Marketing Experts Reveal Top Strategies To

Arlen
[00:00:06]
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Arlen
[00:00:42]
Welcome everyone to the e-commerce marketing podcast. I am your host Arlen Robinson. And today we have a very special guest Omar Zenhom. He is the co-founder of the $100 MBA, the largest alternative business education online. He’s also the host of an iTunes best of 2014 podcast. The $100 MBA show, the $100 MBA show has delivered almost 1000 lessons and counting to over 70,000 daily listeners. Omar is also the co-founder of webinar ninja and all inclusive, easy to use webinar platform that allows you to create a webinar in 10 seconds flat. It has been known that Omar’s biggest talents are actually on the dance floor. Michael Jackson would be proud. Well, welcome to the podcast, Omar. How’s it going?

Omar
[00:01:33]
Good, man. How you doing Arlen?

Arlen
[00:01:35]
I’m doing great. Well, before we get started, you have to tell me a little bit about this. Michael Jackson being proud.

Omar
[00:01:41]
Oh, definitely man. And you know, I’m I grew up in the eighties. I was born in 80. Okay. And so if you didn’t like Michael Jackson in the eighties, there was something wrong with you, like mentally something wrong.

Arlen
[00:01:50]
Right. I hear you. I grew up in the eighties as well. So I know, I know how

Omar
[00:01:54]
That is. Well, I grew up on Michael. I used to, you know, watch all his mu you know, music videos and emulate his dance moves, like in the basement and all that stuff. And we’d have dance parties and during the birthday parties of, you know, me and my siblings and right. So yeah, been a big Michael Jackson fan, all my life, love his music. I think he’s a master at what he has done in the, in, in the music and entertainment industry. Right. So, yeah, it’s just little fun, fun fact people don’t know. Cause I’m quite tall. I’m like six, five, so, okay. When people see me on the dance, like, wow, you could dance. I’m like, well, I wasn’t always tall. Gotcha.

Arlen
[00:02:28]
It’s a pleasant surprise. Okay. That sounds awesome, man. Appreciate it. Yeah. We, we appreciate you coming on the podcast and you know, before we kind of get into the topic, which is gonna be about webinars, wanted to find out a little bit about your background and you know, kind of how you got to where you are today.

Omar
[00:02:45]
Sure. So I got started in my professional career as an educator. I was a teacher at the high school university level. I was like head department at the university. That was my last stop for the last five years. But while I was in education as a teacher, I was really interested in the internet. I was really interested in seeing if you can, you know, create things and sell them online. I didn’t even think of it as entrepreneurship back then. I thought of it as just like an experiment, right. And this was around 2002. So the internet was still kind of young. There’s still, you know, no WordPress, no PayPal, things like that. It was just very hard to do anything. So I think I got started on eBay and things like that. And I think I just kind of slow slowly kind of understood that, you know, maybe I can do this thing.

Omar
[00:03:31]
Maybe I can become an entrepreneur as things got easier as I got more experiences, as I built more side hustles on the side when I was teaching, but eventually I made the decision to take that leap into entrepreneurship and leave my nice cushy job in education. Okay. Which was a huge risk for me. But you know, I really needed to change. I just felt like my frustration outgrew, my fear and I kind of just wanted to do it. I, I launched the a hundred dollars MBA because I believe that, you know, a lot of people would like come and ask me, Hey, how do you start a business? How do you like, you know, start a website, how do you sell things online? And I would help people one on one, but then I started, maybe I can scale this a little bit. So I built the a hundred MBA, which is exactly what, it sounds like a hundred dollars MBA education, which it covers all the basics of how to, you know, how to market sales, finance, all that kind of stuff that you’d need to get started. Right. And that, that’s kind of how the show kind of launched it as well after that the podcast a hundred dollars MBA show. Yeah. So that’s kind of my evolution in professionally.

Arlen
[00:04:32]
Okay. That’s that’s awesome. Yeah. The, and I think you, what you provide there on the a hundred dollars MBA, a hundred dollars, mba.net, your website, it’s a platform that I know a lot of e-commerce business owners. Cause I talk to e-commerce business owners all day and most of them, you know, kind of always hit the ground running, you know, they, they’ve got an idea, they’ve got a product and they just get out there. And so a lot of the, unfortunately it can be good and bad, you know, a lot of times they, they seize an opportunity and it works out. But a lot of times, you know, as you, as you know, when you kind of hit the ground running and you don’t necessarily have, you know, the big, the business background, you know, there’s a lot of things that, you know, you could be overlooking things that you could leave on the table and just things that you don’t even think about just because you don’t have that background. And I think, you know, your platform is, is, is, is just right on time, especially for the people that don’t have the time to, you know, enroll in a formal MBA program or definitely, or the money, you know? So

Omar
[00:05:33]
It’s, yeah. I mean, a lot of people don’t know this, but when I left education, you know, I felt a little bit insecure about being an entrepreneur. So I went to Wharton business school. Like I applied, I was so happy. I was gonna Wharton business. I was so happy. I was gonna be a hundred thousand dollars in debt. Right. Right. But after one semester, you know, my professor pulled me aside and he asked me, you know, like, what are you doing here? Like you’re a lot older than these students. You already have kind of a business on the side that you’re building, you know, why are you getting your MBA? And I was like, oh, I’m just getting my MBA so I can be a great entrepreneur. And then he’s like, that’s not why you get an MBA, you get an MBA. So you can get like a middle management job at Morgan Stanley or, you know, Goldman Sachs or something.

Omar
[00:06:09]
And I was like, and I, I just realized that the reason why I’m here is because I feel insecure. I want the information. And then you kind of just told me, Hey, we don’t have a monopoly on this information. You can learn this stuff in books and courses and, and things around you. And I just realized people need this curated for them. It’s not easy to kind of find this information if you don’t have any structure. Right. So, and that’s kind of what led me to call it the hundred dollars MBA, cuz my education was gonna call it cost a hundred thousand dollars for the MBA. Okay. So definitely. And you know, and one of those, one of my bigger side hustles that I had when I was in, as a teacher, I, I had a, an e-commerce store. I had my own clothing line. Okay. So I was selling physical products online and yes, definitely. I mean, I made so many mistakes along the way, especially when it comes to, you know, my costs, I used to spend so much money on things I didn’t need to, you know, and that just comes from just not being aware, not having a community around you.

Arlen
[00:07:02]
Right, right. Yeah. That totally makes sense. I mean, everything that you mentioned as far as, you know, at the beginning, just thinking you needed to sign up for an MBA and then, you know, realizing that eventually, you know, do you really even need it at this point, but you, I mean, you need the information, but you know, like you said, signing up to, to be a hundred thousand dollars in debt, you know, may not make sense initially, especially early on. So yeah. So all of that, that sounds excellent. I mean, you’re the, the site that you provide is I I’d say in very invaluable resource now, how did you go from that to what you’re doing now as, as far as co-founding webinar in ninja, the, the webinar platform?

Omar
[00:07:42]
Definitely. So back in 2014, I was running webinars to grow our community at the a hundred dollars MBA as well as doing like office hours and supporting the existing members of the a hundred MBA. And I just was really frustrated with the options out there when it comes to webinar platforms that were clunky, they were ugly. They were hard to use. I couldn’t just use one piece of software. I had to also use a landing page software along with like email notification software, along with all this other stuff and had to Franken sign it all together and hope it works and do this every single week. Every time I would run a webinar. Right. So I, I just got frustrated. I was just like, I wanna just create something simple for myself. So I don’t have to reinvent the wheel every week. So I teamed up with a freelance developer.

Omar
[00:08:26]
I just, basically, when I say teamed up, I hired this person for a little less than a thousand dollars. So I decided to reach out to a freelance developer to build a small version of what today is webinar or, I mean, when I say small as like super, super conservative. Okay. And I just wanted it so I can make it easy for me to run webinars just myself and I started running webinars with this software. Okay. And I realized, oh, you know, my customers were like, Hey, what do you, what do, what are you using for this? And I was like, it’s just something I put together. And they’re like, well, can I buy it? Okay. And I was just like, okay, let me put up a sales page. But honestly we, we decided to, pre-sell it 250 spots to see if there’s interest and we sold out in about 48 hours. So I realized, okay, wow, there’s a big demand. And that was back in 2014 and we’ve been iterating the software since, okay. Based on user feedback, based on what people are need, what they’re looking for. And our goal is just to make it super easy and simple and clean for you to be able to run a webinar today, we have over 13,000 paid users, which is for us really great growth for a self-funded company. Right. So, yeah. It’s been a great journey.

Arlen
[00:09:33]
Yeah. That’s, that’s awesome. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, I, as a business owner on, on my end here and, and running O side affiliate software, I know the importance of, you know, solid webinar tool. And so most of our listeners that are out there, the eCommerce businesses, you know, as a business owner, running a business, you know, they’ve, they’re, they’re well wearing a million hats. They’re doing a lot of different things. And everybody that listens to podcast or reads marketing blogs probably, you know, sees the same thing, do webinars do webinars. But I know a lot of what people don’t really realize is, you know, how do they get started? So, I mean, what advice can you give business owner eCommerce business owner on getting started with the webinar? Like where do, where do they even begin?

Omar
[01:10:15]
Definitely. That’s a good question. So I, I love to kind of break things down a little in, in simple steps. So, you know, the first thing you need to start with when it comes to a webinar is the topic. You basically just need to solve a problem, a pain and issue something for your actual audience. So a lot of people kind of struggle with this stuff. They’re like, I don’t really know what people want. Like how do I actually come up with this? And one of the best ways to do this is to make your first webinar a Q and a webinar, just to have a open question and answer webinar where you basically, you know, you invite people and say, Hey, I’m doing an open Q and a open office hours. If you can ask me anything, you can get advice about anything I can consult with you, whatever it is.

Omar
[01:10:55]
And what you do is on that webinar because you’re getting all these great questions, you know, you’re able to find out what people are struggling with and you can take one of the hot questions or some of the hot questions and turn them into the topic of your next webinar. Got it. You know, that’s a great way to do that because you know, with our software, you’re able to save all the questions that are asked and you can export them, you can organize them and you can figure out, you know, which ones are the ones that really, you know, kind of strike a nerve. And, and that’s really the best way to start is just to start with just open QA. You don’t have to prepare anything. You don’t have to prepare any sides. There’s nothing there to be, to do other than just to be present.

Omar
[01:11:29]
Okay. You know, so it’s, it’s, it’s great to get started that way. And then from there, you know, once you have a topic, you know, one of the things I love to say is, you know, break it down into five steps or five parts, five tips to get to that learning outcome and to, to get to that goal. So if I’m a basketball coach or let’s say, for example, I wanna help people improve their free throw shooting. Right. That’s my topic, how to improve their free throw shooting by 10%. Right. Right. So I have to figure out what are the five things I can teach them to get to that promise? You know, a topic is really a promise. It’s like, well, I promised you’ll get at the end of the webinar. Right. So, you know, it could be things like, you know, I gotta square up.

Omar
[01:12:05]
I gotta make sure I visualize, visualize. I gotta make sure that I have my arm straight, whatever it is. And, you know, break it down to five. I like to say five steps or less, because one of the most important things that I learned from as a teacher is that when you’re teaching something, you gotta keep it short because in order for you to be able to repeat something, to be able to gain that skill, you gotta be able to repeat it. So you have to remember it, you have to retain it. So you have to understand what’s going on, but you also have to retain that information. You know, if you remember back in the day, when you learned long division, you know, you’d have to go through the steps with the teacher on the board. Right. And you have to remember the steps, right. So if you go too longwinded, like 97 ways, so you like market your e-commerce store like that? No, no. One’s gonna remember 97 ways. Sure. Especially if they’re steps, you gotta remember the order. Right.

Arlen
[01:12:47]
Definitely

Omar
[01:12:48]
Keep it short, keep it nice and concise. And I love to say, keep it interactive when people are doing things on the webinar and people are answering questions. I just like to get a pulse every five minutes or so. It could be just something like, you know, I’m making a point, like, if you agree with me, say yes or hell yes. In the chat, let me know what you think. Right. You know, get people to interact because you wanna keep them on the screen. You wanna keep them engaged. And I like to do this a lot in the beginning cuz it kind of sets the tone of like, oh wow, this webinar is different. This is fun. I like this. Yeah. And they just get fully engaged, so interact as much as possible. And those are kind of my tips for people that are getting started. Yeah.

Arlen
[01:13:23]
That totally makes sense. I know a large part of our audience and listeners are e-commerce businesses that are selling consumer products, maybe women’s fashion. I, I know there’s a lot of businesses out there that sell skincare products, cosmetics. I know a lot of our customers are in those different categories. They may be thinking, okay, you know, you kind of highlighted some service type businesses where they, we can kind of see a natural, you know, fit for a pot or a webinar. But what about the product businesses that are providing in product? What, how would they, how would they effectively give an appropriate webinar and you know, how would that work for those types?

Omar
[01:14:00]
Sure. The funny thing is that when I first encountered webinars and I saw them online, I was like, the first thing that came to mind was like, wait a minute. This thing is like QVC. Like I that’s the first thing that came to mind is that it’s like you have your own shopping network really gotcha. Right. At any time. And you know, when I had my e-commerce store, I used to love this concept because it’s just a great way for you to show off your products, your services, get intimate show its practical use to model it for them, you know, with a less than a hundred dollars webcam. I, I actually recommend the Logitech C nine 20. It’s a great HD cam okay. With a Carl’s ice lens. And it’s great for like demoing products. I lo you know, one of, we have a lot of users that have eCommerce businesses and what they like to do.

Omar
[01:14:47]
And this is a great idea actually it’s that they, they do a feature week. So like basically once a week they do featured items on their webinar. So like they have like maybe 10 items for sale or something that are featured on their homepage and they’ll, they’ll they’ll do a sale or like basically like last minute sale. So like right. The prices even drop more on the webinar and they have a certain amount of time before the end of the webinar to grab that deal. And, and during that webinar, they’re showing these products, whether it’s clothing, they’re model modeling it on camera, or they’re doing closeup shots of iPhone covers or whatever it is that they’re selling. Right. And then it’s great because they can describe things. They can talk about the practical use. They can take questions, you know, this is exactly like a shopping network, right?

Arlen
[01:15:27]
Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. I never really thought of it like that, but that that’s correct. It’s your own shopping network pretty much.

Omar
[01:15:33]
Yeah. So our users that have eCommerce stores love the platform because it allows ’em to really, you know, answer a lot of questions that they can’t just answer immediately. Sometimes people see things on a website on a webpage and they’re interested, but they can’t really close the sale because they have like a really burning question and maybe they’re too, you know, embarrassed to kind of email support about it. And they kind of just forget about it, but on a webinar it’s just so easy to chat. So easy to just type in, Hey, do you take Amex? You know, does this come and, you know, double X, large or whatever. Right. So it’s just easier for them to interact, ask really quick questions, buying questions really. So they can be able to close that sale. So I, I, I love, I love that that use of webinars.

Arlen
[01:16:15]
Yeah. That’s, that’s definitely something I hadn’t really thought about. And especially what you mentioned as far as that last minute sale, or I guess you could call it a flash sale just during the time of the webinar where, you know, maybe you’ll give a you’ll heavily discount. One of the products that are featured only during the time of the webinar. So, you know, you can, you can kind of tease that also in the webinar, in the promotion of the webinar. So let’s say you’re emailing out the, your customers, the webinar information or webinar subscription, or sign up page. You can let ’em know, you know, during the webinar, we will be doing a special flash sale, you know, where you can get 50% off X, Y, Z only during this time. So that, that can definitely help increase the attendance. I’d say for sure.

Omar
[01:17:01]
Yeah. And definitely one of the things our users do is cuz we have these, these set email notifications that get fired prior to the webinar, like reminders, like tomorrow’s your webinar and in one hour it’s starting and you can customize these emails before they get sent out. So a lot of ’em they customize customize ’em with the feature products on that are gonna be on that webinar. These rings are gonna be, you know, discounted during this time. So make sure you attend live and all that stuff. So you can kind of like tease them and really get them interested to just make sure they attend live.

Arlen
[01:17:30]
Right. Right. For sure. And so, you know, we definitely see all of those being ways and which someone can kind of improve their sales by doing these webinars. And you know, there’s definitely a lot of obvious benefits to it. What do you think are some other benefits that people may not even realize, you know, when doing a webinar?

Omar
[01:17:49]
So I think webinars are a great way to do a lot of product research. I do this all the time with our software itself, like before we actually release a new feature, I’ll en you know, invite a subset of our users and just say, and I’ll invite like maybe like a thousand people. And you know, maybe like out of those thousand 300 can show up and I just basically say, Hey, you know, I’m just, this is not a sales webinar. It’s nothing, we’re we have a couple features that we’re working on and we wanna get your feedback. And it’s basically, we’re trying to refine it. We’re trying to make a product better. And it’s great to just get a focus group together. That’s interested in what you’re doing and they can learn. And then, you know, as a reward, I kind of just say, Hey, you guys will get first access.

Omar
[01:18:29]
We’ll release it to you first. It also allows me to prioritize what my customers want. Maybe they’ll be like, well, that’s not really a feature I want, I’d rather have this. And then I have, I’ll go back to my team and say, Hey, let’s, let’s start working on this instead because that’s really what people need. And that’s what they’re looking for. So in whatever business you’re in, even in, in eCommerce or whatever, they’ll be like, you know what, you know, that’s a great product, but you know, you’re always sold out in this color. Or I, I was, I, I just saw this other product on, on Amazon. And I’d love to, if you guys can come up with something that’s similar, you know, it’s just good to get some feedback from your customers. And I love it because it’s very interactive and it allows your customers to feel a little bit special. Like they’re part of the process that, Hey, this, this business actually cares about my opinion and I’m gonna check them out frequently to see if they’re implementing the things I suggest. So, right. I love, I love webinars for R and D.

Arlen
[01:19:20]
Yeah. I never really thought about doing that. That’s definitely something, I, I just kind of jotted that down as a note because we here internally, we always kinda struggle with, you know, what are, what are gonna some be some of the best new features to put out there and, you know, we’ve, we’ve done the kind of the emails and taking the pulse of our, of certain key customers. But I never really thought about doing a, a webinar to kind of do a closed focus group that, so that’s definitely

Omar
[01:19:44]
Something. Yeah. And what’s great is like, we phrase it as like you get a sneak peek before anybody else. Right. And it’s kind of like a private invitation, like it’s like Elon Musk inviting somebody to Tesla to see the new car that no one knows about or something like that. So sure. And it’s great. And you don’t have to have a finished product. Like we, we have like a sketch mockups and some envision mockups. So they have an idea, they have a visualization of what it’s gonna be, but it doesn’t have to be completely coded and finished, you know, that’s too late then, you know, so right. We just like to show them like a visualization, what it will do and show them how it work. And, and it’s just a good way for us. And you could do the same with the physical product, you know, have a mock up of what it would look like and things like that. So they can understand what they’re, what they’re talking about or what they are giving their advice on. Right,

Arlen
[02:20:26]
Right. Yeah. For sure. And I know one of the kind of million dollar questions, a lot of the listeners are probably wondering is, you know, I’m sure they’re like, you know, everything does sound great. Definitely sounds like an opportunity, no matter what type of business you’re in, e-commerce whether it’s a service business or a product business where you’re selling a product, but ultimately it’s gonna come down to, you know, not, it’s not gonna be effective unless people show up. So what are some effective ways to market the webinar to, to kind of get it out there and make sure you can bolster your attendance?

Omar
[02:20:59]
Definitely. So I’m gonna say something a little bit, maybe surprising or, or maybe controversial, but I think the number one way to improve your attendance is to improve your performance. You, you gotta be good. You gotta be good at what you do. And it doesn’t mean you have to be some sort of like, swarmy kind of salesperson. You just gotta be good at presenting and being proud of what you have, you know, and is in a, in a way, webinars are a form of public speaking. And I invested a lot in being a better public speaker. I’ve taken a lot of classes. I’ve been trained one on one, I’ve taken voice lessons, all that kind of stuff. Now you don’t have to go to that extent, but you definitely should rehearse your webinar before you actually get on live. Right. I always give this analogy.

Omar
[02:21:40]
You know, we all have an uncle Bob in our family and every Thanksgiving uncle Bob says the same joke. And we all laugh, even though it’s the same joke he’s been saying for 30 years, and it’s not the joke, it’s just his delivery. Right. Right. We all laugh because his delivery’s just so on point because he is been saying it over and over and over and over, right. It’s not the first time he’s said this joke. So the same thing goes with the delivery of your webinars. Now you might be saying, well, what does that have to do with marketing? Well, you know, once you start doing webinars, people will talk about you. People will share your webinars. People will say, Hey, I just was on this webinar. And it was like really fun. It was really interactive. I got a lot out of it.

Omar
[02:22:16]
It wasn’t just a pitch Fest, you know? And I’m just sharing with what happened to me. That’s how I became somebody that people register for, or, you know, check out my webinars. And I, I, I do very little kind of paid marketing because I really focus on my craft. And I think that’s the, the number one thing you can do to improve your attendance rate. The other thing you can do is, is a lot of people don’t utilize their actual website, like, okay, you’re getting organic traffic to your website anyway. Right. People are finding you through Google searches, referrals, whatever. Right. So you should definitely be putting on your homepage with like a hello banner or a little thing on the side, an image that I run a webinar, here’s my webinar. I do it every week, or this is the next day or whatever, and link it to your registration page.

Omar
[02:23:02]
It’s just the easiest way to get like, you know, a lot of registrations to your webinar that you don’t expect normally, because people are just going your website, finding you in different ways. So that’s, that’s number one, you gotta do that super simple two seconds. Right? The other thing I really highly recommend is that you try to, you know, get on other audiences or other platforms as much as possible. I like to guess post as much as possible. So it doesn’t have to be another e-commerce site. It doesn’t have to be another site that is in your actual marketplace. If you’re in, again, like iPhone accessories, you don’t have to go to another iPhone, accessory website and blog for them. You can get outside the niche. Like some of the most effective blog posts that I’ve written on. Other sites were things that are completely irrelevant.

Omar
[02:23:47]
Like I, I, I went to digital photography school. It’s like a digital photography blog, very big blog by Darren Rouse, over a million subscribers. Right. And I went to their blog and I realized that they don’t really have a lot of blog posts about how to GoPro as a photographer, how to create a business at a photography, how to get gigs and things like that. And there’s gotta be a lot of amateur digital photographers over there that want to take that step. So I, I wrote to them and I said, Hey, you know, I I’d love to guest post for your blog. I read every blog post on this topic. It’s kind of, you know, missing a few things. And this is what I would like to present. In fact, I wrote the whole post already. It’s attached. Okay. And I love to write it beforehand, right.

Omar
[02:24:30]
Because it allows them to make it easy to say, yes, you know, if they already have the material and they already know that, okay, this is a well written and it’s worth publishing, you know, versus, Hey, before I write it, you know, this, this really helps a lot. And then people will be like, ah, no, they’ll thank you. I don’t know who you are, blah, blah, blah. But if you have a good blog post already written, it’s easy for ’em to say yes. And if they say, no, no problem. I can publish on my own blog. I can rework it for another blog, whatever it is. But the point is that the end of the blog post, you know, I wrote this EV blog post 2,500 words, images, everything, great advice. And at the bottom of the blog post, I said, Hey, you made it to the end of the blog post. You must be serious about this topic. I’m gonna be running a live webinar on how to go pro as a photographer. If you’d love to attend, I’ll, you know, I’ll show you around and I’ll show you the tools I use to run webinars. And I just give a link. I will button a link of like the registration page for that webinar. And you get tons of registrations on people that you would normally not have access to. Okay. So those are just a few tips.

Arlen
[02:25:28]
Gotcha. Gotcha. You know, that’s, that’s, that’s great. I mean, there’s so many different ways to promote it that I think a lot of businesses don’t really even consider and you know, I’ve done several webinars and there’s a lot of things that you mentioned that we didn’t really even take full advantage of. So, you know, it’s, it’s always a learning process, no matter what you do. And yeah. All of those things I can, I know would definitely help out, you know, and to, to wrap things up. One of the things we always ask our guests on the podcast is, you know, we talked a lot about webinars and promotions, but I know you’re, you’re, I guess you could say definitely an expert in, in e-commerce marketing in general, what, what do you think is one thing an e-commerce business can do, you know, today right now to help their business grow and get traffic and get sales,

Omar
[02:26:11]
You gotta do something that is going to attract people with the value of information you give. So you gotta have some sort of content marketing strategy. People are more interested in getting the most out of what they get or buy than just buying it. You know, like for example, if you’re going on a trip, you know, you, you do tons of research to find out what’s the best hotel. How can I, I’m gonna book hotel, but I wanna know where the best hotel is on TripAdvisor. I’m gonna read all this information. I wanna know where the, the, the hotel’s located. So I’m gonna read blog posts about the different cities in that country. I wanna find out, you know, where are the best spots to eat? So I’m gonna find out how far that is from the places I want to eat. So information is gold and you know, and a lot of people’s like, well, there’s so much information out there.

Omar
[02:26:54]
It’s hard to kind of, you know, stand out. Well, actually it isn’t that hard to stand out because so many people are not really putting the effort into creating great content, really putting the effort into building some great content for their actual blog, for their actual podcasts, for their webinars. You know, webinars are a great way to actually run regular content on a regular basis. Like a, like a show, like I mentioned before, where you can show people how to apply their products or services and make, make the best use of it. The funny thing is that most people don’t do this. So therefore you sound like your product is better, but in fact, you might even be selling the same product, right. But people just don’t know how to use it. People don’t know the, the benefits of it. They don’t know all the different, you know, uses of that actual product.

Omar
[02:27:36]
So content is really, really king when it comes to actual running any kind of business, but especially eCommerce, cuz you know, they don’t, a lot of people have so much choice and they don’t have any kind of guidance. And if you can guide them, you’ll be the person that’ll trust. You’ll be the person that they will wanna come back to. You know, I, I, I think that when it comes to any kind of business, you know, the only way you can differentiate yourself is that you insert yourself into it. And the best way to do that is to give your take, give your opinion, give your advice through content.

Arlen
[02:28:05]
Yeah. For, for sure. And that’s what a lot of businesses don’t really, I like you said, there’s so much out there. People need guidance. You know, when they’re looking to make a purchasing decision, no matter what it is, if you have your, like you said, put your kind of personal attention to that particular content, your, your feedback, your opinion, and you’re authentic about it. That’s you know that you’re gonna win people over because you know, they, you know, it’s just like, I think about this every time we go to the grocery store here in the us, we’re so fortunate that, you know, we have so many options, but having so many options can actually be bad, bad thing sometimes because sometimes you can get overwhelmed. You know? Sometimes I, I, I go to the store and I’m looking at all right, what do I wanna eat for dinner tonight?

Arlen
[02:28:48]
And then I’m like, geez, I’m going to frozen food aisle. I’m like all do I want do that? Do I wanna get yeah. A rotiserie chicken? What do I wanna do? You know? So it’s, it it’s best if you, if you understand the landscape, like you said, the, the fact that it’s a lot out there and people are gonna have a hard time making a decision just because it’s, it’s cluttered. But if you can, you know, make your content stand out and, you know, kind of put your, your personal stake and opinion behind it. It, I think that definitely will, will shine

Omar
[02:29:17]
People. Yeah. For sure. People just wanna know what to do, like what to do. I love this analogy because it makes it so clear. And the analogy is, think of a travel writer. Think of like one of my favorite travel experts is Rick Steves, right? This guy is like such a lovable guy. He has a great YouTube channel. He’s got the best selling, like travel books. And he, he caters for a demo, like an older demographic, an affluent demographic. But I just love him to death because he, he just puts everybody at ease because he specializes in traveling to Europe. And that’s a think about it. You’re going to Europe. There’s so much to consider. Oh, there’s different currency there. And there’s different ways. And where do I stay? And what are the best cities? I only have two weeks, all this stuff. And he just boils down, Hey, where do you want to?

Omar
[02:29:59]
You wanna go to Europe? Here’s a book to do Europe in two weeks. Hey, you wanna, you wanna go to Italy? Here’s my Italy guide. And it tells you exactly where to go and everything. And people just like, yes, I need an expert just to tell me what to do, because I don’t know if I’m gonna make a mistake. I don’t know how to best utilize my time. I got two weeks. It’s an asset just like money. You know, it’s just like a purchase you’re purchasing too. You’re spending money, go on this trip and they just need a guide. They need somebody to show them what to do. And that goes with any offering, any product people just wanna know, Hey, what’s, what’s my best choice here. What’s my best option here. Right. Can you just tell me, because I have my own life, I got my own job. I got my own thing I gotta do. So I, I love that, that kind of example or parallel because it really clarifies it for me.

Arlen
[03:30:42]
Yeah. That, that totally makes sense. You just, you you’ve gotta tell people what to do and just guide them to, you know, the decisions that, you know, you want them to make and that’s gonna be, you know, purchasing your product or services that, yeah, that can’t be said any clear. Well, Omar, well, I definitely appreciate you joining us here on the e-commerce marketing podcast. You gave a lot of valuable nuggets and that I know our listeners will appreciate. And if anyone wants to get in touch with you, how do they do that?

Omar
[03:31:09]
Best way to get in touch with me is actually via email. I love just kind of talking to people on email. You can check out webinar, ninja.com. If you just go to the content link, the contact link at the bottom, or you can go to our website for the a hundred dollars MBA one zero mba.net, same thing, contact link, and be sure to check out our podcast a hundred dollars MBA show on iTune, Stitcher, whatever you listen to.

Arlen
[03:31:30]
All right. That sounds awesome. Walmart, Omar, will you. Thanks again. And you have a, a great day. Thanks for joining us here.

Omar
[03:31:35]
Thanks Arlen. Really appreciate it.

Arlen
[03:31:38]
Thank you for listening to the e-commerce marketing podcast to access e-commerce videos and other resources to help your business grow. Please visit get osi.com/videos. Subscribe to us on iTunes by searching for e-commerce marketing podcast, and please leave a rating and a reviewed. Thanks for listening. See you next time.