267: How to Quickly Earn Your Buyer’s Trust - with Liam Patterson

Something that's absolutely critical in sales is trust, the buyer has to believe that you and your product aren't going to solve their problem they have to trust you. And if you don't have that, even if you have a great product, even if you have great marketing,they're probably not going to ever sign up. Fortunately, Liam Patterson came in and he shared exactly what he and the Bidnamic team have done to create an incredible amount of trust to get buyers feeling like they absolutely will get their problem solved with the dynamic.Check this out, he walked us through precisely what they did from day one, to earn the trust,and to deliver that trust and make sure that everybody knows that they can solve their problem. So check it out. You're gonna love this one.

Welcome to Scale Your SaaS, the podcast that gives you proven techniques and formulas for boosting your revenue and achieving your dream exit brought to you by a guy who's done just that multiple times. Here's your host, Matt Wolach.

And welcome, super excited to have you here. Thank you very much for coming. If you're watching, thanks for watching. If you are listening,thank you for listening. This is Scale Your SaaS and our goal is to help you do exactly that. So you can understand exactly how you can get the right understanding of growing through marketing, lead generation closing deals, scaling your team, whatever it is, we want to help you grow your company. And I'm really excited. I want to share this story. I can't wait for you guys to hear this one.I've got Liam Patterson with me today. Liam, how you doing?

Yeah, it's doing great. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. So Liam, let me make sure everybody knows who you are. Liam is the founder and CEO of Bidnamic.He's an entrepreneur and growth hacker with a deep experience in E commerce and digital marketing. Be dynamic is a marketing technology platform that helps retailers unlock the full potential of Google Shopping. What it does, it helps retailers to outrank competitors, increasing revenue and market share, and really what it does, in short, it gives you an unfair advantage on Google Shopping. So anybody in the Ecomm world, this is what you need in order to be able to get those sales up. Once again,Liam, thanks so much for coming on the show. Absolute pleasure.Thanks

for having me.For sure. So,

you know, kick us off. Tell me what have you been up to lately? And what's coming up for you? Yeah, absolutely.

So we've really been scaling up big Namic. The core business, as you mentioned,there were Google Shopping specialists, we work with hundreds of E commerce retailers, direct to consumer businesses and brands. And yeah,we're just really helping them get more, get more exposure, get more growth on Google Shopping.In terms of our business, what we've been doing is about about nine or 10 months ago, we took our first investment round. So our first kind of VC round,which was 4 million pounds, $5million US dollars. And we've been putting that to work. And we're putting it to work in r&d.So we've got a really exciting new product that we're just launching, and also into winter growth as well. So we've pretty much doubled the team, we've opened an office in Austin,Texas, so in your side of the world, now got a team of around28 out there, and and just really investing in research and innovation for new products as well. So it's been a really exciting time for for scaling up the business and the brand as well. Oh, that's

so cool. I love that phase. That's such a fun time to be in a company and really see that scale start to happen. But I want to actually go back a bit when it when it all came to be what motivated you to start bid Namic. Where did the idea come from? And how did that all come to be?

Yes, it's actually quite a funny story,really. So I guess we we scratch our own itch. I think it's a bit of a saying this side of the pond, certainly. And we so we built our own e commerce marketplace. So it was a print on demand business. So we didn't have physical warehouses and physical stock. Instead, we have files that had 1000s of artists,illustrators, graphic designers uploading imagery, and merchandising digitally onto products like phone cases,tablets, T shirts, mugs,hoodies, all kinds of products,which would then be printed or produced on demand, and printed locally and shipped locally. So we had, you know, printers, all right, and suppliers all around the world, which meant that we could ship a product really quickly to a customer. And our proposition to the 1000s of artists and designers and creatives that worked with us was really getting them exposure so they could upload that design, we created the technology that would make it appear like it was wrapped in our hype, you know, really realistic end products of a mug or a t shirt, all the folds and distortions. And then we push it out to marketing. And the unhealthy channel that really grew that business was Google Shopping. And we went a bit too deep into that channel. So for anyone who's not familiar with Google Shopping, it's basically whenever you go to Google,you're looking for an E commerce product or a physical product online, and you'll see like a carousel of adverts. So they're little thumbnail images, it's got the price. It's got the suppliers, or the retailer's name on it, and effective it's free. to show up on that channel, but as soon as someone clicks on it, that's when the cost comes in. And that was a big challenge, because we were effectively on the receiving end of a fire hose of designs, some absolutely incredible, some absolutely, you know, terrible and probably never sell. And we were betting our own money, you know, we were putting in 10s of1000s of dollars, in some cases,an hour, some cases a day, on different regions. So we had, we had so many products that it was really a challenge, and one that we kind of leaned into, because we had to because it became such a dominant channel for us. And we ended up myself and my co founder has a PhD in MAFFS.Very, very smart team and the engineers around us, we've always had that software approach rather than a traditional ecommerce approach.You know, we didn't have any warehousing, we didn't have any of that side of it. We're always on the demand generation piece,whether that was demand generation of artists and illustrators, or is demand generation of selling their products. And we built our own e commerce technology to do that.So first of all, we trialed everything on the market. There was some great stuff out there.But it always has a few limitations that were frustrating or didn't quite work with such a big catalog of products and our use case. So we started developing our own technology. And it was really,you know, we're going back back maybe five, six years now. And our own investors that we had some angel investors in the business, some pretty big names.So Marissa Mayer, the co founder of booking.com. And Chris forest, who was on the board of net a porter. They both kind of said, Look, can we use this technology on our portfolio of brands and investments that we've made? And we're really kind of no way and it's not, you know, we've never done client side servicing. We've never built even a software business.We've done ecommerce tech for our own use case. And eventually, we gave in and we said, Okay, well, we'll we'll try it pretty pretty. With low expectations being it probably wouldn't really move the dial thing we were very unique use case in E commerce with so many products and so much demand from from Google search. And we just saw this hike this rockets that you know, of acceleration for the brands we worked with stitch and story was our first client still a client today, and many other brands as well. And that was about four or five years ago now. And fast forward, you know,four years, we've continued investing in that product actually became the core business about about nine months later, we made that switch of,of turning off that, that ecommerce business and instead putting all our focus into the SAS business, which was there,the marketing technology for Google Shopping, and and today,we're working with over 200ecommerce brands all around the world, some some really big names and recognizable brands,as well as you know, startups and scale ups that just had their first rounds of investment. And we're looking to grow smarter and grow more efficient. So yeah, that's I guess we yeah, we scratch our own itch. And yeah, created something just for ourselves then actually had a broader appeal or more of a mass appeal than we expected.

That's so awesome.I love those stories where you were just solving a need, and it was your own need, you had a problem, you went out and solved it in a great way that you realize other people could solve this as well, I think that's so fantastic. I actually have been a part of a system that did the exact same thing. That's how we started. But I want to ask you,so in those early days, once you got it started, once you realize, okay, we're going to market this to others. How did you do it? Like how, how did you get past the the worry that maybe a buyer might have that you're brand new? How did you convince somebody and get them to trust that it's going to work for them?

Yeah, I'd say I'd say we're really naive when we set out, you know, we just had this technology, it was kind of by accident. So you know, the first say, eight clients, we're referrals. So we start from,from our own angel investors,almost by accident, you know, we didn't intend to do this before,right? We'll just, you know,help them out. And you know, and do this. And then so we started to get our first ones get big success from them. They were connected to people, they have their own, you know, angel investors in their business. And they were kind of in the London tech scene. And that that kind of led to more and more so I'd say probably the first six or seven customers where we're referrals from those from those first initial ones or from our,our investors, our angel investors as well. So that's kind of the very beginning. And then I think the almost a growth hack, or there wasn't even intentional growth hack was just, we just lean in with our customers. So, you know, from day one, we'd be totally transparent about the case studies. You know, a lot of brands, a lot of people in our space, say we work with an online retailer who sells fashion, you know, like there's no detail there. There's no description that was always a bit of a bugbear for me as when I was running my ecommerce businesses, which was like, why not be transparent? Why not tell us that? You know, and I'm still not sure why people do that.Maybe it's fear that that you know, people are going to steal their customers from them or I don't know why but I think we just learnt anyway, it's like,right, well, we've got great success. We've got happy customers. Let's just lead with that. So we just lead with case study. So And today we've got over over 50 case studies, all of the URL or with the the business name all of their month. per month or year on year or, you know, quarter over quarter, whatever that time period is that that that improvement has been achieved,what the exact metrics are, of course, we can't talk in terms of pounds and pence or dollars and cents. But what we can do is show percentage growth of revenue of reduction of costs.And also we get quotes from their, their ecommerce managers or the people we're directly liaising with, and their name and their quote on there. So it's like 100%, transparency.And but even taking it a step further is, you know, when we go to events and trade shows, which are a pretty important part of our of our go to market,particularly in the US, we were very present a lot of the big E commerce, trade shows and events like shoptalk and etail, West and others, Chicago, in Chicago,RX, IRC and so on. And again,it's just bringing clients with us. And, you know, part of it's just the fun, you know, we've tried to put on panels with our clients, and just let them do their do the talking and do the selling because, again, I just maybe it's naivety, but putting having been in the shoes of a buyer who's making that purchase, it's like, it's just inundated with people telling you, you know, we can help you,we can help you. Whereas when it's like we can help you and here's one of our customers telling you exactly how we've helped them. And it's even more powerful when it's in person,and they're, you know, at the event they're with us there, you know, just gives that credibility and that, you know,which gets over that that trust factor in the early days.

I think you just said the exact word that is so critical trust, and it's something that a lot of companies kind of skip over. And it's so important, because as much as you can identify a problem as much as you can convince the buyer that they have a problem, they need to trust that you can solve it,they need to trust that your system is going to be the answer and the fact that you understand that so well. Liam is just beautiful, because you're now putting these stories front and center. And and you're absolutely right, the old way of doing things was you can't show who your customers are, you can't, you can't put your customer list out there. And I was taught that in my early days, like you can never don't do that. But actually, guess what your competitors, they're not going to work hard enough to go find those and go through everybody. And even if they do,if you have such great results,they're not going to want to leave. So your clients aren't gonna want to leave anyway. So don't even worry about it.Because you're literally I was told like, don't make sure that you don't post anything about who are our customers are because want anybody to steal them. But it's actually the opposite that works. When you put it out there and put these stories of success, you get so many more customers. And for those of you who know me and follow me, you go to Matt wolach.com/reviews. And you see tons of reviews and testimonials. Like just like Liam said, he said, 50, we probably got 50 some in there, I don't know somewhere around there. And it's exactly right.The more you put up there, the more you show, this works, and that you can prove it and that you have a lot of variety in terms of the size of companies location, what they're doing their industry, somebody's going to find something that's relevant to them, and that they're going to be able to connect with. And I love. I love what you said about and when you go to a conference, and you get them up on stage, and they're actually sharing how much they love you and how much they love the product. Like what better what better sales method could you have than a third party testimonial like that? We I haven't ever been on a panel with a prospect or with a client. That's amazing. But I have had clients at a conference at a trade show booth where they're kind of just there and somebody else is looking at it.They're like, Oh, yeah, we use this. It's amazing. You should definitely use it. Like that's,that's gold. That's the best I love that you guys are doing that.

Yeah, yeah, I think it was almost by accident.You know, we just got built close relationships with with our clients and then it was like, Oh, great, you're gonna be at that place. Let's let's get you you know, let's meet up and then Oh, actually, like, you know, just kind of snowballs right? And then you almost getting to two benefits, you're building on that relationship,you're building on that, you know, on that compounding of that relationship, and you're also getting the story out there getting the success out there.And I think the other thing you just mentioned now, which is again, part of it is once you've got this depth of experience in different segments so first of all, we're fortunate we're so vertical that all we do is Google Shopping you know Google Shopping ads we're not trying to do different channels different types of ads different you know,when we're masters of one vertical so I often say that creates cut through and it cuts creates cut through and our messaging and also very visible at trade shows because people walk past no interest at all or they're like, oh, Google Shopping like that's been a headache for us. That's been really annoying, you know, how do you guys do it differently?Why why do you do it differently? You know, it creates a conversation so again,it kind of a British term Marmite is like kind of a spread that some people hate it some people love and it's that relationship it creates cut through that. Again, it's either relevant or it's not relevant.Whereas I see so many companies in their marketing messages.They're trying to appeal so broad believe that actually they don't, it's not clear from the browser from the shopper, who,you know, what is this actual thing about? Is it you know, is it something that I need to pay attention to that I'm interested in? Or is it not? And then that segmentation. So within those case studies, we've got, you know, all the verticals, they can go on their case study pages, they can see it like this see fashion, let me see health and beauty, let me see jewelry,let me see the location, you know, North America, let me say Europe, UK, and also like the challenge. So typically,ecommerce retailers come to us with two challenges. And that's either about that they're,they're happy with the return on investment or the profitability of the channel, but it's just volume, they just don't seem to spend any more money on that channel, there's a lot of hit a glass ceiling or a roof, and they just can't, can't put more money in efficiently at that same level of profitability. So when they hit a growth ceiling,and we come in, and we lift that ceiling, we get more growth for them, they're able to put more spending at that same return on adspend at that same profitability that we're getting from that channel, or it's a profitability channel, that actually that challenge isn't profitable, when they factor in the return rate when they factor in, you know, cancellations when they factor in chargebacks. And payment fees, and postage and shipping fees. Actually, it's just not profitable. So then we come in, and we improve the profitability at the same volume. And then we then once it's profitable, we can move to growth. So again, we're able to set so those two use cases of of growth or profitability, so it allows people to really see okay, yeah, these guys have done it for for brands similar to me,which I feel is become a bit of a incessantly a bit of a gimmick where they'll say, Oh, we've worked with people like you that are brilliant, who is it, and it's like, someone totally different, or someone who's they've sold a totally different problem for. So again, I think we're quite fortunate that the scale, we've got to, and documenting it and getting the case studies there, again,because of those close client relationships has allowed us to then have that in our arsenal,to give that credibility and to give that cut through in the messaging that we that we have.

It's brilliant. And it's super important. Because when people are looking at these testimonials, they want to find relevance. And I always tell my clients, hey, if you're trying to give a testimony, or tell a story about a relevant prospect or customer, and you start talking about, hey, look at how we helped Coca Cola, and you're actually telling it to the mom and pop down the street, they're not going to feel that's relevant, like they're gonna think that you're too big for them. And likewise, if you're talking to Coca Cola, and you start talking about this tiny little company, mom and pop that you worked with, they're going to feel like you're too small for them. So you've got to make it relevant. I love how your website does that. I love how you guys have identified how you can make sure that you're telling the right stories, that you're you're relaying the right information. I think that's fantastic. It sounds like you guys have done a lot of things.Great. I want to flip it. What were some of the things you did early on that you look back,you're like, Oh, I wish we didn't make that mistake. I wish I wish we didn't do that. What were some of those things?

Yeah,definitely. So I think we, we opened up kind of to too many businesses. So maybe we were,you know, we didn't kind of the core ICP. So ideal customer profile. Like we didn't understand the things that we could control and the things we couldn't control. And now we've got a level of maturity that we've identified those. So we'll get there kind of crystal clear example, before we would look at someone say great, they're on Google Shopping, their challenges profitability. So it's not profitable enough for them in the historic state that never been profitable enough.And then we would say great with our technology, we can make that more profitable, you know. But actually, what we wouldn't do is just take a bit more of a deeper dive and look at what's the real cause of this is their challenge here to do with the the way that their Google Shopping campaigns have been structured, the way the bids that have been applied,you know, are they over bidding on some clicks and some search terms on some products? Which is where our technology can really come in and add value? Or is it something different? Is it something to do with their website? Is it you know, is their website just so slow, that after we've won a click from from somebody's typed in the exact product title, you know,men's Superboost, running shoe size, 10, black, under $200, it is the perfect match from the perfect customer, they've we've got the click, that's cost the customer and out that retail is paid for that click, it's come through, and then the website is taking ages to load, you know,and then because the website takes so long, because it's a very slow website, the customers are bouncing. So we can only control one part of the funnel.But actually, there's another part, which is their website,which is meaning we're losing,you know, we're losing delivering on our on what we've said we want to do, because actually, there's another more fundamental issue that really,if we'd known that we should have said, go and fix your site speed going fix your bounce rate of your website, and then come back to us and then we can solve this problem and really build on that because actually, there's another problem that's more pressing. So I think that was one of those one of those learnings. So it was there's some things that are in our control. And there's some things which are out of our control in the scope of that product and Google Shopping. So I think that's definitely been one of the learnings is, you know, what being very clear about where is their pain and actually doing a bit more upfront, taking a bit more investment in the sale to make sure that we do those checks, you know, we do effectively in mot nickel, we call it in the UK, effectively checking over like a check over a car and automobile, check that everything's sorted. And that's now what we do up front before,you know, before winning a client, we actually do this,this big check on their, on their their store, and we spot is there opportunities is it going to be challenging to actually work with them and deliver on what what we're setting out to do, you know, and setting out to do with them. So that's now what we what we do up front is really invest upfront in that sales process, so that we can avoid doing that. Whereas before, in the early days of the business, we would get excited,everything that great, we start working with them, the weeks and months would start to go by and we'd we'd have a small improvement, we'd make some some gains. But actually, that was only the gains we can make here because it was a bigger problem that we weren't aware of and that the client wasn't aware of.And it was out of our scope,because website design, for example, and paid speed.

Well, it makes sense. And this is something that I'm a big believer in is make sure your work with the right customers, you said it before the ICP is critical that make sure you hit that and it looks like you guys are doing some deeper work up front to understand if they are actually a fit for you. That's something I advocate as well, for those of you who've listened to the show a long time, you know, we we call that process discovery and discovery can be as deep as going to their site. If you're working with ecommerce understanding, what are they doing? And will it work? And will our system actually help them? I'm glad you guys are doing that Liam and sadly, we're getting close to the end of our time here. I want to know, what advice would you have for new software founders who are starting out they've got a great product, but they want to understand how can we get to a point where Liam and Ben Namic have made?

Yes, I'd say it's all about all about going out there being constantly aware of the feedback, you're getting listening and trying to adapt as well. So see what what challenges are the customers having? And is that something you can solve or not solve? So I guess one of the learnings was,you know, originally, we were selling to customers who weren't, in our ICP, they weren't our ideal customer profile, because for example,their page load was just too slow. And we should have known that upfront, or we, you know,we could have done more work to solve that. And then we were turning away customers who had to slow websites, we couldn't work with them. And obviously,that's really frustrating for a sales team for a business for marketing. We've had someone that looks like a perfect fit.And then we're not working with them. But actually this these challenges, these things that can be really painful, not winning that business can also inspire new products. So we've now got a new product, which we're just bringing to market,which is a landing page product.So it's built just for Google Shopping. So it's effectively a headless landing page, just only accessible from clicking on a Google Shopping ad. So you click on the ad, it loads a unique headless page, which has all their product information, their images, descriptions, their price, their checkout button integrated into Shopify, for Shopify stores, so people can transact through that. But it loads instantly, it loads in under a second. And it scores100 out of 100, on their Google PageSpeed in there for PageSpeed Insights for mobile and for desktop. So again, we've seen this segment that before we were, we couldn't sell too, and we were falling over with. And we've now through having the engineering resources and the investment, we've now made that USP where now we can we can solve that secondary problem for customers. And now we've got a really great advantage where we can create this optimum experience for shoppers clicking through from from Google Shopping ads and having a custom journey just built for that to that shopping journey of Google Shopping. So I would say you know, look for those challenges.And then potentially they can become your opportunities and future as the business scales up.

Amazing advice. And as you were telling the story about how there are certain people you can't work with,because of that problem. I'm like, Well, if only that you guys could solve that, whether it's through you build some product yourself, or you partner with somebody to do it. And you've already worked on that.So you're way ahead of me, Liam,I'm so glad to hear that. And this has been super awesome.Really excited to hear about your story. You guys have done a great job. Congrats to you and what you've done. I want to make sure everybody can learn more about what you're doing and dynamic. So what's the best way for them to learn about the dynamic and yourself?

Yes, it'd be to head over to bit namic.com bidnamic.com We've got the whole whole website there. We've got all those case studies we talked about as well, all around Google Shopping. And they can also book a book a demo book, that free discovery call where we can we can understand their business,we can do all that upfront analysis. If they're active on Google Shopping, if the channel that they're having challenges with such as around growth or around profitability, then we can assess if we can if we can help the business. And then in terms of myself, personally, I'm Juan I'm very active on LinkedIn. They can find me there Liam Patterson bit Namic See,I've been namak

perfect. We'll put all that into the show notes and make sure you guys head over there for sure. Liam, this has been awesome. Thanks for coming on the show.

It's been a real pleasure. Thanks

for having me. For sure, and everybody else, thanks for being out there. Make sure that you are subscribed to the channel. This was awesome this time with Liam here and you don't want to miss this or any others that are coming up. So definitely hit that subscribe button. You'll be good to go.And I hope that we helped you scale your Sass today. Thanks for being here. We'll see you next time. Take care.

Thanks for listening to Scale Your SaaS.For more help on finding great leads and closing more deals. Go to Mattwolach.com