The Easy Days of eCommerce are Over. This Is How You Can Prepare For The Future.

In an emergency situation, we always regress to the level of our training. Unfortunately, many digital marketing and eCommerce practitioners do not have the training to navigate a maturing eCommerce industry.

And it isn’t our fault! The discipline of eCommerce and digital marketing has evolved over a ten year period of relatively low competition, where the total pie was growing as consumers rapidly adopted online shopping. 

Ecommerce growth was being driven by a shift in consumer behavior more than the grand strategy or revolutionary product of any individual online seller - maybe with the exception of Amazon. Unless you were making incredibly poor decisions in digital media investment, or the product you were selling was really, really bad, it was hard not to grow. 

Most eCommerce and digital marketing professionals have honed their practice in what is essentially “easy mode”. Now that the market has matured - the overall rate of growth is slower, there are more players, and the overall level of sophistication is higher - “hard mode” has suddenly been activated.

Not only has our training been insufficiently challenging to prepare us for this moment, but the main sources of that training have their own agendas, and that agenda is not “the betterment of your career”.

Google has been quite generous in developing a free analytics tool and tons of free resources and certifications on digital marketing and analytics. But there is no such thing as a free lunch--all of these tools conveniently imply that you should spend more on paid search! This is analogous to our nation’s doctors receiving training sponsored by drug companies in lieu of med school.

Many of us have learned digital marketing tactics by searching for answers on the internet and testing them out ourselves. An industry of digital thought leadership has grown quickly to meet this demand for answers. These digital thought leaders are great at personal branding and SEO optimization, but how well do they understand the businesses they’re “growth hacking”? 

No one wants to question this system because, to a certain extent, we are all guilty of the same crimes. For the past ten years it has been relatively easy for any given digital practitioner to walk into a “struggling” eCommerce business, make a few tactical tweaks, and return the business to steady 5-10% year-on-year growth. Seeing this pattern play out for the past 10 years has given owners and executives a false impression of what it takes to manage their direct business in 2020, on “hard mode”. 

I see and hear from a lot of brand owners, CEOs and brand presidents who want a digital marketing wizard to come in and “increase ROAS and CTR”. But they refuse to give that person any input or influence on creative direction, merchandising or site experience. In today’s highly competitive online environment, that isn’t going to cut it. If your digital marketing strategy has cycled through four agencies and three digital marketing directors in the past five years, all of the low hanging fruit has most likely been picked.

Digital marketers are coming to the same realization that traditional marketers reached a long time ago - marketing cannot solve product issues, and it cannot “make growth happen” if a business has reached the bounds of its total addressable market.

As a marketer - digital or otherwise - it is your responsibility to:

• Develop a deep understanding of your product and your customer, and leverage that knowledge to improve marketing performance
• Understand if your business is experiencing a growth issue, product issue or a scope issue and educate your organization accordingly
• Avoid situations where management is determined to lean on performance marketing to “fix” the business and “manage out” anyone who disagrees with them

The shift to "hard mode" presents a short term challenge for digital marketers, but a long term challenge for business owners. If a talented digital marketer steps up and puts in the work to develop a deeper understanding of the business, they are building the foundations for successful entrepreneurship.

If you’re trying to build a sustainably profitable direct business, the next best alternative for your most qualified candidates is going to be “starting my own company/agency”. As an employer you are offering moderately less risk for significantly lower upside opportunity.

The upside you present a potential candidate is not simply "a paycheck" but how the candidate's work is going to fit into his/her overall career narrative. And if you set a candidate up to fail by under-resourcing your direct business, micromanaging or clinging to outdated thinking, you are capping your upside potential at close to zero.

Digital marketing and the general management of a direct/eCommerce business are skills that are incredibly transferable across industries. As a small, family-owned company or bootstrapped startup, you truly are competing for talent with Fortune 500 companies, venture-backed startups, agencies and the entrepreneurship option. 

The companies that I see struggle hardest financially - the companies that post the same eCom and digital leadership roles over and over again for half a year without filling those roles, or experience rapid and disruptive turnover in their eCommerce departments - are the companies that fail to acknowledge this via their benefits, policies, culture and compensation packages. 

We’re all playing on “hard mode” now, but this represents an opportunity to build a unique and truly valuable set of skills. If you had the grit and growth mentality to make it this far, you have the tools to navigate a mature eCommerce landscape. But if you get stuck mourning “the way things were” you’re gonna have a bad time.

If you’re an eCommerce or digital marketing practitioner, or a business owner working to grow your direct channel, I welcome your feedback: greifelda [at] gmail [dot] com