Since the dawn of digital, there has been a huge talk on what companies are doing for digital marketing. Whether it’s blogging, paid search or SEO, companies are using unique ideas to reach their audience with the relevant information.

The content marketing trend has changed and today; we cannot deny the fact that the best vehicle for content marketing is Podcast. 

Podcast is an easy consumable content format which does not require any text or video like any other content formats do. It's simply an audio digital file which needs to be downloaded, and listen anytime and anywhere.

That’s the reason why a large retail business group is using podcast and getting unique ideas for their online business.

​Here’s the list of inspirational podcasts for online retailers:

1. eCommerceFuel

​eCommerceFuel is the best community for online retailers where they can get tips and tricks for their 6 & 7 figure online stores from the founder Andrew Youderian. eCommerceFuel podcast focuses on tips, strategies and stories from the likes of building a store to the nitty gritty of buying and selling a business and giving marketing tips.

The recent shows in trending are: Selling a Business, How to Invest & Building Community — A Discussion with Ian Schoen and Reader Questions on Product Development, Buying Sites & More.  

2. EcomCrew

The founders of ecomcrew - Mike Jackson and Grant Yuan have years of experience in online business. Mike keeps blogging on various topics of eCommerce and retailing and has a huge collection which can be useful for any online retailer or a novice who just started up.  EcomCrew podcast is all about building a successful store, improving consumer experience, inventory control and more!

A couple of interesting interviews includes Recent changes made on Amazon Review System with a special guest Jeff Cohen and SEO and Ecommerce, containing three-part series.

3. Build My Online Store

Every Sunday on Build My Store Online, Travis Marziani and Terry Lin talk on vivid topics of e-commerce and online marketing giving retailers unique tips on promoting brands and products. In addition to blogs and podcasts, Build My Store Online consists of useful resources and services for online retailers.

Recent Sunday episodes include Using Postcards To Increase Lifetime Value with Touchcard.co  and 10 Email Sequences Your Online Store Should Have

4. Shopify Masters

The experts on Shopify Masters podcasts talk about actionable strategies and marketing tips helping retailers in growing profitable online stores. Therefore, these episodes are a valuable resource for any store owner who is looking for good opportunities in online business. 

Take a look at couple of recent episodes: Disrupting the Market: How Lululemon’s Former CEO Boosted Stock Prices by 400%  and How Bento&co Partners with YouTubers and Bloggers to Drive Sales

5. The Fizzle Show

The Fizzle show is a podcast for creative entrepreneurs and honest business builders who want to earn their living doing something they care about. The episodes are full of fun, business advice, and entertainment making it enjoyable while listening.
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The recent episodes include: A Day in the Life of an Entrepreneur(FS166) and 3 Hard Things That TRULY Matter to Your Business (FS165).

6. My Wife Quit Her Job

My Wife Quit Her Job is a website owned by Steve Chou and his wife Jennifer where they share their experiences of how they launched their online store BumblebeeLinens.com and earned $100K within a year. The podcast is an interview-based show where Steve interviews successful store owners on what they did and how did they succeed…

Tune into a couple of recent episodes including How To Transition From Amazon To Your Own Ecommerce Store With Kurt Elster and How To Make 20 Million Per Year With Only 2 Employees Selling Vacuum Filters With Chad Rubin.

7. 1 Day Business Breakthrough 

1daybb.com is a not just a website, it’s an experience brought by Pat Flynn and Chris Ducker who love to bring entrepreneurs together to brainstorm and mastermind to achieve breakthroughs and business growth. Each episode of podcast brings the most pressing problem of entrepreneurs in their own voice which is followed by Pat and Chris thoughts on how to overcome them. 

Recent episodes from 1daybb include Hotseat #25 (Carrie) - Getting Serious About Recurring Membership Opportunities and Hotseat #24 (Chris) - Promoting a Retail Location with Smart Local Marketing. 

Note: Retailers can go to the website and listen to the above episodes directly.

8. Niche Pursuits

​Spencer Haws is the brain behind Niche Pursuits who started creating niche websites using his own principles. He is also the creator of Long Tail Pro- the effective keyword tool which became the part of his business. 

The podcast episodes deliver practical advice and solutions for creating and running a niche e-commerce business.

Two of the most trending podcast episodes include: How Hayden Miyamoto Finds and Scales High Quality Link Building Opportunities in 2016 and  How Jon Haver Built an Amazon FBA and Affiliate Site Business That Shattered His $15k Per Month Income Goal

9. Etsy Conversation Podcast

Etsy conversations Podcast features inspiring interviews of Etsy and non-Etsy shop owners. The podcast episodes deliver stories of successful store owners who started their business of selling handmade products.

A couple of recent inspiring interviews from Etsy shop owners includes Modern Pelage - How Veronica created a business to support her personal aspirations, and more! and Tripawds- Rene and her husband share their experience of which tool they used in making their online business successful.

10. Mixergy

Mixergy is a platform where ambitious upstarts learn from experienced mentors through interviews and online courses. 

The people who speak here are amongst the great businesspeople who take out some time from their busy schedule and teach others what they learned from their experiences. 

Listen to recent interviews directly from the experts’ desk and get some suggestions: How Jeff Booth went from builder to tech builder with BuildDirect and Sales tactics from a cold-calling machine.

End Note:

The list ended with 10 amazing podcasts but there are many other popular podcasts from different eCommerce websites which are too worth a listen. 

The podcast episodes can be easily downloaded for free from these websites or if you have iPhone or iPod, just subscribe to iTunes and tune into any of these podcast episodes.

Happy listening! :) :)

Considering the global economy as of June 2016, The World Bank has announced the global growth
forecast which has been degraded by 2.4% from the 2.9% pace projected in January.

Effect on E-commerce industry
The impact of the global economy may be a challenge to many industries; and among those most affected ones, is Ecommerce.

In order to ensure a profitable business, online sellers need to ensure that they are making the best optimization of cost, especially in the growing stage.

There are many areas where sellers end-up incurring more costs, and, with the advancement of technology, it is always helpful to be updated with the latest solution to streamline cost spending of the business.

Major areas that eCommerce sellers should keep a track of:

I- Cost spent behind hosting and maintenance of server
With the advancement of technology, there are multiple options for sellers to start an online site. However, considering the most common ones:

Free Web Hosting Services are surely making it easy for any start-ups and small business owners to start selling on-the-go. However, with limited server speed sellers may often face a site downtime that can hamper sales opportunities and growth of their eCommerce business.

Share Web Hosting Services is allowing growing sellers a dedicated portion of the server at a nominal price. Such services allow multiple sellers to host their websites on one server. The cost of hosting and server maintenance is shared among multiple people, but with the increase in a number of users, sellers may end up facing slow site performance.

Dedicated Web Hosting Services helps sellers with high-level of security by allowing them a dedicated server in whole. However, sellers are liable for the operation and maintenance costs as they will own it. Unable to take care any of that in time can stop sellers from performing their daily activities.

You can replace these with:

Online eCommerce marketplaces are allowing sellers an opportunity to eliminate the hassle of worrying about website hosting and maintenance, as those activities will be managed by the platform itself.

Amazon and eBay are among leading marketplaces that allow sellers quickly expand their business across the globe.  Without having to worry about the server space capacity, many online marketplaces are helping sellers avoid costly hosting situations and confidently grow their eCommerce business.

II- Cost spent behind software used
Gone are the days when online sellers depended only on a single store, today, in order to gain a competitive advantage many are spreading their product visibility across multiple platforms. However, performing tasks to manage multi-channel store can multiple your expenses, depending on the software used.

The most common technology used among online sellers is:

Traditional software, allows sellers with multiple alternatives as per the budget. However, such software available out there may have its own unique features that may, or may not, offer flexibility as per your eCommerce growth needs. 

In such situations, sellers are either forced to switch the software or, add another one to continue their daily eCommerce business activities.

Cloud-based software, as it eliminates the hassle of dealing with physical software. Such software solution providers allow a virtual software account access to sellers from where they can perform their business tasks.  However, most of the software being designed as per standard business requirements,
chances of spending more than usage, increases.

You can replace these with:

Customized solution will allow sellers an opportunity to request for fully-managed process automation software. This solution will allow sellers a flexibility of requesting customization within their budget and growth needs.

Apart from offering a dedicated server space, sellers get a chance to work with experts from the same field who will take care of the maintenance too.

III- Cost spent behind supply chain process
Technology has advanced the way online sellers deal with their daily business activities. However, the success of startups and small sellers depend on the way they manage their supply chain process tasks.

Managing inventory tasks for small sellers may sound easy with less flow of orders, hence, many perform them manually. However, this process is labour-intensive, which means each product in-and-out has to be accounted for and maintained at appropriate stock levels to avoid delay in fulfilment. 

Fulfilling customer’s orders involve many steps. From procuring inventory from the warehouse, printing labels, packing the products, and connecting with the right shipping services to ensure customer’s orders are delivered in time. Manually performing such tasks repeatedly can automatically increase fulfilment costs at the end of each year.

You can replace these with:

Automating the supply chain process will eliminate sellers from the hassle performing the same tasks over and over. Cloud Technology is making it easy for sellers to perform time-taking and repetitive tasks in the simplest ways. 

For instance, allowing them to print multiple labels and quickly integrate with an assortment of carriers from any place, anywhere.

IV- Cost spent behind managing daily operations
Sellers who run an online business will need to interact with multiple people for procuring stock and performing daily business tasks. Delay in communication automatically hampers order fulfilment tasks.

So, who are the major players?

Suppliers are the ones that sellers would have to communicate regularly for stock requirements. Unable to procure products in time automatically encourages small sellers to depend on other costly suppliers who could actually provide them with the product and ensure a quick fulfilment.

Staff dealing with the stock/warehouse requirement needs to be provided with customer’s orders details in time, to ensure products are out for shipment at the earliest. Communicating over the phone or messages can lead to miscommunication and longer delays.

You can replace these with:

Centralized system management software is making it easy for sellers to sync their suppliers and employees at one place. 

Sellers can easily add multiple contacts as per business requirement and ensure accurate communications with any of them, in real-time.

V –Cost spent behind promotion
Last, but can be the most highly- investment area by many small sellers in order to gain increased visibility in a short span of time.

Website marketing is an important aspect for small sellers to encourage visitors to engage with their sites. Therefore, many sellers try and perform different promotional tactics across their website, investing a huge amount of money.

Social media marketing is the buzzword among small sellers as it is helping them reach a wider audience from one place. Also, with sites like Facebook and Pinterest offering a “Buy Button,” many sellers usually takes time to see returns on their investments.

You can replace these with:

Social media analytic tool is helping small sellers market only in those areas that can churn more results in less time. Instead of blindly spending hundreds of dollars, why not gain access to insightful performance reports and make decisions smartly.

End note
Cost-waste is all around us in our personal lives too, however, considering a business in such economic crisis it is better to get rid of the trash!
Happy Savings :)