negatives. Now the problem is you can't add
a we still, we still call them positives because obviously
you've got a negative keyword or a keyword.
It's like, let's call it negative and positive.
You can't add a positive keyword to it.
You can put search themes and search terms in which I'm sure
you guys do for, you know, 25 plus older women, women's makeup
rather than girls or teenagers. So you can do that, but you
can't, you can't necessarily say to it like I only target these
guys. As you say, merchant centre,
asset groups, search themes, audience targeting, target those
groups and try and kind of pin it down.
The thing always with P Max and, and I might get shocked for
saying this, we actually have a poster in our office saying rule
#1 is Google at evil thieving watsits.
And what we mean is you put it's all working really well.
So you put your budget up and suddenly like, why have my
search terms gone from good to bad?
It's not like they they're good with some bad ones now it's
they've actually changed from good to bad.
And we've seen budgets go up when you spend 2530% more
suddenly and actually revenue drops, not as a percentage of
spend, just Jay actually just drops.
I was making 10 grand a day and now making 8.
And it's like, OK, it's now changed.
So again, it's all part of testing, refining, streamlining.
I always imagine Google is just like this completely crazy
animal. And the more you kind of tame it
and, and let it run as fast as it wants, but down almost down a
tightrope. Now we're making money from this
thing. So that would be my advice for
brands that are like, yeah, we need to knee sharp like you're
talking about, Janice, but need to kind of close up.
But I mean, I, I've written a page and a half of notes and
questions to ask you, Janice. We've been going for 40 minutes.
Is there anything else you guys use AI for?
Any closing thoughts? Anything else?
You're like, actually, this is the thing on our horizon that
we're looking into next. I think the main thing is just
creative variance. I mean, particularly with both
metas, Advantage Plus Shopping and with P Max, just being able
to say, oh, actually, you know, each of our products has a very
specific benefit for a very specific use case.
And being able to say, oh, actually, do you know what?
We can produce creative volume that's really useful.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And it's and as we said right at
the start, and I think it's nice to close this as well.
AI is really fun guys. But the basics are the basics.
Be a good brand, sell a good product or you know, have an
authority in the space, create good content, talk to your
customers, build products and user journeys and marketing
campaigns for them. But I mean, Janice, thank you so
much. If anyone's like Janice, this
brand sounds amazing. What's the website?
How can people find you? How can people tune into your
newsletters and that sort of thing?
Yeah, we're lookfabulousforever.com and as
you said, you can find me Janice Thomas on LinkedIn and I talk
about various e-commerce related stuff.
Amazing and I highly recommend following Janice.
Janice, you come up, I think every 8th post on my LinkedIn
feed. If you post like I'm at Magento
conference and also Janice is on Magento, so please don't hate
her for that. Like this is about e-commerce
and Janice is a huge amount to add as I'm sure you guys saw
today. But yeah, whenever you're at a
Magento conference, you're always number one of my LinkedIn
feeds. So do go and follow Janice.
Go and check out the brand. Definitely subscribe to their
emails guys, because we didn't work today, but the e-mail we've
spoken about in the past, your e-mail is absolutely amazing.
So thank you so much, Janice. Thank you for everyone for
tuning in today. If you haven't already, hit
subscribe button and leave us a review on whatever platform
you're listening to. If you want to listen and watch
us, we're on Spotify video now as much as YouTube video as
well. If you want to come on the show,
drop us an e-mail hello@winningwishop5.com and
just say this is my brand. I'd love to come on and talk
about X Something cool to do with your brand.
Thanks for tuning in. We're back again on Tuesday.
I'll be on holiday next week so I'll be recording from holiday.
Hope you can join us on Tuesday for Tuesday tea break talks and
we'll see you again next Friday. Thanks for tuning in.
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