François Lanthier Nadeau Of Duda On The Top 5 Ways To Market, Advertise & Promote An Ecommerce Business Today
An Interview With Eric Netsch
You may not be the best, but you’re the only “you.” People like to buy from people, not just brands. Invest yourself into your marketing efforts to differentiate and build these stronger bonds with customers. It’s scary to be transparent and put yourself out there, but it often pays off!
As a part of our series called “The Top 5 Ways To Market, Advertise & Promote An Ecommerce Business Today”, we had the pleasure of interviewing François Lanthier Nadeau.
François Lanthier Nadeau is the VP of Product Marketing at Duda, a leading white-label web design platform. Prior to joining Duda, François founded Snipcart, an eCommerce platform that can be integrated into any website, which Duda acquired in 2021.
François is no stranger to sharing his thoughts about the industry at large. He maintains a blog where he shares refreshingly candid stories on life in tech and eCommerce. He has previously appeared in Indie Hackers, Infopresse, The Startup, freeCodeCamp, Baremetrics, Wishpond, Inbound.org, and more.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you’re super busy. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
When I was finishing university, traditional marketing looked hierarchical and somewhat stale — so I experimented with digital marketing. First I interned at agencies, then I inadvertently blogged and SEO’d my way into running an eCommerce solution (Snipcart). I went from intern to marketing lead, to product owner to CEO, getting more equity along the way.
Can you share the most exciting story that has happened to you since you began at your company?
In 2021, we sold our company to an awesome, bigger business called Duda, which is a platform that helps agencies build sites and scale their operation. It was the wildest of rides for me — emotionally, and financially — but I’m still super stoked that we pulled it off! Today we’re helping Duda help agencies build killer eCommerce sites.
What’s the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson did you learn from that?
Right before a major product launch, I realized I had forgotten to prepare my PR strategy. I was mainly a one-man-marketing-army back then. Literally the day before launch, I Googled “how to automate PR distribution” or something similar. I found a PR SaaS service that promised it would put you at all the right places in a short amount of time. I clicked “yes” blindly to all of the offers and upsells and whatever it threw at me. Twenty-four hours later, we were featured on tons of irrelevant sites — local small sites, regional Texas news, gaming blogs, survivalist blogs. I spent freaking 5K on that!
Still makes me laugh. I learned that there is no magic shortcut to doing good product marketing work. Now that we’ve merged with Duda, we have the opportunity to work directly with a legit PR firm. Quite frankly, it made me realize how important it was for this channel to be handled by true professionals.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
At Duda, we’re working on building a native eCommerce solution inside Duda’s bigger site-building platform. We’re actually in beta right now and hoping to open to all users this summer. What’s exciting to me about this is its immediate power and future potential. In the short term, we’ll allow a level of design flexibility combined with site performance that is just unseen in the eCommerce industry. In the long term, we’ll adapt our eCommerce offering to cater to our still underserved, huge market: digital agencies. Everything we’ve learned about reducing time-to-bill, automating agency tasks, and increasing productivity — we’ll apply it to eCommerce, which has always been a time suck for agencies and clients alike.
You’re a successful business leader. What are three traits about yourself that you feel helped fuel your success? Can you share a story or example for each?
I’m ultra-transparent. Even when I want to hide my emotions, I can’t. I share 99% of what I think and feel, for better or worse. The upside is that people always know what’s up with me — my blog’s filled with examples.
I care about people, stories, and having fun more than I care about code, pixels, and data (though I do need to give a crap about these). At Snipcart and Duda, this is my mantra: “We take our work seriously, but ourselves? Not so much.” Life’s too short not to care and not have fun with people you work with 40 hours a week.
Awesome, thanks so much for sharing that. I want to shift gears and talk about eCommerce. In my work, I focus on improving shopper engagement, so I’m very passionate about this topic. As you know, mobile has taken center stage in terms of how people are engaging and transacting with eCommerce stores — leading a lot of stores to lean into mobile-first shopping experiences like mobile apps. Can you help articulate a few reasons why an eCommerce business should consider creating its own mobile app?
I think native mobile apps are great — if you need and can afford them. The bigger the brand, the more complex the shopping experience, the more it’ll make sense to create one. Otherwise, businesses should focus on leveraging powerful platforms or frameworks enabling both smooth desktop and mobile experiences.
Also, ensure your mobile experience includes SSO for quick authentication (if needed) and Apple/Google/PayPal as express payment methods.
I use two native mobile apps to buy online: Nike & Simons. That’s it. Their brands are so strong, and their native mobile experiences are so sleek. They are worth going to the app store, installing an app, creating/logging into an account, classifying my app in the right folder, getting push notifications, etc. Not all businesses can pull this off — it takes a significant amount of brand loyalty and UX design to make it as frictionless as possible.
The cost of paid ads is at an all-time high. What are some alternative strategies to reach your target consumers that don’t involve paying a third party like Facebook and Instagram?
Community, community, community. Find them. Get involved in them. Add value, and be a good actor. Engage with your community. Then, one time out of ten — sell your product.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience and success, what are your “ Top 5 Ways To Market, Advertise & Promote An Ecommerce Business Today?” Please share a story or an example for each.
1. Leverage radical transparency.
You may not be the best, but you’re the only “you.” People like to buy from people, not just brands. Invest yourself into your marketing efforts to differentiate and build these stronger bonds with customers. It’s scary to be transparent and put yourself out there, but it often pays off!
2. Build (and sell to) your audience.
If you build a niche, high-value publication, or social channel for your customers, you can sell to them directly.
3. Pick a fight
Find a competitor who’s the Goliath, or the Bad Guy, and start doing organic marketing (not paid) against that narrative. You’ll hijack their audience and probably convert some of its unsatisfied customers.
4. Bet on co-marketing.
Pair with like-minded brands to do co-marketing activities. Share your mutual audiences so both of you can market to qualified customers.
5. Tame long-tails (SEO).
Invest in ranking for lots of keywords with low volume, low competition, but high intent. Once you’ve got a decent amount of long-tails in the bag — aim higher. If you can pull it off, evergreen SEO content pays dividends far longer than ads.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I’d call the movement “Go to Love.” I’m considering starting a podcast or a YouTube channel for it. It’s a tiny mantra I keep repeating to myself whenever I’m anxious, sad, or frustrated. Instead of staying in that bad place, where would I need to go to reach love? Or is there love somewhere in there? Go to love. If we all managed to increase the number of times we interact and make decisions from a place of love… man, that would be another world, wouldn’t it?
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Check out everything we’re babbling about at Duda on social media and on our blog. These channels are managed by kind-hearted people I actually know and love!
Check out my personal blog for more personal stories about startups and mental health.
I want to thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise with us. I wish you continued success!
My pleasure. May your talent and luck meet sooner than later!
About The Interviewer. Eric Netsch is the co-founder and CEO of Tapcart, a codeless mobile app builder that helps Shopify’s fastest-growing brands to create an owned marketing channel so that they can reach, engage, convert, and retain their audience without ever relying on another entity for access. Eric has been featured in TechCrunch, Business Insider, The Verge, etc. To launch your mobile app, visit Tapcart.com.
