Marketing Experts Reveal Top Strategies To

Arlen:
Welcome to the e-commerce marketing podcast everyone. My name is Arlen and I am your host. And today we have a very special guest, Allison Vernerey who works as a Vice President of Product at Zmags. Previously, she held positions at The Home Depot and Decathlon. Allison graduated from Duke University and is currently based in Boston, United States. Welcome to the podcast, Allison.

Allison:
Thank you so much, Arlen. Thanks for having me. I’m excited.

Arlen:
Yes, great. Thank you for joining me. I’m really excited that you’re able to join us today and, you know, and add to our discussion of e-commerce marketing. You know, today we’re going to be kind of diving deep into the topic I know you’re very familiar with, which is how traditional e-commerce marketers can keep up with the fanatical pace of social media-induced consumer demand, because, you know, it’s like every few months we look up, there’s a new social network out there. There’s a new trend and as a e-commerce business owner, sometimes it’s exciting, but sometimes it’s a little bit overwhelming as far as, all right, are these platforms relevant for my business? I see other businesses are going on these routes. Do I need to go those routes? And so, yeah, I think you’re gonna kind of help enlighten us and kind of spread through the weeds a little bit and kind of decipher some practical tips for the listeners out there. But before we do get into all that, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and specifically how you got into what you’re doing today.

Allison:
Yeah, absolutely. So I work at ZMAX, which is a company that is there to help e-commerce retailers build the best experiences for their site and be nimble with those kind of changes and make sure they make the most of it. And the way I got to it was really, I’ve taken all the steps of being involved in retail and e-commerce. I started actually now. a few years ago, I will just keep it big, but a few years ago, I started directly working in retail stores, like selling products to people, being on the shop floor and seeing firsthand, what do people want, what do people need, what are they asking for, what’s going on there? And then I moved to working in e-commerce building websites. I was working for the Home Depot for a while, which is one of the biggest online retailer. obviously here and then afterwards I was in product there and seeing, hey, that’s great, but there’s a lot of blockers, it’s hard to do everything we want. And so that’s where I took even more of a step back. I still always feel like my source is being close to the customer, but using that knowledge and figuring out how do we help e-commerce marketers, how do we help brands really serve the best things for their customers in the end.

Arlen:
Okay, great. That’s awesome. And I could imagine you kind of working with Home Depot, just really learning from some of the best in the industry when it comes to e-commerce, Home Depot, Lowe’s, they really have their systems in place and their processes in place to be able to effectively serve customers and sell a variety of different products online. And they do it quite well.

Allison:
Absolutely. I mean, Home Depot was such a great school to go to in a way because it’s so looking, there’s so much data, there’s so many resources and so many new things, even though it might not be a brand we think of as being on the edge of e-commerce, but they really are because it’s big enough, they’ve got the reach, they can test a lot of things and so it was a great experience.

Arlen:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, you know, it kind of just speaks to the trend that people are going to, you know, when you think of Home Depot, a lot of times you think of, you know, going into the physical store, putting your hands on items, the tactile nature of a lot of things that you have to buy for the home. And yeah, there’s a place for that. But I, you know, I think just the way the whole world is shifting, where everyone is so busy juggling multiple things, and trying to maximize their your time. That’s where the e-commerce presence, I think, will come into play. And yeah, you know, sites like Home Depot have done a great job doing that. I’ve ordered things and major appliances actually from Home Depot. And I’ve had, you know, pretty smooth of a process with the ordering, the delivery and even servicing. And so, um, yeah, it’s kind of just speaks to, um, how brands like that are been able to, you know, kind of, uh, stay in line with the changing times.

Allison:
Yeah, and I think it’s key too, because if you can sell super complex products online, like appliances, things that are expensive, then you can expand that to anything, right? There’s a lot to learn there in terms of the buying experience for customers and how do we make it a pleasant, so positive experience for everybody.

Arlen:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, as I mentioned at the top of episode, today it’s going to be all about, our discussion is going to be all about social media. And so with social media platforms, which as I mentioned, they’re known for the shifting of trends where you have different networks, we have different features and functionality that seem to spread across all of these different platforms. I wanted to start off with asking you, how do you think… you know, e-commerce marketers can stay ahead of these trends and just try to maximize the results.

Allison:
Yeah, I mean, great question. And I think it’s gonna be an always evolving one, right? Because it’s an evolving space. 

Arlen:
Yep.

Allison:
So the answer keeps changing. I think try to kind of breaking it down and organizing it in my head, but for everybody, I think when we think about social media trends, there’s two buckets, right? There is, okay, what are the platforms? Where do I need to be as a marketer? Do I need to be on TikTok, on Instagram, on the next thing here? And then the second bucket though, which I think is really important, and I’m sure we’ll spend some more time talking about, is, okay, there’s going to be influencing going on, right? There’s the concept that wherever on social media, people are getting influenced and it’s going to impact my brand, whether I see it or not, right? Whether I’m a part of it or not. And so I have to be ready to kind of react to that and make changes. So. I think first of all, it’s making sure you’re thinking about the two aspects, right? And I think it’s hard sometimes because there’s so much going on. When it comes to the platforms themselves, right? TikTok, Instagram, and all that. I think the advice, which may sound a little generic, but is the truth, I think, is what is important for your brand, right? Who is your target audience? Where are your people at? where do you think it makes sense for your product, your message to be, because you can’t be everywhere, especially if you’re a smaller business, right? You can’t invest in everything. You can’t be keeping up with a thousand things. And so you need to pick. And I think in a lot of things with social media, you don’t need to be first mover, right?

Arlen:
Thanks for watching

Allison:
You can be coming on a little bit later, 

Arlen:
Right.

Allison:
Having taken advantage of all the learnings of a lot of people, and you can still benefit a ton. You don’t need to be the first person on Tech Talk or whatever is going to be the next thing there. But if then you realize it’s the right investment for you, then go for it. And invest in that one thing. Don’t try to do it all without really taking the time. I think taking that step back is perfectly fine, even though things move really fast. I think it’s actually still really important for kind of like first bucket there.

Arlen:
Yeah. Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned that because I think a lot of times businesses think about these social networks when they first come out and having to just immediately jump on them. But that’s not really the case. You can kind of, you don’t have to be first to market with them. You can wait things out, see where they go. Because you know, I mean, there has been, you know, different platforms and things that have kind of gone by the wayside or have over a time period, may not have performed as expected for a lot of businesses. And so, maybe waiting it out, seeing how other businesses that are maybe in your space are performing and then going in there, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. So yeah, I totally agree with that. Now, I think one of the things also, you had mentioned also one of the main things is, when as a business, you do also, I think, have to totally define your ideal customer. So that ideal customer avatar that you kind of already have modeled, where is that customer in this particular network that you’re thinking about? Because, you know, a lot of times people think about these platforms and they just think Okay, you know, these platforms are global. They’ve got customers of all types, but that’s not necessarily the case. Some of these platforms skew younger, some skew older, some skew more male, some skew more female. You gotta just look at the stats and then make the decision and see what’s gonna fit your business.

Allison:
Yeah, absolutely. If you’ve got your ideal customer profile, obviously the answer is always, I want all the customers, right? 

Arlen:
Right,

Allison:
We all do. 

Arlen:
right

Allison:
We all want everybody. That’s just not reality. And so it’s where are you going to get the most bang for your buck, right? Because in the end, all that is investment of your time, of your money. And so what’s going to be your return? And that’s going to depend on the audience that’s there.

Arlen:
Yep, yep, yep, for sure. Now, what I wanted to ask is really in your opinion, what do you think is the most significant impact that social media really has had overall on just consumer demand? And how do you think these companies that are out here so far have really leveraged it to their advantage?

Allison:
Yeah, I think it’s been fascinating. And I think really when you think about the impact of social media, I think it’s really that influencer culture, right, that’s been the most impactful. And I think that’s created a bit of a shift in power and a shift of, you know, who is sending the message out there because it might not be you as a brand anymore. It might be those influencers, and they take the message however they want. And so I think focusing on that, influencer culture, I think that’s led to a lot of changes, a lot of spikes potentially that are not forecastable, right? Your products may go up, they may go down, you have no way, in ways that maybe you’re not able to control your message as much. But then the other side of that is you’re also getting potentially impact to… an audience you may not have thought was your target audience before, because those influencers help expand your reach, things like that. And so I think, sorry, I’m getting lost a little bit because I think there’s a lot to unpack there. But when we’re, if we’re saying, okay, have people been able to take advantage of it or how can they make the best of that? 

Arlen:
Yeah.

Allison:
I think there’s two things, one side having a strategy, right? You do want to be a part of social media, you do want to leverage influencers, maybe you have contracts with some of them that make sense for you depending on your size of brand. But the other side is things are going to happen out there that are out of your control. I think the people who make the best of that are really the ones that are going to put themselves on top. And when I say make the best of that is being able to react to those changes of, you know, something suddenly becomes really trendy. Okay. What can I do about that? Because I’m not dictating the trends, but I can very much ride that wave, right? I can, I can be a part of it. I can make sure that it benefits my brand, my business, my customers.

Arlen:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, it’s, you know, it can be a little daunting just because of, you know, what’s out there. And it’s everything, it’s good and bad. You know, there’s good sides to social media and there’s bad sides to it as far as the business is concerned. Number one, you know, as we were talking about the demand, of course, all of these social platforms has opened up a whole new channels for businesses to market their businesses, which is definitely a plus, you know. because these are, I guess you can say, kind of alternate worlds, if you will, alternate universes, so to speak, where you can find and target customers that would be interested in your product. And so definitely kind of opens things up. You’re thinking about days of the past where there were no social platforms. Marketing was a little bit more predictable, a little bit more limited. You had maybe… television, radio, newspaper, print media, and that’s really it. That was it. Now, you know, with the whole online media and these social platforms, I mean, you can kind of take your pick, you know, there’s, I think, probably hundreds of different platforms that you can, you know, find people on. So, yeah, it’s good, but at the same time, it’s kind of like a kid in the candy store type of thing where, you know, it can be a little bit overwhelming because you get in here and you’re like, all right. there’s all these possibilities, there’s opportunities, where do I go, how do I select that? And I think sometimes that’s one of the things that a lot of businesses struggle with and what’s gonna be right for them. And one of the things also we’re wanting to kind of go at is let’s say a business has, they’ve kind of decided upon a certain number of platforms, they’re looking at their customer profile, their ideal customer avatar, and they’re getting active. on these platforms. They create a page, they create a profile, and they do various postings. They’re trying to educate people about their business. And the next question, which is, I get this all the time from businesses, is how active and responsive do I need to be on these platforms for my presence to be worthwhile? It’s like, do I have to do postings daily? Do I need a dedicated in-house social media person that’s going to handle it? How responsive do they need to be to comments, to questions and reviews? Is there, I know it’s not probably a one size fits all, but is there a kind of a general rule of thumb that a business should follow?

Allison:
I think that’s a great question. I mean, I do think the overarching answer is in the end, there are constraints, budgets, right? How much can you invest? And I think it’s going to be the answer is what is the best you can do? Because obviously, if you can respond to everybody within five minutes, that’s great for satisfaction. That’s great for all that. I would say I think even more than. speed of response. I think it’s focusing on what’s the quality of my response to, right? I think it’s having meaningful conversations and interactions with your customers where they feel like they’re getting hurt, right? So social media gets used a lot, for example, for somebody who has a product issue. Let’s say something didn’t arrive, it arrived broken, something like that you wanted to address. Do you want to address it fast? Absolutely. I do think though The key is how you address it. It’s not that you did it within three seconds, right? So I think that’s important to remember and for everybody to remove a little bit of that pressure from themselves on the immediate thing. The other thing I’d say is, I think setting expectations, right? In those accounts, once again, you’re building a brand voice for yourself. I think customers and then people out there respond very well to you saying like, hey, we are a small startup. We’re really excited about this. But it’s very, very possible to communicate like, you know, we’re multitasking. We’re doing what we’re responding to you as fast as we can. But expect our response time to be X. Right. I think it’s about the setting that expectation because people understand that there are humans behind. But you’ve got to say it out loud. Right. You can’t just leave them in the dark.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Allison:
So I think the what ends up being your actual answer and then setting the expectation as part of your brand messaging.

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Allison:
And if you have the luxury to say, we’ll respond to you within five minutes every time. Wonderful. That’s great that you can set that. But if you can’t, I think that’s completely OK. You just have to actually say it. And I think that’s something we sometimes forget. And we put pressure on ourselves, right? Of like, well, I’m not there. And then people get upset because. It’s just the communication in the end that they’re waiting for. The same way social media puts that in between, but the same way you and I are talking, we need to know what to expect from the other.

Arlen:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that you’re totally right about that. Setting the expectation is clear. And I think also in addition to setting that expectation, it’s going to then be the consistency. You know, if you say you’ll be able to respond in five minutes, you got to do that every time, you know, you can’t miss a beat. So it’s very, yeah, you do have to be strategic. You got to make sure you have your team in place and dedicated people on your team that’s going to, that are going to be managing these things because you know. If you set those expectations, let’s say one month and then the next month, you’re totally off and you’re not responding for days and things like that, then that can definitely cost your business reputation. The way social media is these days, if you get a poor reputation across social media,

Allison:
every time.

Arlen:
that can be very devastating to a business.

Allison:
Yeah, and I guess the thing I’ll add that you’re making me think of too, with that consistency is thinking about, yes, you want people and you want a genuine exchange, where does technology make sense into this, right? There’s a lot of technology out there that can help you with this because, let’s say you have customers all over the world, you may not have the same response time from somebody in Australia, then somebody in the US, then somebody in Spain, right?

Arlen:
life.

Allison:
And so maybe you have some automated things you’ve set up, with a lot of the technologies we see now, and I mean, it’s gonna keep going faster and faster, but with artificial intelligence, maybe you have chatbots, right? You have options there, I think, to also take that step back and say, okay, maybe I don’t need to always be there. I can have a first level that’s a little bit more automated and then come back every few hours or whatever may make sense for you there.

Arlen:
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I’m glad you mentioned that, the AI, because AI is the hot topic these days.

Allison:
Thank you

Arlen:
I mean, it just seems like as we got into the, it started the year 2023, I guess well towards the end of last year, it just seems like the magicians behind the scenes just kind of pull the cover up from under us, or not from under us, from over. the AI, it’s like they were hiding it. And then they just all of a sudden said, surprise, here we go. We have all of these technology, chat GPT, we have VAR. And so it’s definitely changed the game a lot. Now you also alluded to it, that this has been a real great benefit to businesses with respect to social media. And so I wanted to see, what do you think the role of AI in machine learning? and just all this evolving technology in the context of managing, you know, e-commerce and social media, how is that going to really help, uh, you know, manage the demand that we’re getting?

Allison:
Yeah, I think being honest that it’s a tough question because like you said, right, there’s been this explosion in the past few months and everybody is seeing the excitement, everybody is also seeing the worries and, you know, hitting the limits and seeing the mistakes. And so I think everybody is kind of in that in-between stage. I believe there is a ton of potential to help automate things, to help serve things better. That being said, I strongly believe, and in the end, it’s in the name, if you think about social media, the point is to be social, is to create interactions between people. And I think the people side of it will never go away and is important. But the illusion I was making before, I think there’s a good way to start integrating for first level. responses. I think there’s a good way more things that are maybe not customer interaction, but more, you know, all the posts that you’re going to have to put on social media. That’s the kind of thing where there’s much less risk, right? It’s not technically an interaction. It’s you pre-preparing things. You can organize it. I think that’s a great place for somebody who has a limited bandwidth on their team to make sure that they can get more content out because they’re leveraging some of those tools. 

Arlen:
Yeah.

Allison:
So, I think it’s finding the right place for it. And I think it’s probably less on the customer interaction side and more on the planned marketing side, that it’s going to make sense.

Arlen:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I totally agree. Now, I wanted to see now if you could kind of just share your insights on just kind of the future of ecommerce and social media and how it’s going, how you see it affecting the demand, you know, now that we’ve got, you know, the metaverse now coming into play and we have, you know, all of these changes happening. What, you know, how is that really going to affect businesses and the demand that they get? What do you what do you see, I guess, in the next five years?

Allison:
I think we’re going to keep seeing, and we already have, it’s not just a future thing. It’s something I’m sure people are experiencing. But I think we’re going to see it more and more at different levels, depending on your brand. But we’re going to see more and more unexpected up and downs. And when I say unexpected, it’s things that are just, I guess I call them unforecastable, right? I can’t forecast that, because how was I to guess that something was going to go viral, that something was going to change? And so I think it’s going to be. more and more for marketers to learn to deal with that uncertainty and live well with it and really get the benefits from it when it happens. But it may not be any more, you know, this is my Thanksgiving, this is my Black Friday, this is my Christmas, right? I think we’re going to see more and more different waves that we didn’t know about. I mean, lots of examples there for linking to social media, right? Like those products going viral. in the capacity that brands have to react. There’s so many of those stories, but I think it was 2021 that the Stanley Cup was an almost discontinued product.

Arlen:
That’s right.

Allison:
And suddenly you see all those influencers with it and the brand sold more than they had ever sold. They had no idea where it came from, right? A couple months before the same thing happened with they’re actually… One of our customers with Carhartt beanies, where now you see everybody wearing those beanies,

Arlen:
Right.

Allison:
Carhartt is a work brand, right? They were not doing this for that. They had no idea that moms and kids would be wearing their beanies. And so being able to react to that, I think is where the future is. And hopefully we can dive into that a bit more because I have some thoughts there on, you know, how can they think about that and what might be good ideas. But… I think that’s gonna be the key and that’s gonna be the future of being a good marketer is being able to insert yourself where it makes sense rather than pre planning at all.

Arlen:
Yeah, yeah, I got you. And I guess with that in mind, you know, you’re going to, it actually brings up another question. We were talking about kind of inserting yourself where it makes sense. Um, that brings up another question. Where would you say, where are some cases where you may have seen where a company inserted themselves into a, maybe your specific social media platform, and it was a detriment to their business as opposed to. a you know as a positive thing where it may have hurt them as opposed to helping them. You know it could be just any general one that may you know offhand or something that you where you’ve worked with internally.

Allison:
I don’t know that I have a good negative one. I think there are situations where opportunities could have been exploited or exploited sounds like a bad word, but could have been leveraged even better. 

Arlen:
Let’s see.

Allison:
I think sometimes it’s not going far enough with things is more what I would say. The example that I have that I kind of love and I think is fun because she’s… obviously a big star, but if you remember, Beyonce came out with that Lemonade song a few years back and

Arlen:
Yes. very good.

Allison:
it got super, super trendy and everybody wanted that yellow dress, right, from the video.

Arlen:
Yeah.

Allison:
And I think that was an interesting thing because we’ve got a lot of our customers that are in clothing retail, right, those kind of products. And so we had some of our customers that had the yellow dress, right? So here, easy to know, hey, I’ve got to go in, I’ve got to be a part of this, I can highlight this. Now, challenges there, yes, because that means that runs out of stock so quickly, so what do I do with that, right? There’s reactivity that’s needed, but very obvious that you have to go in. I think where we had discussions with some other of our customers is, hey, maybe you don’t have this specific thing that’s going viral, but at this point there’s something around yellow lemons, right? 

Arlen:
Right.

Allison:
And Beyonce, if you’ve got something within that sphere, how do you become a part of that in a positive way for your brand? Because it’s a fun story, right? In this case, it’s pretty low stakes. It’s an easy thing to get to be a part of. And so, um, I remember at the time it was a few years back, but we worked with quite a few brands who fought about, okay, where is my opportunity and how can I be nimble enough to become a part of it so that my site reflects what’s happening, I can have a presence on social media about it and I can really benefit from it as well.

Arlen:
Yeah, yeah, great. And that’s a great example for sure. Now kind of switching gears as we get ready to wrap things up on the other side of the coin, wanted to see, would you be able to share just any example of a specific case study of any e-commerce business that adopted social media, any of the platforms and saw, you know, a, you know, kind of a huge rise in their consumer demand and that not only leverage it at that time and even be able to sustain it and grow from that.

Allison:
Absolutely. So, I mean, I won’t cite names specifically just for reason of letting customers do their own thing, but we’ve got a few, we definitely have a few of those. I think everybody has been involved in social media to some extent. The ones that I will say I’ve seen take on the opportunity really grow firm are the ones who have said, hey, I’m going to invest in social media. I’m going to pick the platforms that make sense for my ICP, right? Like we talked about before. But then I’m going to think a little bit more broadly, because the truth is social media is one part of the journey. 

Arlen:
Yeah.

Allison:
It’s not the whole journey, right? And so I think where people are seeing a lot of success is if they say, great, social media is like, every day I’m posting something different. It’s nimble, it’s flexible. Now, when my customers go back still to my e-commerce site, right, to make the purchase, they go back to that main channel in a lot of cases. I still need to be nimble there too, and I need that journey to be connected. I can’t be having a ton of kind of last second things on my social media, but then nothing reflected on my site and it feels disjointed. And so where I’ve seen people have the most success is if they’re able to have a full story and a full path, right, to take customers from social media to the next channel that makes sense on their journey. And then with something like their e-commerce site, making sure that they are able to be nimble there too. So we were talking about the lemonade example. There’s a lot of stuff there where, yeah, you wanna write that way as you say, hey, great, we have a bunch of yellow products. You make a funny joke and all that. Now people land on your site, those products have to be highlighted very easily. They’ve gotta be right there. That specific yellow dress needs to be right there. But then also when 10 minutes later, because you’ve done a good job, it goes out of stock, 

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Allison:
You have to have a backup,

Arlen:
Yeah.

Allison:
right? And you have to have the capacity to that day, not lead customers to a dead end because they wanted

Arlen:
Mm-hmm.

Allison:
that yellow dress, they thought you were gonna give it to them, and now you’re telling them you’re also out of stock.

Arlen:
Right.

Allison:
You got at least, I don’t know, plenty of ideas there where you gotta be able to tell them, hey, fill this form, you’re first on our wait list. At the same time, you’re collecting information and you’re creating that exchange. Maybe you are saying, hey, this is not there, but here are other similar products that we’ve tailored for you based on this specific trend, 

Arlen:
right?

Allison:
That may make you a part of it. And this nimbleness, I guess, that you have on social media to just post and change, you need to have that throughout your customer journey. I think that’s really key there.

Arlen:
Yeah, yeah, I like that word, the nimbleness, being able to easily pivot, easily adapt to the changes. And yeah, I think you definitely nailed it as far as if you’re gonna go these routes as far as social media, try to build a big presence, sell your products, you have to be ready because… You have to be ready because… You know, you never know. You never know what’s going to really take off. And, you know, if you, if you are fortunate as a business and, you know, something really takes off, something goes viral, you get a, you know, huge, adoption on any of these platforms. You know, the last thing you want is to be able, is to turn or have to turn away customers and to say, okay, you know, we’re out of stock, we’re not ready. We can’t service you because, you know, these days there’s a million and one businesses out there that. you know, we’ll be glad to take these customers money, provide them a similar product, similar service, if your business can’t do it. So, you know, you wanna be ready. And the reputation thing is also huge because, you know, if people get a bad taste in their mouth because they had that experience where you couldn’t fulfill them, you know, you know, that can hurt your image for sure.

Allison:
Yeah, and I think the important nuance

Arlen:
Right.

Allison:
there,

Arlen:
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Allison:
I clearly agree with you

Arlen:
So, I’m going to go ahead and start the recording.

Allison:
The addition I’d have is

Arlen:
I’m going to go ahead and start the recording.

Allison:
you may

Arlen:
Okay.

Allison:
Run out of stock.

Arlen:
So, I’m going to go ahead and start the recording.

Allison:
Honestly,

Arlen:
Okay. So, I’m going to go ahead and start the recording. 

Allison:
Managing supply chain is so hard,

Arlen:
Okay. so, I’m going to go ahead and start the recording.

Allison:
right?

Allison:
I mean we’re not even gonna go into that

Allison:
It may happen.

Arlen:
Okay. So, I’m going to start the recording

Allison:
Do you want it to happen?

Arlen:
So, I’m going to start the recording.

Allison:
No, should you prepare?

Arlen:
So, I’m going to start the recording. 

Allison:
Yes.

Arlen:
Okay. So, I’m going to start the recording.

Allison:
Let’s say It does happen. I think it’s for an e-commerce marketer to realize, hey, yes, I can do as much as I can on supply chain, but short term, that’s really hard to change, right? It takes a while to change your supply chain. So what’s the other side of that? Because I think a customer will be forgiving if you’re out of stock, as long as you have an appropriate message, as long as you don’t mislead them, as long as you give them an alternative or the confidence of this is coming in X time. Having information and keeping that line of communication, I think that’s the key here. And that’s where the marketer can have the most impact. Otherwise you can feel a little powerless.

Arlen:
Yeah. Right.

Allison:
You don’t have anything in stock. Well, I’m not gonna start making the dresses. 

Arlen:
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Allison:
I don’t know how to do that

Arlen:
Yeah.

Allison:
So thinking about where you can have power, making sure you’re set up for that so you can impact things right away.

Arlen:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, that the responsiveness and being prepared is key. Yeah, as long as you, you know, let people know what’s going on, you’re honest as a business. You know, these days, I think a lot of people are really just will appreciate the honesty. They know that no business is perfect. Things happen if there’s a demand in their product. Yeah, they possibly could run out, you know, they may have experienced that before with other brands. So. Yeah, just have to be upfront with them and then make sure if you set a expectation or a timeframe of the way they can get it when you can fulfill it, you got to be pretty close to that though. That’s the one thing you got to be on point with because if you miss a deadline or an expectation then yeah, you only have a few chances, really one chance. Some people are going to be more. forgiving than others where they may wait, even if you miss a particular deadline or shipment, but others are gonna be like, oh, I forget it, I’m on to the next company. So

Allison:
Yeah,

Arlen:
yeah,

Allison:
for sure.

Arlen:
definitely some things to keep in mind. Well, Allison, it’s been awesome talking to you. I definitely have learned a lot myself about this whole social media craze and the demand that’s really out there for businesses. So yeah, I see it’s really… something that every business really needs to take a look at and see which platform is right for them and kind of go from there and then craft a strategy as you mentioned before you kind of dive into it. But lastly, before we do let you go, I’m always interested to know a little bit more about my guests. And so if you don’t mind sharing a closing fun fact that you think our listeners and viewers would be interested to know.

Allison:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s fun to finish like that. I like it. One fun fact, which is often more information that I get asked eventually, but people usually detect a slight accent when I’m speaking, but they’re not quite sure what’s going on there.

Arlen:
Right.

Allison:
So the fun fact about me is that I was born and raised in France. So I am fully French. I’ve lived in France most of my life. So that’s what my accent is when people are often trying to guess. They don’t always get to that. 

Arlen:
Right.

Allison:
So that’s my little fun fact.

Arlen:
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And yeah, you’re right. I know, you know, if you don’t know, I already knew you were from France originally. So that’s where I knew about the accident. But a lot of times, yeah, sometimes it is hard to detect, you know, especially, you know, somebody that may not have, you know, lived there has been in the US for a long time. I know with accents, it really is strange though, because I know there’s there’s some people that I talked to that are from other places where their accent. It’s almost like, you know, they may have lived in the U.S. for 20 or so years, but it sounds like they’ve never left where they came from. 

Allison:
Yeah?

Arlen:
But then there’s others where slowly over time, the accent kind of phase, they adopt more of the U.S. dialect and the tendencies. So yeah, it’s just strange how it just varies from people to people. But I’m sure you get that question all the time.

Allison:
Yeah, absolutely.

Arlen:
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Lastly, before we do let you go, yeah, if you don’t mind sharing the best way for our listeners and viewers to reach you, if they wanna pick your brain anymore about social media and how it can affect their consumer demand.

Allison:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great question. I think through our company’s LinkedIn is probably the best one or through my LinkedIn. I think

Arlen:
Okay.

Allison:
LinkedIn in general, probably the best way. So I’m sure you’ll be sharing my name, but Alison and Verneray, I can be found on LinkedIn. You can send me something. And then ZMAGs, that will also get passed on to me if you go through the company. So that works as well.

Arlen:
Okay, that’s awesome. Well, we’ll definitely have the link to the website in the show notes. So people can check out your business and I definitely encourage people to look you up on LinkedIn so they can connect with you further on that platform. Well, again, Allison has been awesome talking to you. We really appreciate having you on the e-commerce marketing podcast.

Allison:
Amazing. Thanks, Allyn. Thanks for having me.

Arlen:
Thank you.

Podcast Guest Info

Allison Vernerey
Vice President of Product at Zmags