Ecommerce Is A Video Game (Here Are The Cheat Codes)

Key Takeaways

E-commerce is just one giant game. And chances are, if you are watching this, you aren't winning as much as you could be. Because the truth is, there are cheat codes and strategies that the top 1% of brands use to stay ahead. That's why they keep winning. They're playing a smarter game than you. And in this video, I'm going to break down the exact cheat codes you need to win the game of e-commerce. So, if you're building a brand online, this is the blueprint for building and scaling that you need. Now, it turns out e-commerce is the best video game ever created. Billions of online shoppers are actively searching every day where they can spend their money next to solve the problems they have. And brands are changing culture as a whole. And every day lives are being changed on levels that some can only dream of. And it's pretty crazy when you think about it. But the truth is, if you actually know what you are doing, e-commerce is way better than an actual video game. But in this game, points in each new level are just dollars in real life. And this is where I see most people get tripped up and it causes them to lose this game. Messaging is the bridge between your customers mind and the products you sell. And if you're building your brand using content or ads with platforms like Tik Tok shop, Meta or Instagram, you really only have one job to become the best communicator in the world. Think of the biggest brands like Alani, Rogue, AG1 and Comfort. They win because they know how to communicate what their customers want and they build their strategy around that communication. And this is the power of messaging. Now to be the best communicator we need to break our game board into four sections. Platforms, formats, audiences and messaging. And the platforms are made up of Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, and Tik Tok shop. This is where you can post as much as you want and put out the wear. Formats are things like founder stories, behind the scenes, reviewbased lifestyle, special offers, newsletters, and creator UGC. These are the types of content you can make or the how. Audiences are things like athletes, street wear, or interior designers. These are all of the people you can reach. The who message is things like value proposition, your narrative, or your key differentiator, the what. And every time you're running an ad or putting out a piece of content, you are sending some message to some audience on some platform in some format, one or another. And each of these combinations unlocks a different buying trigger within your customer's mind. Let's jump into my screen and look at some examples of this. For good messaging is Misfits Market. and they're selling grocery items like sweet potatoes and their headline says, "What's wrong with these sweet potatoes?" And they show a dismorphed weird looking sweet potato and then they guide the viewer to the answer which is nothing is wrong with these sweet potatoes. They just look a little bit different, but most grocery stores don't want to sell those items even though they're perfectly fine. So, this brand has found a way to curate their message to identify a specific audience in need and be able to offer some of these vegetables and different products at a discount so people can buy them. And this message is really clear and you can join for free to support a better food system so you're not throwing away other items. Now, let's look at another ad. This one's by Carp, which is a deodorant brand. >> If your armpits are sweaty, inject them with Botox. If they're smelly, use a deodorant. If they're staining your clothes, soak them in vinegar. They're dry and irritated, use a lotion. If you want them to smell sexy, put on some cologne. The problem is, if you try to buy each one of these individually, you're spending hundreds of dollars. And who wants this stuff? Let's get rid of all of this because you can literally get the same benefits in one stick of Carpet. >> Carp uses ingredients proven to stop sweat, prevent odor, and actually reduce bacteria growth. Just look at the difference between the bacteria on an armpit wearing Carp and an armpit wearing generic deodorant. Ew. So, you actually don't have to overpay on Amazon. You can go to our website and get it for 56% off. You're going to get to choose four premium fragrances. You'll get three free. >> All right. So, the message is very clear here in this ad. Most deodorants and most products are overpriced and you have to have so many different ones to achieve the exact same thing with their product. They're not only offering you a better deal at a better price, but they're offering you more for less. One product that covers all of those other things that he just mentioned in the video. And this is clearly demonstrated through the message by visuals and how he actually phrases things with the comparison when he's going through the video. Not only that, but he says, "Ditch your drugstore deodorants today. Sick of deodorants that promise the world but leave you sweating. We're framing a problem and framing his product as a solution very clearly." And then one of the biggest value ads is the actual price and offer itself, which he's talking about stop wasting money on all these products and clearly demonstrating this. And then Carpay stops odor and sweat for a less price, which gives all the information and dials in the message to be very clear to the consumer to make a decision to buy. Now, let's look at an example of somebody with bad messaging. >> You picking this up? >> Go ahead. >> Okay, cool. >> I would say it's less about a moment and more like a type of moment really. So, anytime I see him trust himself is the thing. So, >> I don't even know what's happening yet, but let's continue watching. >> Whether it was his first steps, right? His first words. Now, we're talking about like colors, numbers, alphabet, and at some point, he's going to have to trust himself and I'll have to trust him to drive. You know what I mean? So, these are the things that are really special for me to watch and kind of see his face light up. >> All right, this is a really tough watch, this video is. So, this is a brand ad for Fossil, but it starts off with a story that kind of starts in the middle. We don't even really know what's happening. And the set is weird. The message is not clear at all. And what I find really funny about this ad is the product placement that they're doing in the video. He's talking about his kid and some story and is using this weird phrasing and then all of a sudden you just see fossil watches and product placement throughout the video >> when he >> which is pretty hilarious to think about because he's talking about a story and all of a sudden we see like product placement and then when he's speaking they're just showing the watches in the background then showing the watch on him. Like, how many times do we need to show the product shot to make the message clear because we don't know what's going on. This ad is as unclear as any ad I've ever seen. And it's honestly shocking that somebody would even edit this, film this the way they did, and put this as an ad. I don't know how this even got to the approval process to be quite honest with you. And this person might be somebody that people want to tune into and listen to specifically, which they're using, somebody who's more identifiable out in the public, but the message is just not clear. So, let's look at another bad ad message example. All right, so here's this one. This is an image based ad. It is by ID Y L and it says made for the now and always, which is very vague. We don't know if they're selling makeup if we don't know this brand or if they are selling jewelry. We can't really tell. Is this a bracelet? It's very small. It's on a brush. It wouldn't be a ring. Maybe it's a necklace. It's hard to say. And then indulge in timeless pieces that celebrate your unique style. Okay. Complete with a curated luxury gift and make your moment truly extraordinary. All right. That's all very vague. It's like, you know, trying to give this luxury mystique mysterious feel, but it's just really not coming across. If you're if you're going to see this in an in an ad placement, most people are going to scroll past this because they don't know what's going on and it's just too all over the place. So, you know, the message is not good on this one at all, which is why proper messaging activates psychological buying triggers within your customer's mind and draws them closer to buying your product. And to be able to do this, you need your message to reach the right audience through the right ad format on the right platform to get them to take action on what it is that you're actually offering. This could be an actual sale on one of your products or them signing up to your newsletter. But no matter if you're just starting out or an eight or nine figure brand, the approach is the exact same. When you start thinking of the game of e-commerce, ads, Tik Tok shop, and content creation like this and using this framework, your mindset and approach will completely shift. Now that we beat level one, let's start playing level two. You're running ads, tweaking the website, sending more emails, posting more content, tried to launch on Tik Tok shop, but still are not seeing the growth in terms of sales. Now, there's two reasons why this is happening. The first one is actually good. This is called the planning phase. You're investing time, energy, and money, but not seeing a direct return right away. You're building skills. You're building momentum and really learning the game. And in that early phase and even in some periods when you start to scale, you're going to have seasons of planting and investing and growing your brand. This is a natural part of the game. Everyone goes through this. But the second one is actually bad and you must avoid this stage. This is where you're strategically misaligning and ultimately setting yourself up to fail. And this usually comes from not being clear on where you are headed or having shiny object syndrome. So let's look at what this would look like. So, going back to this brand that we really didn't know what product they're selling, let's go ahead and look at how unclear the process is if you were to even click on this ad and what strategy they're using. So, once we click on the ad, we're directed to a page where we have a video. We don't even see what they're really selling yet. And I'm assuming if it is jewelry, there's a few slow shots here that pan in. As we scroll down, we don't even see that product initially that they're promoting, which already is misaligning the message and people are going to be lost. But let's assume that they click on a product that they may like now that we know it's jewelry. Well, now we're directed to another video, which is also very bizarre. This is already our first click in from the ad, and now our second click in, and we are still not on a product yet. And now we're showing different products. Once again, we have to click and hope that maybe this is one we're interested in and we make it to the product page. People are going to get lost with this strategy and there's no clear road map to buy. You're having multiple touch points where people are having to click to even get to a product page and we're not even calling out exactly what we're selling, what it is. There's just too much mystery, too much confusion, and too much navigation that's required for somebody to make a decision to buy. It's going to be very hard to scale something like this at a profitable rorowass. So now let's look at what clear messaging looks like. We're going back to Misfits Market where they had these misfit looking sweet potatoes and how they're mentioning that nothing is wrong with these. So maybe we're interested in buying some of these items because we want to support small farms that have ugly vegetables. That's totally okay. So we hit shop now and the first message is save on grocery delivery and reduce food waste. So, we're not only helping a cause, which is a powerful message and strategy, but we're also aligning our offer with this audience because you're buying these misfit vegetables that just would have gone to waste. We're actually going to reward you by allowing you to save more money on your family household for buying vegetables that look ugly, which is absolutely amazing. And you can conclude all this information in such a short line of text. It really only took us what? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 eight words to be able to tell us all of that, which we know is clear. Not only that, but look at this visual. Here's all of these misfit fruits, items, and vegetables that we can buy. And all we got to do is just hit get started and be able to go through the process to check out and start grocery shopping with this brand. Okay, so we just completed our second level of the game and why most players get stuck. Let's see how the top 1% of brands keep beating you on level three. These are the brands making millions of dollars per month. How are they doing this? What are they doing differently than you? You may not like this, but the answer is actually super simple. It's the strategy. They have a crystalclear strategy. They put all of their time and energy into the right strategy and any dollar they make, they roll it back into the strategy to apply leverage. That means if they spend 5K on a UGC creator strategy and make back 50K, they're going to double down on that and keep growing and reinvesting into that character. They stay away from shiny object syndrome. And most importantly, they've gified their funnel. You see, once you have the right strategy in place, all you have to do is stay super consistent with laser focus. It's picking a strategy, validating it, and sticking with it. All right, so now let's break down what a gamified funnel looks like. So, whenever we click on shop now, we're immediately presented with a special offer, which already begins the gamifying of the system. We can pick a box for free gifts and discounts. So, rather than going direct to product page, we're already setting it up to feel fun, exciting, engaging. It almost feels like we're getting something in advance before we even started playing. So, let's go ahead and see how this works. We choose one box and we just received free shipping. Now, somebody's already excited. Rather than just saying free shipping as a banner and having somebody read it, we're turning it into a system where it feels like they just earned a reward, similar to how a game would be. We choose another item. We just got free underarm wipes. Let's choose another. We got a free mystery gift now. And then one more. We just got a free sweat absorbing base lotion. Confetti pops up. You can see the excitement that begins to play out here. As we hit continue, we're then directed to a product page that is very welldesigned for conversions. And let's just look at how this is structured via mobile. We have our early Black Friday offer that is already being released. We have save up to 67% off with four free gift offers that you just received and you're going to want to collect them because you've already have been given them. You just got to order the product to receive it. And then even their imagery, they've made it horizontal so they can fit more information on their product page. As you can see, the game of unraveling all your special gifts. And as we scroll down here, we're guaranteeing their delivery by a certain date because we know people want things fast in today's day and age. With games being fast-paced, so is online. And then we have key call outs like best deal, most popular to boost our AOVs and get more conversions. And then, as you can see, they're actually taking away some of the gifts, unless we choose the four sticks. So, we're almost guiding them in a very specific direction if you want to receive all of the items you just selected. And this is some really good reverse psychology because if you just choose one stick, now you're only getting that one gift when you thought you were getting four. So, now you kind of feel obligated to want to have to buy the best deal and get the best offer with all the items, which makes it feel like a no-brainer offer. And as we continue, we have all these key call outs that really allow the consumer to make a buying decision. And then we're guided to a page where we can start selecting our scents. So we have best sellers we could organize it by and start to choose. Maybe we want two of the best sellers. We want a different scent here. And once we select the ones that we want to try, we simply continue. And we are directed to a checkout page that is very well optimized. Most of you are actually missing this page here, which is 1 million plus happy customers. If you think about a game online, a lot of times games will show 1 million users are online playing this game right now. It's a form of social proof that has already been proven through how you get people to engage and use something. And these same strategies can be applied with your online e-commerce store. So, now that we understand that, how do we create your winning strategy to be level three? To make your brand's offer work, you have to understand your ICP, your ideal customer profile. In simple terms, who do we want watching our ads or content so they buy what we're selling? The first thing you need to do is figure out who this person is. This is the only thing that matters until you complete this step. Now, to do this, we use this easy six-step test. What would they say? What would they be like? What message would resonate with them? What are their main pain points? And how do they prefer to be spoken to? as well as what are their needs. You must learn who this person is so that way you can create the right content on the right platform in the right format with the right message. The biggest mistake I see brands do is they start with the platform first. They saw that another brand was crushing it on a certain platform like Facebook ads. So they only want that but their ICP is on the opposite platform. This is the wrong approach and a massive trap. Don't just start with any platform or format or message. Start with the audience. Who do I need? an audience of to buy what I'm selling. This is the most important aspect of this game. All of the biggest brands on social media understand this and put their ICP at the heart of everything they do. And once you have this, you need to figure out the platform. Where do these people hang out? Where do they spend their time searching and scrolling for online? Start with one single hero platform first, crush it, and then add in the next. Now, everyone is different when identifying this and not everyone will have the same answer, which is why inside of Ads Mastery, we work with you one-on-one and identify these very things while scaling your brand. I left a link in the description below for you to check that out. But here's the structure for how you can do this for yourself. So, you need to think, where does my ICP, ideal customer profile, spend their time? Is it either Meta or Tik Tok? Now that we have the platform your customers live on, we need the format. We have the who and the where. Next, we need that format. Here's why this is so important. The algorithm will identify for you what is your best format and we'll push that format even more because it knows your customer will want more of it. So, I put together five formats that I think will work great for you in this next video here. So, now we have the who, the where, the how, and last, we need the what, which is the message. And the message is going to target the pain points that your ICP has. And the stronger the pain point, the more they will trust you once you solve it. And the more that you solve it, the more that they will want to pay you to solve it. You want to identify that deep lying pain. Now, this four-step structure, the audience, the platform, the format, and the message, this is the framework for how you win the game of e-commerce. The more clear you can get on every single one of these levels, the easier the game becomes. And I promise you, if you go allin for 6 months on one platform in one set of messages for that ICP, you will become a master of this game. Now that you understand the levels of e-commerce, in this next video, I'll teach you how you can turn your brand into a cult-like brand on the internet. And I have it all in this video right here. And I'll see you in just a sec inside of that one, and we'll start building your cultlike brand together.