An eCommerce Podcast Hosted by Brett Curry

Aaron Sheehan and I go way back. We first met when Aaron used to work for an agency that OMG supported.

Now, Aaron is the Director of Competitive Strategy at BigCommerce. He brings a fresh perspective on the eCommerce industry, and a unique point of view on eComm platforms and the future of eComm technology.

Coincidentally, his office is only a quarter of a mile from mine. In hindsight, we probably should have recorded this show in person.

Here’s a look at what we cover:

• What is Headless, and how does it compare to Composable? Are these just buzzwords or trends that are here to stay?
• Aaron’s and my take on the state of eCommerce and why we see a prevailing “cautious optimism.” 
• The eCommerce trends Aaron is most excited about and what omnichannel means today (vs. what it meant 10 years ago).
• When should you consider upgrading your tech stack, and where does the BigCommerce offering fit in the marketplace?

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Mentioned In This Episode:

• Aaron Sheehan (LinkedIn)
• Aaron Sheehan (Twitter)
• Big Commerce
• Feedonomics
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

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Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today I'm talking to a guy that I go way back with. We've known each other, worked with each other since like 2014 or something insane like that. And so we're going to be talking about the commerce and tech stack and where e-commerce is headed and all kinds of other fun stuff. But I'm delighted to welcome to the show Mr. Aaron Sheehan. He's the director of competitive strategy at Big Commerce. Aaron, welcome to the show. And how's it going, man?

Derek:

That's going well. Thanks Brett. It's nice to see you again.

Brett:

Absolutely. What's hilarious it to me anyway and to us probably maybe others will find it funny. So we are both in Springfield, Missouri. Most of the guests on this show are la, New York, somewhere global. Who knows? But we are literally, I think if you looked out the window of your building, you would see my building. We are that close to each other. We probably could have just done this podcast in the same room, but here we are in our respective offices quarter of a mile away or something. So it's awesome.

Derek:

Your guests might have the belief that Springfield is really tiny now that because of we've grown know that we can see each other's office. It's a little bit bigger than that. It's passive. It's a little bit than there not see Brett's house if he, yeah, closes the lines. I can't see what he's having for dinner.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah, it's not that small of a town. Missouri State University is here. It's the home of Bass Pro, it's a home of O'Reilly Automotive. There's stuff happening in Springfield, Missouri, a greater metro's, a half a million or something like that. And the total, I used to be in tv, so I think in TV demographic or designated market areas. So we're like number 70 in the us so beds size market maybe a little bit bigger. But yes, we are in Springfield together, which is super awesome. And so I want to know this, I'm sure others are wondering this, Aaron, but what is the director of competitive strategy? What do you do? What does that look like?

Derek:

That's a great question. I have not yet quite figured it out myself. So I just hit one year last week at Big Commerce and I keep doing things here and eventually somebody will tell me what my actual job is. What do I have you do

Brett:

Here? Well, I do things,

Derek:

Yeah, so it's actually, it's a sort of series of duties and concerns, but the primary role of the director of competitive strategy is to advise the business, the big commerce business on what our competitors are doing, what the larger market is asking for, and how we can best be competitive with big commerce and phenomics in speaking to the merchants and brands whom we serve. So that takes a lot of different flavors. So there's a sort of research hat that you wear when you're going through and trying to figure out listening to podcasts like this one, what are the trends? What is happening in e-commerce? What direction is the economy taking the business? There's also a piece of that that is sales enablement. So competitive intelligence is the sexy part of the job, and that usually manifests as enabling our sellers, our partner managers, our account executives to have accurate up-to-date information on how to position big commerce properly in deals and understanding then and advising back to our product and engineering team and merger acquisition team, where do we need to be going? Not where is the puck, but where is the puck going to be? And that's a really, really overused analogy.

Brett:

Yeah, it is, but it's still good. Get tip that Green Gretzky. Love that guy's. Classic.

Derek:

It's classic. Yeah, it's classic. So that's a lot of what it is. And then there's a certain amount of publicly representing big commerce evidence on podcasts and find shows like this one.

Brett:

Yes, I love it. I love it. And that's why I'm excited about this show really because I want to talk about where you view e-commerce is headed. And I'll share my perspective as well. Even if listeners of the show are perfectly happy with their tech stack right now, there's always this thought of what's coming, what's next? What do I need to be thinking about? Do I go headless, do I add to my tech stack? Do I add apps? Do I, do I re-platform? What do I do? So understanding how to where things are because yeah, we have to consider where the industry is headed, where the puck is going so to speak, and we got to skate to it. I also love how you answered that where you're like, I don't know, we're still figuring it out because I don't know if you are this way Aaron, and you're a really smart guy. When I'm hanging out with family or other people, they're like, so what is it that you do? I looked at your website or I did this, but I have no idea what you do. Do you struggle with explaining what you do at family reunions and things like that?

Derek:

Very much so. Very much so. It helps. E-commerce is something that's pretty accessible to most people. Almost everyone has some engagement with the industry. It's all the plumbing and stuff that's sort of behind the experience that is a little opaque to a lot of folks, but it definitely can be challenging, but it's been worse in the past, so this is actually not too bad.

Brett:

It's getting better. Yeah, it's funny, my niece sister's daughter was telling all her friends at school, she lives in Kansas City that her uncle Brett was one of the owners of Google. And so I was super famous there for a little while. It was unbeknownst to me, I don't know where I'm hiding all the cash and all the stock options. So there you go. You heard it here. First misconceptions as to what we do in digital marketing, but the way I like to explain it say we help e-commerce companies get more customers and scale, and I know you help navigate and help e-commerce companies make good business decisions and then you help big commerce make good business decisions. And so we're going to be diving into that just a little bit. First of all, and we talked about this a little bit before we hit record, I was really keen on big commerce and paid a lot of attention to big commerce kind of my very early days in E-com.

And then the whole world shifted to Shopify, at least the area of e-commerce that OMG primarily plays in. But I got invited to the spoke at event in Miami, met Juan Jato and Dan on the big commerce team. They invited me to the partner summit in Austin last year. That's where you and I reconnected. Even though we live, our offices are quarter of mile way and we had to meet up in Austin, but I was so impressed by what Big Commerce is doing and the roadmap and the ideal client profile that the big commerce is building for. And so I was pretty excited about it. And I think not a lot of people know what Big Commerce is doing, but why are you excited about commerce and where it's headed?

Derek:

Yeah, great question. So I've wanted to work at Big Commerce for some years because I was on the other side of the table for many years as an agency partner doing implementations. And I know right at the time in 20 14, 20 15, that was primarily Magento, right?

Brett:

Yeah, Magento. But that's still the glory days of Magenta. It

Derek:

Really was. And so it was the best option for an awful lot of people. The platform became very enterprise grade and frankly a little on the overcomplicated side for a lot of merchants. And I know you felt that as well on the piece when you're just trying to get a product fee to work and you've got to employ a team of five developers to figure out how to make it it reliable and map attributes stuff. And for most merchants, all that's overhead that's coming out of your margins directly. The more time that a brand spent as an IT company, the less they are spending on and growing their funnel, optimizing conversions and adding channels and broadening reach. It

Brett:

Be great to spend that redeploy that cash into product development or product enhancement or improving the customer experience or marketing, getting more customers rep. Oh wow,

Derek:

What have an idea. Yeah,

Brett:

Yeah, A little self-serving but also true.

Derek:

Very much so. This podcast paid for by OMG v, the what oppressed me about Big Commerce at the time that I started becoming I choose sort of became aware of Big Commerce and started working with them back many years ago. The platform was very mature for what it enabled and the way it was built was very much allowed for an easy transition from a Magento environment to big commerce. There's a lot of feature parody, a lot of the concepts were the same. And it was stuff that you know, mentioned Shopify earlier. Shopify didn't have and still doesn't in many cases. Some things I consider sort of basic e-com and the people were very warm and very knowledgeable here. It was definitely a company of entrepreneurial hustlers but who are also kind. And I think you know, say that and you're like, what does that mean in the business context?

Why do I care? When you're on the partnership side of it and you're working, you're going into delivery to solve problems for your merchants, your joint merchants, you actually want people you trust on the other side of that table kind of doing business together. And that's not necessarily the norm in tech even. And that really sort of stuck with me as I liked working with these folks. I hope I can do it again. And so I took another agency, I went to another agency, went to the big commerce partnership program a second time, and then post Covid or during covid had the opportunity to come over here finally and work from Springfield, Missouri, worked for Big Commerce, crazy Good for you, and jumped to the chance to do it because I've always liked working with Big Commerce as folks and the product and I saw an opportunity and it jumped on it real quick because I wanted to be here.

Brett:

Love it, love it. And I really like that perspective too. And this is something we try to do at OMG and I think the best agencies, the best brands also embrace this where you can be really business savvy and have smart strategy and be sophisticated there, but also be kind and be a good partner and be a good human. And I think that actually works really, really well in today's environment. And so this idea of collaboration and multiple people winning, it's a real thing. And I know it's the same thing, hanging out with the big partner or big partner, big commerce partner Summit and other things. Really dig the team and the vibe going on there, which will look great. So let's pivot a little bit. Let's talk about e-commerce globally. And you mentioned to me before we record, you're on the road a lot, you're going to shows you're at Shop Talk.

We were just at, I was not, but we were just at Prosper and Etel West and a bunch of other things. So we get to rub shoulders and talk to merchants. We are in an interesting environment, Aaron, right where you got inflation, which is maybe improving, maybe not. You got people talking about a credit crisis, you still have a conflict in Ukraine. You got all these things that there really have created some uncertainty. You got bank failures. And so there there's a lot of negative news and I see people that I really trust on LinkedIn. My buddy Jeremy Horowitz, I think you're connected with him as well. Like gorgeous talking about, hey, there's some real things to be concerned about as a business owner and as a brand right now. But also as I go to events, and I haven't been to one in a few months, but as I talk to brand owners, people are still growing. They still got their foot on the accelerator and yes, cautious about what's going on, but I think the best brands understand, hey, there's always opportunity to grow. There's always opportunity to improve. But how would you describe the current state of, what's your global outlook on e-commerce right now?

Derek:

Bullish still, we're long past the point at which e-commerce is sort of a novelty channel.

Brett:

Yeah. Will it stick? Will it not

Derek:

Stick, right? Is this internet thing for real? I don't know. We're so far on that curve through it. Covid provided. I think Covid was a moment of maybe wild fiduciary optimism over sampling on a white vent in that the growth projection E-commerce grew incredibly fast in a very short period of time. And if you jumped on the bubble expecting the bubble to continue at that pace, you probably feel like we're in the middle of a giant depression right now. But realistically, if you took Covid out and looked at the projections, e-commerce is still ahead of where it was in 2019 by a healthy amount and projected to be higher in 20 this year, 2024. And going forward, these aren't going away. We're transacting on phones, we're still transacting on computers. I think

Brett:

A quick side note there too, Aaron, because we did the pseu at omg, we invested in our team and hired pretty dramatically during the pandemic to tr. We just saw e-commerce taking off. Then e-commerce slowed down a little bit. But if that was you and then you, you're seeing a bit of that retraction, Hey, you're in the same company as Shopify, you're in the same boat as Google, you're in the same boat as Amazon. Really All the big tech companies have had to pull back a little bit and even engage in layoffs and things like that. So it can sort of feel like, oh wow, it's doom and gloom. But if you look at Google added something like a hundred thousand employees during the pandemic or whatever. So yes, they've let go of some people, but still headcount is way up over 2019. And I think that that kind of tracks with e-commerce growth is still up over 2019. It's just slowed since the height and fury of the pandemic growth.

Derek:

Yeah, and I think where that's become most acute is in sort of a certain amount of privately held VC bat companies just because valuations went kind of nutty there for a lot of folks for a period of time. So now you mentioned going to shows. I was at NRF in New York, which was great because last year's NRF was omicron, so it's sort of, Sloan didn't happen. There was no very little at attendant. So this was record breaking year at N RF in New York, the Javits Center, tens of thousands of attendees went to Shop Talk in Vegas. Just got back from that a couple of weeks ago, about 8,000 people there for that. So the mood is definitely, I say guarded optimism from, yeah, it's guarded optimism. People are guarded in the sense that the easy money, I'm just going to slap my business plan down and go shop it out to a VC firm and they're going to get an offer sheet, they're going to be fighting over me trying to, that's gone or at least slowed down quite a bit.

And valuations are down to, even for publicly traded companies, it's down to sort of a healthy amount. But very few companies are like, I'm going out of business now because they're, nobody wants selling. Generally speaking, if you're in tech, people want what you're selling. And if you're a merchant, as long as you have, you've diversified your channel offerings well enough so that all your eggs are not in one D to C basket. And we can talk maybe about that a little bit more. I think you'll be fine. The challenges are more operational now for a lot of folks as they adapt. It's a, it's change management. That's always the hard part for companies. There happens to be a lot of change happening in successive waves and so people are just dizzy from trying to pivot, but that doesn't mean they've fallen over. So it's just more work.

Brett:

And I love that guarded optimism and that that's exactly what we're seeing. We still have a healthy flow of merchants reaching out to MG Commerce asking for growth strategies on Google and on Amazon and elsewhere. But there's also this trend of people more focused on business fundamentals. We want profitable growth. We want to be a healthy business, not just throwing money everywhere because we can't keep up with growth. And I think brands are functioning and needing to function more like healthy businesses, which is the way it should be anyway. And so that's definitely a trend as well. I want to talk a little bit about platforms and technology because, and I used to hang out at I R C E back when that was a hot show and we were getting to know each other win when Magenta was rocking and rolling. What are some of the shifts you've seen in terms of tech stack and platforms? What has kind of changed in that regard? Since when, and I first started hanging out back in the earlier days of e-commerce,

Derek:

Right? The good old days.

Brett:

The good old days.

Derek:

Yeah. I feel like the obvious answer to that is software as a service. The move from on-premise, sort of open sourced or even closed source platforms like Oracle, atg, magenta, WooCommerce, moving towards software as a service, as a delivery model. So the public cloud became a thing and then multi-tenant SaaS became a thing. And the value proposition of being able to, I almost apply insurance math to businesses, which is law of large numbers, which says if I get enough people together in one data center, I'm mitigating each individual merchant has their risk mitigated in terms of security, uptime and stability. And your brands and your businesses no longer have to be many IT companies or higher many IT companies and full service agencies to host, run, operate a complicated piece of tech stack. Definitely. I think it's certainly had the most impact in the platform in MarTech spaces.

So if you look at how email campaigns are managed, if you look at attribution software, if you look at platforms, customer loyalty ified, now it is, and it's even beginning to affect your legacy platforms like ERPs and OMSs, right? You're starting to see the back office is now catching up to the last 10 years of innovation and tech, which is fantastic. And long past time it's hard to find cobalt developers these days. So I would say the ation is the biggest sort of tech change. We may talk about it later quite a bit. We can say about composability and headless as well. I think the jury's still a little bit out on pieces of that and who that's for and why and why it matters. So I wouldn't say that that's necessarily, it generates 80% of the hashtag thought leadership on LinkedIn. Yeah, it does, but it generates maybe 5% of the actual implementations in the world, right? Here's definitely something to sort of explore there, but definitely SAS is unquestioned. I don't, yeah, yeah. On-premise software sort of ruling the roost it did back when we were walking around an I R CGE in 20 14, 20 15.

Brett:

So a couple things I'll kind of key in on that, totally agree with you SaaS, it taken over and one of the things that I believe I heard at the last big commerce partner summit was the belief and the position that kind of an open framework or an open model one back in the on-prem days when really it was probably a better experience for you as a merchant and for the user if you secured your own hosting and had an on-prem option on-premises option like magenta or whatever. Now it really is SaaS and there's so many benefits there. You talked about insurance, talk about there's speed, all these things. And I think the commerce belief is that more open is going to win on the SaaS side of things as well. Is that kind of a line or any perspective or insight on that?

Derek:

Yeah, very much so. One of the reasons I'm here, coming out of many eight years of being in the W ecosystem is I believe in open and flexible and giving choices to merchants and brands to shape their digital future the way they want. If you talk, a lot of times you'll talk to folks who are in on another platform that, where they're at the mercy of that platform team's roadmap. It's hard to innovate, it's hard to find developers who can work on it or it's limited in what it can do, or it's got pretty strong guardrails around key pieces of it. Like our friends in Canada with a green bag, they [inaudible] Yeah, don't think about it too deeply. I

Brett:

Don't have no idea

Derek:

What their approach to payments and FinTech and look at those, those eight Ks and you kind of realize where the money's actually coming from. And so there are definitely plenty of brands and merchants for whom I've had this conversation many times, flexibility is actually a negative. And I saw this on Magento as well. Too much choice, too much optionality, and it bred analysis paralysis or a lack of maturity maybe to be able to assess where something, what should be, where I should depart from the norm and where I should just stick with the, the templated approach. The platform gave me

Brett:

It limited speed and maybe cause people to go down the path of spending too much money and when really just needed something simple, just get the products up online and sell 'em. Be, yeah, go simple.

Derek:

But some you can overcorrect on that you can overcorrect and go to a very safe platform where innovation is, maybe it meets your needs today, but innovation is challenging and you're kind of like you have vendor lock in. And I think if there's anything that that's probably at the heart of that headless and composable movement, it's people being wary of vendor lock in because we've all been through, I think the phase of, I fall in love with this product and then it gets bought and it gets acquired and rolled into a larger stack and then silently dies, right?

Brett:

Or just maybe doesn't innovate, right? We've been seeing this, I, I've got some friends and I'm more on the marketing side, not the tech side, but even WordPress. WordPress used to be the platform. It was, I don't even remember the percentage was 30% of the internet was, excuse me on, and it's kind of fading. I hear most people advising don't do it when it comes to WordPress. So almost every platform or channel can have its day or there's the risk of the downfall of that platform, and then you potentially are stuck depending on how you built on it.

Derek:

Oh, totally agree. Although in full transparency, my 11 year old daughter has a WordPress, so I mean

Brett:

Full put, WordPress is not dead yet, it's just not. Maybe it was on a meteoric rise and it's maybe on the plateau or decline at this point. Yep. Let's do this here because you mentioned headless a couple of times, and if you're about our age, we're not talking about the sleep of hollow dead headless horsemen type of thing. I want to get your perspective on what headless is because I still think there's a lot of people that are confused about it. And so want to hear your kind of explanation and then what is the trend there? And I think you kind of nailed it where you said, Hey, everybody's talking about it. It's 80% of the headlines, but maybe about 5% of implementations are actually headless. But what is it and what's your perspective on it?

Derek:

Yeah, no, great question. And what I've had to grapple with quite a bit in the last year, I, I'll draw, I'll start maybe by illustrating what I consider two terms that get used kind of interchangeably in that the sort of LinkedIn content world that we live in, headless and composability or headless and composable. So the way I describe it to people is headless is an adjective that you would apply to a piece of software, and it's all it means is that that software, usually it's applied to an e-commerce platform or a web website, a CMS or something like that, but it's a backend without a front end. So it would be an e-commerce platform where I have a management utility or APIs and I can put my products into it and describe my products and access my customers and fill orders and things like that. But the interface, the screens, the elements, the buttons, the forms, that's not part of the platform. Instead, the headless platform is meant to have a different system on the front. So back in the day, way back in the day, for instance, we used to do an agency you and I worked with, we used to do a lot of Magento in the back and WordPress on the front. Gary would be,

Brett:

Yeah, and quick shout out, we don't mind to mention it at all, but Classy Lama was the agency, that's where we met. So shout out to Kurt and the crew and the glory days of e-commerce. Man, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Clai Lama. I know you did as well. But yeah, there was a lot of magenta on the back end, WordPress on the front end, which we kind of dogged both of those platforms on this podcast. But anyway, yeah, continue that thought.

Derek:

Well, and that headless framework means that I'm picking a system that is maybe better for representing front end content but doesn't have the maturity to handle complex data on the back. So I take the system that's better for handling complex data like category taxonomy and product attributes, product media and images and long form content and stuff like that. And I'm saying I'm authoring all of that in this complicated system back here. But the thing that I'm going to use to build pages, maybe I want to drag and drop editor, maybe I want better sort of media management tools. Maybe I want something that's more user friendly and less sort of dev heavy in how it operates. I can basically hack glue those two systems together, and I go to a website and it's at my domain.com and I click the store button, and now I am@store.my domain.com.

So I was on WordPress, then I hit the store, do my domain.com, and now I'm on a big commerce or a Magento page. So headless simply means a backend with no front end, that's it. Either labels a piece of software, composability or composable is the adjective you would use for an entire tech stack for a company being made up of pieces that are purpose built to do one thing specifically. So in a composable landscape, I probably have a headless system, maybe multiple headless systems, and I also have a separate front end and maybe I have a separate product information management system, a separate dam or digital asset management system. I have lots of maybe have loyalty or promotions running r running, I've search and merch. I'm using Clav or Algolia or something. I'm taking lots of services and I'm knitting them invested

Brett:

In class in these individual areas.

Derek:

Yes. And I'm knitting Symp

Brett:

Symphony of e-commerce.

Derek:

That's perfect. Yeah, great analogy. And so I would use multiple headless systems to make a composable stack. And where you get the confusion is that there's two words get used interchangeably and it feels a little bit like one is meant to replace the other. And I think vendors, we're probably as guilty of this as anybody else, don't necessarily do our buyers any favors because you've got to shovel your way through all the marketing speak to get to the reality. I think we've gotten a lot better about this, but definitely I see plenty of it still plenty of confusion and FUD on the topic.

Brett:

Yeah, dude, the great explanation, love that headless is really a backend without a front end. And then composable is really joining all kind of the best in class or the things that work for different business use cases and combining them, composing them. So really, really good explanation there. So yeah, do see, are the headlines just going to fade away or is this move, I'm guessing the composability that that's probably really a real direction that the industry is headed or what's your perspective on that?

Derek:

Yeah, I think about this a lot and depending on how I wake up in the morning, I might have a different view, but at come moment I act totally fair. You're right. I don't think it's going anywhere, which sounds maybe a little counter to my sort of crack, about 80% of the thought leadership with the 5% of the, I don't think it's going anywhere. And the reason I don't think it's going anywhere is that platforms J, all the innovation now to speaking specifically about e-commerce here at this point, the innovation, the new platforms being created or the platforms being improved, they all fit the composable model. We knew we're part of the maline because

Brett:

They know that's how you get product adoption is by being composable. If I'm creating this new novel thing that has value in the marketplace, it's got to be composable and no one's going to buy it.

Derek:

Yeah, exactly. So think when I survey the landscape, I spent a lot of time by virtue of this job looking at other e-commerce platforms and how they're built and who therefore I don't think composability, headless is going away simply because there's too many people, there's too many platforms self-identifying that way. And what will likely happen at some point is there will be some kind of VC or private equity rollup of multiple best in breed, and you'll create a brand new sort of monolith of maybe multiple solutions and different new different things kind of doing business as one that's not new to business. Brett, there's two ways to make money in business bundling and unbundling. So we are in the middle of a big unbundling, which is the coal composability thing. At some point there's going to be a rebundling, but architecturally, I don't think it's going to go back to being the way that a magenta or a woo or something got started where it's completely different

Brett:

Environments that don't communicate with each other, stuff that that's likely dead.

Derek:

Exactly. Monoliths. I don't see anybody trying to build the next monolith, which makes me question whether or not we'll see another one. And so look at the product direction of where Adobe is taking the sort of leftover bits of Magento. They're not trying investing in making it a monolith, they're investing in making it a microservices based platform that connects to the rest of Adobe's services. So there's not a lot of people sort of advocating for it. So I think what will happen is I think platforms like us Big Commerce are going to keep leading the way on making headless composable more accessible. Because that's the biggest barrier right now is it can be complicated and it can be inaccessible and it absolutely is not the right choice for a lot of people. But I do think that over time what will happen is headless composability will get more commoditized and it will become more accessible to a wider variety of merchants who are going to want the benefits that approach provides without all of the overhead that goes with it. That's my guess. Right. Makes

Brett:

Sense. Totally makes sense. So I want to, in just a minute, I want to talk about some of the trends you're excited about and I have think some good perspectives I want to share there. Before we do though, I just want to, because I think a lot of people don't know this, what position is big commerce carving out in the marketplace? Who's big commerce trying to serve and really where is big commerce headed? And I know you've got a unique perspective because you view the competitive landscape as what you do on a daily basis, but talk to people about that who maybe just haven't heard from Big Commerce in a while.

Derek:

Yeah, no, that thanks for the opportunity to pitch. Yeah, so big commerce big, I think you've mentioned this a couple of times, both off air and on air. We kind of fly under the radar for a lot of people. There are other platforms that get a lot more with bigger marketing spends I think that get more attention. We've been around for quite a while, started off as an s and b platform and have grown into an enterprise level platform. I would say that we squarely serve, if you ask Gardner and Forrester and stuff that we serve, the mid-market, if you were to ask them, they would say we serve the mid-market, which that am ambiguous term, that means whatever anybody needs it to mean in any given. But I would describe it as largely speaking that 5 million to a billion dollars in on online G gmv, right?

That's who we're not trying to be sap really no desire to become sort of a conglomerate, publicly traded. We're publicly traded, but we serve b2b, B2C merchants equally well. About 35, 40% of our customer base I believe is doing b2b. So we do quite a lot, lot of direct brands, but we are really built more for more, I would say semi complicated channel makeups we're built around the premise that merchants should be able to, to, we should be encouraging them to sell on every channel, every marketplace, every digital property that they possibly can to diversify, to reduce that risk of an economic slowdown in one channel, sort of tanking the whole business, which we're kind of seeing in some of those venture backed like D two C brands that got kicked off in 20 18, 20 19, 20 20. If you didn't have an in-store strategy, if you didn't have a marketplace strategy, you're kind of feeling it right now. We're there to serve those merchants as well as we can by taking what is a complicated series of I need to manage multiple web properties from one backend. I need to manage multiple marketplaces and add networks from one backend. We figured out how to make that actually pretty straightforward and simple. And so we're best serving mid-market merchants who are growing into multiple channels or established brands that are already there and they're usually looking to get off of some kind of antiquated piece of highly expensive legacy software and move to something more modern.

Brett:

And that was one of the things that really spoke to me as I was at that partner summit was this focus on that. And I think another point of clarification, one thing I heard someone mentioned was that in Ian, even more like in the 10 million to a couple hundred million range, that's a real sweet spot for big commerce. I know you can work with people that are a little bit smaller and of course that are bigger, but I think that that's where a lot of growth in e-commerce is going to come from. That's the type of business that OMG commerce wants to work with. I think there's a lot of exciting things with that size merchant that you can do either as an agency or as a platform. Yeah. So then when should someone, if someone's out there, they're maybe not exactly loving the platform they're on, when should they start thinking, maybe I should check out Big Commerce, maybe I should look at what it has to offer. What are some pain points that often pop up the big commerce has an interesting solution for?

Derek:

Yeah, great question. Adding channels a or and optimizing existing channels has a been one. So we acquired a company called Phenomics about a year and a half ago. Phenomics does optimization and management of product data across ad networks and marketplaces and makes it really, really easy to spin up and turn on, Hey, do you want to get into Target? Plus, do you want get into Amazon or one of the many Amazons, do you want to go to Google, Walmart? Do you want to advertise on TikTok meta? Like there's about 500 I think supported sort of channels between marketplaces and ad networks. Making that simple MA and making that optimized so that it performs really well, kind of using AI to optimize that mix of product data works better for, I would say more high SKU count merchants. Usually if you've only selling 50 SKUs, you probably don't need AI to optimize your feed.

You should be able to do that yourself in an hour or two. But if you're maybe a little bit larger, you need that help. I would also say on the platform side, we get a lot of people who start calling us when they start hearing no from their existing vendors because maybe that vendor happens to have very tight opinions about how the checkout should look and doesn't allow custom customizing the checkout. We also get a lot of folks, we have a very large office in London, so we do, I don't know if Europe is your target audience, but we have a lot of expansion in Europe because we're very friendly to regional fulfillment and payment models worldwide. So because we're so global, we get a lot of folks who are doing cross border and don't, they're not necessarily looking to just outsource that to one of the many sort of providers that sort of handles cross-border outsourcing.

They want to do it themselves. And we also get a lot of people looking to explore headless for the first time. To be honest, definitely, I'm going back to the earlier statement. We have more headless implementations than any other partner in the mock clients. Yep. Because we're so gosh darn and easy to use, Brett and so accessible. And because we have a front end, actually, you don't have to, I mean most of our customers aren't using as headless. You don't ever need to think about it with us. But if you do or you want to, you're curious about exploring it with us, you can simply deploy us one whole big commerce get started and then slowly pull stuff back over time as your business demands. There's really no other platform that allows you to mix and match in a composer, like slowly transition to composable. So I like to tell people we're the last e-commerce platform you should ever need because we enable pretty much every method of selling on any channel that anybody wants with big Commerce. So if that sounds appealing to a merchant, then they should probably give us a call.

Brett:

Dude, that's a good line. The last e-commerce platform you'll ever need. And a close second is we're just so gosh darn easy I think. I don't know what marketing is going to go with, but I think you should pitch both those taglines and as long as you get credit for them, I think one of those will work. So perfect. Awesome. We're coming up against time a little bit, but I want to spend a little bit of time here. What are some trends you're excited about? And you kind of alluded to one big one that I know we both want to chime in on a little bit, but what are you excited about in the world of e-commerce and trends that we're seeing?

Derek:

I'm really excited about how omnichannel is being a redefined right now among merchants and vendors in the space. So back when you and I were met in 20 14, 20 15, you'd go to I R C E and everybody was omnichannel, right? It's not everybody's composable now. Everybody was omnichannel. Omnichannel, totally. It didn't matter what you were selling. It was omnichannel. Omnichannel,

Brett:

All of which were all the channels. All the channels,

Derek:

All the channels. And what it meant though, a lot back then was my point of sale, talked to my inventory management system, which talked to my e-commerce platform, endless aisle. What if I use my stores as fulfillment centers? What if I shared customer data between a digital customer and a web? Because it was very siloed, still is for a lot of brands. The web store is very siloed operationally from the physical store. And so omnichannel meant things like Bluetooth beacons in your store that would connect to shopper's phones as they were walking through and show them 360 views of things or let them earth stuff that wasn't on the shelf like beaconing. And then it's changed a little bit and now it feels like it's more about advertising and transacting on other platforms, digital platforms assigned besides just owned web properties. And so now you see omnichannel deployed to not only mean what I just described previously, but also is now inclusive of selling on social media networks, of which there's a new one every couple of weeks it seems like, and transacting on new marketplaces, of which there's a new one every couple of weeks.

Cause everybody's building their own marketplace now. And so there's a lot of that. Unified commerce is the buzzword I saw at N R F and Shop Talk this year earlier, meaning it's just commerce. It's just

Brett:

Commerce. That's the beauty. Just commerce. Yeah.

Derek:

Yeah. It's just commerce and the brand needs to be anywhere where its potential customers are. And so you have a lot to manage and optimize, but the opportunity to grow is actually huge, even given the economic conditions that we're in because people are everywhere and they're fragmented, and so you've got to go find 'em, go optimize your message for that channel. But the channels are robust enough, the reporting is robust enough and the audiences are large enough and you can actually make money. You have to work pretty hard not to make money. So I'm excited.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that perspective because you're never going to hear a shopper say, I just want an omnichannel merchant. If there could just be some omnichannel offerings, they don't think about that. But they want products to be easily purchased. If they're on Facebook and they just want to shop and they want to buy right there, they want to buy right there. If they prefer to shop on Amazon, they want your product to be there. If there's some products that they want to buy in store, they want to buy it in store. And what we are seeing, and I know you're seeing this too, is that the pure play D two C brand where all they do is sell on their.com, that's probably not the path to get where you ultimately want to go, whether that's long-term profitability or to sell your brand or whatever. Usually you're going to need to go multichannel or omnichannel or this unified commerce of right.

My.com is crushing utilizing Google and YouTube and all that the Google ecosystem has to offer. I'm maximizing my opportunities on Facebook and Meta and Instagram and other social platforms, and I'm maybe selling on shop on Facebook and I'm maximizing marketplaces. And yes, they're growing, obviously Amazon is by far the biggest, but you got to think about Walmart and Target and you guys are really closely integrated with Target and there's lots of exciting things right there. Don't sleep on the target, the marketplace, it's not huge. It's not for everybody, but we've seen merchants on the target marketplace really do well, really move some volume of products there, which is pretty exciting. And to be in store, there's some products people like to buy in store. But yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, Aaron. I

Derek:

Was just, Hey, target plus is invite only to my understanding, unless that's changed and we are able to,

Brett:

Yes, I have that back door, a little bit of that int

Derek:

Rope. We can get you under the velvet rope to the v I P lounge. Here's what I'm saying. Yeah,

Brett:

Yeah, just talk to Aaron and actually OG through, we're connected to the Heat omics crew, and so we can help you get in there as well. And yeah, shout out to Brian Rosen, one of the founders of Theos. He was on this show back in 2018, if you can believe that here in Shein. He's, he's an OG that Brian Rosen

Derek:

Spent the thought later, Brett.

Brett:

Yeah, before it was even Trip, before everyone was even talking omnichannel. We were going right here on this show. So, man, there's more things I want to ask. Aaron. I'm kind of bummed we're up against time here just a little bit, but how can people connect with you? Because you seem to me in any way, and to be pretty active on LinkedIn and other places. So where can people find you and those who want to just learn, explore, stay up on how tech stacks are developing and things like that? How should they find you?

Derek:

Well, if you're in Springfield, look out your window. You could probably

Brett:

Small place you, you'll see 'em small. Stick his hand.

Derek:

Yeah, I'd live on top of the water tower real easy in the spot. No, I'm, I'm probably too online. So I'm on Twitter and I'm on LinkedIn primarily, so I'm pretty easy to find Aaron Sheehan on either of those. I've had that handle for a while. I'm also, it's Aaron dot sheehan big commerce.com. If you want to drop me an email. I do eventually read all my emails, but probably a LinkedIn or Twitter DM is the fastest way

Brett:

To get ahold of me. Totally, totally. That's just cooler. You want to just drop into somebody's inbox, uninvited necessarily

Derek:

Price. Why isn't the DM

Brett:

Dms slot into the dms that's totally acceptable these days. And then those that are interested in phenomics or big commerce, how should they go further there?

Derek:

Big commerce.com, phenomics.com, there are prominent calls to action on both of those sites. You can certainly also, you can talk to Brett at OMG if you're interested in learning more about Phenomics as well through his fine agency and team. And you can of course, reach out to me directly if you want to get ahold of anybody at Big Commerce, I can connect you pretty quickly, whether you're an agency looking for a partnership or you're a merchant who's interested in getting a demo or maybe just learning more about the platform.

Brett:

Aaron Sheehan, ladies and gentlemen, Aaron, this has been a blast. I wish we had more time. There's more things you want to talk about. But all that means is we just need to schedule round two here before too

Derek:

Long. In person.

Brett:

In person, in person. Yes. That is our quasi promise to you, listener. And I'm sure that carries a lot of weight with Next time we do this show, actually, we've got two of these microphones, so we could set up a little studio here. I can slide over. We could be here in the same studio and only add about a minute and a half to your commute. And let's do it. Let's do it. So, all right, man. Really appreciate it. Yep. Take care. Awesome. And thank you for tuning in. We could not do this show without you. And hey, we'd love your feedback. So would you like to hear more of on this show? And if you have not done it yet, we'd love to see that review on iTunes. It helps other people find the show. It makes my day. And hey, I think I'm going to start reading some of those reviews on this show, just for fun, just to call people out. So with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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What got you here won’t get you there. 

What will it take to reach your next big breakthrough?

Whether or not we want to admit it, we all have limiting thought patterns that create a sort of blindness, preventing us from seeing breakthroughs. 

I first met Will when he was the Head of Growth for Organifi. He helped grow the brand from an $18 million per year run rate to a $100 million per year run rate in short order. 

In today’s episode, Will Hughes wants to help you think differently. And not just a philosophical kind of thinking, but big, business-altering, breakthrough kind of thinking. 

Here’s a look at what we cover:

• The remarkable story of the Hollywood Blacklist and how we can find treasure in what others are rejecting.
• Using creative thinking as a competitive advantage.
• How to avoid being a copycat (while still paying attention to competitors).
• What Google vs. Yahoo can teach us as entrepreneurs. 
• The power of reticular activators.

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Mentioned In This Episode:

• Liquid Mind Masterclass
• Will Hughes (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

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Transcript:
Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO OMG Commerce, and today we have a very unique episode. I think this will blow your mind. I think it will unlock some things for you that will be extremely beneficial. This'll be a ton of fun to listen to. I've gone through this material, I've seen one of these courses. It's fantastic. And so my guest today is Will Hughes. What's up Will? How you doing, man? Welcome to the show.

Will:

Yeah, man, great to be here. Great to see you again.

Brett:

Absolutely. And so just a quick intro so folks know who you are and how we met, but we worked together when you were the head of growth at Organify. Yes. When you were there for years, you kind of saw that really the explosion of that brand and it went from just a kind of cool little brand to something really massive. And so I know that'll come out a little bit. I've seen this presentation or some of your content they're going to go through today. I know Ezra Firestone saw you speak and he immediately invited you to come to his Blue Ribbon Mastermind and present as well. And so we're talking about how to think differently to really unlock scale in your business. And so your, your approach to process called Liquid Mind. Yes. But tell us just a little bit about that, and then I want to get into your background, but Liquid Mind, what is this? Let, let's kind of tease this topic a little bit and then we'll talk about your

Will:

Background. Yeah, for sure. So actually I come with gifts. I'm going to actually do sort of a case example. I'm going to do some straight hardcore learning for everybody listening today. So we'll get into that when you're ready. But just to paint a picture, so what I like to teach is creative thinking as a competitive advantage. So what I rail against is the copy culture. I hate that everything in the e-commerce industry with D to C brands, everybody's just ripping everybody else off, right? There's very few originals, there's very few innovators out there. And if someone's going to launch some new strategy or program in their business, a new subscription program, 99 out of a hundred times, they're going to find a brand that they appreciate and they're going to just go rip off their stuff. And that might be the efficient thing to do, but it's such a lack of originality and innovation in doing things that way.

It drives me crazy. And more importantly, it leads to this oversaturation of the same type of marketing that everyone's doing the same thing. So if there's a new hot kind of video format, well all of a sudden everyone's doing the same thing. And that dilutes the impact of what that strategy might have when everyone's just copying everybody else. And so what I teach is these frameworks for business, creativity and innovation, how to think differently, how to think creatively, how to have frameworks to get these big creative ideas on a much more regular basis. So we all have these big aha moments once or twice a year. I want to give people a form, a formula, a format for a formal thought process for getting it once or twice a month. And the reason that matters is creativity equals innovation. And innovation equals revenue. So I want to teach people to be innovators. That's what I'm after.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. And there's something to be said about, you have to pay attention to your competitors and you do need to look at benchmarking. And they're sure if they're ahead of you in certain areas, you may have to make some shifts, but that's not how you achieve breakthroughs. You don't achieve breakthroughs by copying the competition. You achieve breakthroughs by thinking differently and by making unique connections and combining things that nobody else's combined before, going with the fresh novel idea and then executing on that idea. So I love this phrase. I love your approach here. Love the content. We're going to dig into it. But you and I got to hang out when you were at Organi and yes, I quickly did see the, you are a guy that thinks differently and you were able to push the envelope. And can you talk a little bit about what that experience was like? Because I know a lot of people know organi, but sure, you were there for years. What changed as you were there?

Will:

Yeah, so I got to identify, mean it's been years when I first got there. Now, I moved out to San Diego maybe five plus years ago to work at Identify. When I got there, about 18 million in revenue. And some of the genesis of all this is on the, my first week on the job, this EO came to me and said that my goal was to grow the business to a hundred million in revenue in 18 months. And we had to do that at either breakeven or profit,

Brett:

Right? No big deal. Hey, it's not. So just put a pen in this or come back to it later. But yeah, a hundred million. So basically that's more than five x growth in 18 months. And yeah. Yeah. Can't lose money. You got to

Will:

Do, yeah, got to do pretty no profit,

Brett:

Right? No, no, no problem. No problem. So

Will:

Real, really aggressive goal. And when he first said it to me, I mean, it kind of was really disheartened. I'm like, I just moved across the country to take this job. That's not realistic. That's not the way these things work. You know, want both profit and massive growth at the same time. So I had some concerns about this opportunity, but I sat back and I thought about it for a couple days, and where I landed was I could do this, I could figure this out. And the way I was going to figure it out was thinking differently than everybody else. I was going to make it my mission to be more creative and find frameworks for unlocking creativity. And it set me off on this journey. And in fact, I did get the company to a hundred million run rate in about 18 months. It was just more than a little more than 18 months. But I did actually get them there. And I've been using these frameworks ever since and kind of replicating that success. So it was definitely a fun ride. I've got amazing friends still working at Identify left there about two years ago. But just it great company, great friends all the way around. Really good experience.

Brett:

And really, it's a great product. We enjoy New mg. Got to work with you on some YouTube projects. I remember sitting in your office and you were whiteboarding and talking about stuff, and it was one of the most fun conversations I had sketching out YouTube ideas for campaigns and stuff. Sure, yeah. What a cool company. Glad our paths collided. And that was super fun. So you grew from 18 million a year to a hundred million run rate, which is phenomenal. A lot of that was done by thinking differently. Because you're right, you either, you got two options. You can either scale or you can be efficient, but you can't do both

Will:

Really hard to do.

Brett:

Wow. Maybe you can, there's creative ways to figure things out. So, sure. Let's talk about this a little bit. You talk about thought patterns and thought patterns that we have as entrepreneurs, as humans that are limiting. Yep. So talk about that a little bit. What have you observed?

Will:

Yeah, so this is interesting. So thought patterns. This is a really big blind spot that no one's paying attention to. So over time, we learn how to think efficiently. Our brains learn how to take shortcuts to get to the answers that we're seeking faster. And that's great. That helps us to multitask. It helps us to move a thousand miles an hour. As entrepreneurs, it served us well. But at the same time, this is a really interesting area, which is it. It's a blind spot that no one's paying attention to. So over time, we all learn how to think efficiently. The brain learns how to take shortcuts to get to answers faster. But we'll give you an example. So if you counter a problem in your life and then you encounter a similar problem down the road, you've experienced something like that before, you're going to get to the solution to that problem much quicker.

And so your ability to short circuit getting into answers gets faster and faster and faster. But it also locks you into one way of thinking, one single approach in how you solve problems. So this is really good for efficient thinking, it's really good for multitasking and moving a thousand miles an hour, but it's the antithesis of creative thinking. And I can give you an example that's kind of interesting. So I have this, it's in one of my presentations, but it's a visual. And I know we're on a podcast, so no one's looking at the visual, but it's a heat map. And it's a heat map of how the eyes move on an article website. So think the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or whatever, we all know and understand the concept of banner blindness, right? And so what's happening when you look at this heat map is everyone is immediately going to the content.

And the content as we know, is on the left through the center of the page. And no one's looking at the top or right of the page because you've learned in the past, there's no content, there's no value there. Let's go right to where the value is. Your brain being efficient, let's not waste time looking to the right and to the top. But when you're doing this in your business, when you're trying to solve problems, that might actually be where the creative solution is. So if you go to some new article website, and the actual great answer you're looking for is on the right rail, you're never going to see it, right? You're blind to it's,

Brett:

Yeah, we're trained to not

Will:

Look for that. Yeah, you're trained to not look for it, and you're not look going out of your way not to look for it. You're going out of your way to be efficient and find the answers that you want and what's blinding you to what other opportunities might exist. And so what it's really doing is it's locking you into one way of thinking, having one single perspective, and not having the ability to think differently. And that that's the case study I actually brought today. And if it's a good time, we can jump into that now or yeah, let's do,

Brett:

Let's go right to the case study and there'll be lots of follow ups and stuff. So yeah, let's lay it out there.

Will:

So for those that are going to watch this, I am going to do a screen share, but you got sweet, this is going to be fine for just listeners as well. So lemme just pull that up. There we go. Okay. So what I like to teach are these case studies of people that have done something extraordinary, something different, that had extraordinary results. And sometimes I'm profiling famous business leaders like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, and sometimes the people you've never heard of. In this case, we're going to profile a gentleman by the name of Franklin Franklin Leonard. And Franklin Leonard was the founder of a company called the Hollywood Blacklist. And the Hollywood Blacklist is a collection of some of the most successful movies that were ever produced out of the rejections of all the major studios. This is a guy who is really thinking

Brett:

To love that concept, love that concept.

Will:

So what his job was in Hollywood is he was a script reader. Now, I don't know what that job title actually is, but he would read scripts all day long, eight hours a day, and I don't know how many scripts they can get through in a day, but very monotonous job. And he's looking for that needle in a haystack. He wants that one movie he can pass on to his boss, and hopefully they'll buy this script and fund the movie and make the film. And his goal was, how can I find more high quality scripts in a more efficient manner? And the genius in what this guy did is he found a creative solution that was in the trash bin of all the major studios.

Brett:

Nice.

Will:

And so what we need to know, or the problem that works we really want to overcome here is studios have been making decisions on what scripts to greenlight, which movies to fund and produce. They were making these decisions on the wrong criteria or very limited criteria I should say. And so for some of the reasons they would,

Brett:

Their version of banner Blindness, right? Yeah. They were viewing movies through this certain lens and only doing what was successful before. Yes. So it was that translation there. You

Will:

Fully nailed it, right? There's one way to do it, there's only one way to do it, and now we're blind to other approaches. So that's exactly right. So the criteria they were using to decide which movies to green light were things like, if a script comes in with a star actor attached, like if Brad Pitts attached to a script, the odds be getting made, obviously are much higher. The genre of the film is going to matter because some genres make more comedies versus drama, whatever. Some make more than others. They would evaluate the script if it's going to do well in foreign markets, is this going to translate overseas and in another language? And of course, what they really want is, is this movie going to have a sequel? Can we follow it up with another movie if it's successful? So is the criteria that they were using.

And so what Franklin wanted to know is what are the favorite scripts that didn't meet these criteria from these other movie studios that were being rejected? But yet they were really high quality scripts. And so back in the early two thousands, I think the number was 12, I think there was 12 major studios back at that point in time, universal MGM and so forth. And so what he did is he went around and he took an anonymous survey of his friends that were also script writers at the other studios and other executives at these movie studios. And he asked them to give him a list of the 10 favorite movies that they had rejected or passed on in the last year. And he simply tallied up the list. Super smart, which of these movies got the most votes? Went to the top of the list regardless of how everyone ranked them individually and

Brett:

Here. So the same movie was on multiple lists, so multiple rejection lists, but it was still the favorite of those rejected. Those went to the top of his list.

Will:

Exactly. Right. And it didn't matter if everyone listed a movie, one versus two, that was irrelevant. It's just a total cumulative score. Yep, exactly right. And so the blacklist is a summary of these 10 we're the movies that were most voted on by the executives. Now remember, these movies have been rejected by every single major studio. So here's the results. Fast forward to today, over 400 of these movies that were absolutely dead, 400 have been made into movies. Wow. Now let's look at the quality.

Brett:

Sorry, what type, I know you just said what type period is this again?

Will:

Well to today? So started in 2005 and now 2005

Brett:

To today, still 400 movies, over 400

Will:

Movies. None of these ever were been made into movies. 300 of them were nominated for an Academy award. So this is showing you, they were high quality scripts. They were missing on high quality scripts. 54 of these movies actually won an Academy Award, and four of the last 10 pictures came from the Hollywood blacklist. They never would've been made. So those four movies are Slumdog Millionaire King's Speech Spotlight.

Brett:

What's funny, that was the movie that came to mind first when you said it was Slumdog Millionaire, because it's such a beautiful story, but it does not fit any, it doesn't fit any mold. So that that's, there you go. So cool. That was one of 'em. Yeah,

Will:

That's exactly right. So those four movies, Argo was the last one. They never would've seen the light of day. In fact, they were rejected. These were turned down by all 12 major studios. What revived them was the blacklist. So in Q 440 scripts have been produced into movies making over 30 billion in revenue. Wow. Now, here's the hero slide. Harvard Business School actually did a research study around the blacklist, and they said movies from the Hollywood blacklist generated 90% more revenue than non-listed films with a similar budget. So not only are these higher quality as far as getting accolades and academy awards or high quality scripts they were passing on, right, 75% of 'em get nominated for Academy awards. So high quality stuff, but yet they're earning 90% more at the box office. They've been, what tells you is Hollywood's been evaluating films incorrectly for the last 100 years.

They got locked in that thought pattern. There's only one way to do it. And you kind of nailed it just a moment ago, Brett, is, it's almost a two layer effect here. Number one, we get locked into a single way of thinking, one perspective, there's only one way to view things. That's our thought pattern. But then when you work at a big company, they give you the way that they do business and they then force on you, this is the way it's been successful in the past, and there's no other way to view it. So it's a layering effect there where you really, it's, it becomes impossible to think creatively. So to be different, to think creatively, you have to learn how to break these thought patterns. And that's something that I really like to teach. And we'll go through one example here that basically Franklin Leonard is teaching us, which is I like to teach people how to approach achieving how to overcome the problems in your business or how to achieve these aggressive growth goals from different angles, altitudes, and directions.

In his case, Ray Leonard's case, he was taking the opposite approach, the inverse approach or the reverse approach to what everyone else was doing. By doing the opposite, he's getting these big outsized returns. So that's the opportunity. How do we think differently from everybody else? Let's think in different directions. I want to teach people how they can see what they don't and your competitors can't, right? We're blind to this stuff. And it's shocking at how blind we are. When people go through my masterclass, we do a bunch of puzzles and it is ridiculous how adults can't solve these puzzles, but yet kids can solve 'em like that. Kids are far more creative and imaginative than adults because they're not stuck in the thought patterns that we are. It's just, it's crazy. So I like to teach people how to think differently to scale businesses up to nine figures and beyond.

So let's do a couple, we'll do two more quick examples of this. So who else took the inverse approach and did really well with it? Right. Well, how about the Yahoo Google fight, which now fast forward today is going to be the Google Chat, G B T fight or AI fight. But back in the nineties, Yahoo was the most trafficked website on the planet, right? 125 billion in market value. And we all know what the Yahoo homepage looks like. There's a million things going on there. There's probably 40 different links that you can click before you even scroll below the fold. And here comes Google with their very clean interface and only one single thing to do type in a search bar. And Google just cleans their clock. They take the opposite approach and just bury Yahoo. Google's current market share is 85% for search versus Yahoo's 3%.

And remember that valuation? Yahoo. Yahoo was valued at 125 billion. They sold to Verizon for just 5 billion a couple years ago where Google's valued at a trillion. Wow. So they're taking the opposite approach in getting extraordinary results. And that's all that's also playing out right now in front of us with AI and chat G P T and all the competitors rolling out compared. When you look at Google compared to chat G P T I typed into a search, which is on the screen for those watching, is what are the best things to do in New York City into Google? And we get what we always get. We get a bunch of ads, we get a bunch of blogs, we get a bunch of articles that we got to navigate our way through the junk, the good, the bad sift through research versus I throw that same question into Chad G P T and it gives me 10 recommendations of what to do in New York City. And they're all great. They're exactly what you would expect. Not only is it telling me to go to the nine 11 Memorial and Statue Liberty, but it tells me to see a show and gives me restaurant recommendations. Go eat here.

So this is yet to be fully played out, but it's certainly a different approach of the way things been happening

Brett:

On. It's going to be really interesting to watch that play out. I do think, and I'm a little bit of biased cause I'm a Google guy and our business is somewhat built on

Will:

Google as a month.

Brett:

Eventually someone's going to take some of their market share, no question about it. But there's still times where if I'm searching for a product or searching for something, I want to use Google and not chat gps. I don't want just text, I want visuals and other things. But for sure the AI revolution and the progress that's being made and the speed at which it's improving, it's crazy stuff. And Google's still on the heat for sure. Well, the

Will:

Speed is incredible. Cause when I was playing around with chat G P T around the holidays, December-ish, you, the results I was getting out weren't very good. And where it is today, obviously we are all getting better at training the ai and the AI itself is getting better. Oh my gosh. The results are spectacular and it's just a couple of months later.

Brett:

It's insane. It's insane. And one kind of highly, one thing too sure that I think we will add to the comparison between Yahoo and Google. Yahoo is very traditional. Let's sell banners, but let's make the banners better and let's make them more interrupting. And then let's just, it's native ads and stuff, which all worked. That's fine. Sure. But Google's thing back in the day was, Hey, what if a good ad is just an answer to a question? There you go. And that's what they built the business on really, right? Well, it was organizing the world's information, but making an ad, just the answer to the question and making it the right answer and different way of thinking, unlocked immense value areas and great user experience. And really to a large degree, they just earned that 85% mark market share. I know they're people made disagree and stuff like that, but people want to use Google and why it's happened

Will:

For sure. Okay, so we'll do one more example of someone, Colin, of following this inverse reverse logic or orthotic flaw pattern or thinking that Franklin Leonard did. And so this is an example, is Blank Street Coffee, a coffee chain in New York? So probably only people living in New York will have heard of it, but they're taking the opposite approach to the big boys who obviously is Starbucks. So what they're taking is a very small efficient approach. They are starting with their square footage. So the typical Starbucks is going to be 1500 to 2000 square feet, where these are little micro stores. These are like 350 square feet for blank Street coffee. Or they're even these food trucks like the taco trucks, we all know it's a mini taco truck. It's almost like a VW kind of old school seventies VW bug on a truck,

Brett:

Which is very small.

Will:

Yeah. Yeah. They're tiny. And what they're doing is just giving you a great product that costs less and it, it's a different experience. Starbucks is saying, come in and sit down in our living room and spend the day. And these guys are saying, Nope, no, move on with your day. We're just going to give you a great cup of coffee. So they're automating the process of making a coffee, which is cheaper for them. So they then can pay their employees even more. They're paying 28 bucks an hour, which is way above them of wage.

Brett:

$28 an hour for just the coffee shop. It's crazy. Yeah,

Will:

Crazy.

Brett:

But you need that if you're living in New York City for

Will:

Sure. Of course. And then their coffees on average, it's about 30, 25% less expensive than Starbucks. So it's a value. Those companies growing really fast, they've raised $80 million, they've opened 40 different stores. But here's the key for Blank Street, these stores turn profitable within 30 days of launch.

Brett:

No

Will:

Way. What retail store have you ever heard of turning profitable 30 days of launch way, right? 30 days. So they're taking the opposite approach and crushing the big guy. I mean, they're not crushing Starbucks's back obviously, but they're doing a great job. And no Starbucks is turning a profit in 30 days. So Scott Galloway says, when something is successful, everyone else piles in, right? Yeah. The copy culture stuff in our rail against. But this creates the opportunity for someone else to come in and take the opposite approach. So instead of always thinking, how do we copy the next guy? I want people innovating. I want people thinking creatively, how do we actually think different? And this is one way to do it. How do we think in different directions? Come up with the inverse approach. And I actually just had a big win for myself on this.

So just in teaching you this masterclass, liquid Mind masterclass, and I was thinking about how do I market and grow this program? And I came up with a very cool idea. I'm actually building a case study around it right now. So I won't reveal the answer on this one, but people can get on my email list and it, it's a case study that's going to come up, but it's the opposite of what everyone else is doing. And what it's landing me is the opportunity to speak in front of my exact target audience, which is CEOs and founders of digital brands, e-commerce companies, rape anywhere between a million and a hundred million plus. And I'm getting in front of these opportunities to speak to these founders anywhere from about a hundred in the room all the way up to a thousand in the room. And this is not through any traditional way you can think of. This is not me going to a conference. This is not me going to a mastermind. This is not me on a podcast. This is something new. So I'm having this really good win on it now I'm documenting it as I go do.

Brett:

Now I'm totally curious. Now you got to tell me this half of the podcast.

Will:

I'll share it with you now for sure. But then for everyone else, they can join my email list. It's free to get on. So this case study we're going through now, I produce two or three of these a month and just get on the email list and I'll put them on the distribution for it. So they can just go to liquid mind masterclass.com/join, J O Y N, just join. And that's just free opt into the email list, and then you'll get these case studies and even this one will come out as a, you'll see the video recording of this case study. So sweet. Anyway, really interesting. And just a good, it's just one practical way that I can teach people. How do you think creatively? How do you think differently? Okay, well here's a practical way to do it.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. And it's all linked to that in the show notes, but it's liquid mind masterclass.com/join. So check that out. Yeah. So I love this because we want to, there's this old saying, and I agree with it, that success leaves clues. And so when you see someone is successful, a company is successful, you say, well, what are the clues? Well, the most obvious thing is, well, we just do what they did. Let's offer more products at lower prices or whatever. But maybe that's not the answer. And one of the things where I live in southwest Missouri where an hour and 45 for the Walmart headquarters. So northwest Arkansas is not too far. And one of the innovations that Walmart had was, instead of, so this great service at the time, whatever, low prices and stuff, but rather than going to all the major cities where everybody else was, their approach was, let's go to small towns. Sure, underserved small towns that everyone else is overlooking. And that's really where Arkansas, or that's really where Arkansas is, where they're from. But that's where Walmart really gained a competitive edge. So I do like this idea of, what if I did the opposite? So here's what every else is doing. Success leaves clues, but what if I did the opposite? Is there something in that

Will:

It's got with the speed of technology and the speed at which we all move today to be successful, to compete on these platforms? I feel like you almost everyone just seems like you have to steal from everybody else. How are they doing it? Let's borrow theirs. What's their upsell flow? What's their how bundling and pricing, let's just borrow a borrow bar. Whereas if you can just slow down and be creative, you'll put such distance between you and your competitors. It's ridiculous. So the way I think about it is the leverage points of a business, and I have a slide on this in one of my presentations, but I probably throw 20 of these leverage points on the slide. I just said subscription programs, bundling pricing, copywriting, video ads, whatever. There's probably 50 to 75 of these leverage points in any D two C business. But if you can stop in 80 20 those and then get creative around the ones with the highest impact, you'll put such distance between you and everybody else because everyone else is being lazy and just copying. So being creative is actually the competitive advantage. So that's what I'm really after.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. And it is true. Most of your competitors, all they're doing is copying everybody else. And those are the conversations that are taking place in marketing meetings and CEO level meetings of the C-Suite. And other companies are just copying what everybody else is doing. And so there's

Will:

A weird thing with that. You do want some, it always validates a bit to go, oh, someone really impressive. Everyone wants to copy some of the models from, like Dr. Squash has done so phenomenally well and Manscape has the amazing ads, and so everyone just wants to copy, copy, copy. But you know, it's copy everything and be successful. Just because it speaks to their audience doesn't mean it's going to speak to yours. And I feel like it's the movie example I was just giving in Hollywood where it gives you cloud cover to say, well, that's what they're doing, so we should do it. But it doesn't

Brett:

Mean it's the safe thing where you say, well, this formula's worked before. I mean, tell all the other Tom Cruise movies sell. So if we get him on this movie, it'll do great. Sure. But what's also, what's so great, and I'm so glad you shared that example, I did not know about the Hollywood blacklist, so I definitely learned that that's a new perspective for me. But he didn't just say, give me all your garbage, give me all the trash movies. But what he identified was that he believed the model was wrong. He believed the way Hollywood was looking at was wrong, but he knew there was some gold buried in the scrap pile, right? So he is like, Hey, what are your favorites? Tell me the ones you rejected because you had your model's broken, even though he probably didn't say that, but what were your favorites? And he started there. And so really a smart approach because it's looking for things that everybody else is missing. Yeah,

Will:

Exactly. Right. If you actually put just a little bit of creative thinking time in each week, why can't you come up with a two degree shift on a subscription program? And that's better than anyone else in your industry. You know, don't have to, we're about inventing the iPhone, but how can you make a two degree shift that is better than everybody else? And if you can just get into this process of thinking, the results are spectacular. So I actually do some work with a company called Size Advisory, and they've got a venture capital arm out of Silicon Valley, and they'll bring me into consult and do growth marketing for some of their portfolio companies. And what I am doing behind the scenes is I'm bringing this framework, I'm looking at the leverage points of their business, and then I'm looking for the creative opportunities to accelerate them past their competitors. Because invariably, when I go to meetings at other companies, if they're looking at a website redesign, if they're looking at their funnel, if they're looking at their ad copy, the meeting always starts the same way. Well, this is our biggest competitors doing, how do we copy that? But it's the way every meeting goes in these companies.

Brett:

And these are really smart people,

Will:

And there are very smart people, really talented people. And any of the companies that size is advising, these are incredibly well funded, talented, smart brands. But I'm telling you, the meetings almost always start with, we need a new X, y, Z funnel strategy, and this is how the competitor's doing it. Let's build off from there. And it always ends up being full and emulating what everyone else is doing. So I'm okay to look for inspiration in those places, but then innovate on top of it. And a good first step for that is let's think about thinking in different directions.

Brett:

And I remember hearing this quote, I think it was maybe from Jim Collins or Jim Collins references this, but it says, one thing that's worse than failing is succeeding and not knowing why you succeeded. Really. Right? So there's like the success, it was created, but you're like, well, I don't know. I dunno what I did. It just happened. And I think sometimes when we look at other companies, we see, oh, they're really successful at attracting new customers, or their margins are greater, whatever. And so we copy something. But that wasn't really what made them successful. Don't, we don't understand. I think what's key there is understanding why is this company so successful and what are the elements in that I should maybe learn from or implement? And what are the elements that I should do the opposite? Cause there's more opportunity in the opposite. I think sometimes we make assumptions as to why people are successful and we're going down the wrong path.

Will:

So yeah, you're really interesting because I've definitely worked with some companies who have some spectacular marketing that people love, and whether I'm in a mastermind with them, or maybe I was advising them as a consultant, but you go in and I'm now working with maybe their head of growth or head of creative, and they're shockingly little there. And what that shows is what you just said is their secret sauce was actually something else. Maybe they just had the perfect product market fit or the absolute perfect tagline, or the absolute perfect name, liquid iv, the most genius name ever in that one word. If it's considered one word, I'm not sure Liquid iv. But what I get from that is it's hospital grade, which means it's premium and it's a

Brett:

Hydration problem. Instant, instant hydration, get all everything you need, just get an IV what you're drinking. That is a brilliant name,

Will:

Genius. It's absolute genius. And so there could be other reasons for the success you're pointing out. So yeah, I've actually got into these companies and I looked under the hood and I'm like, wow, that's not where the competitive advantage is. So it's just really interesting. And sometimes maybe they're just outsourcing all of it to an agency. They definitely have, there's some magic somewhere for these companies to be scaling Point

Brett:

But point. There's some unfair advantage somewhere in the business. There is. It's allowed it to happen.

Will:

But to your point is if you're just emulating everything that may not be where you might be copying the wrong things,

Brett:

Right? Yeah. So you're here. Totally. And I love the examples you gave of Qua and Manscaped and shout out to Raindrop, a Jacque Spitzer in the gang that they helped create those ads or did create those ads. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. They're fantastic. But then you look at something, is it what? What's Ryan Reynold's mobile company that just sold the T-Mobile for like,

Will:

Oh, mint, mince

Brett:

Mint. Yeah. So his ads are the opposite. And yes, obviously they lean, he leans into Ryan Reynolds as a celebrity and instant trust and stuff, but they're the most simple ads ever. And he kind of tongue in cheek talks about how simple these ads are, right? Sure. So that you can't just look at it and say, well, we got to be funny like Dr. Qua, or No, we have to be really simple like Mint Mobile. Well, but why are you doing that with Mint? It totally lines up with we're no frills, we're super cheap, it's all, and then we're leaning into the credibility of Ryan Reynolds. So yeah, so why are you doing it? Yep. What's the strategy here? What is this unlocking? What is your competitive advantage? Because otherwise you're just copying and who knows what kind of results you're going to get. So

Will:

Creative unlocks looking for the creative unlocks. That's what we want.

Brett:

So any tips? And we're about out of time, and I want, hopefully people are like, dude, I got to know more about liquid mine. And so we'll talk about sure that in just a second. But in any tips or tools, how do I know that I maybe am locked into a thought pattern? Or how do I know that I'm not thinking creatively enough any, or maybe we should just all assume you're not thinking creatively enough. Right? I am locked in patterns, but any tips or suggestions there?

Will:

Yeah, I can cut to the end of the book or movie on this one. You are thinking in thought patterns. We all are. Yeah. And it's human nature, right? Yeah. It's human nature. And look, it's served us very well. Why we're successful to begin with is we figured out we have pattern recognition, we figure out the patterns and we shortcut our learning. It serves us really well. In general, it's just the antithesis of creative thinking. So we are thinking in thought patterns. What I'm trying to uncover, and I do in a lot of the presentations I'll give from stage is I try to give people some unlocks to really show them just how blind we are. The visual that's not in front of us of the banner blindness, right? It's, it is just a representation that we just get locked in one way of viewing things like, this is what you need to understand.

We get locked into viewing things from one single perspective, whereas a second per, it's why it's really helpful if a third party expert gets dropped into your company. And it's why if an outside consultant gets dropped in, I get dropped in sometimes they immediately see something just so obvious and so that everyone else couldn't see it. And you're just like, holy, how do we miss that one? Right? Yeah. And it's just because you get so stuck in your way of thinking, you just can't see the right, can't opp other opportunities. And all it takes are these unlocks to say, oh my gosh, well then once I break free of the thought pattern, you're no longer blind. And so that's why builder, these just kind of step by step frameworks. So yeah, I do that through my masterclass, which is a formal training. I teach it live to founders of TC brands and e-commerce companies.

And I teach on stage a fairmount going to Blue Ribbon, as you mentioned, in a month or two here down in Puerto Rico. And then I produce these case studies. So those are free. So if you like the material we cover here today, I'll produce two or three of these case studies a month. Not all of them go public. Some are from my innovation group, but the public ones, I will send out one to two every month over email to those on my list. So that's awesome. So you want to learn more, just get it, go to the join section of the website. So just W Liquid, my masterclass slash join.

Brett:

Awesome. So I want to talk about the, these life cohorts, the training and stuff that you do. So we'll talk about that in a second. But how do you find these case studies? Are you trained now where you see a good idea like that and just immediately resonates? Or how are you finding these great examples?

Will:

So actually I go, I'm going very deep into content. And so I'm always trying to think differently than everybody else. And one potter that I do see happening now today is people not going nearly as deep. They TikTok. Everyone's moving towards TikTok. I know some brands that are turning out 100 plus TikTok videos a month, which is just blows my like, well, you and I work together with identify or other similar brands. We were working, we were talking actually just about a month ago about a brand, but at the peak of any of these I've ever worked for 10 to 20 videos a month, max. Totally. And that was a lot. That's just going to have all openings, all closings and hooks and chop it up in different ways. But you're talking 10 20. So now people are cheering out a hundred videos a month, and of course you can hire talent and U G C and all that, but my point is they're not going deep on the content.

It's all surface level. And so I'm going the other way. I want all my content to be very deep, very well thought out, very tried and tested. In this particular example, I have used this thought process to great success so much Cibo, our entire case study on it. So I don't have any answers to how I come across them other than I devour content the way everyone else does. I listened to a ton of books, ton of podcasts. I go to a lot of masterminds and all the like. But because my brain now is in this space of trying to think differently, of thinking creatively, I do very quickly find out who, who's doing something different, whether it's people or you don't know. So I actually have two case studies coming up with people you've almost certainly have never heard of before. One, she's a bestselling author, but it's a book on sugar-free living. And her book was number one on the top of the charts. I don't know if it was actually number one in South Africa and in England. So she's very smart and she's very accomplished, but she's not a household name, but she's done something different and extraordinary that we all can learn from. So I'm just finding people that I can profile and somewhere where I take inspiration, oh, I'm going to incorporate that in my way of doing business, and then I build a case study around it.

Brett:

Yeah, that's awesome. And I love the comparison, and I think this will tie in nicely. You get the TikTok machine, which who knows if it'll be banned or not or whatnot, but it's huge. It's hot, but it is a content, it's an insatiable beast. You got to keep feeding a content. Or you can look at something like YouTube where I've got some friends who are pretty large on YouTube, and it's more about viewer pieces of content between them really well, high quality, and they're just going to get better over time. They're going to get more views, more traction that they're going to explode over time potentially. So very different model. No right or wrong, but it's like, nah, I don't want to be this content factory. I want to do fewer piece of content and succeed. And one concept I want to throw out, I'm just curious if you're familiar with this or not, but it's the idea of a what's called a reticular activator.

And I wonder if you've like got this triggered working for you. So the idea behind it, have you heard this term before? Sure, yep. Yeah. So it's like your name is probably the most powerful reticular activator, and that's where if you're in a room and there's tons of noise you could hear when someone's like, will you hear it? Or you go to buy a vehicle, and I just bought my wife a 4runner not long ago. And so red car, no, I see every 4runner on the road, right? And it wasn't that they weren't there before and now suddenly they are there. It's just that my subconscious is looking for this. It's looking for this pattern. Exactly. And so I think you've probably trained your brain to start looking for these breakthroughs. That's

Will:

Exactly right. And now can we take some of those lessons and put them to use for us? That is actually one of the case studies. I have not actually built that one yet, but that is actually on my outline to do so. That's sweet. That's really interesting. The example is you're in a really loud crowded restaurant and you know can't hear anything. Then the person sitting directly across from you, but all of a sudden someone a hundred feet away in the corner says your name at a very low tone. You're still going to pick it up. You

Brett:

Hear it? Yeah. It's just so fascinating the way the subconscious mind works.

Will:

Yeah, for sure. Mind will pick that stuff up. So yeah, it's literally breaking through the noise. And so those are the concepts. When I come across those, I'm like, there you go. That's something I want to explore deeply and use to my benefits. This is exactly the kind of material I love to teach. Yep.

Brett:

Love it, love it. Well, I am super excited about hanging out in Puerto Rico and hearing the full talk and maybe sit poolside or something. That'd be super fun. So tell everybody, if you were listening like, Hey, I want to go through one of the live trainings, the life cohort, that's all@liquidmindmasterclass.com

Will:

As well. Oh yeah, I didn't mention this. So I do offer the, it's a six week, six hour, one hour week, six week masterclass that I give the first section. I'll actually give train for free, so it's not recorded. Again, thinking differently. I don't do anything recorded. Everything I do. Well, that's not true. My case studies are recorded, but that's more because they're going to end up on YouTube and that's just the content engine. But when I'm teaching, I teach live, and when I'm teaching the masterclass, I teach the masterclass live. And now why would I do that? Well, what's the completion rate give? Give me a guess because you'll get close if not nail it. What's the online completion rate for an online course?

Brett:

Oh, it's got to be like what, 10% or something

Will:

Like that? Like five to seven? Yeah. Yeah, it's five 7%. The online completion rate of the Liquid run masterclass, it's 97% and no one drops out maybe. But I'm teaching it live. It's same thing. There's a concept there that's related to a personal trainer at a gym. If the personal trainer's waiting for you, you are good. That's, you show up. The reason you hire a

Brett:

Trainer, you're paying for it. They're waiting on you, you're going, you're

Will:

Going. Yep. And that's part of it. So I do teach it all live. I teach it in small groups. It's almost all founders, a million to a hundred million. So I teach section one for free that you can get on the homepage. There's just a little button on the homepage if you want to go through section one for free, or if you just want to get on the email list and get those case studies. Again, they come out one to two a month, but that's just forward slash join to get to those case studies. But yeah, other than that, you'll see me floating around at various masterminds, they're on stage and yeah, Puerto Rico's going to be great down there for Blue Ribbon.

Brett:

Yeah, dude, you're hitting the circuit and doing it in a unique way, which I can't wait to learn about and learn your ways on that. But yeah, you're hearing your name pop up all over the place, which is awesome. So we'll link to everything in the show notes. Do check that out at a minimum of ethos case studies, but also consider the masterclass as well. But Will Hughes, ladies and gentlemen, will, thanks for joining us. Tons of fun. And we'll have to do it again sometime.

Will:

Yeah, it's great to see you. Absolutely. Look forward to hanging out soon.

Brett:

All right, man, really appreciate it. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear more from you. What would you like to hear more of on the show? Give us some feedback. If you've not done it already, leave us that review on iTunes. It helps other people find the show and hey, it makes my day. And so with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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Online marketers can learn a LOT from direct response TV (DRTV) ads. 

• The power of an irresistible offer.
• The art and science of a problem-solution ad.
• The appeal of a “magic product demonstration.”

To name a few!

This episode features Jordan Pine, a seasoned DRTV veteran who has also had success in the online marketing space. I wanted to pick his brain on how to be successful with DRTV. I’m convinced that some of the lessons he knows and that other DRTV pros know can be leveraged by online marketers. Recording this episode was an absolute BLAST! We went a full hour, and I could have easily continued for another couple. It was fun and insightful! Here’s a look at what we cover:

• The “Divine 7” for choosing the right product to advertise.
• The 10 TNT (Tried-and-True) elements of DRTV.
• Why the Ginsu Knife commercial belongs in the DRTV Hall of Fame.
• The “problem scale” and how to use it to analyze a product and the strength of a problem/solution opening. 
• Gluing people to ceilings, running over flashlights with tanks, and other “torture test” product demos.
• Lessons from the Godfathers of marketing like Claud Hopkins, Rosser Reeves, Joe Sugarman, and more.

‍

Mentioned In This Episode:

• Jordan Pine (LinkedIn)
• SciMark(Website)
• The SciMark Report
• Paragon Products (Website)
• 10 Tried & True Techniques For Commercials
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And I'm not exaggerating when I say I really couldn't be more excited about today's show because if you've listened for a while, I'm a self-proclaimed marketing junkie. I've always liked ads, I've always liked TV ads, and specifically I've always liked infomercials. Yes, that's correct. I've always loved infomercials and DRTV ads. And so today I have a legend in the space. Joining me on the show, Jordan Pine Jordan Pie. Jordan Pine is SciMark's founder and president, also the co-founder of Paragon Products, and he's a blogger. He's a student of DRTV. He's been running campaigns forever. He's one of the masterminds behind the wildly successful tack light tack glasses. I think there's a tack lantern tack, all kinds of stuff. And also some microwave cookers, which have done phenomenally well. He's a trusted name. Everyone wants to talk to him if they're looking at DRTV. And I think there's a lot we can learn from DRTV. One thing that I've said over and over again is YouTube is actually very similar to DRTV, so we're going to get into that as we we dive into the podcast. So with that, Jordan, welcome to the show. Thanks for taking the time and how you doing?

Jordan:

Well, thank you for that amazing introduction. I'm going to have you do all my introductions in future.

Brett:

Thanks for having.

It's a fun gig and yeah, man, what an amazing career. What an amazing background it was. I knew we were going to be friends when you'd reached out to talk about YouTube with me. And I just mentioned the Ginsu Knife commercial, right? Because it's one of the earliest commercials. I remember watching the Ginsu Knife commercial as a kid and thinking one, this is awesome. I got to talk my parents into buying it, which they did. And then two, who makes these? It's fun. Who makes these ads? But as we talked about it, you immediately fired me a YouTube link to the original, original, because I think I probably, I must have seen the ads in the late eighties or nineties, but this was from 1978, which was awesome. Yeah,

Jordan:

Great campaign. Great. And a very iconic, memorable opening with the hand can be used a knife, but it doesn't work so well in a tomato. That opening is probably the, if there's going to be a DRTV Hall of Fame, it'll definitely be, it's

Brett:

Got to be one of the just so engaged. You have to basically have to watch that when it says in Japan, the hand can be used like a knife. It's got this great voice and he chops through the wood, but then does not work on a tomato. So it's fantastic. So give us your background a little bit. So I've talked about some of your successes, but how did you get into the DRTV world?

Jordan:

Yeah, it's great. Sideways, I guess I would say I've had three careers, four, if you count a brief stint as a private eye, yes. But first I was a soldier. I joined the Army at high school and I served four years active duty and four years reserve. All in peace time as it turned out. Thank you for service, there weren't any major. Oh yeah. Yes, I will accept that. But there's a lot of guys that have done multiple tours now that have done way more than me. I was lucky enough, from my mother's perspective at least, to not be sent to any major wars or spent any time in war zones, down peace, years of the nineties. But after that, I was a journalist. I went to college on the GI Bill and I got a degree in journalism from Rutgers University. And I was a working journalist for several years, a business journalist.

And then I got into digital marketing and I had a friend that I had met in the National Guard that was the reserves that I served in, that was recruited right out of college into one of the top as seen on TV companies. And later on, he said, a few years later, he said, the brother of the CEO of my company, former company, and he's looking for a marketing director, would you be interested? He'd always told me how crazy the industry was. And I was like, yeah, sure, I'll meet with him. And pretty much the rest is history. I got recruited by him as a director of marketing and then eventually spent five years there, became VP of marketing. But I really love the industry from day one. My current business partner and best friend, the one that brought me into the industry, bill Corliss. He used to always tell me these stories and they were larger than life stories. And then I joined and it was every bit as crazy and fun and full of characters as he had said it would be. And sharks, of course. Yes. His epic advice to me when I first started was always remember, these are the kind of people that will stab you in the back and then ask for their knife back.

Brett:

So descriptive and somewhat terrifying as well. Yeah. Did you, let's just talk about this for a minute cause I've got a perspective here too. What do you like about, so yes, there's some larger than life characters and the products are fun, but what is it about this combination that makes you love DRTV? Just for a side note, we started talking about this. For those who don't know, Dr. RTV stands for direct response. So instead of ads that are aimed at branding and positioning and driving response, at some point, direct response ads are designed to get someone to, in the early days, pick up the phone or mail order or something or visit a site and make a purchase. And so Dr. Direct response, but yeah, or what is it about the combination of things that you like so well?

Jordan:

Yeah, so direct data you're talking about there is really what appealed to me. Just you can get immediate feedback on whether something is working or not and that that's mean besides all the crazy characters. And this industry comes out of Boardwalk, so there's a lot of interesting selling techniques going on. But what I really liked about it from a marketer standpoint is you can immediately see if, and it's really fast too, in our industry, within a couple weeks, you can know whether this creative idea, whether this product idea that you had actually resonates with consumers or not using cable television testing. So I always like that. I always making the phones ring these days, making the servers light up, however you want to phrase that, you know, can actually immediately see the impact of your decisions, of your marketing strategy, of your creative. And you really can't beat it.

And it was also in the beginning, when I started in the industry, it was the only type of advertising that actually made money. Now that isn't the case, but when we started, we would make money in direct sales off of TV and forget about paying for your advertising. You're making a profit for the first six months, and then you go to retail and you've got all this advertising behind you and suddenly it blows out at retail. So it was a beautiful, beautiful model. It still is in many ways, but especially in the early days that I started, it was a very beautiful model because like I said, all your advertising is making you money. And in addition to fueling your eventual retail sales,

Brett:

Yeah, would you just wild. So making money on the front end and then, yeah, I know you really can explode when you hit the retail store shelves and then you have all those ads kind of fueling the growth. I know for me, I, I've just always loved the art of a good ad and especially the psychology of selling. And you talk about some of the greatest pitch people on Dr TV spots or infomercials, like Boardwalk Pitch people. And there's just something about this, the psychology, the art and science of that as well, that that's super interesting to me. What are the phrases that's causes someone to lean in? What are the phrases that cause someone to almost feel like they have to purchase? And so I love the psychology of it, love the art of it. And then there's nothing like the rush of when people start responding.

When I was in college, I worked for a radio station and I was involved with this live broadcast one time, and this was early on, I'll never forget this. This was early on when I realized I may maybe kind of hooked on marketing. So we did a live broadcast for a jewelry store and I was kind of involved. I got to get on air a couple times and whatnot. But people started flocking to this jewelry store and they were selling stuff and the owner was happy. And I was like, this is pretty fun. This is pretty exciting. There's some real juice going on here. So yeah, when you see a campaign that's working, it's still super exciting to me. So

Jordan:

Yeah, it's like that excitement. That's why I love the industry. So you go into the CEO's office and you have the report and you have all these phone orders and all these web orders and you're like, we got to hit use a metric, a metric, a KPI called Cost per Order. It's like CPA, but yep, cpo. And the CPO is so low and we just have a party, pop the champagne. It's so exciting to see your work immediately. Yeah. Give you those results.

Brett:

That's amazing. It's amazing. Cool. So we talked about Ginsu Knives is one of the all time greats, the Hall of Fame. It's definitely in Canton for sure. And then mentioned Tack light and the spinoffs then of that and some of the microwave cookers that you've been involved with. But what are a few of your all-time favorite DRTV campaigns and why?

Jordan:

Yeah, it's a good question. I'm really a big fan of anything by again, the pitchman that started the business. So Ron Pope Billy Mays. My two favorite commercials of all time are both Billy May's commercials. The first one would be Oxyclean, the original Oxyclean commercial that he did. And really it's because the technique, of course, is as flawless and it had had one of the best magic demos of all time. A magic demo in our trade magic demonstration is sort of what it sounds like. It's a demonstration that's so good. It's almost like a magic trick, although it's not. And he had this giant tank of dye and he drops the scoop of Oxy cleanin and the red dye tank turns clear. So if you Google that or go on YouTube and find that commercial and just watch it, it's really a clinic and great Dr selling.

And so that's probably my favorite commercial of all time with Billy MAs, the late great Billy MAs. And the second one would be a commercial called Mighty Putty. Mighty Putty was like a putty that dried cured so that it would bond things together. And again, another Billy MA's commercial and that probably had those commercials, had some of the best torture test demos as we called it, where they pull a tractor trailer or they lift a bus, they pull a plane later on. Those kind of, again, magic demonstrations, which I love because at the end of the day, it's a little bit of a PT Barnum style business. It's a Barnum technique. And if you can really get what we call wow factor or wow going in a commercial, it can really cover, really cover over a multitude of sins. But it can also really just kick you into the next level in terms of getting buzz and driving sales.

So I love the old pitchman, I love all of Billy Mays's work. I mentioned Ron Pope. Ron Pope was one of the guys who started the industry. So any of his infomercials, Showtime Rotisserie said it and forget it. And in the modern era, the guys that really worked with Billy and did a lot of the great classic commercials like John Miller and Peter Hutton from Hutton Miller, those are the guys behind the scenes, the creative geniuses that do a lot of the commercials. You even see today all the mighty putty stuff and stuff like that. So those are the guys that are my, no, their work is at the top of my list for sure.

Brett:

Yeah, Billy Mayman, like the Michael Jordan of T rtv, he's just one of the greatest. And Ron Pope, I've heard his name forever so I know he's a legend as well. And there's something about that magic demo or the torture test. I love that. I never heard that phrase. And we, I've called it over the top demo as well, where you've got, it's good to show the product in actual use. This is specifically what I'm going to use it for because people need to be told and there needs to be that suggestion of, hey, you can fix your pots with it and you fix this and that and whatnot. But then, yeah, then you see the magic demo and now you're like, man, I got to get this nothing. This, it creates that real emotional draw. I still remember, you probably remember this ad too, this wasn't exactly DRTV cause it was short form TV commercial, but it was more direct response. It was for super glue where two guys walk into a room carrying a dude and they glue him to the ceiling and it's like this ad was not cut and they put glue on his shoes and stick him to the ceiling. And I'm like, man, that's amazing. He got it. My super glue.

Jordan:

So I think the original version was a beam. He was dangling the hard hat from a beam. From a beam, I don't know off a building, but if you go, yeah, that was the original super glue demo. They glue the helmet to an I-beam or whatever and he was hanging off of a beam. Yeah.

Brett:

And I assume that's legit. Were those real demos or do you know?

Jordan:

Yeah, I don't know about that one. I'm sure they were with many different safety. As someone who's done 150 plus of these commercials, there are things that you do. We have safety things in place that might be off camera. I don't know if he was hanging off the Empire State Building. That would

Brett:

Probably be,

Jordan:

Yeah, you would never get permission or insurance for something like that. Sure, sure. Hang your actor off of a, but yes, there, they're always real demos, maybe off camera. Like I said, there's some safety features. There might be, hopefully there's a cord connected to the guy's ankle and Casey Falls or something.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's awesome.

Jordan:

But wait, what you were saying, sorry to cut you up, what you were saying in the balance between demonstrating the product in real life, all the everyday uses like Mighty Pie is a great example. You know, can stick a mailbox on, you can you know can do this, you can do that, you can plug a leak, but then they have that, what I call it is the knot that you would, but you could pull a tractor trailer with it. Yeah, yeah. So it is a balance. You have to make sure you get enough of those everyday demos as well as that magic demo that kind of really proves the point.

Brett:

Not that you would, but you could. I love that. I love that you could. Yeah. Let's break down what are some of the successful elements? Cause I think that there are lots of lessons here and we're going to talk about how to tie this into digital marketing kind of as we go here. But what are some of the elements of a successful Dr. RTV campaign?

Jordan:

Okay, great. So when I started, I studied all the old masters and in the current greats as well. And I read their books, I interviewed them if possible. And of course I worked with them. You heard

Brett:

Some of your, just quickly, who are some of your favorites of kind of the old time greats?

Jordan:

Yeah, sure. So the old time greats, you got las got Albert Lasker and Kennedy, which was a cohort of his Claude Hopkins. Claude Hopkins wrote book a hundred years ago. Scientific Advertising. Yes, scientific Advertising, which was the inspiration for the name of my consulting company. Mark, you got John Caps. Yep. Tested advertising methods. Yep.

Brett:

So good. Yeah,

Jordan:

Of course you got the madman guys, you got David Ogilvie, Ross Reeves, personal favorite Mad Man. They might have even based Don Draper on him.

Brett:

Oh, on Ross Reeves.

Jordan:

On Ross Reeves, yeah. And he was a great kind of cranky guy. He had some great quotes that I could share with you from that era. And then you have Al ik, he's one of the early assing on TV guys. I mentioned Rom Pope, Joe Sugarman. Joe Sugarman was a print guy, d r print guy. But he wrote so many books that are super valuable.

Brett:

Yeah, I love his book Triggers. So it's triggers, it's a really fast read. It's like every chapter's two or three pages. Super fun. It's one I highly recommend you grab it on Amazon. So it's a great

Jordan:

Read. Actually behind me you can't see it. But behind me I, I'm a book collector so I have a library of, I mean it's only like, what was it, 30 or 40 books. But it's all the key books that have been done by all the Dr. Masters. So

Brett:

Nice. Yeah,

Jordan:

I have his books in there, Sugarman for sure.

Brett:

I bought Triggers, my son is doing sales just, he's only 20, but he definitely stole my Triggers books. I got to buy a new one. But I was glad. A lot of wisdom use that education for sure. So cool. So I catch you off, we kind of went on a rabbit trail there talking about some of breaks. Yeah. But you're talking about elements of success. You want to interview some of these guys. So who all did you interview? Just curious about that.

Jordan:

And I didn't finish my whole list, but the, and the more modern era, the Kani brothers, aj, Andy and his brother Chuck. I worked for Andy and I've worked, I've partnered with AJ since then. But in those days he was the, they're brothers and they all have three different companies and they're big force and on tv. So just working for the one brother and studying under the other brother got a chance to interview them. I interviewed Billy Mays, I interviewed Ropo P Met Ropo P interviewed him. So anybody that I had access to or that was still living, a lot of the guys I mentioned earlier are not living anymore. But the guys that were still living at that time, I worked with them. I interviewed them and I compiled these lists. That was kind of how I started as a journalist. I'm a journalist coming into, I had some marketing experience, but on the digital side, early digital too, we're talking about, so you're a Google guy, remember when I was just a colored banner across the top of the Totally course I was a bear ball and search engine, but their first ads were cu Yeah.

So we actually were one, a small company that I worked for in New Jersey. We were one of the first people to advertise in the tri-state area on that banner. And we used to have the Google team come in and talk to us about advertising at that time. So that's my digital marketing experience was way before the.com bubble burst basically. And my company survived because it was self-funded and it wasn't venture backed, but it was one of the few at that time. And I went through that period. But anyway, so I come in as a journalist and I don't really know much about as on TV at all infomercials. So this is what I did. I interviewed people, I took notes, I made lists, and I eventually condensed these lists down. There's a saying in DR that it's a success and probably applies or comes from other industries as well. Success is 80% product and 20% creative. So I set out to understand what the product criteria were that these guys were looking for and what the selling techniques were in their creative approach. And I ended up with, in the end I had the Divine seven and t n t,

Brett:

The Divine seven and t n T. Okay. Did you explain? Yes.

Jordan:

So the Divine seven is seven key product criteria, particularly for as seen on TV products. And t and t stands for tried and true. It's 10 tried and true tech selling techniques for Asen on TV commercials. And I'd, I'd be happy to go through those. Do you want You want to go through 'em?

Brett:

Do it man. Let's do it. Yeah. And we probably won't be able to key in on all of them in much detail, but let's go through it for sure.

Jordan:

Okay, so the Divine seven number one is unique and that's really about perception. So it has to be perceived to be new and different, right? Number two is mass market. Our ideal would be one per person, which obviously you can sometimes get there with sunglasses. You could say my market size is one per person. You could have multiple people in house that wear my sunglasses, but usually it's about one per household. That's how we look at it. Yeah. At least one household. One can be in every household in America. Problem solving.

Brett:

If you feel like that's true of the total addressable market, that's when you've got a mass market. Enough offer. Got

Jordan:

It. Yes. Well also, and this is something that's important to understand, what we do is we test cable television networks, big ones, Fox News and big news channels, stuff like that, as well as it's a moving list based on rates. But when we air a commercial, it's airing, airing everywhere. It's not local, not a regional air, it's a national air. So if you don't have an item that appeals to the entire nation or every household in the nation, then you're really just wasting money. So you're

Brett:

Wasting exposure. It's not very targeted spend.

Jordan:

Right. Got it. And then number three is problem solving. I always describe this as a the problem scale. I call it one to 10. One is an itch, 10 is a heart attack. Seven, you want to be a seven or higher on the problem scale in order to really grab people and sell to them. That's very important. I'll have a lot of people say, and actually you can critique bed as say on TV commercials this way, when they have that opening hate when this happens to you and you're like, no,

Brett:

Not really. That's really not

Jordan:

Very painful. It's probably not strong. Yeah, yeah.

Brett:

Got it. So it's got to be,

Jordan:

Do a minor inconvenience.

Brett:

So it's not a heart attack, but it's certainly not just a little itch, it's a like a

Jordan:

Seven, it's a like a seven or better. That was my, that's a sweet spot. Obviously not an exact science priced, right? That's just common sense. And in our business we operate on impulse purchase. So it varies by item, but typically with the consumer products that we do, that's why we're 19 99, 14 99. And we used to be $10, buy one, get one, because those are impulse purchases. We used to say, you're easy to take a $10 bill out of your pocket. It's harder to take a 50 out. And obviously these numbers have moved around a little bit. Now it's 29 99 is a common price point. But when I started it was 10 14 99, 19 99. And the idea was, you know, don't have to think too much about spending that amount of money. Once you get into more money now

Brett:

It's like you need to think about it, you feel like you need to talk to your spouse or somebody about it, then you just don't do it. Right. But if it's, yeah, 15 bucks, 20 bucks, 30 bucks, you just do it in the spur of the moment.

Jordan:

And if you're seen an on TV section in a Walmart or whatever it, it's always in an impulse area of the store. So a checkout or does it end cap. So you're on your way and you're like, oh, okay, grab that. Don't got to think too much about it. Throw it in my bag, throw it in my cart and move on. So that's what price right means it's just an impulse price, not a considered purchase. And that's really about price to value. You can have a TV that's impulse price. The loss leaders, you see sometimes they used to do $99 flat screens or whatever. Hey, this is about price to value, but ultimately the idea is take it out of considered purchase. I got to think about it and move it into a, I'm excited, I'll just drop the money and buy it.

Brett:

Got it. Love it. So number five.

Jordan:

Number five is easily explained. We have longer than most because as on TV is what we call short form is a two minute commercial. Obviously most commercials are 30 seconds, but that doesn't change or less, that doesn't change. The consumer's been trained, viewer's been trained to have about a 32nd attention span. So if your product isn't easily easy to explain, you're not going to get it done in that time. You're not going to sell them. People come to me with what I call Swiss Army products that does seven things. I'm just like, this is not for us. No way. I can explain those seven things in 30 seconds or less. And I really have to communicate what it is, what does, why it's different in that short period of time. And this'll be more common sense now to people who are dealing with TikTok and right. YouTube and things like that because we know the tension spans are short. But again, when I started and I first compiled this list and refined, it was insightful. People had longer attention spans back then.

Brett:

Kind of sad but true. Yes. So yeah, usually the DR tv, the short form Dr. TV commercials are two minutes or whatever. Yes. But are you using a rule of thumb? I want to be able to explain everything though. Problem, solution, feature, benefit, demonstration, 30 seconds. Because then you're reiterating it just for the rest of the time. Yes. Type of thing.

Jordan:

Yeah, you're reiterating it. We spend the rest of the, well last 30 seconds of the commercial is going to be building an offer. We'll get to that when we talk about the t and t, but building an offer and all those things that will sound familiar to people. So the last 30 is gone, the first 30, you really have to establish the problem, make yourself the solution and convince, tell people what it is, what it does, why it's different. And that first 30 and then the middle of the commercial is usually reserved for credibility boosters. Again, we'll talk about this in the t and t list, but Got it. Yeah. Credibility boosters, establishing value. That crazy magic demo. That's one of the biggest challenges. Okay, I want to do, I want to emulate Billy Maze, I want to emulate Hutton Miller. They have the first ones to do these kind of things in a big way.

So how do I do that now? How am I going to explain, I'm going to lift a bus with Mighty put, obviously I'm not doing that one, but a version of something like that in 60 seconds. Okay, there's a bus, there's Mighty. So that middle part of the commercial, if you're doing something big and grand, a Barnum move, then you're going to need the middle of the commercial for that. And then of course it becomes even more challenging because we do run sixties, a double 30. So now you have to cut that down. So really you got to be thinking, and again, this is going to sound less cutting edge than it might have sounded a few years ago, but you really got to be thinking about condensing your message into the shortest time possible so that at least you get the sale down and then you can do all these layering on top things to make it more exciting and convincing.

Brett:

Totally, totally makes sense. So what it is, what does what it solves, problem, solution, demonstration, all that in the first 30 or or potentially less. Awesome. So then number six,

Jordan:

Number six is age appropriate. So what that means is it's just a play on words and DR tends to skew older, middle-aged and above. So I established that because people would try to do tween products, or especially these days, young kids aren't even watching younger people even watching tv. Correct. So you know, got to make sure that the demographics of cable television or broadcast television are right for your product.

Brett:

So generally you're thinking forties and over or Boomer and older. What it's,

Jordan:

It's moved down. It used to be, I used to say 65 plus because that again, that's a sweet spot because our 50 plus boomers and above, because that was really the sweet spot. The bulk of buyers off of TV were that age group. But then things have evolved and I, when I started, I remember this clearly, I think web sales were 5% of total. It was like 95% phone sales and no, I'm sorry, 90% phone sales, maybe 5% web and 5% or more, a little bit more was mail. Mail-in send your checker money order to this address now. And we did that for years. It diminished in a diminished, but it was still a significant percentage of our sales. And the websites were mall websites. I dunno if remember those. It was like you go there and it's tons of products. We didn't even have our own webpa domains. It was kind of like a proto Amazon that we just drove them straight to our product

Brett:

Page. I think I'll just mail it in. I could call get online, I just want to mail it. That's so funny. Or even the mall websites are awesome too. So skews older, but it has shifted down a little bit, you would say?

Jordan:

Yeah. Now I'd say it's 35 plus or even 30 plus. I wouldn't do teens, I wouldn't do teens. I probably wouldn't do 20 somethings. I wouldn't do anything. Maybe it depends on what your goals are, but to get direct response, yeah, you're not going to get that. Yes.

Brett:

Yep. Makes sense.

Jordan:

Cool. And then the last one is of the divine seven was credible or believable, although that can be a pretty low bar if you have enough. Wow. And other factors going for you. But sometimes we look at quite a few products that people just aren't going to believe it. So if you look at it, and I know what you're saying, I remember an example would be someone brought a cardboard square, it was reflective somehow and their whole pitch was like you put a potato on it and it just grows. So if you put this in your vegetable drawer somehow it'll just, things will grow and stay fresh. And I looked at it and that science, I don't

Brett:

Think science works that way. I'm not a botanist, but I don't think it works.

Jordan:

And I just had to say, even if they had research and I'm like, well even if the, I'm not a scientist and I'm not going to critique your study, but it's just people aren't going to believe it. Take this cardboard square, put it in your refrigerator and magically all your produces is going to stay fresh. I didn't believe it. But then again, there's a famous product called Green Bags, infamous, famous, I mean it still sells today. That actually does work. And when you look at it the first time you'd say, ah, I don't know, putting my vegetables in a bag keeps them fresh. It actually works. There's some science behind why it works. So like I said, credibility is a good criteria to keep in mind, but you'd be surprised sometimes how low the bar could be as long as you do the other things. And obviously customer satisfaction, et cetera.

Brett:

Got it. And that's where I think some of the magic demos you talked about, you see it and maybe you wonder a little bit, but you also kind of believe your eyes. You believe what you're seeing, something like a magic piece of cardboard that grows produce or something. It's like I don't too much, I'm sort of seeing it. But so yeah, that totally makes sense. So the Divine Seven, that was worth the money to tune into the podcast right there. Divine Seven, divine. Love it. But we're not done folks. But wait, yes, there's more. But wait, there's more. There's so much. Alright, so let's talk about T. The, you said 10 T and T, 10 of the tried and true. Yeah,

Jordan:

Well the Divine Seven, just one last thing on that. Yeah, so later on I, I've refined that and rejiggered it a little bit on my website. I think I have eight criteria now. One that I added later that I think is important I mentioned earlier is wow. So sometimes if you have a really amazing demonstration, a really magic demonstration you can get by with not having some of the other Divine Seven and also Divine Seven are not like required. They're not hard and fast. They're basically, if you want to have the best odds of success, you'll hit all seven of those plus Wow. And then you have a pretty strong idea that you're going to have something successful. Of course you don't know until you actually put it in front of consumers and find out. So we use these criteria to this day and I, I've been consulting with Major the big Gas on TV companies for years as well. And they use these criteria just as a gut check, a way to sort of separate items. Then of course is a whole process of validating and finding out if you're actually correct. But it, they're good heuristic for separating the wheat from the chaff to start.

Brett:

Love it. And I love the Divine Seven is actually eight. That's fantastic.

Jordan:

The Divine Eight, right? The grade eight, I don't know, I got to grade

Brett:

Eight. Yeah, it just works. I don't know. Yeah, divine Seven's pretty special. So I will link to your blog posts also that be in the show notes so folks can check that out. Cool. So T and t, let's talk about that.

Jordan:

Okay, so t and t, you're basically breaking down the elements of a successful on TV commercial number one is start with the problem solution opening. It ties right into problem solving as a criteria for products. So you start by articulating a problem. This is the classic black and white or desaturated scene. You've seen an infomercials, oh no, are you tired of blah blah, blah. That's the classic scene. But starting with the problem solution is opening is hard and fast. I

Brett:

Love the Flex Seal commercials that are relatively, I mean that's not too old, but the opening scene there is a leaky roof and this guy with a pretty thick New Jersey accent's like this will cost thousands, these repairs will cost thousands of dollars or whatever. And then he gets into his pitch. That's a pretty good one. Yeah,

Jordan:

Phil's done an amazing job with the Flex Seal line. He blew it up into a whole business and that that's classic VR as well. So yes, you, they're actually super cuts on YouTube that you can find of it's, I have a favorite, maybe I can give it to you to put in the show notes, but it's like a super cut of all these problem scenes. Nice. And it's just hilarious when you put 'em all together. It's like this person has the worst, they ever fall down the stairs and they're gar garbage bag breaks and their roof is leaking and it just goes on and on. And so start with the problem solution opening. I, I've actually done a lot of, again, it's a very measurable type of marketing. So I've done a lot of AB testing with more aspirational openings or not having a problem solution opening. And every time hands down the problem opening is what wins.

Brett:

And a lot of that ties back to it. It's more motivational. We're more motivated to avoid pain then to seek pleasure. And so it makes sense. Yeah, if we got a problem, we want to solve it. So yeah, it makes sense that that's going to be usually the strongest opening.

Jordan:

So that's one. Number two, showcase unique features and benefits. So any good webpage or Amazon page has a list of features and benefits. So we just showcase those particular things. Again, this part of the commercial, these kind of go in order by the way. So this part of the commercial is about establishing what it is, what does, why it's different. So you showcase that and then tied into that as number three, which is demonstrate or demo the product repeatedly, which includes that magic demo in tech light we had the magic demo of this is supposed to be a super tough military durable flashlight. So of course we'd run it over with a Humvee, we freeze it in a block of ice and it still works. We do all these crazy military tough demos,

Brett:

Which both of those are really memorable. Seeing it in the block of ice and someone chips weigh the ice so you can, until it's actually ice and then the Humvee, that was better than just a van or something, right? It's going to be

Jordan:

Military how had to be a Humvee,

Brett:

Right? It's perfect

Jordan:

How to be a Humvee and then explain how the product works. It's a little mundane, but here's how it works. Here's part of a commercial's important, who does a really good job outside of Dr is Dyson. So Dyson's really selling you on there. Yes. Their sophisticated vortex technology inside of there, which is why you're going to spend three times as much. Exactly. You normally spend that in a vacuum. So they use that to great effect. Number five, prove value by comparing and contrasting. So when you think about this, I always think of the most iconic side. It's usually a side by side demonstration. You can also do before and afters of course. Number one in terms of comparing contrasting before your roof was leaking after your roof is no longer leaking or weight loss, you see the guy with the gut and then the guy doesn't have the gut anymore. So that's before. And afters is a classic example of that. But this a second one in terms of contrasting bounty, the quicker picker upper to this day, they do that split screen scene where they both go over a regular paper towel and the bounty goes over the same spill and there's a smear and left behind liquid on the negative side and on the product X side and on their side it gets the whole thing. So that is that drill

Brett:

I think brilliant immediately communicates the difference and it just lands, it works.

Jordan:

And then we have number six is established credibility with testimonials. So we don't always use testimonials. Sometimes we use celebrity endorsements. Basically this boils down to, you mentioned psychology earlier, I'm a student of social psychology, particularly Robert Cini. Yeah, I love it. And he has a concept called social proof. So we, especially in longer form, which is the half hour infomercials, they use a lot of social proof, a lot of people telling you how great the product is an incredible way. So that builds that sale for them.

Brett:

And the other interesting thing about social proof, we use this a lot for YouTube or any kind of digital ads. Video ads is especially user-generated content, but testimonials are pretty engaging as well if they're done the right way and I know how to craft the right testimonial or edit the right testimonial, but they tell a story and stories are very engaging. So it provides that social proof gives you confidence that it's going to work and it's also pretty engaging and helps draw somebody in. It's interesting, I remember going through a period of time when I had some clients tell me like, ah, testimonials, it's old school try. But I think everybody's over that. They know, no, this works, it's going to work forever. That's like saying good offers. So like old school. Okay, so anyway,

Jordan:

Yeah, I've heard that so many times in so many different ways. There's so many things that everything that I'm saying and everything that I will tell people is tested, tried and true means it's been tested and before me, I mean billions of dollars have been proven these things out. So I always kind of have to laugh when people are say, oh I'm not, I'm going to do that. Yeah,

Brett:

I don't want to do that. That's not my brand, it's not my style. I'm like, oh, okay,

Jordan:

It's great, but we know it works. Do you want sales or

Brett:

Yeah,

Jordan:

Exactly. Anyway, so yeah, where were we? Chaldini social proof. Yes, very important. Raise an answer. Obvious questions and objections. So we mentioned Sugarman earlier, this is basically Sugarman one of, I mean Sugarman has many things, but one of the things that jumped out of me enough to put it into my, he's

Brett:

Also Sugarman's the guy, but I don't know if we mentioned before. So Ruth book triggers, which you recommend, but he is also the guy behind glue blockers. That was one of his big successes. Love the blue

Jordan:

Blockers. He was the first guy to do the blue blocking sunglasses. He had those great, that had a lot of social proof in it. There's a character that he found on a beach that did some dance moves and stuff. Very iconic. And that of course led to many variations. And to this day you can buy blue blocking sunglasses. They still sell. But yeah, so his thing was to, and this is selling 1 0 1, he just applied it to Dr Print, you know, sit down and you think about what I mean, any Amazon seller knows these things because there is a section on every page where you try to anticipate questions and give answers or people submit questions and you give answers. So his idea was to include that if you have, he said it in a funny way, he said, raise an answer, obvious questions and objections, but make sure you have a good answer. Yes,

Brett:

Yes, yes,

Jordan:

Totally. So don't raise it if you don't have a good answer, but to anticipate what people are going to say, like that's not real or whatever. So then you show them that it's real or that this can't possibly do X and then you think of a way to show that. So if you have a good answer, anticipate, again, that's just selling 1 0 1, but he applied it to Dr. Number eight, present a powerful offer at an incredible price. I mean that is what was it Sounds like it. It's become a bit mundane crossing out the higher price and putting the lower price. But Dr. Infomercial marketers kind of pioneered all this stuff.

Brett:

It still works and it still works online. And we've tested this quite a bit. And we have clients that will test this during holiday sales or whatever. Having that was priced, that's marked out. And then the current price, it's powerful. It's got that psychological effect of, hey, I want to buy this anyway and now you're giving me a little extra justification and a little extra logic that I can use to say, yeah, okay, I'm doing the right thing here. I'm making a smart choice to buy this. I'm saving money to buy this product. So that's fine. Yeah, still

Jordan:

Works. Save saving more money than I'm spending.

And of course along with that goes all the techniques. Some people don't use them anymore, they've fallen out of favor. They're a little bit manipulative. But sometimes if you can do supplies are limited and things like that, all the infomercial guys pioneered every technique you can think of. Supplies are limited. Act now. Act now. And you get a special discount reasons to, there's so many ways you can use this. One of the modern innovations that I've seen that I thought was pretty clever is obviously when you're at a commercial, some percentage of people, a growing percentage every day are going to go to Amazon and find your, they're going to skip your website, they're not going to call your number, they're not going to go to your website, they're going to go to Amazon, they're going to search. So they're going to find competitors. And you don't really want that ideally.

So we used to have this offer not available in stores, which was true cause you can get a bonus item or something only on TV that was incentive to call us and order direct. But now it's seen one of the top players saying, this offer only is not available on Amazon. The product on Amazon of course, because you'd be stupid not to have it there, but they have a special offer, a TV offer that you can only get by going to their website. So that's incentivizing come into my sales funnel and stay away from all those competitors and knockoffs and stuff that you're going to find when you go to.

Brett:

And I guess that that's even powerful even if you are selling your own product on Amazon. And we've seen this a lot by the way, quick side note, we help brands launch on Amazon, we do it all the time. And yeah, we found successful companies that are really good at running their own ads and driving traffic through Facebook or YouTube and they're generating this little business, little ecosystem on Amazon of people that are feeding off of their brand or off of their ads. And so then once we launch their brand on Amazon, then they can get those sales. But I'm guessing even if it's your listing, even if you're controlling Amazon, you still probably want to drive some traffic to your own funnel once you get the customer data and all that. But also you probably need to get some of that data pretty quickly to know that the campaign is working, right? Cause you need that feedback to know is the Dr TV campaign working and you need that more in real time than probably can get from Amazon.

Jordan:

Yeah, yeah. It's solving Amazon is I'm sure is a big challenge for everyone. It is. It's been a challenge for us as well as that's evolved to the numbers are crazy and of course I'm part of the problem because I love my Amazon Prime too. Totally. So I think everyone's trying to solve that. It's become a big part. Like I said when I started 5% web, still having mail-in orders. Now of course web is so dominant and Amazon's just eating all that. So phone is talk about phone, people are like what people call in and order. It seems so antiquated, but it still happens significantly enough that we would put phone numbers obviously still. But yeah, become everything became web and now everything's becoming Amazon.

Brett:

So what are those breakdowns now between phone, website and Amazon? Do you know? It probably varies but

Jordan:

Averaging the averages, I would say up to half of your direct sales we're going to come from Amazon or people are going to go to Amazon, maybe 40% I've heard. I don't have a good numbers, but I'm just, I mean this is take it with a grain of salt back of the envelope. And then I think phones probably got to be down to like 20%, but it's still significant. So it's still

Brett:

Significant.

Jordan:

And again, it would depend too on what you're selling. Obviously a lot of people are using hybrid model of DR where they're doing branding and they're driving to web and they're doing other things. E-commerce, the.com people are doing DR. Now performance driven marketing. So that wouldn't apply to them. But when we're talking about classic as on tv, I'd say maybe 20% phone, 30% your microsite, the rest Amazon, something like that. Yeah, I mean Amazon. Yeah, that makes sense. Amazon just eaten everything.

Brett:

Makes sense. Awesome. Yeah. So back to t and t. Were we ready for number nine?

Jordan:

T n t? Yes. Use it. It's dynamite. Yes. So you present a power powerful offer, an incredible price, and then you increase your perceived value with a value comparison. So you could pay a hundred dollars for this, but today you'll get this better product for only 1999. So we do a lot of comparisons. Sometimes it's just a matter of no, if we go back a few years, we used to zero in on a, this is going to sound really dated too, like catalog page. Yeah. We use webpages at some point where you zoom in on the price and you circle in red and it's like look how much this is. Well

Brett:

Even saw that you guys know tack light, right? I think you use Zoom into an Amazon listing and show it these are $59 but not tack light.

Jordan:

Yes. Seven or eight years ago when we shot that, yeah, that was still a, I mean I would use it today, but I don't know exactly how I would use it because I mean it's moving so fast, but back then it was still a good selling technique. And there's all these techniques by the way they evolve, but there's still the fundamentals. So fundamentals just a question of figuring out how to apply value comparing today, but especially if there's the first one to break price, and again I got to put the asterisks of Amazon is because now it's becoming much more common to find all different price points. But the fundamental technique is to find someone who's selling something for an expensive price and then be the first one to, to break the price. So we used to do that all the time. We would, whether it was on live shopping or even an infomercial going into to short form, we would break the price. It would be 60 and we'd bring it down to 1999, fortune point 99. So if you can break a price, you definitely want to call that out in your advertising, the first one to be at this crazy price.

Brett:

Love it, love it. So number 10, the grand finale of t and t

Jordan:

Number 10 is actually the title of one of the books that we mentioned. A guy named Aloff wrote a book called or Money Back. He's the guy who coined that phrase. And conceptually it's minimizing risk with a satisfaction guarantee. Again, something that might seem mundane, people don't give it as much thought as they should. And somebody who's a really conscientious marketer should think about ways to innovate in this space. How good can you make that guarantee? We used to, it was in the beginning it was as simple in the ally cuff days, simple as if you're not completely satisfied, we'll give you your money back, no questions asked. That was innovative at that time. And then it became we'll pay, I'm sure you've seen in some of the early web days, we'll pay you to return shipping. Yeah, we'll triple, we'll give you triple the money back.

I think it was Pope who'll used to do certain crazy. You'll lose money on that when people use your abuse you for your guarantee. And I looked at the numbers and it's like a small fraction, we'll actually fill it out and send it in. You had a couple hurdles to jump through and he was like, it's worth it for the ones that get through the process and go through all that trouble, it's just worth it to pay them double or whatever it is to have the power of that marketing. And Sugarman's, Sugarman was a fan of that as well. He would give these, I think he called it satisfaction, not satisfaction, total satisfaction guarantees or something like that. I don't remember the exact terminology, but his idea was like, this guarantee is so good that people will actually think you are getting ripped off. And that gives them the confidence to take that final step and close the sale.

Brett:

Which makes a lot of sense. And yeah, you mentioned free shipping both ways. I think Zappos was one of the early ones to do that online. Yes. And they realize that that's the biggest hurdle for someone to buy shoes online, is that it's not going to be the right size and returning, it's going to be a nightmare. It's going to cost a lot of money. So they invested actually marketing dollars into those returns. So free shipping both ways, no questions asked. We'll exchange it. Yeah.

Jordan:

Well what is Prime doing? Prime doing the same thing. You can just don't even put it in a box, just literally throw it through the window of your local ups and we'll take it back and give you a refund. They're making it as frictionless as possible. Totally. And that's the concept. Yeah,

Brett:

That's the concept. And that increases consumption and demand and sales enough to make it worth any of the hoops you have to jump through as a business or the added cost as a business. It if far outweighs that, so love that. Well man, that was gold. So you got the Divine seven actually with the grade eight and then 10 tried and true. So that's fantastic. So we're up against time a little bit, but I don't want to get this short cause it's been awesome. So just a couple more things that I want to chat about as we wrap up. You know said you could know it in as early as a couple weeks that this is working when, what do have to see to know that your DRTV campaign is working and talk just a little bit about the math behind DRTV. 

Jordan:

Yes. So usually in two weekends that's usually how we run weekend to weekend testing. We've erred on enough cable networks, major cable networks to get the so each, and again this is changing a little bit. Attribution as in everything is becoming a bit tricky, but I'll just talk about the general model when it was phone and web and things that you can key would've a different phone number in every commercial that ran every station. This is called keyed marketing, it comes to print as well. And then we would match up the server logs for the times that the, based on when the commercial aired, matched it up with the server logs to know what orders are coming from where. So we get pretty granular in that regard of we added on these 10 stations over the course of a week or two weekends. And most of the media is on the weekends that airs.

And then you know immediately get, you get daily reports, you get a weekly report and a few days after that you get a final report. We include some sales that trickle in, we call it drag. But looking at those numbers again, the key metric in as on TV is the cost per order cpo. So it's basically your ad spend divided by the orders that you got. It's similar to a cost per acquisition. And based on that number and based on experience, I have a little spreadsheet business model that factors in all the costs. We already know what number we're aiming for. Every campaign has a pre-calculated breakeven and obviously if you get below that breakeven, you're lower, the CPO the better and you're golden. So yeah, it's very fast. And we can also what's called buy manage. So that's what a direct response agency will do based on which stations are performing, which rotations, which is a certain time of day is performing. You can get pretty granular with that as well. Even down to the hour, they will buy the ones out that are not driving sales based on the data they have and they'll heavy up on the ones that are driving sales. Totally makes sense. So that's basically how it works in a nutshell. Do you have any more?

Brett:

No, it's perfect. Yeah, so it's your media buying at that point. You're optimizing just like we would do online. But then I know one of the questions that I have and that I'm sure others do as well, how does a product like Tack Light sell for 1495 and how do you make money? Because you're spending a lot on the CPOs, what are they, like a dollar. But for products like that, are you really relying on upsells and cross-sells things on the backend or talk about that a little bit.

Jordan:

And there's a science to that as well and some techniques that I've collected and applied over the years, of course it is upsells, your average sale is not Fortune 99. It could be back in the day. It could be as high as $60 off of a $10 initial offer. So there's a lot of things happening on the backend, things that that you really can't do as efficiently on Amazon. You can do on a web microsite and on the phone of course as well. And the biggest things are just this word deluxe that's worth listening to this podcast. People like Deluxe, if you apply this word deluxe to something for some psychological weird reason that nobody knows, but it's been proven over and over again, over a hundred years of direct selling people, people will order it. So we used to see strange things. I don't know 40% of customers will order a deluxe. Why? Wow. Because you called it deluxe?

Brett:

No, the deluxe. We all want the deluxe. Deluxe. We can tell our friends deluxe show, well when this is the deluxe, no big deal.

Jordan:

What does that mean? It can be a color even. Well this is in the copper gold color. Oh, okay. And people will go for it. So it's a very powerful word. We obviously try to deliver some extra value and make the product a deluxe product. So that was key. And we did that upfront. We'd always order ordered these things, by the way, in the order of most converting to the least converting based on all the history and knowledge that we had. So deluxe is first obviously multiples of the same thing that you ordered. For some reason people like to order two and three, especially if you give 'em an incentive. We used to see crazier things there. I had a producer friend called the Mooch Factor, and that even applies to the commercial by the way. So we used to offer a lot of bonus, little bonus items, throw away things that you get for free if you order now.

And then we started doing a lot of buy one get ones because for some reason it didn't matter what it was. You might say to yourself, why would anybody need two of these? But for some reason if you give them two, it stimulates the sale. So you can apply that on the back end as well. People who obviously bought one, they're more likely to buy two or three. You can make arguments. We have classic arguments like buy one for you and one for your family and one for your friends and one for your mom. So one for the house and one for the car is a classic as seen on TV arguments. So those two things alone drove most of the backend revenue or drive most of the backend revenue. And then little things like you can do a longer guarantee, like a war, longer warranties, which is familiar to people who have ever bought a vacuum cleaner at a department store back in the day or any electronic item at a Best Buy.

They're always, or even now on Amazon, they're trying to sell you guarantees and insurance all the time. Totally. So we would do a little bit of that accessories. It sort of trickled down to smaller and smaller percentages. A lot of times we load it up and then pair it back as we saw what people were responding to. Because you get all that data too. The phone center gives you all the data, the website obviously. And you can study that and say, okay, this is converting and this is not converting, swap things out. It's a very scientific endeavor in that regard. And that we keep iterating, we keep trying different offers on tv. We keep trying different things on the backend to maximize that average sale.

Brett:

And is there usually a certain magic number you're going for where maybe you're offering it for 1499 or 1999, but you're trying to get 50, 60 as the average order value?

Jordan:

So we have a thing that's similar to I guess ROAS we call it. And it may be if people have heard of it. Media efficiency ratio. Yeah, totally. Some call it ratio. So two to one was the gold standard and everyone was shooting for a two to one in terms of revenue to advertising spend. That was, as a general rule of thumb, that's what we were shooting for. And then of course got better than that three, four to one. If you got a four to one, you're popping champagne and

Brett:

Yeah, nuts. You're buying all the airtime you can possibly buy at that

Jordan:

Point by the world supply. My first boss in this industry, Andy Kuban, used to, when he got really excited and we had William Low CPOs, he would call up the agency and he would say, buy the World Supply of Media.

Brett:

So that's

Jordan:

That. Say, what do you

Brett:

Do it company wants to get, they're like, you got it. I will buy everything right now. So that's awesome. Jordan, this has been an absolute blast. This totally lived up to expectations. Super fun. I'm actually quite bummed that we need to wrap up here, but we are for sure running out time. So couple of quick things. Well first of all, just mention this as we Rapid fire, favorite projects you've worked on. And then I want to talk about how people can connect with you. Maybe they want to tip their toes in the DRTV or may just want to learn more. So we'll talk about that in a second. But Rapid Fire, favorite campaigns you've been involved with and why?

Jordan:

Yeah. So the first one is Nearest and dearest to my heart would be the finishing touch line of personal hair removals. It became Micro-Touch and a bunch of other products that eventually became flawless and is now with church and Dwight. It was a big sale in our business, but that was the first one I worked on. So those are the first campaigns that I worked on. So those are near and dear I, I've done a bunch of fun stuff with I, I've worked with Billy Mays, so anything I did with him was always fun. The, there's a, it's on YouTube now as well. There was a short-lived discovery show called Pitchman, which started Billy Mays and Anthony Sullivan. And I'm actually in one of those episodes. Nice. And I had done a deal my five of my 15 minutes of fame, I guess. So I worked on a few pods with him that we did the Magic Mesh years ago. Magic Mesh, which is a curtain, a mesh curtain. It's like a screen you can walk through and it closes is automatically behind you. That one's near and dear, because it was the first one I did with Fred Paddock and Paddock Productions out of Kansas City. Shout out to them the home of the Super Bowl Champs.

Brett:

Absolutely. Go Cheese man. I'm from KC originally. Huge cheese man.

Jordan:

Yeah. So that was the first project we did together. Became a big success and aired for many years. And then like all the attack light stuff that we've done, Nick Bolton, it's been great to work with. He's, he's a spokesman. It was all the fun stuff that we did. Fun pseudo military type stuff that we did over the years. It's been eight or nine years I think now that we've been shooting commercials for that and introducing new items. So all those have been great. Nick's great. The Paddock team, which did that as well is great. So I've had so much fun on all those commercials, thinking of new ways, new things to run it over with. We went to a tank park and you can actually drive a tank at somewhere in Missouri. And we went there and ran over a bunch of products with a giant tank and crushed a car. I think that's a picture on my website if you go over

Brett:

Where Missouri. Cause I'm in Missouri, I'm in Springfield, so I'm about two and a half hours

Jordan:

Southeast. No, it's not Missouri. Sorry, I misspoke. It's in either, it's in Minnesota. Minnesota, it's called a tank.com. You can probably just Google it and you'll find it, but you can actually go there and drive a tank. And we went there for the day and shot a bunch of really fun stuff. So thinking of, just imagine you're on your 26th or 27th tack commercial and you're like, okay, what could we possibly run this thing over with Now we've done everything. I've done a monster truck, I've done. So it, it's so much fun just trying to come up with these ideas.

Brett:

One, upping yourself on production, which is awesome. Yeah. Fantastic. So for those that say, Hey, I want to keep learning from Jordan, I want to check out some of his articles, some of his materials, where can they do that? And then what if they want to work with you, how can they get in touch with you that way?

Jordan:

Yeah, so I have the companies you mentioned, my consulting company's called SciMark, S C I M A R K. So if you just go to SciMark.com, you can find Humble

Brett:

About science and marketing. Easy to

Jordan:

Remember. Yeah. Yes, that that's Hopkins. Hopkins Scientific Advertising, which you mentioned, which you knew, which I was impressed by. Yeah, I've

Brett:

Got on the shelf in the office.

Jordan:

Yes. That was a very inspirational book for me. So when I named my consulting company, I named it after that. So scientific marketing, so cymar.com, it's got a bunch of stuff on everything you want to know to find out more about me and contact me. And then I write a weekly sub. Used to be a blog. I've been doing it since 2007. It's sort of inside baseball about this industry. It's called the SciMark Report, which you can find on CK and LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn so you can find all my contact stuff and websites and projects and everything. On LinkedIn. I have a YouTube channel, SciMark channel, which has all my commercials on it. If you care to peruse my collection. I think

Brett:

You got to. They're fantastic. And so if you enjoyed this podcast, you need to go to the YouTube channel and watch it and also get the CK as well. So Awesome. Great. Good stuff. And then did you mention Paragon?

Jordan:

Yeah, Paragon. So Paragon is, Paragon is my product company. We do our own products. We design, manufacturing and supply. I do the commercials. My partner Bill Corvis does all the China side development and logistics and managing the supply chain. So we partnered up later on after he brought me into the industry and I got some experience and he did his thing. We later on partnered up in this company called Paragon, where we like the tech, tech projects are actually our products. We've developed them, we do all of our own products now, but Nice. For many years. I just did consulting for other people and then I started doing my own commercials and my own projects. So most of the ones we talked about on my own products as well as commercials or our own, I should say. Sure. From Paragon. Yeah.

Brett:

Awesome. Well, Jordan, this has been an absolute blast. Looking forward to doing part two at some point, or maybe we can talk about how these things work on YouTube at some point. But just fabulous job. Super, super fun. And yeah, thanks for coming on.

Jordan:

Great. Thanks for having me. It was great talking to

Brett:

You. Absolutely. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. What would you like to hear more of on the show? And if you love this episode, which I bet you did, share it with someone that you think might benefit from it. And hey, if you haven't done it already, we'd love that review on iTunes, helps other people discover the show. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

‍

Chris Brewer is an agency veteran, marketing expert, and former golf pro. Not to mention my business partner and OMG Commerce’s co-founder.

Each year, Chris has the privilege of talking with hundreds of DTC brands, both big and small. He hears about their goals, struggles, plans, and more. As a strategist, I also consult with large-scaling eComm brands. Through our perspectives, we’d like to highlight ways in which great brands get in their own way and offer some candid advice when it comes to working with agencies. 

We love the brands we talk to and the clients we serve. But, like anyone else, brands can sometimes overlook how they inadvertently hinder their own growth. Here are a few topics we cover that we hope you’ll find helpful:

• Having goals that aren’t battle-tested.
• Still thinking like it’s 2020 in some areas of your business.
• Prioritizing automation and tools over strategy.
• Shooting for perfect data and ignoring actionable data.
• Stopping short of getting results.

‍

Mentioned In This Episode:

• Chris Brewer (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

‍

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG commerce. And today we have the man himself, the co-founder of OMG Commerce, a repeat guest on the podcast, although it has been too long, some might say since he's been on the podcast. But today I have my business partner, Chris Brewer, on the show. Chris, how's it going? And thanks for taking the time.

Chris:

Thank you, Brett. I was beginning to think that I was in the penalty box. I really was. I wasn't saying I wasn't pushing, and then the invitation came.

Brett:

Yeah, well, what have I done? Why am I getting the invite back to the podcast? We previous shows were so good, and actually you still may hold the record for one of, I think Ezra has the record record, but that's that. That's understandable. It's Ezra Firestone, but you've got one of the top downloaded shows in the history of this show.

Chris:

It's a good thing I spent $12 on that fiber guy.

Brett:

Exactly, exactly. So hey, today, I'm really excited about this episode one because I do enjoy chatting with you and fun stuff always happens when we're on a call together or chatting. And so I know this will be no different, but we're going to get into some straight talk here. We're going to hopefully be transparent, maybe a little bit blunt, but in a loving way, and talk about from our perspective how D2C brands sabotage their own success. So how might you, dear listener and friend and beloved D2C brand owner, how might you be sabotaging your own success? And we only share this out of love, compassion, because we want you to succeed because we have to look at these things from our own perspective. When we talk to other agencies and we talk to clients and we ask, Hey, how do agencies sabotage their success? How do we as an agency, how are we tripping over ourselves and making mistakes potentially? And so hopefully this will be helpful. Now, Chris has a unique perspective because he talks to DDC DDC brands day in and day out. So Chris, I want to get into your background too, for those that don't know you, but what do you do on a day in and day out basis at OMG Commerce

Chris:

Day in day, day out, it starts early here at the home office. Got to get some solid coffee in me could do a plug because I just finished up my big box of just went blank on the name.

Brett:

Sounds like you need another cup, I

Chris:

Need need another cup. But it's just like all natural pod coffee that we have from, so you're

Brett:

Rocking the keur

Chris:

Egg, I'm rocking the Keur egg and starting off there and then my day starting out with looking at meetings coming up. So because I think we recently totaled this up and we knew it was a low estimate, but I'm talking with at least 25 brands a month-ish over, well over 200 conversations a year with not just D toc, but occasionally CPG brands, occasionally B2B com brands, but obviously a prevalence in the, and

Brett:

That's just tracked calls through One Source. You're also going to trade shows and you're getting on impromptu calls which don't end up in the CRM and several other things. So yeah, that's a really low estimate. But yeah. Yeah, you're talking to a lot of people.

Chris:

Oh yeah. I'm talking to a lot of people and I'm also active in some forums, e-commerce Fuel and Blue Ribbon Mastermind. And so I'm always trying to keep my finger on the pulse of what brands are talking about, just staying on top of trends. So between keeping my hand on the finger of, or the pulse of those kind of things. And then the calls I get really, it's kind of a cool place because I hear about stuff that's coming before it really gets out there in articles and blogs and posts and things like that. And I also, for the topic of this pod podcast also have been experienced to how D2C brands can sabotage their own success. And sometimes that's how they arrive because that's happened and we try to repair and sometimes counsel.

Brett:

Yeah, yep, exactly. And so yeah, you've got a unique perspective. One of the best ways to learn is to have your ear to the ground to talk to actual customers and clients because things just come out the fears, concerns, hopes, dreams, all that comes out when you're on these calls. And so we're going to dive in and hopefully provide some insight into what are ways you can better set yourself up for success, whether you're working with an agency or an in-house team or whatever the case may be. But how can you D2C brand really succeed and accelerate growth this year and beyond? So before we dive into that topic though, Chris, give folks like the 6 30, 60, 90 second background. Who is Chris Brewer? What did you do pre OMG and lay that on us.

Chris:

Wow, I got to go back 14 years to go pre omg. It's been a long time. But before that I was a multi-time entrepreneur. I had a direct mail company doing postcards and mass mailings in a localized area. Prior to that I was actually in digital me or in the digital printing field for billboards and an agency for outdoor advertising placement. So I've been on the traditional side of media with direct mail and out outdoor. And then I've also had jobs, I've had real jobs with companies of VP of marketing for a franchise group for a short and somewhat painful period. And then also was in national sales, helped lots of trade publication in the golf maintenance industry of all places. So a real interesting background, but obviously for the last 14 years I've been eating, drinking, sleeping, bleeding, and digital media.

Brett:

I think it's 13, but it's close. It probably feels like 14. How would you Yeah, because it's 2010. Anyway, it doesn't matter. 13, 14,

Chris:

That's when we officially started when we went to the event I thought was 2009.

Brett:

Oh, that could have been, you could be right. I'm thinking of incorporation. Anyway,

Chris:

When we actually started the, Hey, let's try Google Maps for local businesses

Brett:

Conversation. I think that may have been 2009. That is a good, really good point. Now you threw this out there really quickly, but I want to key in on it just for a second. You mentioned golf. What's your background of golf? Because I know we had some golfers listen to the show, they'd be fascinated to know your background with the sport of golf.

Chris:

I played high school golf, I played college golf and I went after my senior year of college. My parents were thrilled to hear that I was not going to go get a job. Instead, I was going to go try playing the mini tours. I played the mini tours in Texas and Florida for a couple of years where my favorite joke, I was the leading money spender. So even though I was quite good, I was not good enough and also just really didn't like the life on the road. So after that, I played amateur golf for obviously been playing amateur golf since then. And now I'm just a hack, just like anybody else can go out some days and shoot a nice little 74 and other days it could be an 85. And I'm burying my head in my sorrows and my wife hates those days. But I still love it. And I still rate golf courses for Golf Week magazine. So I travel, I'm headed to California and I'm taking my clubs next week and I'm going to try to find in between a couple of shows, some nice golf courses I can go rate for the magazine. So that's what I do to stay connected.

Brett:

It's amazing. It's just a reminder. There are different levels of good because if you were to go out and golf with any normal person, they'd be like, whoa, this guy's amazing. And you are, you're good. But then there's certain levels even of world class. So kudos to you for being on the tour for keeping the passion up. Yeah. So let's dive in man. So let's talk about D2C brands. How do they sabotage success? I've got several tactical things I'm going to share and I'm going to kind of chime in as you share some thoughts, but we'll just go in no particular order here. We'll just share based on your perspective, several hundred conversations a year. Where do D2C brand owners trip over themselves or sabotage their own success?

Chris:

Yeah, I think one of the ones, I'll kind of skip around on my list cause I kind of went just random thinking. But one of the things that I think is a good place to start is what I wrote down. They don't battle test their goals. And what I mean by that is one of the questions we ask, because I say this 10 times a week, it seems we're a low volume agency. We're very picky about who we bring on board. So we need to understand if our goals are in alignment. So I'll ask, what does success look for you in the next six months? Be as clear as you can in terms of your metrics. And so I'll give you an example from 25 minutes ago, I had a Shark Tank brand, I won't mention who it was, but they said we want to double sales in 2023 with a five to one marketing efficiency ratio.

So now what I don't know from that and what we actually didn't explore in the call, cause I ran out of time, but is like how did you come up with that number? How is that battle tested? How is that viable? And actually in our team's field, I tell people that we're going to take what you give me and we're going to look in your account. And that's always fun is sometimes you get, hey, we got to have a five to one return on ad spin and we want to grow three x in the next two years. We look in their account that may have some history. They have never hit that number, never, not even close. So they haven't battle tested their goals, but they have an idea or a wish or a pipe dream that if they got on with, I could just say any, A lot of other agencies, they're just going to say, sure, we'd love your business. Yeah, we'll

Brett:

Give it a shot. We'll give it a shot, we'll give it a it a

Chris:

Go. And then that's why, that's where then we see later in forums that I'm attending, agencies suck. They're terrible. And a lot of times it's just like they started out completely misaligned whether they knew it or not.

Brett:

Yeah, I do like that thought a lot. If you're got a goal and we all need to have goals, you need to know what direction are you headed. And this something we talk about a lot as an agency is that goals help set direction, but it's like the habits and the daily practices and your daily routines and what you do consistently, that's what actually brings results, not goals, but if you're shooting for something that is unattainable or unreasonable, you are setting yourself up for failure. Yeah. And the five to one merges for those listening to unpack that a little bit, that's where you're looking at spending 25% of your total revenue on marketing basically, or 20%, sorry, where you want to get a five to one return on your marketing dollars. And that's looking at total revenue, total ad spend, that type of thing. When you're looking at RO ads, that's when you're looking at return on ad spend in platform.

So what is Facebook or Google or TikTok or what are they reporting in terms of sales generated from your ad spend? And yeah, it's a really valid point, Chris, that if your goal is something that you've never hit before and never even gotten close, then it begs the question, what makes you think you can get there? And agents, some agencies are good, our team is really good. We know some other agencies that are rock solid, but we're not miracle workers. You need to know, hey, who is your market and what are your landing pages and things like that. And so yeah, battle testing your goals. I like that.

Chris:

And piggybacking on that a bit, which leads into another topic is sometimes what's happened is just in the last, let's call it three, four years of the D2C C boom including the covid boom, is that some brands are still wearing their masks figuratively because they're living in, well hey, we did this in 2020, how can we get back to that? And a lot of times I'm finding which I is regrettable in some ways, it's great when I can talk to a brand that's been around since 2010 or 2012 or 2014, we can go back and see the progression and where things were. Whereas a lot of brands launched 28, late 20 18, 20 19, they don't have reality. And also before a lot of the data changed and things that allowed really rapid scale on meta and other platforms. So I think that's why it's so important to have really great advisors, whether it's a consultant or an agency or another brand that you trust that can help break through some of those things to find what is the real truth here.

Brett:

I like it. And just kind of piggyback on that, what are some of the things that maybe brand owners don't understand or just aren't admitting about the current environment that are potentially tripping them up?

Chris:

Well, the current environment right now is just on a call with 12 individuals late last night, 9, 9, 10 o'clock. One of them works with large VC funded brands, people with 5,000, 150 million in the bank. He said they're not spending the money completely pulled back

Brett:

In terms of new investments, new acquisitions, things like that,

Chris:

Right? And so with that, what I see is just they stop taking risks in the current environment. And so there's this pullback, there's this foxhole that hey, we're going to wait this out, we're going to reduce spend. And I dunno if that's in answering your question, but it's related to the same topic in terms of not paying attention to the macro environment and just having blinders to that,

Brett:

Right? Yeah. It's easy to still take that 2020 mindset of e-commerce is on fire and growing like crazy. And certainly we've had a few reality checks since then or some big shifts since then in terms of supply chain issues and then inflation and slow down and e-com, stuff like that. But it's easy still to get in that previous mindset. But yeah, there's a shift happening now. I think most people have felt it, and I think we're all concerned about where things are headed, but I think we have to sometimes double check. But is my thinking related to this channel or this goal or this platform, is that still rooted in 2020 or is that based on what I'm seeing today? Cool. Well

Chris:

That's I, I'll give you a compliment. I think you've done a really great job from a CEO and leader perspective, leader perspective in the e-commerce space is really champion championing third party data and tools and where is your source of truth? That's a one question you told me to ask and it's been a great question, which is, and I think that's a good sabotage that I didn't write down. I don't know that you did either, was just what is your source of truth? It may be good to spend a little bit of time because there may be really folks also on the podcast going third party attribution. What do you mean?

Brett:

Yeah, yeah, that's a really good one. I did write down something related to attribution and getting the right data, but yeah, understanding what is your source of truth going to be? And we talk to very sophisticated d TOC brands that have all kinds of custom tracking and they've marked up different Google analytics reports and they've got backend tracking and they've got their CR CRM connected to Shopify and they're doing complex stuff where other people, the people that just mainly manage what they're seeing inside of Facebook and inside of Google. And there's not really a right or wrong, but the key is what is your source of truth going to be? So what do you believe the most, and really the most important thing there is what metrics are you measuring that lead to the right business and financial outcome? This is something that I talked about with Robert Ray Hill from Triple Whale and talked about this with others and we talk about it internally is that you can't just obsess over return on ad spend, right?

Return on ad spend is important, but it's only important if it's impacting your business metrics. It's only important if it's helping actually grow sales and grow profits and make you a more valuable company. You can't take row ads to the bank. And so it is understanding, okay, what is our source of truth? What do we believe the most? What is the most accurate, knowing that nothing is 100% accurate when it comes to attribution and performance tracking, and then what lines up with our business goals. And so one of the things that I wrote down is I think there's some brands that are obsessing over perfect or they're obsessing over getting it right instead of obsessing over actionable, let's get data that's actionable, at least directionally accurate so we can make good decisions, know where to spend more money, where to spend less money rather than obsessing over being perfect.

Chris:

Boy, that is a big one, and I actually, I had took one of my takeaways from the Harvard Business Review and actually that was one of the other elements in the Harvard Business Review about just why businesses and general sabotage their success. And that is a focus on perfection rather than allowing some of the things that, especially in e-commerce sales are going to be coming into play. And I hear that some of the potential partners that we gently decline are those individuals where I'm picking up vibes on the call that there's not going to be much room on either side of the line and that's going to lead to a bad outcome usually.

Brett:

For sure, for sure. Cool. What are some of the other things that you've noticed where brands get in their own way?

Chris:

One is kind of keeping your eye off the ball on your inventory. I could pivot just real quick to the Amazon space because this was another one that came up today. Brand was having an incredible traction and they had a big lift in sales that was caused by some external factors. They hadn't thought that through and they hadn't ordered enough stock and they went out of stock and going out of stock on Amazon, it's like it's the last thing, want to, it's one of the last things you want to have happen. And so they were talking about how long is it going to take us to recover this and what are we going to need to do? But out allowing things, keeping your eye off the ball, whether it's your inventory or your basics or if you're a brand leader that you've got other people on your team making sure there's a reporting cadence where they can come to you with these executive summary types of things in the business like that maybe you don't, aren't able to keep your eye on this, but make sure somebody is and that you're looking at those things.

Brett:

Yeah, it's really good. While we're on the topic of Amazon, I've got one to share here that I think has come up a lot. We've noticed this trend happened starting several years ago. We do a lot with Amazon advertising and the trend has definitely been for both agencies and brands to adopt automation, to use tools that automate bids, take some of the manual labor out of managing your ads, and it's not all bad. I think in the early days of those tools, we would've argued and we had the data to back it up that you could do better doing manual adjustments, but nobody really wants to do manual adjustments. But here, here's the mistake that I see people making. I think there's some brands out there that value automation over strategy. They believe that if we can just automate some of these little things, that's all we need.

And so let's pay less money for that. Let's go affordable, we'll just automate and we'll move on when really strategy is what moves the needle, not the automation piece or not the little bidding up and bidding down. And so that's what we have been preaching on the Amazon side, but also in the DDC space for Shopify stores. And with Google is that the overall strategy you take, whether it's with your Shopify store, big commerce or whatever, or on Amazon, that's what matters. And really some of the other things are just to support your strategy. But that's where I think agencies and smart marketing directors and people with just a good marketing mind will always be valuable regardless of what happens with AI and automation and things like that. You need the strategy piece. And so you've got to prioritize that, I believe over automation. So utilize ai, utilize automation, but prioritize strategy and utilizing platforms to reach your goals.

Chris:

Yeah, that's great.

Brett:

Awesome. What are some other things that you notice that pop up, whether it's related to actual tactical marketing stuff or just the way people show up or the way they think or communicate? What are you saying?

Chris:

One quick one that I just think is a great reminder because things come in waves and things, even in e-commerce, they get repopulated and they fade. One thing that to me has faded and I think it's possible that it faded because there was so much attention on it for so many years and we harped on it and we tested every single brand that came through and said, you got to fix this. But it's starting now to see some feedback from our strategists when we're reviewing brands like, Hey, your page speed sucks. Yeah, so there was this focus because just on the Google side, for instance, having good quality score on your ads, for instance, page plays into that. If you've got a slow rendering mobile site or a slow rendering desktop site, that that's also slow rendering on the ads and it's just going to provide a bad experience overall. And so also the page tools that just Google has have been, it used to be junk, but it's improved a lot over the last several years. So one of the things I would do, and just because you're a Shopify store, you may think, oh, I got no control because Shopify, there's a lot that you can optimize with page speed on Shopify. Sometimes it's as simple as the kind of font that you're using and what's loading. So that's just a one little quick take is page speed.

Brett:

Yeah, and what's interesting about that is I think because that was a hot topic years ago, we talked about page speed a lot it seems like four or five years ago, I think now a lot of people just assume that their website is fast. To your point, I'm on Shopify, it's fine, I got it taken care of. You need to look. You still need to check because, and Google's got some tools that they use for page speed and it's basically the same tool they use when they're analyzing your landing page and determining will this be a good user experience or not. And that will impact your ad performance. So page speed still valuable, you still got to pay attention to it. So another thing that I want to kind of highlight, and this will kind of tie into some tactical stuff, is mistake that we see people making.

Cause we audit dozens and dozens of Google ads accounts and Amazon ad accounts and seller central accounts on a yearly basis, some months, dozens in a single month is a lot of people are stopping short of getting a conversion. And I'll throw a couple words out there. We're all running remarketing ads, we're all trying to get people to buy. Again, we're all running email and stuff like that, but as we dig a little deeper and pull back the curtains or look under the hood or whatever metaphor you want to use, we found that most people just aren't doing this very well. I get to speak at D2CX retain an event that gorgeous put together in LA last year, and one of the points that I made was like remarketing is one of those things that everybody is doing and almost everybody sucks at.

And that's not to be mean the way it is. We look at it, we're like, oh yeah, I've got a remarketing campaign, I'm all good. But really what we need is if we're running any kind of top of funnel traffic, Facebook, YouTube, whatever, how are we engaging with people that just viewed that they were interested enough to just watch the ad, but that's all they did. How are we building audiences there and trying to market those people again, how are we finding people that all they did was click on one lander, they did nothing else? How are we continuing to share a message with them and move them further down the purchased funnel and maybe share with them a unique offer or unique perspective or give them more of what they need to make a decision? What about people that add to cart or what about someone that's purchased one time, but that's it, right?

I think one of the mistakes that people make, and I hear people talk about this or they want to shift their strategies that makes me think this. We assume that because somebody bought one time they'll buy again, or we assume that because they purchased that we don't have to market to them again, which is absolutely not true. People are not thinking about your brand nearly as much as you think they are. You're an afterthought. We're an afterthought to a lot of people. So you've got to be reminding, recommending cross-selling, upselling, but you've got to do it in a strategic way because the other thing we see is that there's a ton of waste when it comes to remarketing people remarketing to huge windows of audiences. People that have been around for 360 days and stuff like that are treating those people the same as someone who was just on your site a day or two ago. And so I see a lot of people either stopping short of getting a conversion or just not executing that playbook effectively where they're not getting those conversions they need to be getting.

Chris:

Yeah, we see that. It's always amazing to me that we get, I've seen it occasionally, even with 10 figure brands, it seems like it's more with seven figure brands that I see this. And so if you're a seven figure brand, go check this. And that is just not utilizing all of those audiences that Brett just talked about it. It's low hanging fruit in a lot of instances. The other one, Brett, that we see a lot, and this is fairly recent, but I still find a lot of brand owners are surprised when I say, did you know you can hook Clavio up to Google ads? Did you know that you can keep that fresh list of customer data for similar audiences? Retargeting all synced up. There used to be a time where we would just have to remind brands every 90 days or 60 days or so, depending on their velocity to upload a fresh customer list to Google ads. And again, we find no connection or a list. This was a guy had a hundred thousand clavio list a couple weeks ago and the last time it was updated was September of last year. So that's another thing that, I wouldn't say that that's sabotage necessarily, but it's definitely one of those eyes off the ball type of things.

Brett:

Totally. And there are different levels here. You could be sabotaging or you could just be not leveraging your success. And it's one of those things where you're running ads, you're investing dollars in your efforts, but there's just a few things that are off that are really making some of that money wasted or just allowing, not allowing you to get the full impact of those ad dollars. Cool. What else did you write down in your notes on ways D to C brands sabotage their success?

Chris:

Well, I think this is the part in the podcast, Brett, where I've got to, oh, I've got to back the chair out. Oh, and I've got to stand on my soapbox, which is right

Brett:

Behind me.

Chris:

So forgive me in advance. I know that there are those of you who are wounded and may need therapy from what I'm about to say. And so here's the area

Brett:

I'm curious myself where this is going quite, this is quite

Chris:

Set up. Every I here you get worried and rightfully, but that is brands will lump all agencies in the same box. That's the first segment of this. And the second segment is they don't treat their agency. I'll include freelance. They don't treat their agency or freelance partners like true partners or an in-house team. Where I see in my 14 years of experience here,

Brett:

You've got way more than that.

Chris:

And I've seen it, I've been in marketing 25 years. What I see this over and over again is they've got an individual running things. That individual is doing a good job, but one day that individual comes into work late, they have a talk with that individual, they start coming in on time. Then later that individual messes up with some campaign structure, fails to upload an audience something again, has a conversation. But then everything's great for a long time and they continue working. They stopped, had a conversation, identified the problem, found a solution, and they rectified it. What I see happen so many times with brands that hire agencies is the first time a human being drops the ball or makes a minor mistake, all trust is lost or major trust is lost. How could you guys do that? And yet the brands that we work with that have the conversation, Hey, I noticed this or I noticed that.

And sometimes noticing something or even having another agency call out something, there's actually a reason the agency did not implement that. And so I've seen brands leave agencies over things that were part of the strategy and they never gave the agency a chance to talk it out or discuss why. What are the reasons we do that? I've seen agents, I've seen brands leave agencies over copy that was written for an Amazon storefront that was taken off the Shopify site with, and they were all upset because they thought for sure it wasn't English first content. They're

Brett:

Like, we hate this content, we

Chris:

Hate this content. This is terrible. Some foreign person wrote this overseas person actually that's on your Shopify site. But those are the kinds of things that I would just encourage brands out there, and I even tell people this on discovery calls before we work together at the first hint of mistrust, misalignment, if you're having water cooler conversations with your co-founder at your brand about who you're working with, you are sabotaging your own success by not calling it out and determining an improvement plan to correct the course of action. Because it is just like it's costly when you hire an in-house person, you have to let them go and go and recruit and find someone else and train them up. It is, I could argue it is equally expensive. It is to replace an agency. And what happens sometimes is we're seeing this now in, I've seen this in every recession before every recession that comes, people pull back, I'm going to bring this in house because my brother-in-law's sister's husband used to run Google ads back when he worked for the plumbing company. That's extreme. But they know somebody that's going to run their ads for them and they pull away without asking what else is going on here? Well actually we had four people involved in the account and these kind of things. So I would just say there is malpractice. There are reasons when agencies should,

Brett:

There are bad agencies out there or lazy agencies. There are for

Chris:

Sure there are. But you really do yourself a disservice when you lump everybody together. Because I posted today in an e-commerce forum that I'm in, there is a $1 million brand that was saying, I can never recommend agencies for these reasons. I had this bad experience. And what I tried to gently point out was there are multiple service providers involved in this forum that could point to multi-year multi amounts of clients that have been with them for years. But what we forget sometimes is just the old, I don't know, the adage or proverb or it's not a proverb, it's an adage, probably is an upset client that it's not resolved, will tell so many more people than a happy one. And so many times it's kind of funny too cause I had an Amazon brand tell me one time, there's this big Facebook group with multimillion dollar sellers that I don't have access to. It's a private group. And I was talking about, man, so I hear that everybody's trashing this kind of ad type. It's is actually DSP advertising. Everybody's trashing it. And I just wish the brands had success would support it. And he's like, I'm not going to support it. Yeah. He's like, why would I support, I've got competitors in that group.

Brett:

Totally.

Chris:

Why would I chime in and talk about how awesome this is working for me? And I was like, oh, I get it. But that's what I would caution so many things as people get their KPIs from forums, people get what their goals should be from forums. People get what agent they do your own work. Yeah, figure it out. Okay, yeah, I'm

Brett:

Going to step, get influence, get inspiration, get feedback. You want to know what other people are doing, but don't take that as absolute truth. And a couple interesting things that I'll point out there. I'm

Chris:

Stepping off the soapbox now. I'm back.

Brett:

Oh, you're stepping. Okay. Soapbox right now. Got it. We'll meditate later. And I think, Hey, I love the agency business. I had an agency prior to omg. I really enjoy this type of work. So I'm pro agency, but I believe there's some brands out there that you'll be happier, you'll do better. You'll love life more if you don't work with an agency. Yep, yep. You will do better hiring an in-house team. And in fact, I'll, I'll point out Peter Goodwin, our good friend who started a Groove life silicone wedding ring company. We worked with them for quite a while. We helped them launch on YouTube and on Google. But Peter told me from the beginning, he's like, Hey man, I want to build an in-house team, but I do want to work with you guys that right now cause I know you're the best. And all this became good friends.

We had an awesome client relationship, but he was going to be happier and he wanted to build that in-house team. And he did. We know other brands like p and g as an example, there are other really large groups that they're just built to work with agencies. That's how they function. And we've had a multi-year successful relationship with a large p and g brand. And so you know, get this expertise with an agency that you often can't hire or can't find. But the one thing I'll mention, and then we'll get off your soapbox, you started this is sometimes where people are like, and you've probably heard this comment too, where I just can't find good help, I just can't find it. Good employees, employees are the worst. I remember hearing that a lot at for whatever reason, the old Dan Kennedy super conferences, which I love Dan Kennedy. But everybody at those events, just my perspective back in the day were like, oh, employ you don't want employees. Employees are the worst. So that that's about as intelligent as saying all agencies are bad, not true. Where would we be? Our most valuable resource is our team is our employees and agencies can be valuable too. So awesome. Now that we've moved past that, now that people are sufficiently convinced that agencies are okay, what would you share next? Chris?

Chris:

Really, I mean the last thought I had, this is one I'll source the Harvard Business Review so I can give credit where credit is due. I thought this was really great, that teamwork can be frustrating for very smart people

And that's where they find it sometimes difficult to truly delegate because they got a sense that I can do it better. Regardless of whether or not that's true, especially likely for those, like we were saying earlier, those have a perfectionist streak. So one of the things that we look for when we're evaluating a brand relationship is if we've got an owner, and sometimes these can be multi-million dollar brands, but the owner still got his hands on Google ads because they learned it and that's what they do. And now they realize they got to gather up the baby and they got to pass it over to this other. And what happens, and we've seen this, we saw this a lot during smart shopping years of Google Smart Shopping where we knew that that campaign needed those, I don't know, Brett, four or five days to let the algorithm determine what was going on.

Brett:

Yeah. After you make a change, need to let it do its thing, experiment a little bit before you make the next round of changes.

Chris:

And so this extremely smart, extremely well educated individual who hired us because of what he heard about our expertise on smart shopping, sees the early data on the campaign and before saying anything goes in and pauses it. And we had that happen multiple times. Even though we have in our agreements only we are going to be in the account, all of those things they just can't help themselves. And those are things that then we had to start those things all over and it just causes a lot. Now it's not just keeping your hands off your campaigns and things like that, but it's also just being kind of self-compassionate about your own internal reactions and understand where those come from and generally appreciate what diverse minds bring to a team. That's a quote from the Harvard Business Review. And I think that is a real key.

And sometimes if you find that you're having trouble scaling outside of macroeconomic factors and maybe you look in your rear view mirror and you've had a lot of team members come and go, you've worked with a lot of good agencies that you thought were good agencies but didn't work out, maybe the next stop is the mirror to a self-identify. Like where have I prevented our own success here? And get some expertise, some outside help. Like, Hey, tell me what I should know here. Where am I? Where are my blinders? Be open. That's one of the things I love about our team at OMG is anybody can come to me, the co-founder and say, Hey, I've noticed this about you. I think this is something maybe you could work on. Or, I get frustrated when you do this and there's no power trip over that. Totally. And so l look, sometimes stop and think about, hey, what other factors could be in place here that is preventing my brand from reaching the levels that I believe and others have told me that it could reach.

Brett:

Yeah, really good. I heard another agency owner talk about, I think he called it talented founder syndrome, where as founders we're pretty smart and we're pretty confident and we're willing to push through obstacles and we're generally right about a lot of things. Certainly not everything but right about a lot of things. That's how we've become successful. And so then it becomes difficult to delegate and let loose of some things, but ultimately you have to or you're going to get, get stuck. And so really good insights. Chris, thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing. I know we could keep going, but we are up against the clock. So for those that are interested and they're like, man, I'd like to talk to Chris Brewer, I'd like to talk to Chris about my business, how can they get in touch with you?

Chris:

The easiest way is to go to our website, omg commerce.com. We've got a strategy session button there. Click that, fill out some brief information. My coworker, Caitlin will review that, will ask me maybe some additional questions. We'll send out a follow up, can fill out some additional foot stuff. It saves us about an hour of that if we feel there's a fit, if we don't feel there's a fit, I know Brett and I both know amazing other freelancers, agencies that we can refer to. So I'd say, Hey, don't hesitate to reach out if you think you're too small or what have you. I'm happy to spend even 15 minutes. I do a lot of little 15 minute calls just like, Hey, what's your challenge? Let's figure it out and let me point you in this direction or this course you could buy or this person you could hire. But that's how you can reach is just that free strategy session on our site. And I'd be happy to set up either a short call or if it's more appropriate, a more in depth kind of exploratory conversation.

Brett:

And I've been on a lot of those calls with you, Chris, over the years and very helpful, very insightful. People leave those calls feeling good about themselves and good about their business and they feel like they've gotten some good direction

Chris:

Pitch. We have no pitch on the

Brett:

First call. And so if you're looking at Google ads, help you get performance max questions, YouTube questions, you want to grow your email and SMS marketing or anything related to Amazon, reach out. We'd love to chat with you. And just out of a quote a minute ago that we'll kind of, we'll end this on getting outside perspectives, getting outside help, not a sign of weakness, sign of wisdom. And I really like that. So Chris, any final words or recommendations or things you want to point out before we sign off?

Chris:

No, I would just say do your research, do your homework. Put as much effort into hiring those that work from an outside perspective in your business as you do in hiring your own team members. That would be my final thing is I don't know if omg, I think we got six rounds. I think it's like five or six rounds before someone can actually start working for us.

Brett:

Yeah, several. It's at least at least four.

Chris:

And so don't hire your first freelancer because of recommendation or an agency. Really do your homework and it things will turn out a lot better for you.

Brett:

Love it. Chris, thank you so much. It's been another good one. And we will make round whatever the next one is. Hey, much shorter. That's

Chris:

Fine than fine. I'll, I'll hear from you in a couple years. Thank you for so much

Brett:

For the opportu opportunity. Okay, thanks Chris. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We could not do this show or Lisa wouldn't be fun to do this show without you, so we'd love your feedback. What would you like to hear more of on the show? If you have any guest recommendations or burning questions, fire them our way. I am active on Twitter at Brett Curry, active on LinkedIn, the Brett Curry, and hey, I'm just starting on TikTok, so check it out, see what you think there. Would love to connect with you on the socials until, and with that, until next time. Thank you for listening.

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Jeremy Horowitz is one of my favorite follows on LinkedIn. 

He recently dropped some brilliant (and terrifying) posts about the economy, the impending debt crisis, and what DTC brands should focus on now.

Jeremy and I go way back. In fact, this is our 4th podcast together over the years (he used to host a show too). Jeremy has been in the DTC SaaS space for years, having previously managed marketing for a large DTC brand. Jeremy is now the Sr. Partner Manager at Gorgias, and he and his team run the DTCX events, which have become some of my favorites to speak at and attend. 

Here's a look at what we cover. Some of it's heavy, but it also speaks to the amount of opportunity on the horizon: 

• What keeps Jeremy up at night? A potential consumer debt crisis? More at this link.
• 64% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Those making over $100k per year are in the same boat.
• What you can learn from Liquid Death. 
• Understanding how and where your customers want to buy.
• Avoiding the discount doom loop.
• Getting your inventory as close to "just-in-time" as possible.
• A different way to look at your marketing budget and performance. 

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Mentioned In This Episode:

• U.S. Personal Savings Rate Chart
• Jeremy Horowitz (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

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Transcript:

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Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today we are going to talk big picture. We're going to provide some information that I think will be helpful, maybe a little bit scary as well, but I think overall positive. So we're going to be talking about state of the economy, state of the eCommerce, and what you should be doing right now and for the rest of the year to ensure success and growth for your D2C brand. I've got the man, the myth, the legend Jeremy Horowitz on the podcast today. And Jeremy is a guy that I've known for a long time now. He used to run a podcast. I was on that podcast and he was on this podcast ages ago as well, but now he's a senior partner marketing manager at Gorgias. Gorgias is a much beloved partner of OMG Commerce. And we'll talk more about Gorgias as we go. But Jeremy, I've, I've recently discovered is an amazing follow on LinkedIn. He's writing some really thought provoking items and so as I was reading his stuff I was like, Jeremy, you got to get on the podcast and talk about this stuff. And so here he is. So Jeremy, welcome to the show man. How you doing? And thanks for taking the time.

Jeremy:

Thank you. Thank you. I am doing awesome. I think it's our fourth podcast we've done over the years, so we're excited to dive that in. I have no idea, I'm going to live up to that intro, so I hope I can really deliver on all the key points. But yeah, I'm really excited to dive in. It really just came out of at Gorgias, we were analyzing data across 11,000 merchants past couple years. I've just been scratching my head of like everybody's saying all these crazy things and shouldn't be happening looking at a bunch of brands that I work with, both through Gorgias and personally, it was like, is this actually happening? And most of the time it's almost never matching up. So I just started studying a lot of the data across all of our merchants and then I started studying the public filings of your and Meadows just to see what's going on.

Cause essentially when you aggregate all e-commerce up into hundreds of thousands, millions of brands we're essentially the digital economy we that's reflected in those earnings. And so I've just been trying to try to just read the TVs and figure out are we in a recession? Are we not in a recession? How bad is inflation? How good is inflation? How has that impacted, where is e-commerce on its growth trend? And I'm sure we'll dive into all of those things. But yeah, I'm basically just like everybody else, just trying to just combine as many and try and get as many points as possible to figure out what is actually going and what can we tactically do to just keep moving through all these just unprecedented times that candidly have been enough ready for some from normal times and some non unprecedented times for a couple years.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so true. And I love the way you unpack that. And then that's exactly what we're going to dive into on this show, making sense of some of the broader macroeconomic issues that are taking place. And just a quick caveat, I'm not an economist. Jeremy's not an economist, but Jeremy's a really smart dude. And so we're going to be diving into this because we want to get a pretty good picture of what's actually happening, where are things headed so that we know what to do and we know how to grow our business, we know how to keep pushing forward and take care of our teams and our clients and our customers and all of those things. So yeah, because I pay attention to the news a lot as well, and we're talking about this before we record. Sometimes I hear things like, Hey, something worse than a depression is on the way.

And I'm like, oh no, that sounds terrible. And then I listen, I read something else and they're like, it's going to be a soft landing. Nothing to see here, nothing to worry about. Economy is up until the right, everything is great. Inflation is not bad, don't worry about it. We're in a recession, we're not in a recession. Just all this stuff. And to your point as well, we've had unprecedented year after unprecedented year, right? Pandemic, totally unprecedented. Then we had supply chain issues caused by the pandemic and now inflation, it's just one year after another. It's stuff we haven't dealt with before. So yeah, I would take some normalcy if you would dial that up, Jeremy. I would totally take that.

Jeremy:

What does that even mean anymore? That's a good point.

Brett:

That's a good point. We wouldn't know what to do with ourselves if things were normal, but here we are and no sense in wishing for something other than what is right, let's just get after it and try to make things work as best as we can. But you had a recent post, and this was the post that really triggered me to say, okay, Jeremy, I got to get on the podcast. It was what is keeping me awake at night right now? And I'm a really positive person, by the way. I can always see the positive things, but I'm also a realist and I want to look at the hard stuff too. So unpack that a little bit. Jeremy, what is keeping you up at night right now?

Jeremy:

So this was a chart that was done. It was a research firm and a private equity company paired together to look at from basically late 2019 to release this in q4. So it was basically through q3, Q4 of 2022, how much consumer credit card debt was the average US consumer taking out and what was their savings rate as a percentage of their income. And I'll share this in, and I can send this so we can throw this in the show notes, but yeah, I'll

Brett:

Link your to your, it's basically a post or whatever. I'll link to that in the show notes. But yeah, there there's this graph that shows savings rate versus credit card debt. Yeah, but you're good.

Jeremy:

And so as you soon go, we go into the lockdowns and early part of 2020, saving rates go through the roof. So the normal average float somewhere around five to 7% during the covid lockdowns, they go spike around 30, 33% in 2020. And that kind of, depending on where you see stimulus, it also goes into a little bit of 2021. And that makes crazy high rate probably, well, I don't know, you can ever have too high of a savings rate, but it just in way past the average. And then you see the amount in hundreds of millions of dollars of credit card debt just plummet from about 850 to 750. And so right from a traditional finance, personal finance, that's great things to see. People are paying down their credit card debt really actively managing their finances and then saving a lot of money. So they have good cash reserves.

So that for us in the consumer economy, they're in a good place to spend. They've got savings that they can tap into, they've got credit card debt that they can tap into. Then the really thing that what keeps me up at night is as you see in 2021, and then what really flexes into 2022 is essentially just a hard reversal of those two graphs and just, you see it's skyrocket in either direction. So by the end of 2022, you see that the personal savings rate had basically it fell back down to somewhat normal levels and that five to 10% and then plummeted down to 3%. And then you just see the credit card rate, the amount of the credit card volume skyrocket from that seven 50 area to north of 950 million, no, nine 50 billion, 909, a big number, a really way too big number that you can't wrap your mind around.

I think it's 9 billion, but that sounds insane to me. So I'm going to say nine 50 million and then we can fact check me afterwards, but it just essentially goes skyrockets. And it was pre pandemic, it was about 850, so a meaningful step up north of 10, 15%. And so what really keeps me up at night is it billion, right? It's 50. So nine 50 billion, really, really bigger than the GDP of probably a lot of other economies in the world. And so right, credit card debt isn't bad, savings should be good, but there's everybody's decision on what they should be doing. But really what more concerns me is knowing that I don't know about everybody else, but every credit card on their mother has offered me a credit card in the past three years. And if I had actually taken all of them out, I think my credit limit would've been something like three x my actual income, which is just bubbly. That's just scary. Those are not good. And just knowing that not all consumers are that disciplined, my guess is reading the middle ground of that data that people are overextended. And so some other data point has really come out that 64% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

When you just think about that means over half of every consumer that you could possibly touch is literally on paycheck to paycheck to pay for everything that they're working on. And then the second piece of that that really is like, oh boy is a group, there's a sliver segment of that that makes six figures a year. They're making over a hundred thousand dollars in gross income on an annual basis and still live paycheck to paycheck. And so what really concerns me is when we take a step back, lockdowns tons of stimulus and inflation, and I don't want to spend too much time on monetary theory, but when the government pumps even more money than what people are already making and the only place that they can pump

Brett:

Amounts of money that have never been pumped into the system before.

Jeremy:

So

Brett:

Yeah, it never happened before to that level.

Jeremy:

Sure, right. Unprecedented scale, unprecedented frequency. Cause it happened multiple times and at those points in time, all consumers could really push at a meaningful volume into maybe their homes was consumer goods. So we had this artificial one-time massive growth that's just really, really jacked up. Then on this back of that, consumers are like, well, I don't really want to change my spending habits now, and I actually, and now I want to go and travel and do all these other things that are going to require me to spend money. And unless something else happens and maybe there's plenty more brilliant people out there than me, maybe there's some simple solve to this that we just haven't figured out yet. But at a certain point this has to stop. People have to either go back to savings or default on their credit card or stop spending money.

I mean, maybe I'm blatantly missing something, but to me it's like it has to be one of those three camps. And so just knowing that having your financial capital tied up in inventory is the kiss of death for any e-commerce or retail business. To me, this is, I think I'm really focusing on this year and every brand that I taught you and advise, it's like how are you really, really optimizing your inventory? How are you being really, really thoughtful about your timelines to inventory when you're placing pos, how much inventory you're carrying? Because at a previous company, and this is a super extreme just to prove a point, but when I was audacity, be calculated to weeks of term, which is essentially how many weeks will it take you based on your current sales velocity to completely sell out? Some brands we were seeing had hundreds of weeks, thousands of weeks of inventory.

And that faces a reaction I need of knowing that all of these factors are at play. You just have to be so nimble in these times. And I know that that's for every operator out there. I'm sure you all just turn off the podcast and hate me because it's the past two years from the supply chain have been a nightmare and everybody's been telling me to load up on inventory and get ahead of this. Exactly. But to me, this is where we're in a little bit of a pickle on our side of the just economy and sphere of yes, the proper thing to do was to load up on inventory, but now you might get stuck with too much if your consumer demand falls off. And so I think the one piece of helpful advice, and I hope what everybody takes away from this is really start studying your customer's purchasing behavior.

And I'm going to misuse in an economic term, but I like the way it sounds of really start to understand your consumer demand curve. So if I'm to study economics, I know it's the price and quantity, but really understand what's, how often do people buy, how much do they spend when they buy? And are my customers the type of customers that literally wait for a paycheck to afford my product or do they need to put it on buy now and pay later? All of those components. And I know you can probably buy some third party data to understand more of the financial habits of your customers, but I think that's going to be really, really important because the key has always been to tie your inventory buying to that as much as possible. And I don't think it's a skill a lot of people developed as you could just blow out sales recently, but it's kind of a little bit more of, I don't kind of the old days when we used to really have to manage merchandising and the e-com manager side of the store, but I feel like that's really going to be the key for everybody this year.

Brett:

Yeah, I'm so glad you pointed that out. And I want to just k kind of key in on a couple of things. One, I think this all does go back to really understanding the consumer, understanding what they're experiencing right now and how that might predicting or thinking how that might impact behavior going forward. But knowing that 64% of consumers live paycheck to paycheck and it's not the lower income folks only, it's people that are making over six figures. So even if you feel like you're reaching a higher income earner, probably most of them are living paycheck to paycheck as well. So just knowing any little blip, if we start to see unemployment rates really go up, that could cause demand to shift dramatically. Right now we've got all these weird things happening, but unemployment is really low. Everybody's working, a lot of people are working.

So cash is still flowing, but a lot of it is credit based and saving rates are going down to your point and that you can look at the graph for yourself to see how scary it is. But yeah, and now this is a complete, those things inverted, the savings rate and the credit card spending those inverted recently. So did your approach to inventory that got flipped upside down too, right? Because a couple years ago was all about just get in whatever we can get in because we'll sell it. And now you got to think about it. And so one of the things we did, and I actually wrote this article at the beginning of the pandemic, it was about understanding consumer behavior in a downturn because if you remember, this is actually hard to turn back the clock and remember, but March and April of 2020 looked like things were going to be a disaster.

Those were the first losing months that OMG commerce ever had where we didn't plan on it. There was other CapEx times and whatnot. We'd spent a lot of money what we meant to. And so we lost money for that month. It was the first two months we ever lost money. But then we're like, oh wait a minute. Yeah, everybody's stuck at home. They can't spend money on anything else other than stuff online. And then things exploded. But I wrote this article on how are consumers going to respond to a recession? And it's interesting, you kind of got these different buckets and we got this pulled up. So we kind of talk about it. There's some people that just slam on the brakes, bad stuff happens, they slam on the brakes. There are other people that are like, they're pained, but they're patient so they're feeling the pain, but they don't want to really give up what they're doing.

You get the comfortably well off folks and then you've got the people that are kind of live for today that are like, Hey, caution the wind, whatever, we'll just keep spending money. I think to your point, there's a lot of people that are live, live for today or where they're feeling comfortably well off where they start those spending habits and they don't want to adjust them. They start those spending habits and just because inflation's there, they're not spending less, they're going on trips, they're doing some of those things. So I think just understanding that it doesn't take a lot to shift things off a cliff, so to speak, in terms of demand and being ready for that. So time is back to inventory. I think that's a really important piece. What are you recommending to merchants now? How should they be thinking about inventory? How many weeks worth of sell through? What are some practical tips you you'd give there?

Jeremy:

Yeah, so I would say that just in time inventory should be taken to probably as close as you can take it to the extreme. And I know it's very different for every business because you have your PO timelines, you have your sell through and wholesale retail,

Brett:

Running out of inventory is bad too. Really. We manage brands on Amazon and you know, run out inventory on Amazon and you got to start some of your flywheel over again. So running out is bad too. But yeah, close to just in time is probably a really good idea.

Jeremy:

And I think, right, cause you really have to thread the needle. You can't go too far in either direction, but I think you really have to lean more towards is this sellout existentially bad for our business and start more on that side. But I think it's really more of just speed. If I was running a brand, I would probably be checking myself through on my best products every day. And then I'd probably be checking myself through my products once a week, if not multiple times a week. Just because assuming that you have the right terms with your manufacturers, I probably would be placing pos more frequently. I know that's not as cost effective and everybody's going to like, well, you'd be more profitable and you're telling me to do something less profitable. But I think this is actually where you need to push your margins on every other part of your business so you can afford to spend a little bit more here just to give yourself the runway.

Because what we never talk about, and I know people are probably on two thousands to say cash conversion cycle, but really how long does it take me to put dollars out of my business? How long does it take me to bring dollars back in And inventory, especially if you're shipping from overseas, you're automatically on probably a month to two month timeframe as just the fastest baseline. And so really being intelligent about that. I think the other piece is just if you like more of a tactical thing. One of the best things we did when I was at a brand back at my time at Lumi is every week I'd standing e with my ops team and our head of supply chain and logistics. And I would literally go through our inventory and it would mostly be prioritized by our best sellers, but I would let them know, hey, these are the changes we're making to our paid media budget.

These are the things that are going on promo, these are the things that we're going to feature on the site and email blah blah, blah blah blah. And then they would start adjusting. And if you don't have that already add, it's the calendar this week. If it's something you're already doing maybe once a month, I'd probably pull that into biweekly weekly. Really have that down. It's really a muscle that you have to learn. There's no perfect science. There's tons of tools that will tell you that they have this perfect algorithm and they help but consumer, consumer demands consumer demand. And so you really just have to get really dialed in there so that when you do have the shakes and when do things do change, you can really adjust as quickly as possible. And I mean, Lululemon is already running away. We made too much sale.

And I think it's actually a brilliant tactic of they're just ripping the bandaid off. It's going to be painful. People are talking about it a lot. What concerns me about what they're doing is they're running it at such a scale that they might actually get into a discount death spiral where they might pull in so much consumer demand cause they're making such a big deal out of it that then they're not going to hit their sales targets in Q2 34. So that actually there's ways that you have to be very careful about it, but I think we're just going to see a lot more people less aggressively discount top of funnel and less disagree acquisition and more strategically discount. How do we move stuff? How do we clean stuff out? And I actually drew Sn one of our close friends really had a meaningful posts about this on Twitter or about the past week of we really shouldn't be discounting the super loyal people that are with you and are going to buy. And there's very strategic points at when to introduce those promos, how to introduce those promos. And you can do it fairly automated now. And I think we're just going to see way more adoption of that with the couple of how oil companies have their burnoff or we're pump, we're pumping too much oil so we burn oil off so we don't ruin everything. I think we're going to see more of those clearance sale type of just move out of the system when need be. That's

Brett:

A good analogy. A little oil burnoff. You got to get rid of some of that inventory and you got to rip the bandaid off and the Lululemon, the example. And I do want to talk about some other DDC brands that are doing really well right now. Cause I think we've learned great from examples. But let's talk about Lemon really quickly. Obviously phenomenal brand, they crushed it during the pandemic. Everybody's wearing yoga pants, staying at home and whatnot. But talk a little bit about that. So now they're discounting everything. What are your thoughts on that discount death loop and any more thoughts about Lululemon, but then also specifically how do we avoid that discount death loop?

Jeremy:

Yeah, so plenty of thoughts on Lululemon, but the good sound bite is actually Ezra Firestone has, I think one of the most intelligent promotion cadences where he's just like, I really don't discount much on the top of funnel and every six, eight weeks I'm running a shallow discount to just get people over the line and clear out some inventory. And so without knowing anybody's business or the intimate inner workings, I would just generally, I would say that that's a pretty good philosophy to have. Obviously tons of nuances and cadences to everybody's business as far as Lululemon, the, it's kind of like a contagion outbreak I think is what I'm concerned by is if this is small scale and it's a small percentage of their inventory specifics products, that classic fashion model where stuff goes out of season and we cut

Brett:

Last year's stuff, buying a sweater and it's June and it, it's fine. That doesn't hurt the brand. You're just, you're getting rid of stuff.

Jeremy:

Right? Exactly. Versus hey, we just launched a bunch of new stuff, we're putting a bunch out, end of stuff's only six months old and we still think we have too much. The problem is that although I know that everybody loves to think that you're going to promote a sale and a ton of new customers are going to come in and buy, at least in my experience, it's your loyal customers and the people who are going to come back and buy anyway who just run through it and take as much inventory as possible, which is great for that short term cash injection. The problem is that if you promote it too heavily to them, you're removing your buyers in three to six to 12 months. And so yes, it solves your short term problem and survival. You can only play in the game if you survive.

It's like, I want to be very practical here, but then when you're like, oh, we produce all this inventory and we're trying to hit our sales numbers for q2, Q3 leading up into holiday, yeah, you're probably not, you're probably going to have a lot softer sales then. And you're back to the same problem where we've produced too much, we don't have enough new customers to offload all of this inventory and we've got to go back to the same customers and it just compounds over and over and over again versus, I know nobody really likes to do this, but the strategy we've run at a couple brands is you move it in a retailer that's one of those offloading retailers, and I know that sounds bad and we need better branding for it. We should call 'em something better than liquidation partners, but move it in a channel where it is maybe a net new introduction. I personally, when I was in college and had that machining, I shot to TJ Max and we're introduced to products, it's super cheap prices and five, 10 years later I ended up buying them. But it was a way to raise it's cash out, get the cash back in your business.

Brett:

And that's only cheapen the brand. We all expect to go to Marshalls or T or TJ Max or Ross, whatever, and there's just a little one off things here and there and it doesn't hurt the brand. We're knowing we're getting it at a discount for a particular reason. And yet maybe you do attract a net new customer, which is kind of interesting. And they kind of key in on the point you're just making. It doesn't take very many of those cycles of discounting deeply and hitting your existing customers for them to be fully trained to just wait for the discount like couple cycles. And I, why would I ever pay full price for your goods at that point? And so then it's really hard to back to back away from that drug of discounting

Jeremy:

Because that tough piece, what we were talking about earlier, cash in cash out, now you're having last cash in for the same cash out from your inventory, you're a advised and it just becomes a gnarly cycle where it's very hard to get out of once you're in that kind of vicious cycle downward.

Brett:

Cool. Makes sense. Totally makes sense. Well, who else are you following? Who are some of the brands that you feel like are just crushing? And I know you may not have insights into their cash conversion cycle or how they're managing inventory, but from what you can see, what D two C brands are just crushing it right now?

Jeremy:

So from the brands that they've publicly disclosed or there's some information there, I think the first one always comes to mind is Liquid Death. We had a great time with them at Retain last Q4 last year, and it's just such an interesting brand, but they really have taken off, wait a minute, were they at Retain? Oh yeah, they spoke the day that you weren't there. They spoke the next day.

Brett:

Oh my gosh. Gosh. Yeah. So I spoke so LA Event last year. I had a blast. I loved it. I had no idea they were there. I mean, I couldn't have shifted my schedule, I couldn't have made it, but I'm so, so bummed now that I missed those guys.

Jeremy:

Yeah, I'll send you the recording of who meets speech, their SAP at retail. But I think what they've done really, really well is, and I, the reason I like them is I think it's a good representation of the opportunity here of if you think we're in no session, if you think that tough times are coming, it makes business so much more difficult. But the winners not only win then they dominate the next decade. Yes, multi-decade of their category industry, the market in general. And I think that they're already in that mode and they're just doubling, tripling down and it doesn't seem like they're slowing down at all. So if anyone doesn't know what Liquid Death is, I don't just don't know if you're under a rocker or something, but they basically sell

Brett:

Jeremy really quickly cause I don't want to lose this thought. And I think it's important right here because we started a little doomsday with a couple things. But here, here's the beauty of this conversation of what we're doing. If you make the right decisions now and get your inventory in a good spot and you get your marketing dialed in which Liquid Death does and we're going to talk about in a second, then you could be successful now. And then if things do go south, you are primed to win. And I've read a more millionaires are created during a recession than any other time. And even during the Great Depression, tons of millionaires were created. So there's opportunity there, you just got to be ready for it. So I love that mindset. We're making the right decisions now to give us the best chance of success now and for whatever may be ahead back to Liquid Death for those that are living under a rock, what is it?

Jeremy:

Yeah, and just to pile onto that point, cause I think it's really important of it also, if you just survive to be the number two, three player in your space, that's also a great business to run. You don't have to be number one if you're in the right market, it could be millions, tens, hundreds of millions, billions of dollars even in the number 2, 3, 4 slot. There will be 17 providers in a space anymore. But survival also is a big win here. But yes, yes. Liquid death, the super tltr is super fresh water in a metal can and everything is branded as super punk metal, hardcore, I don't call it aggressive advertising, but it's insane where one of their stunts was like you could sign your soul away to the company or they infused Tony Hawk's blood into skateboards and all their ads are just these really crazy far out there.

But fun. Cool. Well I guess it's very subjective. People either hate them, they're playing polarizing very well, hate it, but they're just absolutely blown up. They launched on D two C very quickly moved into Amazon now they have a massive hotel wholesale expansion, they're in Whole Foods, they're in a ton of different providers all over the country. And I think while everybody else that I know who's been expanding has been having this channel debate and it's really tough time of do I spend here, do I spend there? How do I just budget my marketing spend? And this is their speech from the conference last year is we just invest in stuff that we like and if it makes us laugh and we think it's going to be a good time, we just put a bunch of money behind it. And obviously they have all the data in the back end on society, know what to invest in.

But they're thinking about it of just how do we grow the overall sales? How do we grow the overall brand? And it's just very funny of Omnichannel was the huge thing a decade ago, then it became all of you to see the past five years. Now everybody's back to omnichannel. And it's like we get so wrapped up in all of our and so guilty of this, all the specifics, your job is just to get your customers to buy your product in any channel possible from anywhere possible and not from your competitor. And I think they're one of the best examples of they hit most of those typical growth paths of Scaled Up, got into Amazon, really, really scaled up. And then their CPG brand so aggressively went into Burry in wholesale. So I think they're a big one. I think Dr. Qua is another big one. You

Brett:

Actually came on Liquid Death really, really quickly. Newer to Liquid Death. I did not know their story until, I don't know less than a year ago for sure. But one of the things, I can't remember if you wrote about this or if I read about it somewhere else, but they did a taste test, but it was a

Jeremy:

A

Brett:

Taser taste test. And I love this angle. They took some really negative reviews online. So some people were saying it was literally the worst water they'd ever tasted. Way overpriced. People were saying it was literally the worst. And so if I remember right, liquid Death challenged these folks to a taser taste test where they gave liquid death plus other brands and if they could pick out Liquid Death as the worst in that bunch, then they would win something. But if they didn't

Jeremy:

A thousand dollars,

Brett:

Yeah, a thousand bucks, they would get tasered, right or tased and they got tad, which was pretty awesome and little risky, I think most marketing departments and most legal departments with Brown on a taser taste test but fits their brand. And I love that they did that,

Jeremy:

A ski mountain in a ski resort in Utah did that also. And it was a incredibly successful iPhone, but they took a one star review, put it on top of their mountain, all the things, if you have a great product, it's actually playing into the negative can work on a very tactical level.

Brett:

Yes, because it shows that you're confident, it shows that you're really confident in your brand and you can't do that if you've got a mediocre brand obviously. But yeah, that's a super fun, super fun tactic. So liquid death, sorry, let's talk squash. And I love Dr. Squash. I'm connected through their creative agency, a little bit raindrop, but yeah, love those guys.

Jeremy:

Yeah, another brand doing a lot of creative work. So for anybody who isn't familiar, it's all natural men's products of soaps, deodorants, bunch of other personal care products like that same model launch on ddc, got into marketplaces and now they're really, really ramping and scaling through Walmart and all those other channels. And I think what they've done really brilliantly is they just really leverage tech well and they're not leveraging tech just to have everything in their tech stack. And I've been guilty of that, of playing with all the new tools but really dialing in their data so that I was talking with their head of E-com there we're like they are testing and constantly know when to send people to their e-com store versus a partner or versus another website. And really dialing in that customer buying behavior because I think that that's, especially if you come out of that DDC mindset or just the Amazon mindset when Amazon's a little bit different cause people will buy from Amazon no matter what.

But definitely a mistake I made when I was managing Amazon and DTC that were both seven eight figure channels was certain people are only going to buy from those other retailers or those other places no matter what. It's such a waste of time to get Amazon buyers to buy from your site or Amazon buyers to buy from wherever new store you're launching it in. And then the same respect they're going to just go back and buy. And I think really just knowing the consumer behavior by channel and then doubling down and using their marketing, using their site to amplify those things that isn't to say aren't driving a ton of revenue through their site and it's not a meaningful sales channel for them. But really leveraging all of those points and that is a little bit of an eight nine figure play that is, it's more expensive.

You need to have a team to facilitate all of that. But I think you can do it at the earlier stages also of your one channel. It just really goes back to so intimately knowing how your customers buy from you that when to pick which way to go. To me, I mean their numbers have just exploded. Disclaimer, they are a Gorgias customer, but the way they're just publicly seeing that company take off, I think that they're another one where they're going to go after the p and g Unilever in their space. They're really going to meaningfully scale up. And they've also running theme here have navigated the one channel. Yeah, add in retail wholesale. And you really need to balance that because caps are going to get too expensive once you hit those 30, 40, 50 million a year thresholds where you just need to balance these things out and you're probably starting to tap into audiences that are so big that you're selling to name your retailer here. Product like buyers and customers.

Brett:

A couple things that kind of key in on there. Love the Dr Swatch brand. A little bit connected there. Spoke at a YouTube ballet event in early 2020, so pre pandemic and some of the Doctor Squa guys attended that. Do you know the guys at Raindrop Creative? Jacque Spitzer?

Jeremy:

Yeah. So

Brett:

They created the original Doctor Qua add that went viral and it was YouTube out of the year and stuff. Funny now Jacque is a friend, we're connected but they, they'd taken a YouTube course I'd taught back in 2017

Jeremy:

18. That's so cool. That's so cool. Everything is so connected

Brett:

Connection, but love what Squa is doing and yeah, it is interesting how omnichannel is all the rage again when it wasn't for a while. But I think it ultimately just comes down to what you said, we're trying to remove friction and we just want customers to buy the way they want to buy. And we typically buy in patterns. Those that buy only on Amazon usually only buy on Amazon those. And it seems like with our family, we've got stuff we buy on Amazon and stuff we buy in store and then you rarely break out of that. And so yeah, I think just understanding how do our customers want to buy this and we've got to give them that option and it's becoming more and more clear to me. And I'm sure it is to you, pure D TOC is likely not the playbook that that's not the playbook typically for the success that most people want. You need to think about marketplace, you need to think about in-store distribution really. I don't think that we have any of our largest clients, those that are doing 50, a couple hundred million that are just pure d TOC at this point.

Jeremy:

And even all the companies that we idolized back in the day that this whole model was built off of all have retail almost totally abers, Warby, Casper, Yeti, Casper, well Casper's just over its own fucking now. But that is

Brett:

A good a point. That is a good point.

Jeremy:

Well all of them, they went to DC then they went retail. Most of 'em are selling on Amazon. Most of them are trying to either are in or are working on wholesale, they're all in the model where it's just like, okay, we just need to go back to selling a product and focusing on that. And DDC is a avenue and a channel. And so I do think kind of tying it back to what we started with, wholesale adds a level of complication. Cause you do remove that piece, you got to buy longer inventory times, you got to ship it to them and they've got us all through then they pay you back and all those components. But then just I think to me just double triple down on the same principles if you know have longer times really get as much data as quickly as possible, really dive in, really start to go a little bit looser.

I know especially those retailers, the fees and things of stockouts and not fulfilling their inventory is a little bit tougher to handle. So you always have to keep that in mind when you make those decisions. But you also just have to be mindful of maybe we shouldn't be selling in 25 retail partners, maybe we should be selling in 10 or 20 or those other numbers. And I think now it's just a great time to shake things up, what actually rattles and falls off the trees versus what stays strong and you can really meaningfully streamline your business. I know that probably feels painful after two years to streamline your business, but just I really keep moving and keep doubling down because the players that survive this are going to be able to pick up a lot of amazing opportunities between talent and share, potentially acquire other brands, launch new products, so many different components once all of this passes that yeah, it's probably going to be a rough 1224, who knows how long runs. But once you're on the other side of that, as soon as the fed drops rates, debt will become cheaper again. And then we're just back to growth mode. And so it's really just about making it through this period so that we can get back to the side where we can just really aggressively get after it.

Brett:

Love it man. Love it. So aside from really getting control of your inventory and doubling and tripling down on things that are working, and I do love the idea of yeah, you want to go but just focus on what the things that are moving the needle and that are really working and kind of drop some of the other things. So focus, even though you're diversifying, you're still focusing, what other practical advice should you give? What should DDC brands be doing going forward?

Jeremy:

Yeah, so someone who on the marketing side will love this one is stop worrying about your aimer acquisition costs. Stop ring's not the right word. Stop having that be your North Star. Look at MER and just what is from a financial, you are a cfo, how much do we spend on marketing advertising costs, how much do we sell period. And then just have an understanding of what your margins are for wherever you sell. So you can have your numbers match up, your marketing spend as a percentage of sales needs to make sense from a p and l perspective, but everybody's doing these super complicated things of DTC and channel modeling and Amazon. And then how do we impact that against this, that and the other. From every time I've dug into this and from every time we've analyzed the data, the more you can just blow out one marketing channel, the more every other marketing channel does well and sells more.

And it's nothing new. It's called the halo effect. It's been around probably for a hundred years, but really go back to that and I know it's really nice to have those immediate feedback loops and that kind of dopamine hit when you know that a channel crushes and it's like that immediate feel, but you are sacrificing something by not looking at the bigger picture. So that's definitely one thing. And I think the part two of that of why it's so important is because of all of this big economic picture and if it plays out the way that I think it advertisers will have to pull out their budget either voluntarily or involuntarily. And while that's a tough thing to realize and you never want to be that advertiser for everybody else who's there, CPMs go down, it becomes less competitive. Customers buy Yes, yes. And it's easier.

It's easier from a cost perspective and from an advert number of touches advertising perspective to get people to buy. And that's, to me, that's that magic unlock where you dominate because then you can spend more money. And it goes back to the kind of three or four years ago when we weren't going crazy trying to figure out how to get cack into a reasonable place. I'm not saying we'll ever go back to that specifically, that was a very magical moment in time, but I think it will get better and things will loosen up and then you can really more aggressively put your foot on the gas even if everything else isn't really great, just because that will be less competitive. And so I think that's why having that just ready to go moment, ready to go prep is so important because if you're looking at everything holistically and you see that crack and that opening, take it and it's going to be great and it's a tough thing and there's no way anybody's going to be right all of the time. But if you can and you're in that top one 10% of brands, you're just going to set yourself up for a special moment in the company's history.

Brett:

And actually I did a podcast with from Triple Whale and we talked about how you know, should stop dispensing over your ROAS and you are not your roaz. I think it was one of the lines that you use, which was pretty great. But obviously got to pay attention to RO as we do. We look at ACO on the Amazon side, we're we're looking at those numbers regularly, but those aren't the real numbers. The real numbers are your financial numbers that that's your real businesses, the financial metrics that are there. And if you can dig into some of the minutia, some of the complexities of your numbers to unlock decisions and understand a little bit more where you lean into and what you lean out of, that's great. But you can overdo it for sure. And I think this is one of those things too that a lot of people do, and I was just thought this analogy the other day.

My son, my oldest is 21 and he's selling solar systems door to door. So he, that's cool. He got a bit of my entrepreneurial bug and he doesn't want to have a normal job and he wants to make unlimited money and stuff, which is totally cool. And he's out there knocking on doors, which is awesome because it's really, really difficult. And I'm like, hey, if you can sell that, you can sell anything. Which is true, but they've got stutters and they've got closers and he actually has a little bit of both. But you can imagine someone that didn't know the business looking at it and saying, we're paying Sutters an awful lot of money, but the closers, closers are the ones bringing all the money in, so let's just pay the closers. And I think that's what we're tempted to do. People be like, let's just run bottom of funnel search and that's it, right?

And obviously you would never look at a direct sales organization and say, stop the Sutters. That's where the leads come from. But it's the same concept with marketing. It's just sometimes a little bit harder to see. You can see who's setting the appointments in a direct sales organization. You can't always see it in a D two C brand, but it's the same concept. You unplug that business dries up and your toast. So understanding how do we make the most of what we have? And maybe that's really strict marketing budgets and we're trying to get the most out of that budget as we can, but knowing that you can't just shift bottom of funnel or things will dry up before long and then wait for those CPMs to go down. Because that was one of the beautiful things about the early part of the pandemic. Viewership went up so people on YouTube skyrocketed on Facebook skyrocket and people pulled out of the auction. So it was like a heyday man for, we had had several brands scaling then with unprecedented CPMs for the time.

Jeremy:

Yeah, exactly. And I think the coolest thing, well honestly the coolest thing pandemic was awful. But I think the interesting lesson from that time period is that was a flash episode of what happened is all those brands that were ready just hit the gas while everybody kind of just like, what's going to happen? What's waiting? We're not sure where our finances are. And I'm sure today and over the past couple years they've been in a significantly better positioned because they were able to really take advantage of that moment.

Brett:

Yeah, totally. Awesome man. Well this has been super fun. I could talk for hours with you about these topics. We are running up against time a little bit though before we sign off though, tell us a little bit about Gorgias, for those that don't know, I mean Gorgias is such an awesome success story. You guys have exploded in recent years, but what is Gorgias and then what do you specifically do at Gorgias?

Jeremy:

Yeah, thank you. Always happy to talk about Gorgias. So Gorgias is the number one help desk in the e-commerce ecosystem really. And we're the number one most solid help desk on Shopify. And so basically any customer support interaction, any customer experience interaction with your customer, we're the technology that connects you. So commenting on social emails, SMS voice, all those different platforms, WhatsApp will have just launched that platform that your CS team uses to not only really drive efficient great moments, but now innovative brands like Dr. Squad, princess Poly, are actually driving revenue through us. So using us to essentially be kind of the closers for an e-commerce company to our analogy earlier where live chat people email in with questions and all those components, how do we answer them? How do we get them the right answer? And then how do we actually turn that potential problem question into a sales opportunity? Yeah, because

Brett:

Really every touchpoint with a customer, every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to grow that relationship and an opportunity to close another sale.

Jeremy:

Yeah, exactly. And maybe it's down the road, maybe you're investing for that retention play. But yeah, and so really having a great time there. I run partner marketing, so all things with all of our partners, like amazing partners like you and omg, we're doing events, we're doing, we're working with a lot of ambassadors and affiliates in this space as well as as all the other technology and agency providers where we're just looking for fun things to do to just help people figure out how to grow their store and navigate all the craziness that has gone on. And I'm sure we'll continue to go on over the next couple of years,

Brett:

No doubt. But you guys do an amazing job. One you put on great events, we've done some events together and just a lot of smart people at Gorgias Man, a lot of brilliant, brilliant people at Gorgias, most of our biggest, fastest growing clients are using Gorgias. And so we give it the full OMG stamp of approval for what that's worth. So yeah, man. Hey, I strongly recommend people follow you on the socials. Where are you most active? I see you on LinkedIn, but where are people or where should people follow you if they want more Jeremy Horowitz in their life?

Jeremy:

Yeah, so on LinkedIn I try to post one helpful thing every day. So Jeremy Horowitz, H o r o W I t Z, and then I've got everything else that I'm working on linked, like linked from there. So yeah, that would be the easiest place to find me.

Brett:

Sweet. That's awesome, man. All right, good stuff. Well, hey, hopefully people are prepared. They're, they're going to be mindful of what can happen, but they're also not fearful but inspired, right? Because that would be the messenger. Don't be afraid. Yes, be aware and be prepared and then you can crush it no matter what. No matter what happens. So any other asks, any other call outs, any other resources, anything else you want to mention before we sign off?

Jeremy:

Everybody have an amazing 2023. If there's anything can help with, let me know.

Brett:

Awesome. Thanks buddy. Appreciate the time.

Jeremy:

Thanks. Have a good,

Brett:

Awesome. And as always, thank you for tuning in. I would love to hear from you, what would you like to hear more of on the show, guest ideas if you have them. I'm open to that as well. And if you haven't done it, I would love that review on iTunes, helps other people find a show. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

‍

At one time, Charles Tichenor was a top 100 advertiser on Facebook.

On the platform, he frequently manages 7 figure budgets per DAY! 

In the early days, he managed FB ads for Apple, New Balance, major automotive brands, and more. Facebook gave him test budgets ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 per day to test new features and Betas.

In this episode, Charles and I dig into what’s working now, what mistakes he’s seeing, and a bit of his framework for success.

Here’s a look at what we cover:

• How Facebook Advantage Plus ads give you an unfair advantage - and what you should do about it right now.
• If you want to win more customers, you have to BE your customer.
• How chasing “what’s working now” with Facebook creatives is likely to make you a second-rate advertiser - and what to do instead.
• The AI Charles was using before Chat GPT and how you should use it.
• Creative ways to use Chat GPT to speed up your marketing process.
• How TikTok is different from all the other platforms.
• How to win with TikTok organic and paid ads.
• How to land on the right creatives for your brand.
• Plus MORE!

‍

Mentioned In This Episode:

• Charles Tichenor (LinkedIn) ‍
• Charles Tichenor (Twitter)‍
• Charles Tichenor (Instagram)  ‍
• Disrupter School (Website) ‍
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)
  ‍

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today we are talking with Charles Tichenor from disruptor school.com and we're talking about Facebook ads and social and AI and all kinds of crazy fun stuff to help you grow your business. And quick background, I met Charles first at Geek out c Diego. I was speaking there, shout out to Nick Shackleford, met Charles there. I was like, whoa, who is this crazy, crazy smart guy. And so we met there and then Blue Ribbon, also San Diego, separate events over time. We met there because you were speaking with my buddy Jeremiah Allen, and so we really connected and hung out there, I think over the cigar party potentially. But anyway, Charles and I were chatting. We're like, dang, this is a podcast episode. Let's do it. So here you are. So Charles, what's up man? And I want you to shed light on a couple things and I got a couple of intro questions for you, but all right, let's listed as Top 100 Advertiser on Facebook. Yes. You've generated a billion dollars in revenue from Facebook ads. These are some crazy, crazy statistics. What do you attribute that to? How have you become this monster maybe that some people don't know about on Face with Facebook ads?

Charles:

I think it really comes down to three things. First off is luck and timing in that I basically was spending seven figures a day before there was a Facebook pixel. So the fact that I was supervisor at Omnicom for the Resolution Media, the performance marketing division overseeing Nissan and CBS and Henkel working with Act Division and Levi's and Apple back in like 20 13, 20 14, just right place, right time. So that's always a key place of things. There's nothing you can totally beat that. Totally. I think a second thing was that I did get a very strong background in data science and analysis. So I have an MBA from a Harvard Business Review, and what that really helped me do was when I was spending that money, I was always doing case studies. I was always doing very aggressive testing. And what that meant was, back at the time there was one rep at Facebook for everybody west of the Mississippi River, and nobody wanted to talk to me because Facebook was this ugly redhead stepchild of a thing that everybody in the room was all about Yahoo,

Brett:

Nobody understood it.

Charles:

So me and this guy became best friends and anytime there was a new tool or they were building up a new team or new ad type I had a seven figure budget to test it. One of the first big wins we had was I launched the first lead gen ads on Facebook. So not only did I have huge budgets, but I also had master's degree education on conducting case studies and data analysis for marketing. So I kind of became that Chuck Yeager of Facebook ads, one of, not the only one, but a few of them just kind of test piloting a million things. So by the time other people got to see stuff, Facebook was funding me at 10,000, $50,000 a day sometimes on new tools. And that still happens to this day which has given me tremendous insight in how the platform was developed, the tools, how they're being designed, the product teams behind marketing and messenger and measurement, how they all were actually working together.

And I've seen those teams evolve over years. And I think the last thing is that I had the luxury of not learning how to run Facebook ads from somebody that was good at email or search or programmatic. I kind of came in fresh, which meant that I have a huge advantage over most people or I did. And I try to teach that advantage because I look at Facebook not as a version of Google display or of email, and I don't value the same metrics in the same way that most other people do. And I've always looked at it through the lens of business results and that has made me a really bad agency employee. But ultimately when I got to the side of vendor and made me one of the best, I'm on my fourth eight figure business to a nine figure exit in the last five years that started as a low end seven figure business. Dude,

Brett:

That's not bad.

Charles:

It's not luck eventually it's a process.

Brett:

Do that once and that's cool. Yeah, yeah, for almost on your fourth, that's fantastic. But it's such an interesting point though. We all and just realizing we all come to whatever we're working on with a paradigm. So you came to Facebook ads, but really not with the paradigm of Google or TV ads or something like that. If I were to approach and try to dig into Facebook, I would totally look at it from the lens of Google ads on YouTube because that's what I know. That fresh perspective is useful. And I think, like you said, you can kind of unlearn that a little bit and force yourself to have a fresh perspective, which is pretty cool. So amazing ways to learn seven figure a day budgets and Facebook linear via an alpha tester beta test or things like that. That's awesome. So fast forward to today. Quick shout out to Triple Whale and RAA Mutual friend of ours, you were just nominated for a Whaley, which is brand new, that's Triple Whales award they give out in the d c industry. Sadly, you did not win, but it's still a happy story. So talk, what were you nominated for and how did you finish in the final rankings there?

Charles:

So they had a lot of awards best, most innovative brands and communities and all of that. I was nominated for the last award which was Best Operator which was tremendous. I mean, it was an amazing award to be recognized like that. And sadly I didn't win, but Renee from Marine Laer did win and top. If I'm going to lose to somebody, I'll lose to that woman that is doing 200 million plus retail locations. Hey, look, it's Triple Whale. She's the bigger whale than me. I'll come for her next

Brett:

Year.

Charles:

And

Brett:

Phenomenal brand 12

Charles:

Months, just a closer. So it was an honor, and if you have to lose losing to the best feels really good. Yeah,

Brett:

I hear you man. We'll, kudos to you to become runner up for the inaugural whales as best operator. It's like their best picture if we're going to compare this to the Oscars. So well done. And tip the hat to Marine layer for sure. Awesome, man. Well let's dive in. So we're going to talk Facebook and TikTok and social and AI and a lot of fun stuff, but what are some of the changes that have happened with Facebook ads over the last six, eight months that maybe some people aren't aware of yet?

Charles:

I think the biggest change that we're seeing is the unfair advantage that Facebook is giving to Advantage Plus campaigns right now, which is a certain style of running an ad, it's a certain campaign type that that's an option. I was doing some of the tests about a year ago where they were giving us about 10,000 a day to test it, and it's a slight change in the way that Facebook is using their data to target the right people to get results. Historically, once Facebook introduced the conversion pixel, which again I remember when that was, was a greater, that was more traumatic to the industry than iOS 14 ever was which was just wild. Like iOS 14 was a roadblock, a speed bump, what I mean in comparison to the end of

Brett:

Days. But the conversion, well that was traumatic and mostly in a good way for Facebook advertisers. It was traumatic, maybe the rest of the industry.

Charles:

And no I saw so many agencies refuse to adopt the conversion objectives. They really dove into P P C and Facebook, to be fair, was designed to compete with Google Display. And when they refused to adopt machine learning, there were folks that bought into it that were really successful. All the brands that got really big in 20 16, 20 17, 20 18, because Facebook ads are really easy adopted it. There are other agencies that fought it that lost floors in their Manhattan office. It was a massive either you were on one side of that divide or the other. And to bring it back to Advantage plus, we're seeing a very interesting piece come in where Facebook is underpricing the attention specifically to invest in a change in consumer behavior. They've done this previously with dynamic product ads, carousel ads. Before that there was no carousel, and those are the ads where you swiped through left and you just see all the products.

There was nothing like that beforehand. And what Facebook did was they gave a discount on how much it cost to reach people, specifically making the investment to change consumer behavior. To be fair, they also did with Canvas ads, which failed miserably. And Hey, look, I made a lot of mistakes with Canvas ads. I completely bet on it, and failed miserably and Call of Duty was still the number one game that year. So kind of shows you how that works. And we're also seeing them make the investment in shops, but a lot of people running Facebook ads have noticed that there's like a 20% off on the shop side, and that's Facebook making an investment to take some of their profit to change consumer

Brett:

Percent off on your CPMs. So you're running an ad to

Charles:

No 20% off like the purchase, it was 20% off the purchase price, people getting massive discounts up to like $20 off buying something. But Facebook was just refunding the user. It wasn't actually coming out of the advertiser's bottom line.

Brett:

Oh,

Charles:

Interesting. And that was to get people used to using shops and the really invested in changing consumer behavior. So with Advertiser with Advantage Plus, they're investing heavily in getting the advertisers to change the way that they're using the platform in a slightly different style. And best practice for years now has been broad targeting, dynamic creative, define your best ads and letting that run at lowest cost Auto placement, which is now maximized conversions or whatnot or I remember it was they keep changing the name for the same stuff but what we're getting with Advantage Plus is they are giving advertisers better results merely because they're using that tool because Advantage Plus does three things really well and different than other platforms. Number one, normally the way

Brett:

A phrase explain what Advantage Plus is to those that don't know. And maybe you'll wrap up into these three things, but yeah,

Charles:

Yeah, absolutely. So Advantage Plus is a type, it's an option when you're running a conversion campaign to tap into the Advantage Plus style way of running the algorithm. And what it does differently than a normal conversion campaign is three things. Typically Facebook spends money on ads because the end user has a good experience with that ad. And then our job is to make sure that the ads that get spend also drive good business results. An advantage plus, it's not only saying the end user, but also that person is directly in market to make a purchasing decision, which is a slight nuanced change, but it's more or less even at prospecting, we're still kind of retargeting people that might very well be in another company's funnel where at Broad, for instance, I used to run New Balance and we did initial testing around advanced matching, and we found that up to two thirds of our budget was spent on people that had clicked on our competitor's ads and been to their site in the last week.

Advantage Plus is basically cranking that up. It's a way more aggressive version of that. Second thing is that it's not allowing for dynamic creative, so you have to put in your best ads and third, only good ads are getting spent. So you can put in really bad ads and push the budget to the moon and you might not get any delivery at all, which is very similar to big caps and cost cap. So Advantage Plus is basically forcing advertisers to only put out the best ads and to prioritize or isolate those best ads and spend the most amount of money on them so that they get the best results. And really what Facebook is doing is they're putting their thumb on the scale of the market economy so that advertisers are encouraged to make the best form of content so that Facebook users have the best experience. And that is a tremendous change, and we don't know how long that'll go on for. Eventually those costs will come up, but the folks that are taking advantage of it are seeing astronomically just tremendous performance above the baseline. And to give it a small example, I was testing it at 10,000 a day, maybe six months ago, a year ago. I'm now at 35, 40,000 a day on an ad account where I'm spending 80 to a hundred thousand a day. And that's a huge piece, and be fair,

Brett:

It's 30 to 40% of your pool spend is going to,

Charles:

And we have to understand that part of the way it's doing that is predicting what people are going to do. So it can't be the majority of your traffic because if all of your people are taking predictions, eventually you run out of data to make good decisions with, and that's a whole other thing for another day, but it's

Brett:

Doing very interesting. So let's dive into creatives just for a minute. I do. I want to kind of underscore something because this is interesting, something I didn't know about Advantage Plus, but so Facebook is rewarding you for just running the best creatives, and in fact, they'll only show the best creatives or good creatives in some ways. That's kind of what Google did early on with their quality score. They were incentivizing you to create a good ad. So they look at click through rate, they look at keyword relevance, look at your landing page, and they'll actually lower the cost for you. They'll make it more attractive for you as an advertiser if you create a great ad. So cost will always go up, right? That's going to happen, but probably going to be some elements of that stick around for Facebook, which is interesting. Yeah, and

Charles:

Cool.

Brett:

So let's talk creative. Yeah, go ahead.

Charles:

Oh, I was going to say, and that's how Facebook's always work. This is just a far more aggressive nature than what we've used to seeing sort of how TikTok is the most aggressive content suggestion engine ever. It's sort of like the YouTube suggested video, but on steroids with a nuclear bomb attached to it, sort of the same thing.

Brett:

Got it. Nice. That's awesome. So let's talk creatives. So what creatives are working right now and or what are some of the creative mistakes that you see brands making right now?

Charles:

Yeah, I mean I think probably the biggest mistake, let's start there. Let's tear it down and then build it up. I think the biggest mistake people are making and brands are making is they think that there's a best kind of creative, and so they're constantly chasing whatever that screenshot they saw. What I can tell you this, I'm working with a brand in the clothing business, apparel and accessories. They'll do over 150 million this year and they run only square static images. I also personally am partner in a clothing business and we spend 75 80% of our money on videos that were kind of designed for reels. Some of it is U G C, some of it's highly produced, some of it isn't. The point there is what does work is what you do well and how people are used to hearing from you. Almost every brand that has an identity, I'm been sipping on this liquid death. So Liquid Death is great around branding,

Brett:

Unbelievable.

Charles:

If Liquid

Brett:

Death, you dunno the Liquid Death story, you got to pay attention. Yeah.

Charles:

Now if Liquid Death, what they've done is they basically took the Warp Tour, Oz Fest, all of that type of vibe, and they turned it into a water business, which is great. Now, if they came out with an ad that felt like a Gap commercial because everybody else was winning with it, that ad wouldn't do well. Now it might work for everybody else, maybe that works for Dasani and it works for all the other brands on the shelf next to them, but it wouldn't work for them. And what's most important is figuring out how you can communicate with Inspire trust in a relationship with your target customer base, and then ultimately continue to hammer that home and think of all the different types of ads that you've seen on television, all the different commercials over the world. And we still have the Geico, we still have flow totally from Progressive. We still have the m and ms, we still have the polar bears at Christmas for Coca-Cola. Know what you do well and leverage that as much as possible. That's the greatest hat to create it. The worst thing you can do is try to respond to other people are

Brett:

Doing. Okay. One second, Charles, I think I lost video and I just want to make sure. Are you seeing your video?

Charles:

Yeah.

Brett:

Oh, there you are. You saw your video that whole time? Yep.

Charles:

Okay, I see uploading It's like 97. 99. 99.

Brett:

Okay. Okay, cool. For whatever reason, your screen, your portion went black for a minute, but it should be recording on your end and uploading, so we'll probably be fine. Okay. So you just finished with, I think when I interrupted, you just talked about Coca-Cola at around the holidays and stuff like that, so that's the greatest advantage. Yeah, but I love this what you do well and how people are used to seeing you, what generates trust, and then go all in on that. But yeah, what are your other thought?

Charles:

Yeah,

The most important thing to do in creative is figure out what is your unique positioning in the marketplace? How do you define your own little piece of the pie? And then how do you make that pie bigger? That's really the trick. I will tell you this. If your strategy is to chase what's working, you are only going to ever be a lesser version of 80% of the market. If you want to be elite, figure out your identity and stick with it. If you change your clothes and the way you talked every single day and went out into the world, you have no friend <laugh>. Like it's the same thing.

What you're looking to do more than anything in any business is ultimately have relationships with people and direct, especially in direct consumer and e-commerce, what we're trying to do is acquire profitable customer journeys with multiple sales in a long-term relationship for great L T V. That happens because of identity and because of trust. So figure out what you do and then continue to do it. What you do well matters. And so figure out what you do well and continue to do that versus chasing all the other things from everybody else because you're only going to ever do a worse than the person you're trying to copy.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. You'll only be, if you're just chasing what works, you'll always be a second run type of deal. And I make a lot of sports analogies, but to compare this to sports, I coach basketball and so if someone said, Hey, what's the best basketball move? Well, I don't know. What are you good at? What fits you? Are you a post player? You guard, you got speed, you got size, you got jumping ability, you great outside shooter. That's what matters. And then do what you're really good at. And that totally makes sense when it comes to career. Well, okay. Steph

Charles:

Curry versus Michael. Yeah, if you did Steph Curry versus Michael Jordan. Well, the completely different player, LeBron James just scored the most points, but he's also shooting 50% more free three pointers than Kareem Abdul. I think Kariba Abdul-Jabbar has three attempts behind the three point line.

Brett:

Well most have to check the dates most of all of his career that the three point line didn't exist, so he could couldn't even do it. So yeah, different eras, different everything, but super interesting. So get understand what you're good at and then key on that. Any advice? So if someone's kind of stuck in that rut of I'm just chasing what's working, I'm hearing this new ad type or this type of U G C or this, and I'm just lurching how does someone understand what are they good at, and then so they can double down on that?

Charles:

Yeah, I think it's always good to test stuff. It's always good to be uncomfortable and to lose. And you should always have part of your efficiency as a business baked into loss. If I'm breaking even, I'm probably losing money because it means that I can't test, I can't get better. So I try to bake in the idea of a five or 10% loss as normal operating procedure. And hey, look, if you have a retail location that would be returns and theft and all of that stuff, that's just baked into business. What I think people need to do starting off with, is everybody has an identity on how they communicate. Some people are great copywriter, lean on it, some people look great on camera, lean on it. Some people are great graphic designers. How do you get attention? I think there is far too much focus on figuring out how to build the best ad for your business and not nearly enough attention and time and effort put into how does this business already make money? Why don't we just do more of that? And sometimes the easiest ways to turn a struggling seven figure business into something on a nine figure run rate is to get rid of every effort that isn't honest and true to who the business is. If you have a beautiful product, just show me a picture of the product I brought TX to market, and if you just took a picture of it, the most beautiful pictures in the world will never sell it. We had to do a video.

Brett:

Is this, sir, what is tx?

Charles:

The workout equipment from the gym, the yellow bands. So I brought that to market. A picture wouldn't do it. We had to show a

Brett:

Picture of a paint rubber band. What do you do with that? Yeah, yeah.

Charles:

There was no concept. So the best way to get somebody's attention, and this even when you're trying as a business owner trying to sell the product and get people interested, what are you doing in person? How are you communicating? You can't just say, Hey, look, here's some military grade rope. Great. Am I supposed to buy that? What am I supposed to do? Instead, you can show somebody what's going on and all of a sudden it clicks. Being able to figure out how you can earn somebody's attention and then monetize. It has very little to do with the kind of ad that you run. The ads that you run are an appropriation of that knowledge, but if your business isn't successful enough to have cash flow before you run ads, the ads are never going to make you successful. And I think that's one of the biggest pain points people have is they think the only thing missing is good ads.

They think, I've got a great business, all I need to do is get on Shark Tank and have somebody give me money. That's not the way that it works. You have to have something that works so you can pour fuel on that fire. Facebook ads is just fuel on the fire. It amplifies your existing business model. So the easiest thing for a business to do if you want to learn how to make the best ads, is look to how you already make money. What do you do well, and then appropriate that for some paid version of attention. Otherwise, you're going to waste weeks, months, or years of your life just being dishonest with yourself and with your customers and failing.

Brett:

And people feel that right when you're not totally honest or you're not true to who the brand is or who your product is. People feel that it comes out in some way in the A. Yeah, and it just kills the believability and the effectiveness. And I love how you broke that down. It's very simple, but very powerful is how do you best get attention? How do you best get attention for your product? And then how do you best demonstrate it and allow that story to come to life? And if I'm selling artwork, maybe just a picture of that is all I need, or it's a really unique piece of clothing, maybe just the picture of it is all I need. But if it's workout bands a picture of, that's not interesting, compelling at all. So showing the workout and showing the results and showing all of that super interesting.

And so really comes down to identity and who are you and how do you get their, and who are you are your customers? How do you get their attention? And how do you show why your product is awesome? Anybody? And I know this is a bit of a dangerous follow up because you just said, Hey, don't just chase the best because then you're going to be a second rate version of that. But I do think there's, so there's value in getting inspiration. There's not value in copycatting but anybody you would recommend that we pay attention to that just does this exceedingly well where we should try to be remarketed by them or check out their Facebook ad library or something like that. Anybody that's done doing this really, really well.

Charles:

Yeah, I am. And I get this question all the time. And what I would say is this, find the people in your business that your competitors that are better than you everybody has 'em. Go be a customer. See how they treat you. Go to their website, add things to cart, shop around, take an idea of what their store feels like. If you were to start a grocery store today from scratch, you're going to build off of every time you walked into a grocery store, the Publix or the bonds or the Piggly Wiggly that you're used to going to, right? There's a format, there's a style. So there's an old saying that I love, you're only as good as who you steal from. And the idea of that is you have an identity, but you need an in order to really evolve that. All of the identities that we have is appropriations of inspirations that we've had. So my best advice, and I'm actually not a huge fan of Ad Library, I think it's a wildly overvalued resource because it doesn't give you context. If

Brett:

This was a good ad, a bad ad, or somewhere in between, you just see that it's an ad. That's all you can tell, right?

Charles:

Yeah. If you want context, go be a customer of your competitor. If you were to spend, I was doing this when I was building three 10 nutrition years ago. I literally went to all of our competitors and I bought their products, I joined their communities, and I got to understand the words that people use, the messaging that came across the content types. My Facebook feed was full of ads, my emails were full of ads. I had gone through the experience of the person that I'm trying to reach and understood what they're doing so that I could then go be with them in that stream and just give them an alternative. Coming in, just assuming that you deserve any attention from anyone is well, it's a losing battle. And so my best advice is go out there, experience the world like your consumers, and if something inspires you, you're like, wow, they're just doing better. Go try it. And what I found is when you're inspired by somebody, you'll appropriate what they're doing in a way that feels more like you than hiring whoever they hired to do that job for you. The Harmon Brothers got a million people wanting to work for 'em because of the pooping unicorn at, right?

Brett:

Right. Yeah. They've only worked for Squatty Potty

Charles:

For Squatty Body, right? Yes, they're great, but you can't use that ad format for jeans. Just doesn't work,

Brett:

Right?

Charles:

So that's my number one piece of advice is if you want go out, be your customer, be your own customer in the world, and see what inspires you, and then just appropriate everything possible and have an allowance for failure. And that's where I get some of the best things ever is somebody built a better mouse trap, I'm going to build it my way. And some of those ads will last forever. I've got ads that were like that where, and in my women's clothing business, I literally just got ads from Victoria's Secret that I was like, this is amazing. I built a version of that ad and it spent nearly 2 million in the last year.

Brett:

Wow. Wow.

Charles:

Great. I'm not reinventing the wheel, wasting all the money. Make one more analogy and we can move on. Cause I know you love analogies, and this is one of my favorite, McDonald's is the only fast food restaurant that researches locations, burger King and and everybody else puts them selves across the street from McDonald.

Brett:

Ha

Charles:

Just be Burger King. Ridiculously successful,

Brett:

Right? And Walmart, or, I mean, McDonald's has got the cash and they've got the method and they're more of a real estate business than anything else. A lot of people don't know that if you watch the movie The Founder, that their McDonald's is more about real estate than anything else. So makes sense that Burger King and the others just, yeah, go where McDonald's is. Yeah, I love it. Awesome. So yeah, let's such good stuff. We could drill into any of that and have a blast, but let's transition a little bit. So let's talk Facebook or let's talk TikTok. So what are some of your thoughts on the short term near term for TikTok, both organic and on the ad side?

Charles:

I love that. I think it's a really interesting place. What I can say with TikTok and with Facebook, YouTube, any optimized CPM platform, I want to set this table here real quick. And remember that ads are nothing other than organic content that you pay for people to see and they run on the same algorithm. So if something does well organically at earning attention, it will almost assuredly do well as paid media, it earning attention. Now, whether or not that attention that you earn is monetizable is something completely different. But with that being said, TikTok is the most aggressive content suggestion engine we've ever seen. And if

Brett:

You use TikTok and what does that mean? It's the most aggressive content suggestion engine.

Charles:

Yeah. So if you were to use TikTok for an hour or two and just swipe on things that you don't like and the things that you do, you're going to only have a feed full of things that you enjoy and you can program tos. I've done it once where I was working with a business and what we did was we made a dummy TikTok account and we only went through all of their competitor and liked and watched all the videos, all their competitors. Now whenever they open up TikTok, it's merely just an inspiration machine. And so the point of that is it's extraordinarily personalized. It knows what you're watching and wants to show you more content like that with a million different data points that they're looking at. And I think that that is something that no other platform can do because it's not really in the nature of that platform to do it.

YouTube rabbit holes we all know about that works on a slightly different thing. YouTube Rabbit Holes is more about the topic of the conversation than maybe the style of the delivery, the keywords and all of that stuff, which is great. And then in Facebook they show you content based on what you like to see based on all the websites you've been to and all the places that you've been and where you spent money that time of year or what you're in the market for. Chat, TikTok is very much about, this is what gets somebody to spend five seconds of their eyeball here. We're going to give you that as much as possible. And with that in mind, I don't think any other platform will be fundamentally able to make TikTok obsolete because it would be out of their core user experience to do so. I think that probably the closest we will get is Instagram reels or maybe even Facebook reels that are inside the app because those don't have an identity as much yet other than trying to be TikTok. When it comes to TikTok ads I think that if you hit on creative that does well, you can do exceptionally well with it. There is a huge issue with TikTok or a difference between TikTok and Facebook. There are two huge differences. Number one, a good Facebook ad can run for years. Anybody that says insists that ad fatigue is real misinformation. I've had ads that have run for 2, 3 40 years that I've ads that I've built four, five years ago that every now and again I still see in my feet

That stuff happened. The longevity of a Facebook ad is basically forever. And same with YouTube,

Brett:

TikTok, same with YouTube, same, we've got YouTube ads we've run for years and spent millions of dollars on the same ad and just keeps cranking.

Charles:

My buddy Sean Cannell from Think Media, he's got an affiliate video of Father's Day gifts. And every year, every year in June he makes, he gets an extra couple million views and a big check. It just happens. Like Clark, he made that thing in like 2013 or something like that. It just happens. It's Evergreen,

Brett:

<laugh>,

Charles:

TikTok though, maybe two weeks. That's all the ever long, that's all however long it'll work because TikTok is also part of that suggestion engine is also new. The aspect of new as a value point is extremely high. Now, you could maybe run something again in a couple months and it'll work rate, but it means that the churn rate of content is massive and that churn rate has far more to do with time than with money could. That ad might last for two weeks. If you're spending 50 bucks a day, it might allow us for two weeks if you're spending 20,000 a day. So there's a big issue there. And being able to consistently deliver that quality of content that's monetizable. And the other side of TikTok ads is it'll never be as smart as Facebook, Google or Facebook or Google. And it has far more to do with the fact that Facebook and Google have a leg up of over a decade of communication and location and transactional data. So I think there are places where businesses can leverage TikTok is their unfair advantage in the marketplace to scale. I think ultimately though there are few scenarios where TikTok is an evergreen isolated growth and acquisition channel at scale, it just won't work because yeah,

Brett:

Totally makes sense.

Charles:

Other places are better at acquiring cash flow in a more stable fashion. So it's just too hyperbolic and honestly just not smart enough and it can never catch up because as fast as it gets better, everything else is getting better faster.

Brett:

Right. Totally makes sense. Love it. We could drill into that too, but we were, we're running out of time, so I want to transition and talk AI for just a minute. So how are you using chat, G P T or other AI to help give you superpowers or give you an edge or help make your marketing better?

Charles:

Yeah, I love it. I mean, chat, G P t's the latest version of the ai. And to be fair, I've been using Facebook's version of that for years. It's called Dynamic Creative. And I don't actually don't spend a single penny on Facebook without having ads tested and proven and created through Dynamic Creative, which is Facebook's version of chat G P T. And so that's a superpower in that I literally will only ever test in that environment. I never having a single account with a single penny spent on anything that's not developed that way. And for Facebook, I use something called the 3 22 Method, which is three creatives, two headlines, two sets of copy, and we can dive into that forever. But the point of is that's giving the AI the best opportunity to create the best user experience so that ultimately I'm buying the lowest priced attention for the highest quality user in targeting the individuals in the most sustainable way to attract the most consistent type of attention.

And from then, it's my business model that monetizes it. Using tools like Chachi PT to handle the copy side of things, I think is something a lot of people are using. As a very light end, I, I'm using Chachi PT to develop YouTube titles and email headlines to see what gets good open rates and checking against IQ keyword scores. And to be fair, those are also really, really great for my Facebook ad. If this a gets lot of clicks on YouTube and a great email open rate, well you better believe when I've dropped that on a Facebook ad, it's going to crush. Absolutely. I think it's also really important to use chat G P t though as a way of understanding how consumers behave. So you can put in there like give 50 reasons why somebody has this pain point and use that to understand concepts in market research.

My friend Sarah Levenger has a great way that she's using chat GP to effectively extract psychological data points on users and using that as a tool, something like that. Yeah. So what she's doing is she's taking in, for instance, say all the comments from Facebook, from an Instagram, say an Instagram post went viral and it's got 30,000 comments. We can grab all of those comments and all of those words that are being used and throw it into chat G P T. One of the things that I love to do is say, Hey, tell me the 10 most important things in this 5,000 word article or something like that 5,000 character piece. And it'll break it down for you. And if you want to do that in even a more really actionable way is say you've got a 30 minute YouTube video, get yourself a transcription of it, drop into chat G P T and tell me what are the 10 most important things mentioned here.

And then you can literally tell it to tell me more about line item three, four, and five, and then boom, you got a 5,000 word description and mini ebook done like that. And it takes no time at all. The point is you can use all of these things to understand what's going on. What I will say is, what it does that I'm very bullish on and I'm a huge fan of is that it can do the collation of data and the sorting of data at scale in a way that tremendously saves you time. Ultimately, you're still going to have to qualify and use insight to appropriately take what it's giving you and take action on it. Yeah, people know when they're reading something written by ai, I wouldn't use it as a co, I don't think it's going to the best for seo on like I'm just building up, blasting out blog pages.

But it can give you a great insight to be a way to inspire your thought process and to also take huge sums of data and make it very simple to read. And I think that's, at least in the way that I'm using it right now, some of the most powerful things. And Sarah Wenger if you don't know her, you should absolutely check her out. She's, she's a stud. She's the best at consumer psychology, and that's one of the things that she's doing a lot of, and I was really inspired by her with that. But just the idea of using AI to take insight from the written word is tremendous and also inspire different ways of thinking and a way that gets you out of your own head. I think those are some of the most important things. Yeah, I love it so much. You can use it, Laura.

Brett:

And I think it really comes down to a lot of what you described comes down to two things, asking the AI better questions. You only get good results if you ask good questions and if you give it good data, like, Hey, look at all these comments. Tell me the top 10 takeaways. But then being able to quantify and qualify and say, yeah, but it's really these things, right? Or This doesn't really make sense, but this does. Yeah. So yeah, I love it, man. I'm super excited. We're using it as a team and really just playing around with it. I think that's a key too. Just play around with it and see what you'll learn and new ideas will be sparked as you go. So let's do this. Charles, I know we got a hard stop in just a couple minutes. I know you're very active on TikTok. You're a great follow on TikTok. Good follow on Twitter, LinkedIn. Where can people connect with you and then out on the socials, and then talk about how they connect with you at Disruptor School?

Charles:

Yeah, so I'm at ct, the disruptor on all socials and at disruptor school on all socials. And you can go to the disruptor school.com to check it out. If you are on a social media account, well, you're not seeing me, let me know and I'll make sure to add it into the flywheel. But I'm literally everywhere, all day, all the time which is sort of my unfair advantage. I love making content and talking to people. I think my wife would wish that I put my phone away a little bit more, but hey, look, that's my life. These are the problems that I have. And

Brett:

Then, dude, you're very good content.

Charles:

Yeah, yeah. Sorry, keep going.

Brett:

Well, I was going to say, yeah, I think there's a bit of a delay as we're recording this. We'll get that cleaned up in the edit, but I've, TikTok being aggressive, you're grateful on TikTok. I'm not an avid TikTok user, so I'll just put that disclaimer out there. But I have been trying to use a little bit more lately. And for whatever reason, TikTok thinks that I love, Tiser because I see you all of the time on TikTok, which is actually great.

Charles:

Well, thank you so much, man. It's nice to know where those 200 views are coming from. It's just breadth all day

Brett:

Long. Tell me it's You're welcome, huh?

Charles:

I love it. I'll take <laugh>.

Brett:

That's awesome, man. So I'll link to everything. I'll link to your socials, we'll link to the Disruptor school, so definitely check it out. And Charles Tichenor, ladies and gentlemen, man, you crushed it. Thank you so much. I can't wait to schedule another one because there was so many things that we didn't dive into. Oh, yeah. Need to. So round two is coming, buddy.

Charles:

I would love it. And anybody watching this and listening an, anybody listening to this, if you have questions on any of this stuff, right back to Brett. And maybe we can just do another, maybe a mail bag, show something, dive in deep. We went an inch deep, a mile wide today. Let's go a mile deep and just make it really fun.

Brett:

Do a little, ask me anything. Yeah, fire those questions away. Send them my way. And then we can get Charles back in for round two. Charles. Thanks, buddy. I know you got a split, but really appreciate the time. It's a ton of fun, man.

Charles:

All right. Thank you very much, man. I appreciate it.

Brett:

And as always, thank you for tuning in. Let us know what you like to hear more of or less of on the show. And yes, if you got questions for Charles firing my way or connect with him on the socials. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

This episode of the eCommerce Evolution podcast is truly unique.

It's not uncommon for us to talk about branding, storytelling, and entrepreneurship. But in this episode, we also discuss faith, family tragedy, chasing your dreams, and nerd out a bit on basketball legends like Michael Jordan and Steph Curry.

Ashton Owens is living many kids’ dreams…but more importantly, he’s living his own. He works directly with Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and other pro athletes. He runs Triple Threat - a creative agency specializing in branding and storytelling for pro athletes.

Ashton and I have a lot in common. We go to church together (how we met), share an affinity for professional basketball, lost a parent when we were teens, and experienced some fun and wild entrepreneurial journeys.

Here’s what we cover:

• How growing up in an entrepreneurial family and losing his father as a teenager shaped Ashton’s faith and professional accomplishments.
• How inviting Michael Jordan to his birthday party as a child influenced Ashton’s belief that the world is full of possibilities.
• The crazy story of Ashton’s first meeting with Steph Curry and Under Armor.
• The meaning behind the Steph Curry logo and how it relates to storytelling.
• Ashton's belief that most people count themselves out before they start and how to shift their thinking.
• Plus more!

‍

Mentioned In This Episode:

• Ashton Owens (LinkedIn) 
• Triple Threat (Website) 
• Empire Printing (Website) ‍
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

‍

Transcript:

‍
Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG commerce. And today I am, I've been so looking forward to this episode. I hope you geek out and nerd out and get as excited as I am as you listen to this. But we're going to dive into branding and storytelling, but from a unique perspective we're talking with a buddy of mine, Ashton Owens. He's the founder of Triple Threat and they are a creative agency. They help with storytelling and branding and they work directly with professional athletes, the likes of Steph Curry and Clay Thompson and others. And so lots of good things, fun things to dive into both from a brand and storytelling perspective, but also just from an entrepreneurial perspective and a going after big things perspective and it chasing your dreams.

If we can go there on this podcast, we're going to get into that just a little bit. And I want to, before we kind dive in, Ashton, I want to kind of talk about how we met. So Ash, Ashley, I go to church together. Did not know that, right? I probably saw you in passing. Yeah, your sharp dresser always got the black hat on as you have in this if you're watching this video, you can see it. And so our pastor was like, he said, Hey, you got to meet this guy that I know that goes here, Ashton. I'm like, okay, I'll meet Ashton. And I don't know, we live in Springfield, Missouri, which is southwest Missouri, smaller community. It is the home of Missouri State University, home of Bass Pro there. There's some claims to fame in Springfield, but it's not a big place.

So I meet with Ashton and I find out this guy's like he's working with Steph Curry, he's designing logos, he's working with Under Armor, he, he's working with Clay Thompson, like iconic. My last name is Curry. I don't know for sure, but I think if you saw my jump shot, you might be like, I think he's related to Steph. Actually. I can't make it through to save of my life. But anyways, this awesome connection immediately hit it off. So with that brief intro, Ashton, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on and how's it going?

Ashton:

Yeah, man, well, I appreciate you having me on. It's an honor and excited to dive in. And yeah, I mean, love meeting other creatives. Been a pleasure to see other incredibly gifted, really, really dominant in their field, be here in southwest Missouri, which is amazing. There's really no limit to where you know live if you know how to network, how to build, how to scale. And so seeing you in a place like Springfield when most people don't even know it's a flyover city. So <laugh>,

Brett:

Totally a flyover. Yeah, that's awesome, man. It is funny, we, a lot of clients have a lot of clients in LA and on the east coast as well. And there, I just went through this string of several meetings where I'd be talking to someone and they're like, Hey, where? Where's OMG based? Because OMGs pretty well known. We work some pretty big clients and we do a lot of cool stuff and just had this string of people being like, Hey, where are you guys based again, I'll stay in Missouri. And they're like, Missouri, never been there. In fact, I don't know anyone from Missouri, but it does go to show, again, especially in a post covid world, does not matter where you are if you do really great work just doesn't matter. So

Ashton:

Most of my clients refer to it as Ozark with the Netflix show. And so they're like, oh, is that where that one show? And my goodness, of all the things to represent us, I don't know if that's the one I want to lean on, but

Brett:

I don't think that's, that's probably not the claim to fame. We want Lake Ozarks is a real place. Yeah, it's a real place. That show was not filmed here, it was filmed actually in Georgia, which a lot of people don't know, and I don't think they got the accent right. There's a unique Ozark, Missouri accent, they didn't nail it, but the show very popular. So kudos to Jason Bateman and the crew there. So we're going to dive in. We're talking about a lot of things, branding, storytelling, chasing your dreams, really cool stuff. There's going to be a fair warrant. There's going to be a fair amount of basketball talk in this podcast. I've mentioned on this show before, I coach basketball, I love basketball. So we will definitely tie it to business, but just you've been warned. We're going to talk hoops just a little bit. So first of all what is triple threat? So talk about your creative agency and how in the world did you start working with Steph Curry, clay Thompson, and other famous athletes?

Ashton:

Yeah, so Triple Threat is a creative agency really with a focus on working directly with athletes. So there's a lot of great agencies out there that they have their niche markets or their opportunity to scale in different industries. And for me and my interest in my background, I really loved sports and grew up obviously with Michael Jordan and the Bulls, as you can see behind me if you're watching. And so my childhood was just riddled with that type of interest in sneakers and that type of life. And so for me, I wanted to work with those people. But being in Springfield, Missouri, as we were just talking about it's kind of tough to break into that. There's no local team, Chicago, Memphis, the Thunder, there's

Brett:

No pro sports team in Spring. There's no

Ashton:

Pro sports. No, no, not at all. And then you have football and baseball obviously with the Cardinals and the Chiefs and so on and so forth. So for me to really break out, my wife and I, we got married young and we moved to Oklahoma City. And so we were there for about 10 years and really just started networking and being able to take this vision and this opportunity and obviously taking a lot of, in the beginning, free work doing stuff just to prove yourself at a young age just to get in the door something that's in your head and how do you break in when you don't have a resume? You didn't go to college for it, but you have this vision and something that you want to pursue. And so with teams coming through in a n b city, like Oklahoma Oklahoma City, we just had the opportunity to network and find a couple of the coaches on the Thunder that went to our church actually at Life Church.

And then they allowed us to meet and we had opportunity to rub shoulders with the one player. And then once you're kind of verified in the group of basketball players or in any industry get, if you have the right idea and the right ambition, you can really take it from there and start knocking on the right doors. So that's the journey of a vision from a childhood dream that's just kind of continued. And even though you have to do some of those not so fun projects or things that you're not as passionate about you if you focus and hey, why are you doing this? Start what's your passion? And just know that you'll get there one day. I think that that really is, that's the story for me and my journey.

Brett:

It's phenomenal and it is so true, and I think this is true. We OMG commerce, we play in the D toc, the direct to consumer e-commerce space. And even though it's a global space and coast to coast and in the US and stuff, it's a little small knit community. And once you do really good work for a couple of people or even just one you can be in in and then things can really snowball from there. And I love that you did that. So you met some guys at church that coached for the Thunder. You got in, you did some work, people loved it, and now you're kind of off to the races. So talk about what do you specifically do for Steph Curry? Because he, he's my favorite athlete right now for a lot of reasons. He's got the personality, he's got the last name obviously but he's just good.

I think if you look at who's changed, and actually we're recording this podcast just after LeBron James broke the scoring record broke the 38 year record, Kareem Abdul Jabbar's all time scoring record. So tip the hat to LeBron for sure. But I think if you look at who's changed the game the most over the history of the nba, Jordan is right up there. He's the one that made the sport go international and he just changed the game in a lot of ways. But Steph Curry changed the game in a major way too. They're now kids, Mike, 10 year old that plays bat they, they're jacking up threes. Why are they jacking up threes? Because Steph Curry changed the game. You got to shoot threes to be competitive anymore. So iconic athlete just one of the best of all time. But what's it like working with Steph and what do you, for Steph specifically? Yeah,

Ashton:

I mean funny enough, that statement of your kid and high schoolers thrown up these ridiculous three pointers. He had a tagline that they ran with for many years called Ruin the Game. And so a lot of people reference that in a negative way. Okay, you've ruined,

Yeah, they're one for 16 and they're shooting from half court. And it's like, come on man. No, for Steph it's been a privilege because like I said, part of that journey of knowing that I wanted to work in this industry and work with these type of players you know, just do the work and you get introduced to the right people. And so when I showed up on the scene to meet and start working with Under Armour and Steph at the time, it was close to four years ago and it started with an individual that I was working with who had the opportunity to become the president of this brand that they were building that is now referenced as Curry brand. At the time it was just an Under Armour. Under Armour had the deal with SC 30 as he called it. And it was just a typical shoe deal that he had his logo on it, he had signature shoes, but it was nothing more than that.

And so Steph wanted to, knowing the trajectory that he was on and the confidence that he had to change the game, he wanted to do what Jordan did, which is basically, Hey, I want to be my own guy. I want to be the Michael Jordan of my generation. And so I want to build a brand that far exceeds who I am and my time on the court. And so it really started with the vision for him. And so I got called in to walk alongside the brand and help figure out what's the name, what's the logo what does this look like, what's the story? And it really does come down to, I always tell people that Michael Jordan taught us to fly Michael Jordan, how he hung in the air, how he went after championships, his determination, he was ruthless. And so we loved him for his competitiveness.

Brett:

A killer man. He was the ultimate competitor.

Ashton:

Ultimate competitor. But what Steph has done is he has transcended through changing what does the game look like in today's generation and how do we push the limits? And even if you show up, he's changed the game where people are showing up 45 minutes before a game just to watch him warm up because his warmups are so iconic and ridiculous. And so how does he take that joy when you watch him? I find myself chuckling. He'll do something, I'm just like this ridiculous. How did you do that? But he decided to take that and he wanted to create a brand around it and tell that story of joy. And so the title that we came up with for that was Changed the Game for Good and that meant a lot of different things for him. Obviously his faith and his background in just his family his upbringing, but also changed the game for good, constantly pushing the limits and breaking records and finding his way in history as a positive influence to the game.

And so that really is what kind of began that journey and that story for him. And so I got introduced to them and started helping craft that in late 2018, early 2019. And then you move into this brand as it's evolved. And since then, now I work closely with his camp. Steph is involved, he's an entrepreneur just much like Michael Jordan. And so he has the opportunity to build and invest and create opportunities. And it's absolutely fascinating once you kind of peek behind the curtain. But he's involved, he has his foundation, eat, learn, play. He has his underrated tour, which is really based around the next generation of players where he's finding and helping develop high school students. And then at the end of it, he helps them get scholarships to go play and get recognized. He has under golf doing the same thing in golf, which is a sport that he loves unanimous media. There's a lot of different facets to Steph and what he's investing in, but it really takes that type of mentality and understanding of what it takes to build a brand and how to tell that story, not just with a pair of sneakers or clothing, but outside of that, how do you connect all of these dots and work together. And so he's absolutely fascinating from a business standpoint just as much as he is to watch on TV and see him do what he does every night.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so cool. A couple things I want to double click on and then take a look at one, this idea of building a brand. And I love the reference Jordan one because I'm a massive, huge Jordan fan. I know you've got a couple cool Jordan stories that we'll talk about in a minute. But if you look at this idea of brand and being an entrepreneur or an owner of something versus just being really, really good at something, if you look at Jordan's playing career, I think he was making something like 3 million a year as a player, which sounds like not much compared to today's money. Top athletes are making 30 to 50 a year, but at the time he was making 3 million a year or whatever and it was more as he got towards the very end of his career. But now as the Jordan brand is something like a 2 billion a year, 1 billion, whatever it is, it's massive.

And I think he makes something like a hundred million a year just on royalties on that and Will forever. So pretty crazy. The power of building a brand. I love what, I love how you guys tied that in and that tagline is perfect. Change the game for good. He did change the game, we talked about that. And for good, he brings joy to it and he's just trying to do good things like that fits him really, really well. How did you guys come about that tagline and the logo and some of those things? How did you bring that to life to really tell his story?

Ashton:

Yeah, I mean it takes a village. So I mean obviously you have a massive group within Under Armor who has worked with him and has built a team around him. They knew that they needed to obviously treat it as if it's its own organization. And so building a team and having presidents and creative directors within that team and then bring in outside help like myself, I've never worked directly as an Under Armour employee, but I was brought in, has stayed close to them throughout this process to continue to see that, how does that live on social media? How does that live on merchandise and stuff as it continues to grow. And so it takes a process of bringing the right people around and I don't know how many the hundreds of logos that was, we went through that process and being able to just be at that table.

There's a lot of times that you show up and you go, what am I doing here? This is an absolute insane opportunity, but it's also just a really cool opportunity because you have a seat at the table and if you're going to take your shot, take your shot. And seeing a lot of these great industry-wide people from their backgrounds, they've come from Nike or they've come from car companies, it it's really, it's amazing. And so the three thing that about the logos, it's called the Splash and the Splashes obviously representation of the Splash Brothers, which is him and Clay Thompson if you look at it looks like when you make a three pointer it has that element to it. It's S and C, so Steph Curry obviously. And then another piece is the halo on top, which is separated on purpose, obviously to give to the s and c, but also just to represent his background and faith and point to that.

So it, it's packed of a lot of meaning. There's a lot of stuff. It obviously was not just based around one person, it was a lot of iterations and a lot of fine tuning. But even the Curry logo, the name, if you look at how it's spelled the type, they created a custom type and the C is actually the arc of a three pointer. And so if you turn the C upside to the side, it's a three pointer. And so then the whole font was built custom based on that one letter which I thought was really, really did

Brett:

Not know that. That is amazing. And that totally makes sense. And now I see it. Now you said it, now

Ashton:

You see now you

Brett:

Can't unsee it.

Ashton:

Yeah, can't unsee. So even when we did the animation for the logo, when you look at it, it comes out of it, there's a lot of storytelling obviously within it, but you come out of the basketball goal and then you see the three pointer and the curry then spells out based on the court eye level.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so cool. So I want to hear a quick story. I want to have you tell a quick story about the basketball and the initial Under Armor meeting you were in. So I just asked you about this basketball earlier cause I saw it in a picture, the John Deere website, but it's a basketball, I dunno if you have it close, if not, we'll just describe it. But basically it's basketball that says never give up on it. Right on phone. I was like, where'd you get that basketball? That's awesome. So tell the story of that and then how that came up in your first meeting with Under Armor.

Ashton:

Yeah, so my background, like I mentioned I didn't go to college for this. I have no background other than I loved art, I loved basketball and let's figure out how to do it from there. And so it was a time when I was learning to be an entrepreneur and have a team and make budgets and all of those really hard things that no one teaches you and you're just kind of failing and learning and failing. And so it was a really rough time for my wife and I as we were learning this route of entrepreneurship. And so we were out at a thrift store. I found a basketball I thought was cool, it's kind of roughed up a little bit. So I took it home. I think I spent 75 cents on it and I took a marker to it and it was late at night, probably 3:00 AM to be honest.

I mean it was the middle of the night and I just sketched out, never give up. And I put it on my desk and I left it there and I just looked at it constantly and I've carried with it as I've had different offices as I've moved now back home to Springfield, it's been with me and I think it's actually up in my son's room so that's why it's not close by. But it's really iconic because not just for me and my personal story and how it's been an inspiration for me, but here I am. Like I said, I've flown into Baltimore, I'm at the headquarters with Under Armour and I'm getting ready to present for the first time and it's overwhelming. And I could paint you a scene of the world's biggest conference room, the world's biggest table with a hundred chairs. I mean it was overwhelming to say the least.

And so I'm walking in as I'm not an employee, no one really knows who I am. I don't even know why I'm there, honestly, I don't know what I'm presenting. But it was just a really cool moment where I'm sitting there waiting for my time, we're all sitting around, Steph is looking at sketches and stuff and the creative director for Armour pulls up this mood board and he had printed out all these different things and on that board was a picture of my basketball. And that night I had taken a picture of it with my cell phone and I posted on Instagram years prior and just had said note to self, never give up or something like that. And so I was sitting there and I go that's my basketball. How did you guys get a picture of it? And they of course were completely shocked because they didn't put it up there because of me. It was something that they had looked to as inspiration that they were looking at

Brett:

When they first, did they first question you were they come on, you're

Ashton:

Basketball real. No, yeah, I mean they did brilliant. I'm pretty sure I even pulled it up on my Instagram. I like, no, this is my from years ago. And apparently someone had taken that and saved that photo and put it on Instagram or on Pinterest and it's been shared thousands of times. And so here I am just a crazy moment in time where honestly as I tell it, it kind of gave me that confidence in that moment where I just felt no doubt, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. This is who I'm supposed to be in that had a little spiritual moment if you will. And so just kind of dove in. But it was just a cool moment that I reflect on and love sharing and obviously still have it and my boys have it now and something to look at.

Brett:

I love it man. And sometimes we all have imposter syndrome at times you become an entrepreneur and then you're around other successful entrepreneurs and you're like, do I really belong here? Am I really an entrepreneur? Or you start to build a company and now we're close to 75 team members at OMG and I'm like, I'm the ceo. Like am I really cut out for this? And we begin to have, and sometimes all we need is that little moment and is yours is a crazy wild story, but it's like, no, no, I'm supposed to be here. This is where I'm called to be. This is where I'm supposed to be. This is it. Let's go. And what a cool story and what a great line too. Never give up. I'm a big Winston Churchill fan and I know he was a fan of that line as well. Super cool. So then I'm assuming the pitch went pretty well after that moment. That was certainly a great way to start it.

Ashton:

Did I actually have photos of it. I, some of the guys that I knew they were snapping photos so it was captured in time and something that I do look at every once in a while as I can't believe I was there and that moment and that's where it all began. Yeah, definitely. So

Brett:

Cool. Special. So let's talk, just curious, what has it been like so early years you're at the boardroom with Steph at Under Armour, what was it like working with Steph kind of in the early days to the way it is now?

Ashton:

Yeah, absolutely. So what's crazy is we ran right into Covid at that time. And what's really unique about the story is I had an agency at that time in Oklahoma City and we were in downtown Oklahoma and we had offices and team and we were growing and this was just an exciting opportunity. I had a family situation pop up with one of my brothers and needed felt just we needed to move home. It was kind of a situation. And so we sold everything and we moved back to Springfield in the middle of the pandemic. And the reason that's important is because while I was going remote and sold everything and was going more so was the world they were all going remote. They were all taking Zoom calls from their kitchen tables and living room and kids running everywhere. So I think it was really just a perfect time because I was able to integrate into the team while also in a really special way.

Cause I have three boys not having to travel a lot. And so for the first two years, honestly, I mean Zoom call once, twice a week working hand in hand with their team and that's just continued. And so it's actually eliminated having to travel. They will mail us if we're doing shoe release, they'll mail us the shoes, we do the filming, we edit it, we send it back, everything is digital, there's no need to be in person. And so it has changed, but it was kind of the situation that happened and now it's just worked to our benefit as we continue to work together and find ways to collaborate and do stuff. So really special. I do have some trips coming up there, I'll be seeing them, but outside of that, it's just like this. It's a zoom call, which is crazy.

Brett:

Love it, love it. So you were telling me, we were talking and prepping for the show, you mentioned you think people count themselves out before they get started and this kind of ties into chasing your dreams a little bit or just going for something big and maybe relates a little bit to imposter syndrome too. We limit ourselves and what we think we can do, we don't take the shot we the big swing. So how does that play out you think? And how have you been able to overcome that thought of self limitation?

Ashton:

Yeah, I think it's just been, it starts with my childhood and my family. My dad and mom were they preached it. My dad was a poor pig farmer who grew up with nothing. My mom was the cheerleading captain and was wealthy and my dad somehow convinced her to go on a date with them. They fell in love. And then from there, from that day forward when they graduated high school, my dad left, went up to Alaska and then hitchhiked home once he made enough mind to marry her. And so that story of my family and how my family was started was just kind of where it was. I'm the second to youngest out of six kids and so I had siblings and so there's the first kids, they're sleeping in one room, in a studio apartment type of life. By the time I get on the scene they, they've kind of figured things out.

So I got into the scene and I'm walking into a little bit more confident entrepreneurial family but that was in my DNA from a young age was if you want something, just go do it. There's no, what's the worst that's going to happen? Fail. Now that sounds really great when you're on the other side. On the side of it though, when you're in the middle of that, it's really terrifying. But the secret to it was just having mentors. I had people who showed up in my life that I allowed in that I allowed insecurities or questions or fears. I mean even to this day I still have things that I'm like, I don't know how to pull this off and I'll make a phone call part of my process if there's anything that I'm questioning or wanting to do, there's so much that I still have no idea at thir age 32, I have years and years to learn. I'm just getting started. And that will still continue to come down to finding people who are super wise, who are open and willing to share their story or their process and just grabbing coffee with them or a phone call. That's just part of it. And so that was the secret to my success is there's been individuals who have come in into my life who have helped me time and time again.

Brett:

That's so great. And I remember hearing this one time, and it's true where you can become a lot more confident when you realize that everybody is just making it up as they go. And that really ties into you're a parent if you're a business owner. I mean it's a bit of an exaggeration, but not really. We're all facing stuff every day that we've not faced before to a certain degree. And so yeah, you just got to have the confidence to do it and you got to lean on mentors and that's something that you know, got to have great parents to start with is awesome. But having those other mentors around you is really great too. You grew up in an entrepreneur family, so I love that story about, I didn't know that your dad moving to Alaska, making enough money to go marry the wealthy cheerleader that that's awesome. But you grew up, your family owned a printing business, is that right?

Ashton:

Yeah, I mean because it was the only thing that he didn't have to go get a college degree for. He could go in and start learning, get his hands dirty and start working and then build from there. And then Amway was also a huge part of his business as well. They were the ones who taught him how to tie a tie and shave, which was important. Business books, how to go and get a loan, how to open a business, L l C, all that stuff. It came from going out and seeking that information.

Brett:

Yeah, that's so cool. And so do you think growing up around the printing business, is that part of what gave you this passion for art and design and stuff? Do you think that's where that came from? Partially.

Ashton:

Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. It's from a young age. My dad at age 13 would, you would get kicked off of the fine family finances a little bit and given a budget and he'd help you budget and learn. And so from a young age you had to go and start working and it wasn't as dramatic as that sounds, but I mean it was the principle that mattered. And so from a young age we were at the print shop learning to print, pulling shirts off. We did anything from paper printing to clothing and hats and t-shirts and everything. And so my love for fashion and how does that play out, how does a brand look good on a t-shirt and part of your marketing strategy. All of that was from age eight, nine years old. That's what I was doing. And then when I started working in the front office, we had a Windows 95 computer with Crall draw on it, and that's how I learned to design. I actually didn't even pick up Photoshop or Illustrator until I was in my twenties because that's all I knew and I just made it work. So yeah, absolutely.

Brett:

That is a crazy story. There's probably lots of graphic designers out there if they're listening, they just had a gasp moment. You didn't start on Photoshop or InDesign.

Ashton:

Yeah, what was that? Wasn't around.

Brett:

That is amazing. Yeah, love that. That idea of teaching kids at a young age and kids growing up around a business. My dad was not entrepreneurial, always a hard worker but I always had this entrepreneurial desire inside of me, which is super interesting. But we share a lot in commons. We go to church together you and your family, your siblings are homeschooled, we homeschool our kids, there's all these connections, which is super cool. We love basketball. I'm the second most famous curry that maybe the third or the fourth, I don't know, but <laugh> absolutely also family tragedy. So walk through that just a little bit, as much as you're comfortable with, but you guys face some tragedy as a family. What was that and how has that shaped kind of your journey?

Ashton:

Yeah, for sure. Like I mentioned, I grew up with a really predominant mom and dad in the household. And so we had a really a healthy upbringing not just in faith but in family and in our education in business. And so when my dad got to a certain age, he loved to travel. That was his dream. One of the businesses that he actually started was a travel agency, which back in the eighties and nineties was, that was the thing. And so he did it so that he could get free trips or he could get deals. And so we would travel all the time. Part of the reason we were homeschooled as well as we could pick up and leave anytime in 2007, he had reached a point where he was wanting to explore the United States a little bit more. And so we bought a brand new RV and we started doing some trips here and there.

And on a trip in July of 2007, we went up into Canada went down through Seattle, and we were just on the other side of Seattle on the Olympic Mountains and we were coming down the mountains when the breaks actually failed to our rv and we were out of control and we went off the mountain and luckily everyone survived except for my dad who obviously passed away at that time. And it was a really scarring memory. It was a hard time. It was my world turned upside down at 17, I think you needed add more than ever. I was the homeschool kid with the metal band and loved art and basketball and I was confused at what I wanted to do, but I loved it all and rebellious as all get out. So it was a challenging time, but it was one of the coolest moments in my faith.

I met my wife during that time of, I call her my angel, she showed up and kept me centered and through that we started dating and we got married at 19. We had our first kid at 20 young kids figuring it out. But that all plays into when my dad passed away, we had a bunch of small businesses that had to be taken care of. And so all of a sudden you're kind of thrown into that of who's doing what. And although I was 17 and so I didn't carry the burden that a lot of my older siblings did, that was right there in the trenches with them and figuring it out and what is does life look like now? And we had 300 acres, which was some farmland that we all grew up on that's has to be taken care of and who's taken care of mom now.

So it was a really challenging time, but it really, there's two ways to look at it. You can be defeated by it or you can be empowered by it. And so it was a moment for me to really just grow up and you don't really have a choice, honestly. There's no one there to offer anything else except for you just got to keep going. And so fell in love, got married young, had kids young actually, our first house that we bought right after we got married in 2011 we got hit by the 2011 tornado in Joplin. We lost our first home. And so it's like you start looking at your life and you go, oh man, look at that. That was horrible. Oh man, tragedy set back. And really all I see as a believer in my faith, I just see God continue to show up and continue to pave away and give opportunity. And so that also as an entrepreneur and as a businessman, you constantly are met with maybe not as tragic, but you're constantly hit with roadblocks and failures and missteps and opportunity to either fail and go under or be empowered and figure it out. And so I would say as much as it is willpower and courage to keep going, it was also just grace and the people around me, like I said, mentors my wife that God put in my life to help me keep going.

Brett:

The people that come alongside you, the grace of God during that moment. And what's super interesting and and I have talked about this a little bit, I don't think I've talked about it too much on this podcast, actually I have on one other that I was a guest on, but I lost a parent as well. And my mom died when I was 15, had lung cancer, battled it for 16 months, passed away. And it's one of those things where you would certainly undo it, you would certainly change it if you could, but there's also something about it where it forces you to grow up. It forces you to change. In your case, you start running in or helping run the family business and the family farm and now you're like, dude, I got to be an adult right now.

Facebook becomes real at that moment. It's not just something you're reading or trying to make your parents happy and stuff, it becomes real or it doesn't. But in our cases it became real. And one of the things I think for me, I always had this confidence and I think my dad gave it to me, always told me that I could do anything that I put my mind to and when I didn't believe it. But I think one thing that happened, losing my mom and wrestling with that, I was not afraid of business failure at that point. It's like, right, I know what it's like to lose somebody, so I'm going to lose some money. It's not a big deal. I'm not worried about that. I'm just going to going to go forward and work hard and chase these things and life is short. It gives this perspective of talk about taking your shot take man, because you don't know. You don't know what's going to happen. And so don't waste time being afraid. Take your shot. And so pretty crazy. And so has your family, your siblings and stuff, they've continued to run the business. Is every all six kids entrepreneurs or just you and a few others?

Ashton:

Yeah, I know mean each of us are entrepreneurs in our own way. My oldest brother Austin ended up taking over with my brother-in-law Cliff. They partnered up and took on. It was a larger endeavor combining, there was different sections of the printing industry that my dad was a part of. And so they have now actually taken up until this year the time to obviously build it in the way that is sustainable and is up to date, but then is also combining and doing all of it. And so really cool to see them continue to expand and grow. They're super successful in what they do. I look up to Austin as one of my mentors and someone that I love and he was one of the reasons that I moved back and I don't regret for a minute. So yeah, it's been awesome. It's been really cool to see them continue to thrive.

Brett:

Yeah, it's mostly digital podcasts. We're mostly doing stuff online and whatnot. But would it make sense to give a shout out to your brothers printing business or to the family printing business? Maybe there's somebody out there that needs something printed and they should check it out. Absolutely. Be open for business. They can new clients.

Ashton:

So it's Empire Printing and it was called Empire Printing back in the seventies with my dad but then it's now there was Express Press and all these different things and until this year, 2023, they actually rebranded it and brought it back to Empire Printing and put everything underneath it. And they do with massive accounts nationwide, they do an incredible job printing embroidery, massive embroidery area, and then all of teen challenge and all of the printed books and collating and all of that stuff. So yeah, shout out to Empire Printing. Cool. The place to go,

Brett:

You need, if you need some printing call Empire Printing. Shout out to Austin. Tell him Ashton sent you. Yeah, Ashton. Super fun. So this idea, and we talked about it quite a bit, but just asking it point blank here, this idea of chasing your dreams, what do you tell people? So you're talk, talking to kids, talking to other entrepreneurs, talking to whoever. What do you tell 'em how and why you chase your dreams? What's your message there?

Ashton:

Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, you know, put the blockades in front of you. And so if you can remove the doubt, the insecurity, you can kind of point blank, look at what is holding you back from whatever that is that you're pursuing move it. A lot of times people put college as their thing. Now obviously I didn't go to college, so I am on the other side of the group that says, Hey, I was raised on youtube.com, so if I had a question, that's where I learned my stuff. So if you want to figure it out, I guarantee you it's on YouTube. But there's other things, right? Being a doctor and a lawyer and other qualifications that you need to go to college for. And I would say if that's your dream and want to do it, go by all means go do it.

But outside of that there is nothing that you cannot accomplish if you don't put your mind and heart and energy into it. And so the way that I've always say is send the email. A lot of times people ask me, how do I get in contact with these players or whatever it was relationships, there's a lot of times it was an email sent, it was a Facebook message, it was doing some creepy research and trying to find someone who works somewhere and tagging and figuring out the right person on Instagram and then just sending them a DM or finding a way to find 'em on LinkedIn. And so I have my own method of even to this day that if I want to find someone, there is no way that I can't. I mean the internet is filled with opportunity to go and research whatever you want to get the right contact for the job that you want or the industry you want to be in. So I always just say, send the email, man, just go and do it and don't hold back any of your fears and it will work out in the end. So

Brett:

Send the email. Just send the email, go out and find it, do the research. Don't be afraid, take the shot. This ties into this point, you and I were talking to this, you and I were talking about this before we hit record, but behind you, for those that are watching Michael Jordan, bull Jersey you're big, you're big Michael Jordan fan, you may be even bigger Michael Jordan fan than me. But tell your story as a kid, what was your interaction with Michael Jordan as a kid? And I think this illustrates this fearlessness that your dad and mom instilled in you and that you have to this day, but tell your Jordan story.

Ashton:

Absolutely, yeah. When I was six years old, my dream was to invite Michael Jordan to my birthday party. And of course my parents meeting who they were, they like, great rhyme a letter and we will send it. And so I, I crafted it for a week. I sat down, I spelled everything wrong and I was homeschooled. So shout out there, but I put it all together, 'em a picture. I think I even told them that I have a letter somewhere if you can stay at our house and you'll have to stay in my mom and dad's bed, but they're fine. They'll sleep somewhere else because you're huge and they have so

Brett:

Everything.

Ashton:

Absolutely. I had thought through everything. So I sent the letter and in that moment my parents were like, whatever. They looked up his corporate office and they mailed it. Well, surprisingly enough, my dad got a call at his office and it was Michael's secretary or assistant and said, Hey, Michael is actually in Paris right now so he won't be able to make your son's birthday party, but he was really moved by your letter. And so we want to send him a box of gifts. And Michael's written a letter for him. So if you wouldn't mind, we we'd love to give that to him. And so obviously as I was turning seven, there is just already this unbridled expectation of life. What can we not do? Dream it, achieve it? And so it just took on this whole manifest of just being fearless. And so a few years later there was a card contest in your basketball cards if kids know what those are anymore ripped it open. And actually right here is the pack that I had opened and it says on it win a sign Michael Jordan Jersey. And I thought, why not I could win that. And so I convinced my sister to sign me up

Brett:

Basically pen pals. I know Michael at this point, so I got to win the jersey.

Ashton:

Absolutely. Just, I put a good word, it's great. I know him. So yeah, so I ended up winning the jersey and it continued to just obviously feed my love and passion for Michael and the culture that I was thrown into in a farm in Springfield, Missouri, engrossed in East Bay magazines and sneakers and baggy clothes East Bay,

Absolutely. It was a lifetime journey of that kind of fearlessness that started at a young age, but was encouraged. And so if you're a parent, I always tell people, if you're a parent and your kid has some crazy idea, encourage that and help them. And if help them outline it. Like my parents didn't say no and they didn't throw away my letter when I wrote it. They said, well if you write it, here's the next step. We'll go to the mailbox, we'll send it, we'll look up his address and we'll send it and we'll see it. What happens. And so just walking that through, even for my kids now, there's been opportunities to encourage them in their love and their interest. And it comes from my upbringing as a child.

Brett:

I love it, man. So amazing. So we're really just have time for a couple more things, but I'm just curious, what are some of the books, the podcasts, what are some of the things you are consuming that are helping propel you on this entrepreneurial journey?

Ashton:

I obviously there is leadership podcast by Craig Rochelle. That is by far one of my favorite guaranteed to, it's probably been mentioned on here a dozen times, but that is one that just encourages my marriage. Enco encourages me as a father, but encourages me as a leader as I'm stepping out in faith and pursuing life. So I think that that podcast has transformed me how I built this sky. Ross started listening to it when it first came out and I think listened to every single one of them, if not a couple of times. So I love those podcasts. And then for book, I always say failing forward, one of the most impactful books that I've ever written or I've ever, I did not write it Johnson Maxwell wrote that one. But that I've ever listened to and read, it fed my soul during that learning period of life. And I referenced that one a lot. But I think that there is so many different materials out there that, not just podcasts, but there is books and that's another piece of it. If you want something or you're struggling with, there is so much content out there to just go and get it. It's obtainable. It's a lot of times it's free or it's pretty small. So yeah, those are a couple of the ones that's impacted me.

Brett:

Love it, man. Love it. What's next for you? What's next for you and team? I know you're working on some highly secretive things. You and I met and talked about these a few weeks ago, so some of you probably can't talk about, but what can you talk about? What's next for you?

Ashton:

Yeah, I mean there's opportunity within the space of the digital age. And so I, as we've gone through this kind of winter, as we call it in the metaverse, there is a lot of things that are happening while everyone is down and out about it that I think will continue to see opportunity with memberships and stuff. And so staying involved in that industry and then continue to help Steph and Clay and a couple of these other guys with their projects or their brand and so that we'll continue to grow and chase after that. And then of course pickleball, which we could have a whole other podcast about pickleball. So that is where I'm investing a lot of time and energy. So we'll come back two excited

Brett:

About that. Well yeah, exactly that. That'll be a great excuse for part two. We'll come in, we'll talk about pickleball. We'll nerd out for all those who were like basketball, come on guys, but you may like pickleball. So come back for episode two. It'll be more your speed, more your style there. So that's awesome. So check it out, go to triple I'm, I'm going to get your website wrong if I don't look at it here real quick. So triple-threat.co. So check that out and also just keep an eye on stuff Steph doing essentially anything Steph does in the public IRS foundation, potentially you've had a hand in that to some degree. Pay attention to Steph and Hi or I mean a clay, his shoe stuff, which is really cool. And in any other ways people should follow you. Are you active on the socials? Are you active on Instagram or LinkedIn or anywhere else that you want to mention?

Ashton:

I'm pretty well hiding behind a lot of the other people and allowing them to do their things. It's not

Brett:

A bad choice. Not a bad choice at all. Yeah,

Ashton:

I let them do it, but I do it. My personal AMO ins 23, I'm on Instagram. It's pretty well all I do if I am on it. So yeah, you can follow me there.

Brett:

Awesome. Fantastic. Well, Ashton, this has been an absolute joy, been a ton of fun and inspiring. I'm ready to go out there and just do whatever and hopefully pass some of these lessons onto my kids and other good stuff like that. So appreciate it brother. Thanks for taking the time and then we'll definitely have to schedule part two.

Ashton:

I appreciate the time as well. It was, it's been a joy. Thank you so much.

Brett:

Awesome. And hey, special shout out, Brian Franco, pastor Life Church, Springfield, Missouri, for making this connection. Appreciate you as well. And as always, thank you for tuning in. Let us know what you'd like to hear more of or less of on the podcast. And if your answer is, I'd like to hear less basketball, don't worry, this is going to be, this was the Basketball Heavy <laugh> podcast. We probably won't have another one quite like this, but this has been a ton of fun, so hopefully you enjoyed it. Hey, if you've not done so, leave that review on iTunes. Makes my day, helps other people find the podcast. And unlike Ashton, I am trying to get more active on the social. So follow me on Twitter for some good marketing tips and ideas, and also LinkedIn. I'm trying to get more active there as well. So with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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According to Chad Rubin, there's a lot of reckless advice from "gurus" when it comes to pricing on Amazon.

Just raising your price because of inflation, might not be your optimal move. In some cases lowering your price, improving sell through, improving BSR can raise your total profits. But lowering your price could have devastating impact to your profits. So should you raise or lower your price? The short answer is - it depends. The key is to test, watch the data, and optimize.

Chad Rubin recently exited Skubana, Prosper Show and his own agency. He’s now the founder of Profasee a dynamic AI repricing tool for Amazon sellers to help you maximize profits without hurting your ranking on Amazon.

Here’s a look at what we cover:

• Prepping your business to sell and how Chad successfully exited Skubana.
• The fallacy of managing your Amazon ad spend to an ACoS goal.
• The art & science of Amazon pricing.
• How to price on other marketplaces so you maximize sales on amazon and preserve margin.
• Product assortment strategies on and off Amazon and where Chad would launch a new eComm brand if he started today.
  ‍

Mentioned In This Episode:

• Chad Rubin (LinkedIn)
• Chad Rubin (Twitter)
• Profasee (Website)
• Profasee (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

‍

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today we have a seasoned pro man with multiple exits, multiple multi-time successful entrepreneur, Mr. Chad Rubin. you may know him from the days at Skubana, which he exited, and we'll talk a little bit about that on the show today. Hopefully that successful exit. He was also a partner in Prosper Show, which to this day is one of the best Amazon shows on the planet. The team here at omg, we still attend. We're prepping to attend this year, which is awesome. And then Chad also had his own agency, which he exited, and now he's the founder of Profasee, and that's a unique spelling on link to the show notes, have Chad explain it in a second. But basically their mission is to maximize your profits.

It's an AI dynamic pricing tool to maximize profits without hurting your ranking at your BSR on Amazon. And so we're going to be dropping some Amazon Truth bombs today. We're going to be talking about the keys to pricing and profitability on Amazon because it doesn't, it's not worthy just to sell on Amazon and erode all your profits, which a lot of people unwittingly do. And so we're going to show you how to be profitable on how to build a brand on Amazon. So with that, Chad Ruben, how you doing, man? Thanks for Hey, taking the time. Good to see you, dude.

Chad:

Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Brett:

Yeah, man. So tell us a little bit about Profasee and explain how to spell it for those that are going to hear this and then Google it later. And then we're going to get into some juicy Amazon topics here. Maybe get into some healthy debates as we go, which is always fun. But yeah, talk about Profasee.

Chad:

Yeah, so Profasee, we are a dynamic AI driven repricer for Amazon brands. We change pricing to maximize for profitability without sacrificing your BSR and Amazon, your competitive positioning on Amazon. I've been doing this for about a year AI first. So before chat, G P T and AI was really a thing. I started focusing on AI because I thought that was the future. And certainly I feel really certain in my assumption that AI is the future. And so how do you spell Profasee? It's P R O F A S E E, Profasee Profits. You could see it's a planned words. After I sold Skubana, I stared at a tree for a bit and that name came to me and I was like, okay, it's predicting the future with a level of certainty. And what are we doing? We're predicting pricing with a level of certainty of how we're going to make you more money

Brett:

Profits, you see. And it is a Profasee because you can predict it. I love it. That's awesome. So let's, actually let's lead with this because I know this is something that I'm interested in. We're looking at acquiring some agencies and we've invested in some e-commerce brands and things, but a lot of my friends are in tip dipping their toe in the m and a waters, or they've had partial exits or fully sold. So let's just talk about this a little bit that we'll get into some juicy Amazon takes the Skubana exit. What was that like? Any learnings, any takeaways? Because we hear horror stories like M and as terrible, you're going to hate your life for a period of months, or it could be totally liberating or somewhere in between takeaways from that experience.

Chad:

I mean, so many takeaways. Where to begin first of all, there's hair on every deal that's out there. There's always going to be hair. And for me, I'm like a skeptical individual, so I always skeptical the entire time of the process. And luckily we sold, I think at the height of everything, which is April of 21, I couldn't have asked for a better time to sell totally. And so I think I did a lot of things to make sure that the deal went correctly with my business partner. We exited in the most beautiful and healthy way possible collectively. What else can I share with you about the deal? Yeah it was definitely painful. I would say, let's just say you're going through the process right now. I think it's an art around bringing the right inner circle of your company into the process. When is the right time to tell a few people in your inner circle of the company? And I think we did that and it's

Brett:

Up too soon. You'll be like, Hey, we're thinking about selling people panic. People worry about their jobs, they're freshening up their resumes, they fired out the door because they think I'm, I'm going to be on the chopping blocks, but you don't want to surprise them. So what are your nuggets about that?

Chad:

Well, I mean, I think there's an art around it and bring people in the right time. So I made a list of the people who are absolutely necessary to be in the know about this acquisition. I got them excited about it because, well, I was excited about it. They would also benefit from the process. So there's a certain level of self-interest there and

Brett:

Be everybody pulling on the rope in the same direction or rowing in the same direction type thing.

Chad:

Totally. I think setting up calls around marketing and sales and development I would make sure to get those questions in advance, 48 hours in advance of those phone calls so that we can prep and pre-process before those phone calls happen. So I want to make sure that we're nailing every question and come prepared. And so I think after the first time we had a call, we didn't get the questions in advance and I was like, okay, this is going to have the change going forward and making sure that me and my team are meeting on those and actively working on those, and we're managing the business and operating it and making sure you're operating extremely well while you're going through the process.

Brett:

And I know it's quite distracting those due diligence calls and the requests are numerous and you know, got to keep the business running for obvious reasons. You want to take care of customers and you got to keep revenues up, but it's also imperative to the deal, you can't be so distracted on the m and a portion of the deal that your profit slip or your revenue slip because then your business is less valuable and now you're getting less out of it as the deal goes on. So any tips there? Or was that just kind of disciplined being do and determined and keeping focused? How did you press ahead with m and a while still running the business day to day?

Chad:

Well, I think the beautiful thing was April of 20 leading up to April of 21, we had the shift of well bricks, the clicks with the pandemic. And we were directly in the epicenter of enabling people to sell online. And so we were capitalizing on the shift. On top of that, you had some acquisitions in our space like Stitch Labs and Trade Gecko, and we were consuming the clients off those platforms. And so again, it's just knowing when to hold 'em and knowing when to fold him. And I think we just timed extremely well in the grand SEMA things and totally, I

Brett:

Don't, was don't think it could've been any

Chad:

Better. Yeah, I was recently listening to a, I think it was definitely a podcast with Harry Stabbings and Jason Lempkin, and Jason was like, we will never see valuations ever again in the software space similar to 2021. And I was like, bam. Nailed it, right? <laugh>

Brett:

That. Yeah, it's amazing. Well, kudos to you guys. You put it, I mean obviously you couldn't have predicted that. You couldn't predict that when you started Cubana, but you did the right things. You had a valuable, successful company. You saw the trend, you picked the timing when you, the wave when saw it. And so kudos to you guys. Awesome.

Chad:

A lot of hard work, a lot of hair loss seven years of high highs and

Brett:

Low lows that every deal has hair on it. I almost made a bald joke. I was like, well, maybe you want those deals anyway. Yeah, but that's awesome. So kudos to you guys. And what do you think and again, I know we've got some Amazon topics, so if you, dear listener are not into m and a one, I think you should be thinking about it at least we'll get to Amazon in a minute, but where do you see m and a going here over the next year or two? Or are you removed from it and not thinking about it a whole lot?

Chad:

I mean, I think if you're building a product that people love and helps and enables people to flourish and you're creating value, inevitably someone will want to buy you over time. So I'm necessarily not at the stage where I'm already thinking about the sale, I'm always thinking about the sale, but simultaneously not thinking about the sale. I'm just thinking about how do I provide tremendous amount of value and create something that people absolutely love and over time will find, we'll, we'll get love from somebody else that wants to buy us.

Brett:

And I love the Jeff Bezos quote that in the long term, customer and shareholder interests are aligned. So I love the idea of thinking about a sale from the very beginning, whether that's your goal or not, because to get your business in a healthy financial state, growing in a healthy way that's good for the longevity of your business if you decide to keep it forever and pass it down to generations or whether you decide to sell it. So yeah, I love the process of thinking about selling right away and you're doing right by customers in the long run, help helps shareholders as well.

Chad:

So just two things on that. One is in our first seed deck, we did compile a list of potential acquirers and the company that bought us was not on that list. So it's never, I'm not saying never, but it's not usually who you think it is going to be. And I think that's an interesting takeaway that I wanted to share. And another takeaway I think is interesting is the acquirer or the suitor of Skubana that was manufactured luck. So I was looking into partnerships and trying to figure out new ways to scale quicker and faster and making it more impactful. And I had reached out to the CEO and we had this conversation and one thing led to another, and that's sort of what started this whole process.

Brett:

Nice. I love that. And I think there's something to be said though about, you know, prepared the deck. You thought about who would buy it. I think there's something healthy about that thought process to again, make the business attractive for that group or thinking through why would this be interesting or attractive? Well, the product has to be good for any of that to be true. But then yeah, manufactured luck. And another way I've heard this said Jim Collins talks about, he calls it return on luck. So the most successful people, the most successful companies aren't more lucky or less lucky, they just make the absolute most of the luck they've given. And that's what you did. You were out there, you built a great team and a great product, and you're talking to CEOs and you're thinking about strategically, how do we grow, expand, create mutual benefit, and then it open the door for an awesome acquisition. So that's fantastic. Really, really cool. Great. Any other parting where I know we can make the whole podcast about m and a, some people wouldn't like that, so we'll move on. But any final tips on m and a in terms of whether advisors or podcasts to listen to or any takeaways if

Chad:

Someone maximize shots on goal find people, surround yourself with people like a council, a Jedi council, people who are going to empower you and help lead you through and Sherpa you through the process of an m, m and a. I did that a great book to read's,

Brett:

Not something to go alone unless you're like seasoned M and a pro, probably not. You need the Sherpa, you need a team around you.

Chad:

I had a great C F O that I hired that led the way he's been through many edits and also making sure your financials are in order. I know it sounds like, hey, everyone has that, but we certainly didn't have it. I think many other companies don't have it even in sass, right? There's deferred revenues and bookings that happen, and getting that squared away is very important in the process.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah, totally, totally makes sense. Well, awesome. All right, let's talk about Amazon. And you know, guys help maximize profits without slowing down BSR and without losing your rankings. And it, it's a dance. We all know that we want to improve our rankings and capitalize on that organic growth and the behemoth that Amazon is in terms of generating traffic and buyers. But if all we're doing is giving money to Amazon, and I've seen a lot of PNLs from Amazon brands I know you have too, where you're like, well, the only person making money here is Amazon. And so we've got to have this structure in a way where you're building a brand and building it profitably. And so let's talk about that. What's kind of the art and science of pricing on Amazon?

Chad:

So I think firstly, the reason why I started Profasee was after years of spending time building Skubana and the Prosper Show and all these other things, I disregarded my e-comm company. We manufacture vacuum filters and coffee filters. So I wanted to revive that business. I mean, it was getting bad. We were getting copied. I wasn't putting a lot of time into it. I probably had the wrong team in place on top of it. So I got back into the game and I was trying to figure out how do I turn this business around? And there's a lot of, first of all, there's a lot of just reckless commentary around pricing from gurus in the Amazon world. And B, I don't think any seller or brand spends a lot of time thinking about pricing. And so they're making sub-optimal decisions around pricing and they're under monetizing their products. And I felt that with my own brand on Amazon and started dog fooding building Profasee for myself, and then started opening up for other people the same way I did. So I found an itch to itch, to stretch and started building it for other people. So, sorry, go ahead,

Brett:

Brett. Well, I was just going to say two things. One, I love a dog food reference. For those that don't know I think this is a Google term where they talked about well, they borrowed from Purina or something. But the idea is say, if you want to make your product better, you got to eat your own dog food. And I guess there are stories of a may, maybe it's Purina eating it, people eating the dog food in the boardroom, which would be really funny to observe. But yeah, it's the idea of we get the product doesn't fit us. If we don't like it, nobody else is going to like it either. So I like that. And then I do want to maybe key on this, and if you think this is better to talk about in a minute, that's totally fine, but what's some of the reckless advice? I love that you said that, and I totally agree with you. What's some of the reckless advice about pricing that you hear on Amazon?

Chad:

So pricing's easy to talk about, right? Everyone, but Oh, just raise your pricing. First one's

Brett:

Not your product. <laugh>, right? I just want to sound smart. You change your own price. Yeah, whatever.

Chad:

Yeah, so pricing isn't one size fits all. So you can say, okay, just raise your price, right? Inflation's here, raise your price. Just do it. Just go do it. And that's what I was hearing especially when I took over my e-com company in October. I was like, that's absurd. That's crazy. Doesn't price need to be calibrated to what the buyer wants? And don't people have different conversion rates and sessions at different times of the day? Why is pricing static? And so the reckless advice is like, Hey, just go ahead and raise it. But raising isn't necessarily the most optimal decision. It could be actually lowering the price, which increases your velocity, which means you have more unit sell through, which means you're generating more absolute profit dollars on the bottom line. So everyone's maintain these knee-jerk reactions, and most Amazon brands are just focusing on adjusting spent. And so if you're managing $10,000 of spend on Amazon today, you would never not optimize it. So why is nobody optimizing price? So that's really where I started to really question and ask why and build a discipline around this.

Brett:

Awesome. And so then I know your tool does this algorithmically and automatically, but what are some of the ways that you could be and should be optimizing price? And I really like the way that you point that out, that yes, sometimes raising the price is absolutely the right answer, but sometimes lowering it and increasing your yourself or in your BSR and improving your ranking and all those metrics change that's better for you. So how are you analyzing that? How's someone that doesn't have AI behind them analyze those things?

Chad:

So I think we all have to understand, and I think everyone that's deep in Amazon gets this, there's a knock on effect. So if you change pricing today, it affects your orders tomorrow. And so knowing that you have to actually really be super hyper focused on your Bryce. And so if you're doing this by yourself, if you're doing it manually, you would trade a spreadsheet for, and you'd have a tab for each asin and you would be looking at your current price, your impressions, your conversion rate your unit session percentage. You'd have your competitor, the top 10 maybe competitors in there with their price. And you'd essentially have your profit for every day on those prices. And you'd actually start making small tweets and start seeing what these small tweets have on your bottom line of profitability and also inputting in your bsr. So you're making these changes and when you make changes to pricing on Amazon, it's not in a vacuum. And so you make these changes, you're making decisions around changes, managing to a specific net margin and have a continuous process around those changes implemented internally at the company.

Brett:

Nice. And how often are you changing prices so as not to mess things up? Is it a multiple times a day?

Chad:

We're talking about Profasee in general or just

Brett:

In general and talk about Profasee too. But in general, if someone's doing this manually and tweaking and observing, what does that look like? And then what does Profasee do?

Chad:

So if you're doing this manually, I mean I think the depends on how many props you have, but if you're doing it on 10 products, you can probably do it manually maybe but I think you should be doing it once a day. And this is a fundamental step because it's the smallest lever that swings the biggest store of profitability. But then you should be having weekly meetings with your finance team and with management and speaking about, Hey, what are our target margins? What's happening based on these price changes? And really connect pricing as a discipline across your roadmap for product across your finance team, across marketing, across your ads team or your ad agency, whoever you're hiring to make sure that you're managing to expectations.

Brett:

Yeah, I like it. You talked about spend a minute ago and well, first of all what else do we need to think about with price? Any tips or mistakes people make when it comes to price on Amazon?

Chad:

Well, I think that first mistake that I shared, which is people don't know what the optimal price is, and the only way to know truly is to look at the data. So it's not just to raise price. And I think, and this is going to the next segue of the conversation is there's so much data to capture your price, your bsr, your conversion rate, your session rate. We do a reverse ace and lookup on all your competitors, and we ingest it all into a model. And the beautiful thing about a model is that a model is self-learning and continuously learns and improves 24 7. And the reason why I started building prop was I couldn't do that manually. And I also have a lot of stews. So before we did a stew rationalization at the company, I had about 500 something stu, private label skews, which is a lot to manage.

Brett:

Yeah, you pair that down then through analysis or have you

Chad:

Oh yeah, it's been paired down quite a bit 80 to 20 Pareto principle. We established criteria around what we want to keep and then liquidated the rest. So it's like, Hey, what's the age of this inventory? What are the turns like on the existing inventory? What are our net margins? And based on specific benchmarks that we made, we said anything over a specific timeframe or under a specific margin, we got rid of.

Brett:

Love it. I love it. So then as we kind of transition, because it's something we're talking about before we hit record, a lot of people that run Amazon businesses, they're either doing this or their agency is doing this, or marketing team managing to hit a cost goal, advertising cost of sales, and you have to consider a cost. It's an important metric. You have to look at it. I also like what you said though too about you're not going to have $10,000 in ad spend and not optimize it, but you don't optimize price. And when we're running Amazon ad campaigns, we're tweaking bids constantly. We do some manual and bulk work and software work and stuff too. But I love where you're going here actually. And so I'll chime in a minute, but why is optimizing for a cost goal a mistake or shortsighted?

Chad:

So a couple of things. It's a target and it doesn't actually account for profitability. And so in the past decade on Amazon, it's been this gold rush. We've all been able to capitalize it, and now we're moving into growing revenue profitably. And so as an agency, and I would love to know, you're an agency, you're a master at this, and I'm wondering if you guys collect this information, but most agencies that I talk to don't actually collect inventory on hand or no, what that looks like or know what your Len cost structure is. They're managing to a specific ACOs. And that ACOs, by the way, the ACOs equation is what you spend to what make, and they're only adjusting one part of the equation. It's almost like having a peanut butter sandwich with no jelly. It's like it's okay, it'll get you by, but it's much more delicious when you combine it together.

Brett:

Yeah, and we do. So look at, I think you've got to have a line of sight, whether it's an agency, your in-house team, a freelancer, whatever you're hiring clear line of sight to total sales and what is our total a cost? But that's still the same thing. It's still just a metric or a goal. We, we've had this discussion in our agency and our leadership team, we want to hit X percentage of profitability. Well that's cool, but we also want to think about total profits. We want to hit a number, we want to hit a profit number. So you got to think about that as well as the percentage. So yeah, these are one of those is one scenarios where you need to think about total profits and how does a shift in ACO impact your total profits? Because you're not taking ACO to the bank and you're not selling ACO to a potential buyer down the road. Its based on profit and

Chad:

Profitability. So ACOs doesn't tell the whole story, right? To me it's a metric, and I'm trying not to be mean about it, but it's almost a gospel metric. But the real God metric is your prophet.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah. It's so true. I actually just record a podcast, this is more on the D to C world, but with Rob Rayhill from Triple Whale, and I love what the guys at Triple Whale are doing but they were talking about, Hey, don't obsess over roaz. You got to know, obviously it's an important metric, you got to know it, but that's not the ultimate business metric and that's not your ultimate financial metric. It serves a purpose, but if you become too focused on it or if your agency or marketing person's like, well, ACO is good, so I don't know why you're upset, ACO is great. Well, that's not the God metric. Yeah, exactly. I like that. I like that. Cool. So how you, did you look at this in your business or how do you look at it or how do you coach people? And I know we've talked about it a little bit already, but how should we look at it? A cost versus profitability and EBITDA and all those things?

Chad:

Well, I know specifically for my business on Amazon, our God metric, if you know your God metric, you got to use it everywhere. And so for us, we're using contribution profit, absolute profit dollars. We're man, we're like, every time we meet in our L 10 meeting, we're looking at what our net margin, how it's trending over time. And we have a specific goal in mind of net margin to accomplish that we're trying to achieve. And I think a lot of just the agencies that I talked to don't, man, they're interested in capitalizing on your spent either a percentage of revenue, PPC revenue, sometimes it's the total revenue, sometimes it's your spend. And I had to really shift away from the agency that I was working with specifically because it's almost like we were worshiping a false, false shot

Brett:

And mean some of those models work and there's not a perfect pricing model, but as an agency we do the percentage of ad spend thing and in some cases percentage of sales. But the key though is you've got to have line of sight into the most important metrics and then you're really optimizing on those key metrics. So a cost keeps us within certain guardrails, and that's what we see most closely in the platform where the ads are. But it's that contribution margin and overall profit that that's really, we're our North star, that's where we're headed. And that's amazing. Yeah, I think that's a super important discussion to make. And when you are talking I would love to get your take on it because you said the business was a little bit back burner for a while as you're building and selling skubana and whatnot. But once you started talking about contribution margin and focusing on profitability at the highest level of leadership, what did that do for the rest of your team?

Chad:

So a few things though. I took over this business, it was a mess. It was really, and I didn't want to take it over. So

Brett:

Was this the family business, long time business or something? Or business you started a long time ago.

Chad:

My family business, my family had a vacuum retail store. I started private label in two really officially in 2009. And this is my own standalone business, private label on Amazon. Nice. And again, it hasn't gotten a lot of love. It didn't light me up. I really want to maximize my outcome. And for me, it was focusing on software that really lit me up that really got me excited. I know a lot of people love building products and launching on Amazon and doing that, and that just wasn't something that I wanted to focus on. So I had other people focusing on it not, and it's all about having the right butts in the right seat and I just lost sight of the business. So I tried hiring two other individuals and without going into too much detail, it didn't work out. And then I started implementing L 10 meetings, which is an EOS practice

Brett:

Just on traction, the book Traction,

Chad:

Yeah, yeah, I'm in EO as well with Gene. And just started focusing on where are the problems and how to assess those problems out. So one of the problems with price, another problem was the fact that we had too much inventory. We had a lot of stale inventory we were getting hit, and the other piece was like our listings were unoptimized, they were dusty. Like a listing of 2000 from 2012 is different from a listing of 2022 or 2023. So I started implementing that and we actually just had our first net profit, positive net profit, net margin of profitability in the month of December. And I think that's the first time. Congratulations. 18 months. Awesome.

Brett:

Yeah,

Chad:

So super

Brett:

Cool. That's a big deal. So pretty quick turnaround really when you think about it. And so that one, that traction system, which great book us is it Gene Wickman or Eugene Wickman. Anyway gene, yeah, yeah, gene, yeah, it's a great book. So check that out. But from that L 10 top level leadership meeting, identifying what needs to change, and you did that and now you are in the money, which is awesome. Very cool. So you dropped we teased out some truth bombs and we might be dropping on Amazon. And you said something, Chad we've been using some religious terms. You dropped something that was a bit like heresy, a bit like blasphemy. Earlier when we were on the talking, you said if you were starting a new brand today, you might not even launch on Amazon to begin with. So talk me through that. What has led you to that spot and unpack that for us a little bit.

Chad:

Yeah, I mean, I think it's having a criteria of what you're going to be. I mean, if you are going to launch a product on Amazon, and I do believe in the power of Amazon, by the way. Absolutely. I just think it's a, and I think you used the proper word early on and I, there's just so much saturation on Amazon. I dunno if you used that word, but essentially there's a lot of saturation. So I would be, shelves

Brett:

Are full, the shelves are full at Amazon.

Chad:

Yeah, shelves are full. I love that. I would establish criteria for how you're going to approach Amazon going forward. So I like to use, I EO and I experience shares. And so one of the reasons why I love AI is that it improves over time. Essentially becomes a highly differentiated product and has self-improvement. So if you can do that with software, you can likely do that with your product on Amazon. An example would be, I know this is a high level product, but essentially it's the Nest thermostat. It gets better over time. It takes years to copy that product because it gets better now. My Nest knows when I'm home and when I'm not home and adjusts my temperature accordingly. So I think this is amazing. There's establishing a new set of criteria to win on Amazon going forward because what got you to 2022 isn't going to take you to 2025 or 2026 and this, you've been in this team for a long time on Amazon Spires every three months.

Brett:

Totally.

Chad:

But if you build a foundation, right, if you build a product from the ground up, you build a highly differentiated product, there's some scarcity of supply, you have a product that improves over time, whatever that is, I, you come up with it yourself and you find sleepy verticals. And where if someone buys your product, for example, a nest, they're not going to buy the anchor nest for good reason. You become a lot more strategic in your process, in the way that you're building your product on Amazon.

Brett:

And it was interesting, I mentioned this to you before we hit record. I posted a poll on Twitter and on LinkedIn. And then quick plug, I would love to follow you guys on Twitter and on LinkedIn. I'm committing to at least the first half of this year going hard on social media, making connections, having fun. And I may continue, hopefully it'll continue. But for now you'll find me there. You'll find me on Twitter and LinkedIn. But I posed a question. If you were launching an e-commerce brand today, what would you do? Would you launch that on Shopify or other platform? Go d toc, drive traffic, build a brand, build demand, build like a following and then launch on Amazon, or would you launch on Amazon first and then look to go D two C later? And it was interesting, it was a heated debate. You can find it on LinkedIn, on Twitter, if you look at my profiles at Brett Curry, Twitter the Brett Curry on LinkedIn, but it was slightly in favor of Shopify, about 55%.

Something like that said go D toc first. I think the real answer is you probably got to understand your product. Is it more of a demand capture type thing where people are searching for it and you need that search traffic as Amazon is driven by search. It also depends on your skillset. What do you good at and what can you do? But I much prefer if we're talking about pricing optimization and profit maximization. I love driving traffic, building a brand off Amazon first because then when you launch on Amazon, you can likely better protect those profits. So yeah, what would be your take on that topic?

Chad:

So funny, you're just getting into social media and I'm also getting into it. So I just posted

Brett:

Dude check and you've got a good, I actually saw you got a good following on LinkedIn, man, I don't know what you're doing, but I'm

Chad:

Happy to share offline by the way. Want to. I can help.

Brett:

Let's do it.

Chad:

Okay, thanks. It's something I'm passionate about. So I just posted something about the Hoka exclusive monetization strategy on LinkedIn yesterday. And Amazon is a gateway drug to find high value customers for your brand.

And it's like 50 people start on Amazon and sometimes they never leave, but always a lot of people start on Amazon, it's not Google. And so it's never been easier to just create a seller account on Amazon. You build a product, you drive some traffic to it, you'll have far better return on ad spend and thus enhancing your profit on Amazon specifically. And so for me, I would start on Amazon and then once I have a good core heroes to you on Amazon, I would start building Amazon like exclusive, which is what Hoka does. They locked their exclusive products on their own website, but they have their generic ham nilly Vanilli product on amazon.com for social proof, for exploration, for discovery. If people just want the black ones and they get them on the second time purchase off of Amazon,

Brett:

I think that's smart too. And I think really regardless of where you begin or where you are now in your journey, cause I know most likely talk, as I interact with listeners at events and stuff, a lot of the people listening already have a business. So whether you start on Amazon or started off Amazon, I love that strategy of core products, hero products on Amazon, but exclusives, new releases, other things off Amazon. And I do think it comes down to your skillset, Amazon, how to crush it on Amazon. If there's somebody that understands Shopify and understands Facebook ads and YouTube ads and Google ads do that, but there's not a real right or wrong answer there. But one cool thing that's happened, we did this with Boom by Cindy Joseph Firestones company launched 'em on Amazon, they had not been on Amazon for years. Company had been around for maybe a decade or so.

We added 15% to the top line almost immediately. Profitable growth didn't diminish growth on other channels. There's also this group of of buyers and potentially our parents or grandparents or whoever they only want to buy on if they're going to buy online, they're buying on Amazon only. And if you are running traffic off Amazon, you're driving people to Amazon right now, whether you mean to or not. Cause that's just where people like to go to shop. And so yeah, no right or wrong answer there, but I think regardless of where you start or where you launch pricing strategy, product strategy. And so actually let's double click on that a little bit. And what else do you recommend there in terms of product strategy on Amazon versus off Amazon, and how does that tie in to pricing? Any of the thoughts there?

Chad:

Yeah, so I mean the thing is you want to have as lease channeled conflict as possible because Amazon, Amazon wants best pricing or price parity across the channels. Yes. So look, we've built suppression monitoring into our systems, but I'll give you an example. There's a cosmetic company that we are working with at Profasee, and they had a bigger issue. They were, the holy drill for them was like, let's get our product into Target. So Targets started buying their products and it became like 5% of their revenue. So Amazon's 95% target's now 5%. Well, the target collection at Amazon the target collection started to not do well. So Target wanted some concessions. So what does that mean? Target wants some concession that you have to lower your price on Amazon and it becomes, it's sort of target hijack the 5% of their revenue and now it's messing with the 95% of the revenue. So it's very important to calibrate and to really think about this before you get in. I know it's so awesome to be in Target or to be in Sephora and to see it on the shelf in the physical world, but at the same time it can have some devastating consequences and unintended that can really hurt your business.

Brett:

Yeah, yes. I'm thinking about that, minimizing that channel conflict. Any tips for that? How do we minimize channel conflict? And I know you did quite a bit of that with Skubana back in the day, but thought there.

Chad:

So a couple things you can have. Now, Amazon's not a little smart about this in the diaper category specifically, but if you can actually zoom out and do this in other categories, and it's not so significant, which is having different skews having a different collection. So for example, the Gap has their outlet and they make product specifically for the outlet than they do for gap.com, then in-store. And this J True does the same thing. So having a different collection and different bundle kit variation and even different ounces size specifically on different channels could prevent that from happening. That's just like one idea.

Brett:

Nice. And that's where, and a lot of manufacturers do that. They have the TV exclusives for Best Buy, right? You can only buy this particular version in Best Buy, and this is the version for Walmart. And we know the guts are probably pretty similar, but there's just enough changes to make it where it's exclusive to that retailer, whichever retailer wants.

Chad:

So another example would be like I think it's, is it Kia or Hyundai? I think it's, maybe Kia has the Genesis, right? Or Toyota has Lexus having two different types of, it doesn't have to be a different name. That's a little bit extreme. That means two different marketing budgets. But that's one thing if you do have channel conflict and you want to want to keep pricing a specific way, the price on Amazon becomes your floor. You give us your floor price, so you give us your floor price and your ceiling price, and those are the boundaries that we operate within to maximize profits for you. And Amazon

Brett:

Needs to be the floor. That's what they want, that's what they require. And if you don't do that, you're going to have trouble on it on

Chad:

Amazon. Exactly.

Brett:

Yeah. Makes sense. Chad, this has been amazing. So I want to talk about Profasee now because I know you built something really, really cool. Kind of sprinkled some nuggets here throughout talking about what it does. It's AI driven as dynamic pricing adjustments. But talk to us more about that. What's the quick explanation of here's who it's for, here's how it works, here's why you should consider it. Yeah,

Chad:

So we are four private label brands. There's tons of people that live and die by the buy box. We live and die by the ERP on Amazon. We believe that you can dynamically adjust price to maximize profit at different times of the day to maximize your profit without sacrificing your BSR on Amazon. So we predict the perfect price at the perfect moment for the perfect customer to make sure we're making you more money. We do that with ai. Why? Because there is a gold mine of information, both from amazon.com specifically from Seller Central and the API of ads along with a surplus of data that you mine from third parties and pull it into the model. So the model can actually be self-learning and learn from your data to figure out really what the Amazon algorithm wants, how your competitors react, and to constantly learn from those signals to maximize the outcome for your business.

Brett:

Yeah, very, very cool. And then we talked about, hey, you can do some stuff manually. You can build a spreadsheet, you can start calculating things, do stuff on a daily basis, but ain't got time for that, right? <laugh> like, and you're pulling data from lots of different places and then putting that into models and coming up with those prices. And so what are some of the things there that the algorithm's considering? Is it looking at competitive price and then it's looking at what conversion rates are and ads and things like that? And it's trying to find that optimal?

Chad:

I mean there's so many signals. So your own price, your reviews, the quality of your review reviews, the quantity of the reviews, your bsr what else your inventory position, if your FBA or not fba, we do a reverse ace and lookup on your competitors, suck in their price, suck in their reviews, pull in all the imaginable signals on those competitor PDPs, those pro detail pages. And we're doing that every single day doing that 24 7. So it's really all about boosting profits and going away from like, Hey, we're going to statically Uber surge. Uber has control surge pricing, which dynamically changes pricing. Most sellers are just guessing or slapping a margin on their product and statically leaving it there. It doesn't make any sense. And so in this fast place marketplace of Amazon, how do you be fast paced? You do it with ai.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah, totally makes sense. And so any case studies or examples that you can talk about, I know there's probably a lot I know in the Amazon world for those that are not in it, very secretive, very secretive, these Amazon sellers, they don't want their name out there in any way, shape or form, but in any case studies that you can share.

Chad:

Yeah, so there's one company that's on our website, one that was willing to speak, and there's going to be more coming up as we move into our next, we're still early, right? We're, we've been building in this model for the past year but one company called Wall Charmers, they do decor, they're in the decor category on Amazon and they were leaving some serious money on the table. We made them an extra 30% more in profits and which has an amazing effect, not just on their EBITDA but on, they want to sell at some point in the future. And so think about applying not just the increase of ebitda, but the EBITDA multiple, you get on that increase, that's huge.

Brett:

And you said, yeah, 30% increase in you multiply whatever that dollar amount is by three, four, up to seven or more depending on how healthy your business is and who the buyer is. So yeah, that's very significant. Chad, if people want to follow you on social, you're a great follow on LinkedIn. I know that for sure. How can they find you?

Chad:

You can follow me on LinkedIn Chad Rubin you can follow me on Twitter. I'm also, sorry, I'm new to Twitter. I'm definitely been involved in LinkedIn for quite a time, so I'm doing both now, similar to you you can follow Twitter, Chad Rubin, you email me and my personal email is Chad Profasee.com. Feel free to reach out if you're interested in talking price, if you're interested in talking to ppc, if you're interested in just talking about Amazon or need someone to bounce ideas off, I want to make sure I'm available to the community.

Brett:

Awesome. Really appreciate it, man. And it should be blatantly clear Now. Chad knows his stuff. He knows the game. He's been in a long time, very, very successful. So otherwise people can check out Profasee on the webs, on the interwebs. What's your address?

Chad:

It's just Profasee.com, P R O F A S E e.com.

Brett:

Awesome. And we will link to everything in the show notes, including your social, so people can check that out. If you forget, you can find that on omg commerce.com under the podcast will link to it. But Chad, there's been awesome, man. Thank you so much for taking the time enjoying Matt with you and talking dropping some Amazon truth bombs, talking m and a. Super, super fun. So thank you,

Chad:

Thank you.

Brett:

Awesome. And thank you for tuning in, really appreciate it. We'd love to hear from you. So if you've not done so, hey, we'd love that review on iTunes helps other people find the show makes my day. I may give you a shout out on the show if you leave a review on iTunes. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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In this episode, you’ll hear Rick Watson’s unfiltered hot takes on the latest changes coming from the “Big 2” in eCommerce: Shopify and Amazon.

Rick Watson is an eCommerce influencer, former software CEO, and the host of The Watson Weekly podcast. Frequently speaking at large retail events like ShopTalk, NRF, and IRCE, he knows his stuff!  

Here’s a look at what we cover:

• How Rick grew from 0 to 45,000 followers on LinkedIn in a few years (fun side notes for anyone wanting to grow their social following).
• The recent Shopify rate increases - people are complaining, but no one is leaving.
• Headless Commerce and Shopify Components - it’s new(ish), it’s sexy, and everyone is talking about it. Is it right for you?
• Amazon FBA changes related to IPI - this shows that Amazon is smarter than the rest of us.
• Buy with Prime - what is it, when does it make sense vs. when does it not? 
• Walmart, Target+, and the other marketplaces - should you care?

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Mentioned In This Episode:

• Rick Watson (LinkedIn)
• Rick Watson (Twitter)
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO mg commerce, and today I've got a treat for you. I have an e-commerce influencer, a consultant, a guy who's just crushing it on LinkedIn and beyond. He knows the ins and outs of Shopify, Amazon, all the marketplaces, everything, anything and everything happening that's big, and this guy knows it. So I've got Rick Watson on the podcast today. He's the CEO and founder of RMW Commerce Consulting. And so Rick, welcome to the show, man. How you doing? And thanks for coming on.

Rick:

I'm doing great, Brett. Thanks for reaching out to me and happy to be on the pod.

Brett:

Yeah, it's one of those things where I've been and I've mentioned this on a few podcasts, I'm trying to dial in my social media game. So I'm posting on Twitter, which I'm partially liking and just honestly partially not. But I'm enjoying LinkedIn a lot, so I'm posting on LinkedIn. I see this cat named Rick Watson <laugh>, and he's dropping knowledge bombs, and I'm like, I got to check this guy out. So I look at your profile, you're like 45,000 followers on LinkedIn. So I'm like, all right, I got to get to know this guy. So reached out and here we are. So just as a quick aside, and we'll get into e-commerce news and things going on with Amazon and Shopify, and we'll dive into some juicy nuggets there, but talk about social media. You well get started on LinkedIn, and do you think is that worthwhile for someone to consider investing in their LinkedIn game?

Rick:

Yeah, I mean, look, it all depends on what your goal is. For me, LinkedIn is marketing. I started my own consulting firm about four years ago, and I know this is not going to be an interesting business if I can't find my own deals. And so it just started with

How can I help people? And so naturally, I've always enjoyed writing and speaking. And so I think there is a few different sides of it. One is how do I talk about the companies that people care about, which is the big two ecosystems in e-commerce by far, or Shopify and Amazon. So that's why you'll see me talk about Shopify and Amazon a lot. And then if I can sprinkle in there information while I'm talking about those topics, other things to help people, that gives people an idea the type of work that I do, but not in a salesy way. I was never good at really selling myself per se. And what I've figured out over the years, especially on social media, no one wants you to sell to them on social media, not so don't do it. So right. I think you have to remember why you're there and everyone has a goal. If your goal is to find new partners, it could be to find new customers, it could be Ed, but a lot of that social media, the way I think about it, it's the top of your funnel. It's how you meet new people. And if those people trust you, then maybe one day they'll do business with you, but not before. Love it, but not before. Right?

Brett:

100% no. And trust you build that on social media for sure. So how long did it take Rick Watson to go from whatever you had in the beginning to <laugh> now almost 45,000

Rick:

Follow? Yeah, so I've been on LinkedIn since the beginning, 2004, five. I think everyone started on LinkedIn as their online resume, but I didn't totally until I used, until I started my business, I never got serious about it. So when I founded my business in 2019, I had about 2,500 con contacts. And so in the last, that's awesome. Four, the last four years I've maxed out, I've learned two things. Number one is the maximum number of connections you can have on LinkedIn is 30,000. I did not know that when I started.

Brett:

Interesting. You cannot

Rick:

Connect followers. So I had to go to the whole follower model, which luckily Introdu, LinkedIn introduced this whole creator mode. So your profile becomes something that someone can follow rather than connect. Actually had to delete connections to meet to <laugh>. So it took me a while to figure out that after a couple months after I started my business, I basically post on LinkedIn every weekday morning. That's kind of my routine. I do it before I start. And that's really the foundation of all my content marketing, period. All my content basically starts on LinkedIn.

Brett:

Nice. And then you're taking pieces of that content and sharing elsewhere potentially.

Rick:

Yeah. So I might be like, if I post about a Shopify over a month period, maybe three of four of those posts might turn into a bigger blog post that will be then used for seo, or each of those stories might be used in my podcast in a little bit different way. And so I'm actually starting to get into looking to starting to get into video. So some of these more popular posts might turn into, so it's all these things are starting to reinforce each other as I kind of like, okay, I got LinkedIn, I have, okay. And the podcast is going, what else can I use this content for? Is what I think is interesting,

Brett:

Leveraging that content. Love it. Love it. Yeah. Well, let's dive into some news. I appreciate that. Side note. And for anybody wanting to build their social media following some free tips for you. So let's talk Shopify now fairly recently, depending on when someone listens, I think it was actually this morning or whatever as we're recording, but Shopify just announced a price increase. They bumped the price on basic and advance and sounds like it was a pretty decent hike, right? 30% or something. So talk that. Why did Shopify do it? It's probably obvious to most people, but why did they do it? And is this good, bad, or it just is?

Rick:

Yeah, I think it is. Look across the board, everyone's raising their prices totally. The cost of employees is higher, the cost of services is higher. And so that even applies to Shopify. Shopify hasn't done a price increase, and to be honest, since I've been following Shopify in the past five or six years at least, wow, I can't think of when they've done a price increase. And I think the COO mentioned that something like 10 or 10 or 12 years. So it's almost like a mistake. I think that they haven't raised prices till now. And so it was kind of inevitable when I saw their Q3 earnings and they kind of went from profitable to slightly, not terribly unprofitable, but negative 10% net margin. And I'm like, these guys are going to increase their price real soon here, <laugh>, no doubt. Because otherwise what do you have to do?

You have to lay, they're a software company who are all their expenses people, so they don't want to lay off people. So they're going to increase their prices and then they might do some layoffs and they ended up doing both. But yeah, I, I'm frankly kind of indifferent for it because I thought it was overdue before I posted my article this morning. I did some searching on Twitter just to get a sense for what people were thinking. There's a lot of complaints no one likes, no one likes to hear about a, no one likes to hear about a price increase, but in a week you will not hear one Pete, I guarantee

Brett:

It'll be dead. It'll dead

Rick:

Like

Brett:

Dead. This really sucks. But they're reaching for their wallet to

Rick:

Where else are they going to spend six months to pay a new agency to re-platform? No, nice to spend, no, they're going to spend the extra $10 a month <laugh>, right? Yes. Thank you.

Brett:

Yep. So likely long overdue. So interesting news there. Yeah, hopefully Shopify can get profitable because hey, we all need Shopify, even the ecosystem at large, a hundred percent Shopify's good for it. So let's move on to another topic. And this one's super interesting to me and it's one that admittedly I understand at a surface level but not deeper. And so I'm excited to chat with you about it. Let's explain what headless is for people and then Shopifys kind of play on that is Shopify components. We'll talk about that in a minute, but what is headless?

Rick:

Headless is an unfortunate term that has made its way into popular terminology in the e-commerce world. And I kind of came up as a developer, so I understand a lot of the technology. And I was a software engineer for many years as and an architect. So headless essentially means that there's a separation between how you display content to a user, the journey a user will go through on the path to purchase from back office and operations functionality. And traditionally in a software, Shopify, a Magento, a Magenta, a Salesforce, historically, all those things were kind of bundled in one software platform. So if the prototypical example is, if you don't your Shopify template, it's not like you could design a custom one. Let's is early on you couldn't design a custom one from scratch. You were kind of choose one of the a hundred templates and that's what you got, right?

And headless I first heard about headless back in the magenta days, something like 2013. And part of it, it was performance of the site. Once you put over a thousand products in Magenta, it would start to collapse. And so people would build completely custom front ends, but use the Magento cart on the backend. And so people talk, what I heard was people would talk about taking the head off of Magento, and by the head they mean the ux. Mm-hmm. Things like the homepage, the category pages, the search engine, the pdp, basically everything up until that add to cart button is the head. And so that's what people meet by headless. And I think the real look, at the end of the day, the goal for headless is flexibility and as flexibility

Brett:

And is speed a component too? Speed of the, and user experience

Rick:

Speed's a component. If the platform is slow by default, right? <laugh> not a component. If the site is pretty fast, Shopify isn't natively slow unless you load it down with a bunch of stuff. It's not the fastest platform on the planet either, but and so some people have run Shopify in the headless mode. Usually that started out with some kind of CMS on the front end or a custom front end, and you can create a user experience. And so I think as Shopify I think Shopify has seen this and then we'll probably talk a little bit about this, but there are a lot of vendors, particularly in the enterprise space, you may have heard term composable commerce or mock microservices, all these kind of terms are in the headless universe per se. And they're just different flavors of this idea.

Brett:

So you can take all these little microservices and kind of stack them together to build your own flexible custom UX and e-commerce experience. And maybe it's to use the example you used before, and probably this wouldn't be today because this is old, but magenta's the checkout or Shopify's the checkout, we've got these other things that are on the front end. They're the

Rick:

Head and exactly. And look, flexibility is great, but similar to a Lego set, most people don't want to build an e-commerce platform by be being given a set of Legos. The reason that Shopify is such an amazing company is that it works pretty well for most things people need. Totally. And so I think as a result, I think what most people who hear about headless who are like, oh, it must always be better because it's new. And I think that's not true at all actually. I think there's a segment of scenarios where out of the box cloud platforms are not flexible enough. Like multinational companies, people with multiple E r P systems with many different fulfillment centers, many different brands. I had a customer ask me like, oh, could Shopify support a million skews? And I even had the Shopify sales rep. Nope, <laugh>, right? <laugh>

Brett:

Not a

Rick:

Chance. So you probably need a little bit more a different platform

Brett:

Than sense something that's top of the box then, but it totally makes sense. Shopify out of the box works for most people. But we got this, the headless component, headless commerce, which is all sexy and it's all the rage and stuff that most people don't need. So then what is Shopify components and how viable is it? Where do you think it fits into this

Rick:

Industry? Yeah, so what I think is Shopify components, if you think about where Shopify started from like's, to use the contrast, Shopify is really for smaller brands that kind of grew up. And that's really the whole Shopify business. Now, of course there are many multi hundred million brands that have been in e-commerce for years and years. And technical architectures are usually a disaster and very complicated. They have 15 e r p systems, they have four brands, they're all on different platforms. They have a pim, like a product, a put a catalog over here. They have an order management system, maybe multiple of them, different warehouse systems all over the place. There's no way you could plug Shopify in as a hub to all those things. And so the idea of composable commerce per se, or what Shopify is calling component components is how can we break apart what's good about Shopify?

Let's say the checkout maybe some of the hosting infrastructure that was designed for commerce and fit them into this complex enterprise world. Can we provide value to this type of brand? And look, the jury is out because it's a new idea and this is a new direction for Shopify. But I think that's the vision is how can we take the best of what build Shopify into this great all-in-one solution, break it apart, and now we have this componentized solution that runs on great infrastructure. I mean, no one, Shopify's not perfect, but no one really worries about Shopify going down day to day, right? Right. So they know how to host software and they have a great checkout. And so I think to me, those two things like the great hosting and great checkout to me, especially early on, what Shopify components is going to be most about. And then they're saying other things are components. I'm not really buying it right now. They threw fulfillment in the fulfillment's, not a component. I mean, come on, everyone needs a three pl. It's a service. Don't call it a component. I mean you're just confusing what it is. But anyway, that's kind of the,

Brett:

Yeah, it's interesting. Do you, you know anybody using Shopify components and is it getting some traction or still

Rick:

Too new? Well then announced said a month ago, so the answer is no. I read the original press release carefully and Shopify is very slick with its marketing. And so they have these components that they have components that they've built over the past few years before they came up with this new name components. So hydrogen, oxygen, the integrations with these new CMS systems. And when they release components, they said, Hey guys, those things we did in the last three years, those are components. And so as a result, everyone's using comp. So it almost depends on how you define a,

Brett:

That's a good way to get adoption for your new product. Just rename your old product for new one and now it's like instant adoption. Yeah.

Rick:

Shopify's something master at this

Brett:

That is smooth. That is smooth for sure. Okay, cool. So good stuff there. Let's get some Shopify news. That's fun. Let's pivot it a little bit and let's talk Amazon. Cause I know you are deep in the Amazon world and so let's unpack this a little bit, but Amazon has made some recent changes to fba. So talk about that. What are some of those significant changes and why do they matter?

Rick:

Yeah, so I mean FBA is obviously a huge part of the third party seller universe on Amazon. It's essentially Amazon's full system that they introduced 15 plus years ago. Now it's had some growth challenges in the past few years where they've struggled with capacity constraints mostly brought about by the pandemic. There's more sellers than space. And so they doubled their fulfillment capacity in the past two years. And one of the things that I think what they're trying to do now is they're basically trying to prevent the next storage crisis in advance. So Amazon is smart people, they try to think ahead of what's going to come going on. And so they introduced this new feature in the last month called I don't think they've rolled it out technically yet. It's called FBA Capacity Management. And basically what it means is every seller, even if they're using FBA ta, they get a certain amount of storage allocated.

Like, okay, you're a seller, you can get this much storage and if you want to get more tough, this is how much that each brand gets. And so what they found is, okay, we have this storage problem and we have sellers that want more space and we have sellers that aren't using their space properly. So what they came up with is a way to solve all these problems at once, which is brands that are doing well, you can bid for more storage. And Amazon we have, oh, we can grant you that request. So you're like, okay, we think that you want to double your storage. Great, tell me about the inventory you're going to put in this. It's like, okay, this inventory's not selling no request denied. Oh, if this inventory has really good sell through by and it's measured by a metric called I I or inventory performance index. Essentially if your sell through is good in 30, 60 days say, then you have a much higher likelihood of not only getting access to new storage if you ask for it. And second is you actually aren't going to pay extra for that storage if you sell through that inventory. So it's almost like a carrot of putting good inventory in FBA and taking out bad inventory and penalizing people who by giving them less space if their inventory doesn't sell well,

Brett:

Which is really smart on Amazon's part, how do they maximize even though they doubled their warehouse space and there are I think some 1200 fulfillment centers in the US or whatever. You probably need better

Rick:

Idea.

Brett:

It's crazy. Yeah. But yeah, still you got to maximize that space. So what do you, you incentivize the product they're selling and you make it really hard for people to send more products in there are not selling. Yeah, very, very smart. Why Amazon is a leader. Sure. So if your i p is good, you may get that extra space and not have to pay any extra fees If it's maybe somewhere in the middle, maybe they'll give you extra space but charge you a premium for hundred

Rick:

Kind of what's happening percent. Exactly. So if almost your I P I is good for the extra storage, then you get back what would've been your fees as not cash, but credits. Amazon is way smarter than the rest of us. So they're not giving you dollars back. They're giving you like, oh, if you want to get more, it won't give you future credits. So they're paying back you gift certificates basically to future FBA storage, which is again, which is really

Brett:

Hilarious.

Rick:

Another evil genius idea that they came up with this at the same time.

Brett:

Totally <laugh> incentivizing merchants to do what's in the best interest of Amazon and in the best interest of Amazon's customers. So that that's good. And then the reward is gift certificates, basically

Rick:

<laugh>, right?

Brett:

Future credits on stuff.

Rick:

We're going to try that. You can only buy from them, right?

Brett:

<laugh>, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is super interesting. Okay. But we deal with this a lot to our agency. Obviously we've got a big Amazon department and we help with the organic side and the paid side, but we do run into this sometimes with clients where they're limited on inventory and then you can't really hit the gas pedal too hard on some of your growth strategies because then your sell through is too high. So then it's like this game of let's consistently build that I I. So that increases your capacity. So it's a bit of a process for sure.

Rick:

And so I think long term, look, I has always been pretty important to Amazon, but I think you can see how it becomes more important with as space becomes an issue.

Brett:

Yeah. So space becomes premium. Cool. So we got that as a new rollouts fbi. F b what else is new on the f b side?

Rick:

I, it depends if you want to go for buy with Prime, that's probably the next big

Brett:

Tools. And first of all, explain this because Amazon and really all the tech companies are notorious for this Google name something then renames it three times. And I know Shopify may be similar, but Amazon, so there's a few things that are named similarly, but what is Buy with Prime?

Rick:

Buy with Prime is essentially a way for, let's describe it from the consumer point of view first, A prime shopper can go to a non-Amazon website and get a prime-like experience, meaning they can be guaranteed that they can use their Amazon account, they're stored information and get their item in with a prime promise within two days. And it be part of the A to Z guarantee, which means you'd get free, no questions asked, returns and everything, the whole prime promise essentially. So that's the consumer promise from a merchant side, it means that if you're a merchant with a direct consumer website, basically like fba, Amazon's fulfillment plus Amazon Pay had a baby and that's what Buy with Prime is. And so a lot of people, a fair number of merchants already had Amazon Pay on their website. And this AM Prime becomes basically a new button on the product detail page labeled Simply Buy with Prime.

And when you click it if you have that inventory in an Amazon facility either mcf, which is kind of the white box, Amazon or fba, which is all your stuff for your three P business, which is in a Amazon box you can actually do either you then click off to the normal Amazon pay flow, which looks like PayPal or any other third party payment flow. You go off to a page, you select your shipping method, and then you go back to the website and then Amazon will share your contact information back with the brand. And so the brand gets something from it, they get to mark themselves to Prime shoppers and they get to co-own this shopper's data. And then Amazon gets something to put them because obviously they're interacting with Amazon. And for Amazon everything is about Prime. So why does Amazon do Lord of the Rings? Like the answer is they want more Prime members, right? Totally. So yeah, everything about anywhere the Prime brand can ensure that prime members get more value wherever they go.

Brett:

Prime is the ultimate accelerator for that growth flywheel. Once someone becomes a prime member, your consumption on Amazon goes up dramatically. And so Amazon knows that and they want to incentivize that. And this is really interesting because one of the arguments we hear some of the things that, of the things I hear a lot is, hey for those that don't want or think you shouldn't sell on Amazon, hey, if you grow your business on Amazon, it's no longer your customer customer. And that's partially true from a data standpoint. Amazon owns the data. You do get to see some of that. But ultimately, in my mind, that's not a reason to not be on Amazon. That's kind of like saying, Hey, if you sell a product, don't get on the shelves of Walmart because that's a Walmart customer. Now you like this way, retail's always worked, right?

It's distribution and if you're a great brand, you want people to discover you on Amazon just like you would on the Walmart store shelves. But anyway, this is a little bit better in that, hey, what is one of the hangups if someone's checking out on your D two C store? Well, do they trust it? Do they trust the delivery? Do they trust the checkout? This gives you that Amazon checkout and you still get the data, which is interesting. Now, I would love your take on this. I know when this first happened, Shopify said, Nope, not on Shopify against t o s can't do buy with PRI on Shopify. Yep. Have they they backtracked on that? Are people just doing it anyway? What's your take on that?

Rick:

Yeah, I look they technically, I think Shopify warns against it. Okay. They're not preventing it. And it's almost like I think they're taking a little bit of a wait and see attitude. And I think it's smart to be honest with you, because I think the average D two C brand who is really focused on their brand probably doesn't want Amazon on their website in the short term. Maybe in the long term they might change their mind, but in the short term, for sure not. If I think about the average D D C brand, that's just not how they think about the world at all. It's just a different reference. However, there's millions of Amazon sellers that have a very small d TOC presence and they have no hope of building their own traffic on their own and attracting customers. And so if Amazon can be an accelerant to help them move some of these Amazon shoppers to their website, which it's, look, it's proven to happen. There are multi-billion dollar businesses. Anchor is one of the started on it as an Amazon brand.

Brett:

And one of my favorite brands, by the way, in terms of Chargers for your phone, for your MacBook, whatever percent, that is always the brand that I buy. I trusted.

Rick:

Yeah, yeah. No, it's great.

Brett:

But it's another example of a good brand that was built on Amazon, but now it's a brand. I'm not just buying an Amazon charger, I'm buying Anchor even though I buy on

Rick:

Amazon Charger a hundred a percent. But you gained that trust on Amazon because you trusted what the reviews. Yep, yep. Right?

Brett:

Yeah, exactly. And you bring up a really good point. I think if someone is highly skilled, and we talk about this a lot. In fact, I posted on that on Twitter a couple weeks ago in the tweet and gain a lot of traction. I was like, Hey, if you were to start a brand today, start an e-commerce brand, would you start on Shopify and then launch on Amazon? So start on Shopify, build a following, build a community d toc, and then once you've got a brand following, then launch on Amazon. Or would you start on Amazon first and then try to go D to C after? And it was really interesting. People were very passionate both ways. It was almost 50 50, a little bit more leaning towards building on Shopify. And I would kind of agree, if you've got the skill to build D two C and you can build up that brand and build up that demand and build up that interest, then when you go to launch on Amazon, you'll take off there and you won't be as priced.

It won't be like a pricing game as much and stuff like that, but I could totally, so if you can build that D two C customer, I see there's no reason why you just don't do a Shopify checkout, just keep it all within Shopify. But if you need to maximize your inventory that's inside Amazon, or if you live on Amazon mostly and now you're trying to go D toc, maybe it is a good gateway. Maybe it is a good little transition little bridge to go from strictly Amazon to D to C. So definitely it is super interesting. Yeah,

Rick:

No

Brett:

Percent. Any case studies or takeaways or anything you, you've heard from people that are using it? I know it's pretty new.

Rick:

Yeah, it's pretty new. I have been doing some secret chopping recently, so I will be hopefully releasing some content about what's it really working. And Amazon has a number of case studies and if you saw, they announced it in September something last year, and then January they're launching it. It's been invite only, it's actually going to be invite only until February 1st this year. But apparently they did some studies and they, they'd be testing that the Buy with Prime button increase conversion over a similar PDP 25%. And so

Brett:

Interesting. We'll

Rick:

See. And I'll say in some cases it's more, some cases it's less like your mileage may vary. And so I think that I, that's why they're did the beta period is so they can prove and gather this data so that they can launch it to the wider world. I think to me, the hardest part of adopting power with Prime is FBA period. The average DDC brand doesn't have their stuff in fba, they have their own d P,

Brett:

Right? Right, exactly. So

Rick:

It's not really an option. And look, if they have an Amazon business, that's one thing, but then do you, now you're confusing the ba, so

Brett:

Yeah, yeah, it's like don't straight, your inventory is not there.

Rick:

Yeah, it's not straightforward, I would say.

Brett:

Yeah, that really makes sense. So Rick Watson out there doing some mystery shopping, so hey, another reason to follow Rick on LinkedIn, because you'll get access to those case studies and those examples when they come out. So sounds fun. Alright, kind of as we wrap up curious your take on Walmart. So when you look at the two biggest players online in terms of marketplaces and just online retailers, it's Amazon and then Walmart, but it's not really that close. If you look at market share and shoot from the hip a little bit here, but different numbers, but Amazon's like 40 to 49% of all purchases are on Amazon. Somewhere in that neighborhood. Walmart is like six, right? You know, look at fulfillment centers like we talked about Amazon's like 1200, Walmart's like 200 and Walmart's got all the stores and stuff. But what is your view on Walmart as a marketplace and as a viable online competitor at Amazon? And how are you consulting your clients to

Rick:

Use? Yeah, what I would say is for the average brand look you, Walmart, you have to pay attention to, but I mean the big three, Amazon, Walmart at Target, everyone needs to pay attention to. Beyond that, it kind of drops off and it becomes much more a niche. If you're at home improvement, you have to worry about Home Depot, and if you're in beauty, you might need to worry about Ulta and Sephora. So it gets very niche after that. But the big three, everyone needs to care about. And so most of the brands that I consult with, Amazon, Walmart, and Target are there customers on retail wholesale side period. And so as you think about marketplaces, those are really, Walmart is the only really market marketplace that you can recommend without question, as long as someone has already started to scale their Amazon business, you're like, should I care about when you go, there's like, I don't know, 50 marketplaces in the us which one should I care about? Well, probably not 50 of them. You should probably just make sure your Amazon and Walmart business are optimized first and then you can start caring. But for most people, they're never going to get there because there's always, if you have $10 to spend, you should probably invest eight in Amazon, one in Walmart, and one across every one else. You know what I mean?

Brett:

Exactly. Or maybe in the beginning you just invest all $10 in Amazon

Rick:

A hundred

Brett:

Percent and really grow that. And then you start looking at other things. And for a lot of our clients, we recommend something similar where let's really focus on the immediate opportunities on Amazon and then we'll begin to look at Walmart. And sometimes Walmart is a couple percentage points in Lyft. Yeah, maybe it's 5%, maybe it's a little more, but it's not going going to be a game changer, but it is certainly something considered. Yeah. Curious also your take on, you mentioned Target. So we've got kind of an end with Target plus for at least some verticals through a couple connections we have and have a few clients that are on Target Plus that's pretty interesting. We actually got some people that are moving some products on Target plus what's your take there? And it sounds like probably a lot of your merchants are on Target plus as well.

Rick:

Yeah, I think it's interesting, particularly a O V seem to be higher on Target relative to other places, which I think moves in needle for some people. I think Target is just such a quality retailer that relate, that relationship is important.

Brett:

Oh, quality customer buyer, pretty loyal, the target fans or still loyal to Target

Rick:

A hundred percent. Again, marketplaces smaller than Walmart, so it's like diminishing returns as you go down. So Walmart and Target are never going to make or break someone's year if they're the head of marketplace period. It just won't cause it's always going to be, it's certain it's on the wrong side of the 80 20. Yeah, yeah. Even maybe 90 10, right? And yeah, I'm sure you

Brett:

See, yeah, I would say so. I would say probably more like 90

Rick:

10. Yeah, exactly. With your clients as well. So one of them can of these businesses can be a 200 million business and one cannot, right? So yeah, it's a very powerful idea, and this is something I coach my clients on, where should you spend that next incremental dollar? And almost more important than your dollar is your time. Most people have a fixed team, they have three people on their team, and I've walked into clients that were on 10 marketplaces and a 10 million Amazon business. I'm like, this makes, no, doesn't make any sense. Yes, you're diversified for

Brett:

All three people on Amazon, forget about the rest for a while.

Rick:

<laugh>, right, for forever, yes, you're diversified, but you are destroying your own opportunity. So

Brett:

Really good point. Really, really good point. Awesome. So you talked about clients and I mentioned your business as we kind of launched here, but RM W Commerce consulting. So talk about what you do, how do you help people and what are the types of brands and companies you're working with?

Rick:

Yeah, so I've worked with a number of different, mostly private equity back brands over the years, which means basically the ultimate owner is an investor that has a portfolio of brands and companies that work for them. Some of them I've worked with are like W H P Global, which bought the brand Ann Klein. They own toys of Russ. They own Joseph Aboud. And so helping them with digital strategy. And a lot of these brands that private equity buys are in the e-commerce world, you might call them opportunity buys and because there's something that people love about this brand, but maybe it's been mismanaged and people under, there's name recognition there, but something about the execution is not right. The profitability is upside down or their digital strategy is bad or they're not in the right, there's something about the business that needs to be improved. And so that's when private equity comes in.

And so I'm usually very much aligned with the new investors and the CEO to help transform these businesses. Basically kind of assess where we are, recommend like a punch list of items. These are the top 15 things that I would be doing right now, and here's what your returns are going to be over the next two years, whether it's people, process technology across digital marketing platforms supply chain, merchandising, but you name it, insourcing out outsourcing. And it's different for every brand depending on how much money they're working with, what their timeframe is et cetera, how many staff they have.

Brett:

Yeah, totally makes sense. So yeah, it's a lot of fun. People, processes, technology, mapping that out. So you're looking, working on the strategic level, you're maybe helping build out the team or find the right agency or find the right partners. And so you are guiding these companies, which is awesome. And so you are primarily working with private equity back companies or exclusively working with private

Rick:

Equity back companies? I would say primarily that's about two thirds of the business. I also worked with software and service providers in the e-commerce industry. I, I've been in the software most of my career and I've been a software company ceo. So a lot of e-commerce service providers, a lot of times in supply chain marketing payments have come to me for advice on Broadway, go to market strategy i e-commerce is a competitive market. And so if you are a supply chain provider or technology provider or a three PL or a payments company, you may be like, how do I stand out? What should my strategy be? What is the right message for me? And it's usually companies that are between series A and series C and they're trying to make some kind of change in the business, right? Well, we've grown to this point, but we're kind of hitting diminishing returns and they're bigger players above us, so how do we break through to that next level is really how I help them from a go-to-market messaging and approach point of view.

Brett:

That's awesome. That's awesome. So if someone's interested or like, Hey, I need to find out more about this, or this sounds like it might be a fit for me, how can they get in touch with you?

Rick:

Yeah, the simplest way that has all the information there is my website, rmw commerce.com or it's also easy, just hit me on LinkedIn search for Rick Watson and you'll find me and should be a message and I'll respond. So

Brett:

That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, Rick, this has been a ton of fun but do follow Rick Online. He's a great follow on LinkedIn. You'll learn a lot, you'll learn a lot daily but also catch you at events, right? You're speaking at nrf, you're speaking at other Yeah,

Rick:

Events. I'll be at Shop talk events, happy at I R C, I'll be at leads, so that'll be fun. Yeah, looking forward to meet anybody who comes around.

Brett:

Awesome. And also, I think I mentioned at the top of the show, but the Rick Watson Weekly, is that the name of the

Rick:

Podcast? Yeah, the Watson Weekly is a podcast Watson, we started about a year and a half ago, and it's kind of a different than the normal podcast, 15 minutes every week. It's a digest of e-commerce news and hit subscribe in your Apple podcasts and would love to have you, Liz

Brett:

Watson, weekly, get that weekly e-commerce news. I like it. Rick, thank you so much. This is a ton of fun and we'll have to do it again.

Rick:

All right, thanks a lot, Rick.

Brett:

Alright, thanks man. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love your feedback. So if you've not already done it leave us that review on iTunes or wherever you consume podcasts. And as I've mentioned, hit me up on LinkedIn or Twitter. We'd love to connect with you and keep the conversation going on the socials. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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Bear Handlon is a former Yale football player, Naval Officer, and the Co-Founder and CEO of Born Primitive, one of the hottest brands in the fitness, athleisure, and outdoor apparel space. Bear’s story is truly unique and full of valuable insights. 

Bear had a simple idea, $4,000 in the bank, and was about to ship off to officer candidate school, but he decided to launch a company anyway. He parlayed the success of his initial product, custom-made compression shorts, to build a large and diverse brand with a wide array of products.

Here’s a look at what we cover:

• When to focus vs. when to expand your product offering. 
• Born Primitive’s 3 keys to building a growth flywheel.
• How to turn mistakes into extreme customer loyalty.
• How getting the product right fuels everything else. 
• Why being face-to-face with customers is the key to product innovation and marketing. 
• While products can be replicated, a strong and unique “brand identity” cannot.

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Mentioned In This Episode:

• Born Primitive
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of omg commerce, and today is another episode in the continuing series of How I Built It series. We're talking to the CEO and co-founder of Born Primitive. If you are active, if you're into exercises, if you're just into looking good, you've probably heard of Born Primitive, but if not, you'll hear about it today. And so I've got like I said, the CEO and co-founder, bear Handlin with me today. Bear, how you doing man? And welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on.

Bear:

Appreciate you having me, Brett.

Brett:

Absolutely. So you and I connected at Ezra Firestones Blue Ribbon Mastermind was, I would say one of the best events I've been to in terms of, well, the content was great, that people were great, but the setting, holy cow, it was Cardiff by the Sea just north of San Diego. We could see this place right on a cliff. And so it was good to connect with you and good to hang out there. It was just a pretty epic time.

Bear:

Yeah, I used to live out in San Diego, so anytime I have a chance to get back, I'm like, I'm all about it. So that was like, yeah, they killed it with the venue and obviously the content was awesome. Tons of squared away people that are all you kind of solving the same problems in e-commerce. So super cool to be a part of it

Brett:

And just a plug like, hey, now that the world is opened back up, I believe you got to get to in-person events. And it seems like to me, it seems like the trend is to smaller events rather than the giant events that we used to have, but I believe got to be at those events. It's where you make connections, where you make breakthroughs. It's worth the time. So good stuff, man. Well, I'm super excited to dive in your story. I got to hear some of it on stage as you and Ezra were chatting at Blue Ribbon, but I want to unpack it a little bit and of course share it with the wider audience. So what's your background? Cause you were a naval officer, so you had a military career right now for those watching the video, you're crushing a Red Bull. You worked for Red Bull, right? So talk about you went to Yale, is it right that you went to Yale? That's super awesome, if that's true.

Bear:

Yes. Yeah, so graduated from Yale University played football there. I was a big sports guy growing up so I had the opportunity to pursue that. Graduated, went and worked for Red Bull for four years, did marketing for them. It was awesome. Still, I'm still loyal even though I'm not employed with them anymore, as you can see. And

Brett:

They're like the OG Energy drink, right? The original, yeah. Yeah,

Bear:

They invented it eight in 1987 came over to the States in 97. The energy drink category didn't exist until Red Bull. So everyone else is just the poer copy

Brett:

Just to,

Bear:

Other brands are doing great, but they'll never be able to. They invented the category totally. So that's their claim to fame with Bread Bull. So that was really cool. I learned a ton about kind of brand and marketing through them, and obviously the way they do it is kind of second to none. So great exposure ended up making the decision to join the military when I was 26 and just before joining the military actually launched more primitive. So horrible timing from a logistics standpoint. I don't know, you'll

Brett:

Start a military career and become an entrepreneur at the same time. Great. Yeah,

Bear:

I think we started it maybe two and a half months before I shipped off to Officer Candidate School. So that's how it all got started. And then I was kind of dual hating being active duty naval officer for about eight years in running born primitive. I just got out one year ago, so this is my first full year as of a few days ago where I've been able to be full-time c o and not sending out emails at three o'clock in the morning from my laptop somewhere overseas or something like that. So that

Brett:

Is amazing. How does that feel? Is the renewed focus really special? Is the free head space really amazing? What's it like now not being military officer and entrepreneur simultaneously?

Bear:

It's great. It's like I've heard people use the analogy though, it's kind of a gas that fills any space it's given. So yes, I have all this free time in quotes, but it immediately got filled with more primitive. So it's not like I'm any less busy. I think I'm actually more busy because I'm able to be more involved. But there was this ironic experience that I had in the military ex, there's a ton of red tape, ton of bureaucracy to make any decision that takes forever. So part of my day I would be in that environment and then I would go to born primitive where I'm the CEO in particularly early on where there's only a few of us you make decisions so fast, you can up the budget immediately. You can just say, oh yeah, let's do it. So I saw both ends of the spectrum of efficiencies and I think that it was good to see both because even with the business now we have 75 employees, I'm still trying to keep the lean, agile, efficient components and never turn into this big bureaucratic organization that just has a bunch of layers of unnecessary tasks.

So I think seeing both has been a huge benefit for me as we develop this thing.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. And it makes a ton of sense seeing the insane bureaucracy and red tape and the hurry up and weight mentality that I know exists in the military but as you scale and as you grow, you do need systems and processes. That's something we experienced as an agency. And I was looking back at this presentation I did in 2019 and we're at 25, 26 people, something like that, and now we're at close to 60. And so as you grow you do need processes. So there is something very valuable about checking twice and having systems and procedures in place, but min when things just slow down to lurch and or grind to a halt and all the red tape that that's no good either. So they're like, there's got to be this balance in between of entrepreneurial speed and energy and enough systems and processes burn the whole thing down. So I'm guessing you probably found a happy medium playing in both those worlds.

Bear:

Exactly. Yeah. I think you take the good of the systems and processes and then lean it down a little bit. But 100% we're absolutely to the point now almost to a fault, where I realize, all right, we're a little too loose here. I we need to have KPIs and monthly reports and things like that. So I think we're trying to find that middle ground now.

Brett:

Yeah, that's awesome, man, that's awesome. So then for those that don't know, and I kind of alluded to it, I said, Hey, if you're into working out and you into looking good and stuff, you probably heard of Born Primitive, but what is born primitive and why did you start it back in the day when you were just about to ship off to the military? So yeah, what is it? Why'd you start it?

Bear:

Yeah, so we're an apparel company mainly D TOC right now but expanding into mass retail as we speak and just launch on Amazon. A couple months ago, congrat, as we were talking, congrat about Congrat. That's awesome. Year or two ago, I probably would've said we're a workout apparel company. We're a whole lot more now. Workout apparel was what we started with but now athleisure apparel's huge for us. And then we recently just launched our outdoor apparel which is a whole new category, whole new kind of sister brand for us. It's called Born Primitive Outdoor and then launch our campfire collection, which is now jeans and flannels and sheline denim jackets and anything you know, would wear maybe wear around the camp fire. So we have a pretty good, and even some active professional stuff. So men's stretchy dress shirts and active pants, things like that that you travel in.

So nice. We're covering a pretty wide variety now. But at the core of it, it started as a workout apparel company and just the cliff notes of how it started, I developed a pair of custom compression shorts that was specific to a very niche market in Olympic weightlifting. I was doing a lot of training for CrossFit, and that was one of the lifts we were doing. So I took an old football girdle from the Yale days and cut out the quad pad and took it over to my neighbor who was a seamstress, and she stitched in the padding in another area of the shorts. And that was the first prototype.

Brett:

And this was for a specific CrossFit move or CrossFit workout, is

Bear:

That right? Yeah, so the Olympic lift is called snatch and there's a portion of lift where the bar can make contact and you're like your pubic bone to the point where some guys in competition were fracturing that bone. Dang. So I just basically stitched that pad in that area and the intent was literally just to make one, and I was going to be the only one that would wear it because I would just plan on wearing it on the days I had that lift and then just wash it a couple times a week. And then long story short, guys were saying, Hey, you should market that. And I said, yeah, no way. And I did a little bit of market research and realized I wasn't the only guy experiencing that problem. I said, Hey, maybe there's something to this. Read some books on overseas sourcing, kind of schooled myself up, got an Alibaba, put out tons of feelers, whittled it down to a couple suppliers. And after quite a process, we ordered, I remember our first order was 200 units, and at the time that was pretty scary, that m oq of 200 units. And then then I shipped off to Officer Can School and Born Primitive was rocking and rolling. So that's how it all

Brett:

Started. That's crazy. And I did not know you sold the stretchy dress shirts. I'm going to have to check those out. I'm a big fan of those actually. So excited to look at that. And so yeah, you started with this one product for a specific need for a specific group of people namely yourself. And then when you got that order of 200, did you sell through it immediately or were you so busy going through ocs and stuff that you didn't have time? What was that like?

Bear:

Yeah, honestly, it marketed itself and we got really lucky. There was a silver medalist in Russia who got wind of it, and him and his guys ordered it and they were posting about it which was huge. I mean, we didn't pay them, we didn't ask for it. So that kind of put us on the map to have a world champion and a silver medalist as well, plugging. It was pretty cool. And yeah, I remember I had the little PayPal notification and turned on my phone and you'd get the little cha-ching, you know what I mean? And it was so exciting. And that

Brett:

Was right. Money we're in the money

Bear:

Of course, eventually we had to turn that feature off because it is a bit more frequent now. But I remember that was just exciting in the early days to see that initial traction. And then we realized, I quickly realized, okay, this is cool, but we can't pigeon our whole ourself to one product. We need to build a brand. So we honestly just started screen printing t-shirts and hoodies and going to any CrossFit event we could within reach every weekend and selling clothes from a card table in a little crappy little tent. And that's pretty much hot.

Brett:

Much clothes and compression shorts were like,

Bear:

We'd have screen printed t-shirts and hoodies and then the compression shorts, and that was pretty much the product lineup. Got it. And we would just set up at any CrossFit event, we could pack up the Jeep. We were just super scrappy. There was no marketing plan, there was just two of us. And we'd work all weekend, get back inventory, everything. I remember we had a yellow legal pad, was how we took orders, which is just hilarious. Just thinking of the logistics and systems we had in place, we didn't know any better and that's how we did it. So the first three or four years we just pounded the pavement and got out there and slowly little by little we started establishing the following and we expanded into, I think the light bulb moment for us was we launched our first sports bra, and that was basically our first kind of custom cut. And so product that with more of a performance mindset of like, Hey, anyone can do screen printed stuff. Let's actually try to make some performance apparel with a purpose. And that, I think that was the moment where we said, okay, this is the lane we want to run it because anyone can screen print on a t-shirt. And I think that was at the three and a half or four year mark and Nice. We really haven't looked back ever since.

Brett:

Awesome. So I'm curious, were you born primitive from the beginning? Was that the name from the beginning or did that evolve and change over time?

Bear:

So the first original name was technically Snatch Shorts. That was the name of the product. And I remember it was actually one of the founders of Early, and I'm forgetting his name right now, I'm embarrassed, but I remember I had a call with him in regards to an athlete he was representing that we were going to sign. And on the call he actually gave me some great advice and he was the one that actually recommended, Hey, I like what you're doing, but if this is long term, I think you should consider changing your name to a brand name. Yes. And then I remember I thought about it. So I think two months in we quickly changed to Born Primitive from snack shorts, but yeah, that's awesome. Technically the OG name was Snatch Shorts llc, yeah, incorporated in Indiana. And then I got some good advice from a dude who's done it before and totally thank God because I don't think Snatch Shorts LLC would have quite the ring that born. I

Brett:

Don't think so. I want to buy my snatch shorts hoodie you want.

Bear:

Exactly. Exactly. And that's exactly what he said. Really

Brett:

Pigeon pigeonholes you into this one

Bear:

For sure. Yeah, and I see other companies do that. I'm like, man, I wish they would think about that because you might crush with that product, but then what's after that? Nothing. You know what

Brett:

I'm saying? Yeah. We just, we've been consulting and working and investing in a brand called Keto Brownie originally, and they're like, Hey, we can't just be a Brownie. So they rebranded as Sinless Snacks. And so now the Keto Brownie is a product and it still has the name Keto Brownie, but it's part of the umbrella of similar snacks. So yeah, you got to think long term about the brand for sure. So you guys did something that I think is really interesting, and I think this is something that every entrepreneur, brand owners should do if they can. So you were face-to-face with your customers selling stuff, getting feedback, trying to hawk stuff at shows and stuff. What do you think you learned or what did you pick up? What'd you learn about customer preference? Customer taste, marketing, any lessons come from those hundreds of CrossFit shows that you guys went to?

Bear:

Yeah, I think for one, you learn about what the customer actually wants, right? Because you're in the trenches with them and there's no better data point than that. Yeah, I think the second major thing would just be learning the importance of one-on-one interactions, especially in the early days. That's the marketing plan. You're building your business brick by brick, and every interaction is critical. And it's cool to still talk with people because I still honestly run checkout at some of our events because to me, that's a great way to just check in with customers. As I'm checking 'em out, I'm saying, Hey, how have you heard of us? And you'll either get, oh, I've never seen you guys, or I've been with you guys for eight years. I remember when you were back in this event eight years ago and you were running checkout. You know what I mean? It's cool to give them a positive brand experience in person. And then over time that foundation gets bigger and bigger. And I think some people might overlook that one-on-one interaction and how important that is. But if you're playing the long game that's how you build a loyal following.

Brett:

Yeah, I love the in-person events, and we do it too as an agency. We have a booth and people come by. And so I always thinking or always observing what headlines do people read and when they stop and say something, what are they asking for and what do they comment on or not comment on it? And when you're at the table, what are the T-shirts they pick up versus those that they leave? And what are the questions they ask that you might not ever get back to you if you didn't do the in-person event? And so I remember one of my favorite quotes was from I think Chesky of Airbnb where he said to do build a company that scales, you need to do things that don't, right? So you can't just spend your every day going to shows, right? That's not a way you scale a brand, but to effectively scale a brand, you need to do some of those things because you learn stuff you won't learn anywhere else.

Bear:

Absolutely. And that's why we still do it. I don't go early in construct the booth anymore. I used to even, I just recently stopped doing that. I was finally told, Hey, you can't fly in two days early and be running a power drill. You need to be doing other things.

Brett:

Maybe you should be running the company. I don't know. Yeah,

Bear:

Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I roll in and run checkout and get to interact with customers and see what their tastes are. So it's a great way to get real realtime data. And then obviously that applies to our website. It's as far as merchandising and what people are wanting. So it's a good use of my time.

Brett:

I love it. So I want to talk about two things that I think are super important, but sometimes tricky to find the right mix or the right timing of. So there, there's huge power in focus doing one thing really well, the snatch shorts, making those really, really well or the initial performance sports bra, making that really, really well. But then you got to expand if you're going to build a lifestyle brand, if you're going to reach a larger audience, you got to expand into other products. One of the early mistakes we made as an agency is we tried to do everything. We did web design and we did TV and we did direct mail. Cause we had some background in that and it was exhausting and we weren't great. Then we realized, hey, we're really, really good at search marketing, so we're going to go deep on that. Went deep on that, started crushing it, growing, getting some recognition nationally, and then we started expanding from there, which I think that can work. You focus on something, you nail it, and then you begin to expand. How did you guys approach that? When did you realize, okay, hey let's try the sports bra, because you obviously weren't thinking about sports bras when you made the shorts originally. So when did you get the idea for that and then when did it become clear, okay, we got to expand beyond this too?

Bear:

Yeah, so the co-founder, Mallory she was the one who kind of thought of she was having frustrations with the active apparel she was wearing at the gym. And as I said, we weren't really doing any of that performance stuff. So she said, well, hey, why don't I take a swing at this and I'm going to design a sports bra that I enjoy and nice. And she nailed the features on it. And I remember we launched it at the CrossFit games, I think in 2015. We sold out of it and girls were wear wearing 'em at the event and coming back the next day and getting the other three colors. So that was a really good initial sign. Nice. Did you have

Brett:

An athlete wear it at that, the CrossFit games?

Bear:

Not that year I don't think. But the word kind of spread because girls were telling their girlfriends, they were coming back to the booth and being like, I heard about the, do you have any of the vitality brass left? And that was just almost like an unexpected, holy crap, this is, there is a good development. So we kind of doubled down on, okay, we need do cut. And so performance apparel and mainly on the fitness stuff to start. And I think you bring up a good point of you have to be specific at least initially, and then you have to be very calculated. And when you expand what that's going to be and have a real plan that sports bra thing was a bit of a fluke I'd say, just because it was mal just trying to solve a personal need. But then we were like, okay, we're doing this kind of performance workout apparels that we're going to do and then the next transition would've into it. Athleisure stuff's like joggers and comfortable stuff that you could probably wear to the gym, but also lounge around the house just, I mean, how hot that market is as well. Massive. And we crushed

Brett:

At, and it's fueled by the pandemic that just helped at all explore. Oh

Bear:

Yeah. Crazy. I mean, our rest day joggers we sell a gazillion of them. We, they're our best product. It's so huge opportunity in and then yeah, I would say we rode in that lane for a good amount of time and I finally was like, okay, I think we're ready to go into another vertical. And that's what brought up out Born Primitive Outdoor which we just launched in September. And that's kind of backcountry mainly for us. We're kind of targeting the hunting audience but it's for anyone in the outdoors, it's a layering system all the way out to your layer pop jackets and stuff and rain gear. So that was something I always wanted to do is I, I'm passionate about the outdoors and I was like, okay, we're finally ready. Those other two components are super healthy and are thriving, but if you want to keep building the business and raising the ceiling on what you can accomplish, you have to carve out new lanes. So we did that and then our campfire collection was kind of a sequel to that, which is more flannels and jeans and Sherpa line denim jackets and just fun stuff you'd wear around that vibe. And then we're getting into tactical apparels, well in April. So we have, and then also the biggest one probably on this list right now, we're launching a performance shoe in July. So

Brett:

Dang man, that's

Bear:

When I'm looking at the roadmap for Born Primitive to get to certain top line milestones, I realized, okay, fitness is killing, but we have to some other revenue streams in different categories that will allow us to reach out to to other customers and bring in new people into the fold. So we're excited about it. There's a lot going on but I think you bring up a great point about it. It is a balance. You can't spread yourself too thin, too quick, or then you're doing everything at 80%.

Brett:

Totally. And yeah, you had built this machine and it was momentum was there, the athleisure, the performance wear, it was just going. And so when you get to a point where you're like, Hey, I can healthily invest in these other things without pulling away from the core, great, now it's time. And I liked it. Did you get feedback on the, Hey man, would love if you launched some outdoor wear, or was it more of a this is my passion, this is what I'm good at, I want better products in this category because it does fit people that are into CrossFit and exercise. A lot of them are out into outdoors as well, so it definitely fits. But was that driven more by personal interest or more and more by feedback from customers?

Bear:

Initially personal interest, and it was ironically validated pretty significantly. We retained an investment bank to help us go through a process to reach out to some private equity groups. And they did a survey on 2000 of our customers and basically posed the question, what would you like to see born primitive do? And the top two were footwear and outdoor apparel. And those were two things that interest were already working. And it was a very high number. It was over 70%. Wow. So that worked great with the deck. We were pitching these private equity groups like, oh, hey, we have hundreds of thousands of active customers. This was the number one and number two answer for what they want. And oh, by the way, this is already getting worked and it'll be launching on these dates.

Brett:

It's amazing. And so you guys primarily say, I got a couple questions there, but you primarily partnered with private equity to help fuel expansion and invest in new products and things like that.

Bear:

So actually no. We raised zero capital. We strapped it from the beginning and still have not we're nine years in last summer, or it was actually last spring, I finally made the decision, Hey, why don't we reach, why don't at least get in the game and see what the market will fetch? And we're actually currently under an L LOI with some really cool guys that bring some, it's amazing, unique experience, but we're only selling a very small portion of the business, so we're still going to run the show. I think these guys are great strategic partners. But yeah, it's one thing I'm really proud of is I see a lot of these other DDC brands that they raise 30 million, they raised 20 million. And I kind of chuckle because I'm not to sound arrogant, but if you were to give me 20 million bucks, I could stand up a D two C brand and have it very relevant very fast because you got 20 million bucks.

And we started this thing in a garage with nothing I think, at the life that at the time my life savings was like 4,500 bucks, and I was about to join the military. Our co-founder, Mallory, was a dental hygienist so I'd like to think a lot of these brands we compete with had quite a headstart on us, and we gained some serious ground on 'em, and now we're in the hunt with them. So it's something I'm proud of. And I think the way we had to conduct ourselves was so much different. And when we went through the investment process, one of the things that really made us stood out is we've always been profitable. So for these guys that are used to seeing at all these TDC brands that have these projections of profitability five years from now, they're like, oh, you guys have never lost money. And I was kind of a chuckle. Of course, yeah, yeah. There's another way to do it. And that's just because that's the way we had to do it because we didn't get a bunch of money up front, but it'll be nice to be with some partners now. They bring some unique experience. They're former executives at a very big apparel company, they publicly traded. So we're excited about what the new chapter's going to bring on that front.

Brett:

I love it, man. And now I've got several friends like Joe Twilight Brokerage and I've got some investment banker friends and private equity friends now, and we're looking to buy an agents here too, and potentially more, but just going through that process, I think that this is what's super interesting to me is as you talk to investors and as you look at, Hey, let's value our company, or let's maybe put it on the market and see what people say or let, let's look to go buy another business. Just the way you look at businesses in that lens or in that environment is different. And I think whether you do a deal or not, that will shape the way you think about the health of your business and the margins and how you're growing. And yeah, I love it. I love that you went through the process and awesome for you that you got an loi hope that goes through because yeah, it's nice to have partners when you're looking to expand and do different and bigger things. So that's cool. Yeah,

Bear:

You hit the nail on the head as far as learning to reverse engineer it once you see what they look at and what they ask if the process were to fall through, or if it does go through and we do it again in five years, I'll be so much more dialed in on what, what's important, at least on that front. And I'm actually one of the guys from It's quiet light, right? Yeah yeah. I'm reading his

Brett:

Joe Walker exit. Yeah,

Bear:

Yeah, I'm reading the book. I actually just started it last night. The exit Exit. Oh no,

Brett:

That is Joe Val. Joe's going to love that. I just gave Walker credit. Joe and Walker have this both in on the Quiet Light team. They both wrote books and they're a little competitive, but friendly. I love you both, by the way, if you guys are listening. Yeah. Joe is preneur and Walker. Diabol was by then Build is the name of his book. Both fantastic books.

Bear:

Yeah. Awesome. Well, I'll check that other one out and then maybe I'll call which one is the strongest one, which is better so far. Yeah, yeah. We'll put it on the air.

Brett:

I love it. So question about footwear. So that surprises me. I don't know why it surprised me, but it does. So people are like, Hey, I don't want to wear my Nikes or Adidas or whatever workout shoes. They're like, nothing is meeting my needs here. I want you guys to make a shoe. What's the reason? Why are people saying they want footwear?

Bear:

I think part of it is we've have built an incredible amount of brand loyalty and we've kind of shown that anything we launched, the diehards will get it. So whether it's outdoor stuff or campfire or new workout stuff, they will come back. And it was just an obvious revolution. It's a, of course, we need to foot to do a footwear. And part of it is with our athlete marketing side, it makes a little bit harder to sign deals with athletes because we'd be like, Hey, we can do everything but shoes. And they're like, well, I guess I'll do another shoes. Shoes. So this will allow us to do full head to toe deals on the athlete side, which will be cool nice. But more importantly, we just look at our existing active customer amount and we're like, okay, if we order X amount of units, if we get 10% of these people to come by a shoe, we're looking at some outrageous numbers.

So it just made too much sense. And it's also fun for me. I, I'm very active. I work out all the time. And to be able to develop a shoe and then just be able to wear those, and it's just the fun development and we're going to get all the employees decked out, and then of course all of our athletes and influencers will get decked out. So it's just a cool development and I think it gives us a lot of opportunities beyond just a performance shoe, probably a running shoe. We have a canvas shoe that's more of a lifestyle sneaker that we'll be launching in August. So it allows for the sequels to happen that hopefully we can have disrupt the market a little bit.

Brett:

Love it, love it. And that makes all the sense in the world. Hey, one of the ways we learn is through failures or mistakes. And everybody likes to hear the crash and burn story or stub your toe story or, Hey, I screwed this up, but learn from it. What are some of the mistakes or the failings forward that you guys have had as a brand?

Bear:

Well, the first one happened really early and I think this was at the time a very big mistake, but I think it taught us a very good lesson that we still really hold onto. So the second order of the snatch shorts remember we upped it to 500. First order was 200. We sold through it, reordered 500. I was at Officer Candidate School. We received the order. We started shipping out the orders because people had pre-booked their orders. And what happened was they changed the adhesive they used on the padding to get it to stay at, kind of adhered to the fabric. So after the people washed it for the first time, the padding would disintegrate. So we thought we had just killed it. And it's order number two, you know what I mean? We're moving on and we have this massive customer service issue. I was at Officer Kenneth School, so I had limited communications.

So Mallory was reaching out to me, freaking out saying, what do we do? Long story short, we reached out to every customer prior to even the issue happening and saying, Hey, in transparency, there's probably a defect on this. We've already reordered no action required. We will ship you a pair as soon as it gets in. We think it'll be like eight weeks, but bear with us. I mean, just the response we got from that was so positive when we thought it was going to be a disaster in all hate mail, that it revealed that if you're just transparent and honest and you treat people and there's a human component to it, people will actually become more loyal. So ironically, it's like what should have been a disaster, actually built brand loyalty in the early days. And we still had that a couple times. I'd say nine years.

We've had a similar issue, maybe two or three occasions. We had a zipper issue on a a pair of shorts three years ago, and we did the same thing. We reached out to everyone, no action required. This might happen. If it doesn't happen, you'll get a second pair of shorts for free. No big deal. But we're replacing all of them. And just the customer service team, they came back like, man, the feedback's insane. People are thanking us and this and that. So I guess the lesson was you can take a negative and turn it into a positive, and it just totally reinforces how important the consumer interaction is because we're so used to talking with customer service agents that are either a robot or AI or this and that, and you just get on the phone with a real person that is a human and isn't confined by these parameters of how they can solve a problem. It was huge. So that was number one, I would say.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that so much because one, you guys were super proactive. You weren't like, Hey, some people may be okay with this. Let's just save a little cost and let's just only replace the ones that where people complain. Because for everybody that complains, there's a dozen more, couple dozen people that are just like, oh, this sucks. And they just move on and never say anything. So you were proactive, you took care of everybody. And young people see that human connection. They realize, oh, this is just a business run by people and they made a mistake or someone screwed them over, but they're taking care of me. That's all I care about. It deepens that relationship. That's super, super powerful. So kudos to you guys, noticed it and did the right thing fast, and I love that no action required where, hey, we'll replace this, but go here, enter your information, all that. No, I don't want to work for your mistake. And so you're taking care of people so that, that's awesome. Kudos to you guys. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from that. Any other mistakes you've learned from?

Bear:

I think the other biggest one is just inventory management. Long story short, during the height of the pandemic when it was just basically became impossible to forecast we just ordered just an absolutely outrageous amount of product based on what we thought was going to continue. And I guess, I know a lot of brands are in this boat right now where they have the

Brett:

Lulu Lemons in this boat as well. I just saw an article on LinkedIn, really, they're way overstocked.

Bear:

And you're starting to see a lot of brands. If you just do Google search on product, you'll see a lot of high high-end brands that are discounting dramatically on Google search and stuff. And that's a hundred percent why I think. So that was another big one, is as the CEO and mal, as the CEO weren't as involved as we should have been on those invoices that were going out, and had I just done a quick sanity check on it, I would've immediately seen, wait a second, that's like, that's 290,000 units of one collection. Let's reel that in a little bit. You know what I mean? I'm wiring 6 million overseas. Wait one wire. What I mean? But

Brett:

Everything was just so frantic and growing at such an amazing pace, and you're like, yeah,

Bear:

Yeah, we were. And everything was just firing on all cylinders. All right. I knew we were selling a ton, so like, oh, to make sense. And then once I actually dug into it, I said, holy, this, had we not been so profitable, that mistake, we would've been dead in the water as a business. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know what I mean? We just had 50% growth year over year. We would've been toast. So we got lucky. We were successful enough that we could weather that storm. Now we're in a really good position because a lot of this inventory, thank God is core items that we'll sell forever. The rest day joggers, you know what I mean? And things like black leggings, those are always going to be, we're never going to go, yeah, doesn't matter. They have 40,000 more than I need. From a cash flow standpoint, it was a nightmare. But again, we were able to weather it because we were successful. But that was the definitely our biggest mistake as kind of young naive entrepreneurs of just, oh yeah, send it the order in. And it's like, alright, we need to actually take a look at this because we're talking about millions and millions of dollars we're sending overseas that and in hundreds of thousands of units. So

Brett:

Yeah, inventory management, man, it's difficult projections. Just managing it, all of that is tricky. And then I think you got to highlight something that I think we're all prone to do. We're prone to say, what is my current situation? Okay, cool. It'll be like that forever extreme demand. Cool. We're just going to keep going up. Or it's really bad right now and it's going to be bad forever. So things always change. The seasons always change. Things ebb and flow, and the market has new tastes and new preferences and stuff like that. So yeah, always got to temper things a little bit. So love those lessons for sure.

So as we're kind of moving into the last portions here, the show, I want to talk about keys to success. And I love the Amazon analogy of a flywheel. And Jim Collins actually is the one that they coined this term and came up with it in the book, good to Great. But Amazon has this flywheel that they've kind of mapped out where it's a momentum machine, it's a compounding effect when things are working. And so the way there's works is if they offer more products at a lower price that attracts more visits. So more shoppers, more shoppers attract more marketplace sellers and the marketplace, which what you guys are doing on Amazon, huge part of Amazon's business. Well, more marketplace sellers leads to more products at a lower price, which leads to more visits. And so I left out some pieces, but that's kind of the gist of it. And so as you grow any piece of that, it just continues to accelerate and grow faster. What do you think, as you look at born primitive, what are some of the keys to your growth machine? Why have you guys been able to build and sustain momentum?

Bear:

Yeah, I think it comes down to three main points for us. We already talked about one of them, it was just positive customer experience. So that is a priority at all times with customer service, when we're in events, et cetera. I would call that in my mind an applied task, but a task that many companies overlook. Number two again, I consider this an implied task, but is not done by a lot of brands. You have to have great product and good quality because the way I see it, it's like this might be their only time they ever interact with the brand. You have to nail that first interaction because particularly when you look at just the kind of e-commerce metrics and all right, I have my CAC and A O V and LTV and return, repeat, purchase rate and all these things, first order of profitability, the formula breaks down. It's a giant math problem. The formula breaks down if they're not coming back. I look at other brands that are a onetime item type of brand, I'm like, man, how do they survive? Because it's tough. If I was selling washing machines, I'm not getting in that business because I, I'm able to sell 'em a legging. I know they're going to come back at a sports bra and then

Brett:

Well, we got to start making components to break. That's like the old may long ago, they were too good. They had to make one. Yeah.

Bear:

So for that formula to hold up, particularly when you're spending an outrageous amount of money on paid digital and paid social like that, you have to get them coming back. And it has. So, you know, got to nail the product ton of attention, deal, has attention to detail, has to go into that. And then I think the third, and I would say this would be our secret sauce, is just what does the brand stand for and what is your identity? For us, we've taken a pretty patriotic approach particularly the roots of the brand got, we've we, we've given a ton back to charity, a lot of veteran first responder charities, but cancer research, things like that. So using our brand as a platform to give back has been a huge kind of part of our ethos. And then just standing for hard work and determination and chasing your dreams. People want to identify with something, particularly with apparel. So I think it's important you have to have that because even if you have the first two, there's so much competition with leggings and sports bras and this and that, you're going to get drowned out because you're there. There's a million competitors because it's a hot space to be in. So there's got to be something more to it. It has to be more than just

Brett:

Apparel. Totally love it. Yeah. Sorry, did I cut you off there? That was

Bear:

Great. No, no. And I think the sub-component of that would just be having a marketing calendar that keeps people excited. So we do that with collections. So we'll launch five or six collections a year. I think that helps. Our repeat purchase rate and our LTV numbers are pretty insane. So that's why I'm willing to spend a lot on Facebook to acquire someone because I know what the metrics are beyond first purchase. But I think one of the ways we achieve that is by always having something new every month. There's something born primitive is able to talk about to keep them stoked on the brand. So

Brett:

Yeah, we all love the next thing. And without five collection launches or whatever, me as a customer, I may not really care for two or three of them, but there's probably going to be one or two that I'm going to love and I'm going to feel like I have to buy. And I want to keen on a couple of those things. So we got customer experience, you got great product and you got brand identity. So that, I think shift that people need to make, and I've talked to my friends at gorgeous e-commerce help desk, they talk about this and I totally believe it, that hey, every interaction with a customer is a chance to get a higher probability of a future sale. It it's a chance to get a referral. It's a chance just to make someone's day and increase loyalty even if you don't ask for any of those things.

And I think in a lot of ways you probably shouldn't, but just every interaction, if it's positive, it's really good. If you're doing what you're talking about where you had the mess up with a couple of pieces of inventory and you go above and beyond there, that really set that customer to be loyal for life potentially. So every interaction is an opportunity to do that. I love the great product piece because the, I'm on the ad side, so we're coming up with remarketing campaigns and bots, not Y campaigns or repeat purchase campaigns and email and SMS programs and all of that is no good if the product is meh. So sometimes the issue is not with your ad campaigns, is with the product. And so that's something you got to look at. And I love the brand identity piece. I think we underestimate the value here.

Why does somebody choose Nike over another brand or why does I love the black rifle coffee, right? That kind of lines up I think with a little bit, at least with your ethos it's just coffee, right? I don't know. I've had it, I've, it's not bad by any means, but it's just coffee. But they charge a premium and they have a diehard following cause of what they stand for. And so brand is super, super important. And so you guys have nailed that. And I think it's becau, I think at least in part it's because it's coming from an authentic place. Your brand is, it's who you are, it's who co-founder is. It happens naturally.

Bear:

And I think of those three, it's like which of those three is actually defendable? I think the only, the third one is defendable, right? Because totally can do the now. Second one is you're going to have to be really squared away and you're have to be very good and capable, but anyone can start sourcing stuff and knock off. So you know what I mean? So it's like what, someone can

Brett:

Do it almost as good and do it for 50% of the cost or something like that, that that's always going to happen. But the identity piece, yep, no one can steal that.

Bear:

And that was cool to see that come out in our meetings with the private equity groups is like that.

Brett:

Yeah,

Bear:

They know that and they know that. And I thought that, but it was absolutely validated in those meetings where it was like, okay, this is the brand identity is super important. That's what they're most stoked on. So yeah.

Brett:

That's awesome, man. This has been super, super fun. Any one thing I think that's always interesting to me, and this will be the last question, we'll talk about how people can buy your stuff and connect with you and whatnot, but as I talked to entrepreneurs and I, I'm privileged to talk to a lot of great ones. What do you consider to be your superpowers? So what sets you apart, right? And I know as an entrepreneur we got to be good at a lot of things. And in the early days we're like, well, I'm doing everything. I don't know. But what do you feel like are your real superpowers if you had to distill down?

Bear:

You mean me personally? Yeah. Well I

Brett:

<laugh> and I know you're a humble guy, you're a hardworking guy, so you probably don't like to talk about it, but just curious if you have any thoughts, sir.

Bear:

I think just for me it's just the work ethic and being scrappy. That's how we started. And now of course through the process we've become much more sophisticated. And I try to be a student of the game now. I listen to e-commerce podcast pretty much anytime I'm in the car and I read books and this and that, but early in the early days it was just grinded out, just outwork the competition. And I was balancing obviously being an active duty and running a business. So I had to be a little nuts in that regard. We didn't sleep a lot and it was a lot of late hours at night and early mornings and driving to events every weekends and it was a lot. I was young and energetic and I really was wanted to see this thing come to life. So I think that was probably my biggest leg up is that I was pretty relentless in Mallory was as well.

And then as we built it and brought in employees, I think that rubbed off on people as we brought 'em in. And that's kind of the kind of DNA of more primitive now go to events, these trade shows. And we were just down in Miami for an event called Waap in, I look at other bigger brands now in our space. I don't see any of their senior leadership in the booth. No, I mean me and my VP were breaking down the booth with power drills and you know what I mean? And our other senior, we're still in the trenches. And I think that sets us apart. And again, some of these other brands that have been our space for so long, I haven't seen these guys in five years at these events. And I'm like, what are you doing? You need to be in front of your people getting after it and getting deaths. So I don't think I have any special skills other than just being able to apply myself and really just work hard and try to achieve an end state. So

Brett:

That relentlessness, I love it. And it's one of those things where to build something extraordinary, you got to put in an extraordinary effort and or smarts and both, you're never going to build something extraordinary by just doing a nine to five. That's just not going to happen. Eventually you'd be able to work nine to five or maybe less, but in the beginning, no way. I love the quote of you can be successful in anything you want as an entrepreneur if you work half days and so you got 24 hours in a day, you know, got 12 hours that you're working seven days a week, pretty much. So cool man, really good stuff. So if someone is listening like, dude, I need to observe more of Bear Handlin in my life. Are you on the socials? Are you sharing stuff? Are you mainly just kind of head down?

Bear:

Not really. I think I might do a bit more in the future. I'm on Instagram at Bear Handlin not really on Twitter, but born primitive obviously we're really active on social. And then our

Brett:

Website get great social account for Born Primitive. So check that out. If you look at inspiration on how do we promote our brand or have a social presence for our brand, check out Born Primitive for sure.

Bear:

But yeah, that's, I'm not really a public guy too much. We're rocking and rolling over here in Virginia Beach. But little, I've by little have gotten more into the scene, obviously I went to the Blue Ribbon event and that's meet people like you guys. And I think I need to do more of that in the future because I'm realizing there's so much knowledge out there and so many good people that you can connect with that are solving the same. Totally. And that can relate particularly founders. It's like, oh my God, I finally can talk to someone who understands <laugh> and relates to this lifestyle. We'd break for lunch at Ezra's thing and we're all on our computers firing out emails, trying to catch up and it's like, okay, these are my people because they're all doing the same, you know what I mean? We're all nuts. We're all totally nuts. And

Brett:

It's awesome because, and I love my family. I've got a great extended family. I hang out with them a decent some amount, but a lot of them don't understand they're not building this or doing what I'm doing. And so I can share a little bit about what's going on, but not really. You need to be around your people. And so that's pretty inspiring. And I would say, now that I've listened to you on stage, seen you in a podcast, you've, you got a knack for this. You're pretty good at sharing knowledge and sharing your story. So if you enjoy it, I think you got to do more of it. I think it's going to be beneficial to you and beneficial to other people as well.

Bear:

Well, I appreciate that. Thanks

Brett:

Man. Yeah, yeah, man. And so then as people are like, okay, I got to check out more primitive, buy some stuff where can they shop? Sounds like they've got more avenues than they used to have just a few months ago.

Bear:

So our main sites born primitive.com, we also have international websites if depending you're coming in from another IP address I think we have eight distribution facilities all over the world. So just go to born primitive.com, it'll get you squared away. We're also on Amazon now, just our core products. So we're on Amazon Prime, you're looking there. And yeah, we got all kinds of stuff in the works. We got a swim collection coming out. We just launched our Miami collection Spring collections come in summer, and then campfire and outdoor in the fall Halloween, Christmas. We got all kinds of wild stuff coming out in the future. So tune us on Instagram, see all of our stuff coming out.

Brett:

I love it, and I say this a lot, but I think one of the best ways we learn is by observing what other companies are doing. So get on the board primitive list, follow them on social, watch how they do these collection launches, because there's some good stuff to learn there. So bear handling ladies and gentlemen Barry Crusher, man, SU, super fun. Thanks for coming on, really appreciate it. And we'll have to do it again sometime.

Bear:

Heck yeah. Thanks for having me, bro.

Brett:

All right, thanks dude. And as always, thank you for tuning in and hey, we'd love to hear more from you. What would you like to hear more of on the show if you've not done so? We would love that review on iTunes Makes my day. Also allows other people to connect with the show. And hey, speaking of socials, I am saying this publicly now for the third or fourth time, I'm committed to being on the socials a little bit more. So I'm posting on Twitter daily ish, and I'm on LinkedIn quite a bit. So if we're not connected there, reach out to me at Brett Curry on Twitter and the Brett Curry on LinkedIn. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

Rabah Rahil has done it all when it comes to marketing. 

Rabah is the CMO for one of the hottest and fastest growing SaaS companies in the DTC world - Triple Whale. Prior to that, he worked on the digital marketing team at Whole Foods, was a part of an agency that managed traffic for Oprah, and owned and operated his own agency.

Triple Whale is a leader (and one of my favorites) in the world of 3rd-Party Attribution tools. Triple Whale helps you make sense of what channels, campaigns, and ads are moving the needle. It also brings all of your important data from Shopify, Amazon, and your ad channel into a single dashboard. 

In this episode, we talk about attribution from a high level and what platforms are getting the most ad spend right now. 

Here’s a look at what we cover:

• Why trying to get perfect attribution data is impossible (and why it’s not the point).
• A "party" analogy that could shift the way you view your ad channels. 
• With data from 6,000 Shopify stores, where are most advertisers spending their ad budgets? 
• Is TikTok where you should focus your time and budget in 2023 (the answer may surprise you)?
• Is Facebook slipping? 
• Where should I prioritize Snapchat?

Mentioned In This Episode:

• Rabah Rahil (LinkedIn)
• Rabah Rahil (Twitter)
• Triple Whale
• Triple Whale Podcasts - Ad Spend and You're Not Your ROAS
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today we are going to geek out and we're going to have fun, and this is going to be a high energy and hopefully entertaining but I've got my buddy Rabah Rahil on the podcast. I mentioned Geek Out because that's actually where we met was at an event called, yep, geek Out. But Rabah is the CMO of Triple Whale. Now, if you've been around the DTC space at all over the last couple years, you've heard of Triple Whale and if you're not very familiar, you're going to get familiar on this podcast, but we're going to talk about one of the hottest hot, most hotly contested topics in marketing, and that's attribution. Or another way of saying it is just how do we make sense of the data and what platforms are telling us and what GA is telling us, and then how do we make decisions on all of this? What is the truth? We want the truth when it comes to data and Rob's going to help us there. You can't handle the truth or <laugh>, you can't handle the truth. I love that. So Rabah man, you got a rich background. You were in the agency world, you worked for Whole Foods, you did some stuff with Oprah when you were doing agency. So give us the 32nd Rabah background. Why are you such a rockstar in this space?

Rabah:

Well, I appreciate that Laudatory introduction. I can assure you I am not as story as beautiful man over here. Brett

Brett:

Use the word laudatory. Yeah, he deserves a lot of law and praises. Yeah,

Rabah:

So I originally I went to school for economics. At one point in time I actually wanted to be an investment banker so I studied that and then I shadowed some investment bankers and I very quickly realized I did not want to be <laugh> an investment banker and mortgage on my twenties. So I got really nerdy. I totally see that. Yeah. I got really into websites building websites AWS stuff, photography, just super, super nerdy stuff. Then I had the epiphany that you can actually charge people more money if you make them money versus if you make them a cash register. So I would build people these gorgeous websites and then they'd come to me, he's like, is it broken? What's going on? It's like, no, your business just sucks. And so that was really my first epiphany into shifting into trying to make money. I had a really wonderful friend, she was a incredible yogi had a huge Instagram following, and we ended up doing an e-book together.

So I photographed the e-book, designed the e-book and then we sold it through her website, which I built, and then I ran Facebook ads against it. And this was back in the day where you could do some pretty awesome retargeting with Instagram. And she was, again, not massive, but she was maybe 500,750,000 followers, like a substantial amount of people. And we just started printing money. So that was my first foray into marketing. And then I just started skilling up. Like you said, I did a stint at Whole Foods, shut out. Really, really great place to work. It just wasn't my jam. I was actually there right before the Amazon acquisition. So the day I got hired, the Amazon acquisition was literally the previous day. So it was a really interesting dynamic in the sense of you had this really hippie corporate company by your gut stuff, and then you have the most ruthless C, not most ruthless in a pejorative sense, but just very data driven company. So there's a very unique

Brett:

Data driven there. Not a lot of perks. They're just cost cutting crazy. It was always interesting to me, I've, I've gone to some Amazon audiences or Amazon offices like the Amazon hq and you compare that to Google offices, they've been to several Google offices too, and then they're different world like Amazon is efficiency, cost cutting, they're still beautiful, but yeah, it's a different, exactly. It's not a hippie culture for sure.

Rabah:

Exactly. You're the VA column. Thank you. The other thing, so from Whole Foods, I went to Agency Life, like you said, I worked for a really great agency, had a Flatiron, they're amazing. We did a lot of app install ads, which was really I had never cut my teeth there. I've done leg genin and D to C, but not really app install ads. So that was really interesting. And I learned about MMPs. We used apps, flyers, so you had to aggregate all this data to make sure what's going on. So that was a really interesting it really made me understand the efficacy of aggregating data and understanding data across multiple channels, et cetera, et cetera. So that was really helpful. And then from that I did my own agency, which was awesome, running my own business. It was great. I loved it. I printed money.

I had a very unique model where basically would just partner with companies from 10 to 20, 25 million and helping them get to the next level. A easy way to describe it was like a mini CMO where I could sit across their whole marketing department. If I needed to deploy ads I could, but it was really people that just didn't know what they were doing, but had a really great product market fit and just had a ton of velocity in the business. So how could we scale them up? Met AJ and Max on Twitter, and then last August I came on board for a honeymoon period and then after that in September I came on full-time cmo. And as they say, the rest is history. It has been an incredible credible ride so far, but it is early stage startup is definitely not for the faint of heart. I mean, so true. Put in perspective. Yeah, I was running the marketing apartment by myself essentially up until March. So almost six months of writing the newsletter, deploying paid media, Facebook ads, Google ads, running the social

Brett:

Account, a podcast like yes,

Rabah:

Podcasting. I was actually editing the podcasts. I mean, it was candidly, it was too much. That's too much. It was too much. It wasn't the path, but it helped build the foundations that got us to where we are now. So it was definitely worth it, but I don't know if I would sign up for it again, <laugh> kind of the interesting part of not knowing you can done

Brett:

It sounds really fun. Editing podcast sounds great. Well, got to tip that to you, man. You've done an amazing job and the podcast, that host is great, which by the way, shout out to that the name of your podcast, and I love this. I don't know who named it but kudos, whoever did as you are not your roaz and it's so good. Thank you. I'm more than my roas. This is a freeing, such a freeing phrase, but that's super awesome. So how long have you been doing the podcast?

Rabah:

We did what, a hundred episodes so far? So we have or not a hundred in total. So have You're not your Roaz where it, it's similar to this where we bring on really interesting people, kind of that talking head stuff. And then we have another one that I host with Ash Mowan, the CMO over avi. And we bring, that's more tactical and DDC Hitt but we've had 30 ad spends and I think I've done a little over 50. So yeah, it's been nice enough to know that things need fixed sometimes, but at the end of the day, just getting started for people, man, if you go look at some of the biggest podcasts and go look at their first podcast, they're like Rogan's first podcast or all these other, yeah, they just get started. People, you just

Brett:

Got to start. Totally got to start showing up is huge part of success and you're never going to get better until you just do it and you got to be one. I

Rabah:

Couldn't agree with

Brett:

You more your first time. So yeah, that's awesome, man. So what I'd like to dig into a little bit I want to get into some juicy stuff right out of the gate, but first this is pretty juicy too. Triple Whale, you guys are, how many years old are you? Because I was hanging out with Max and aj, and I'll tell a quick story in a minute. I think at the very beginning of Triple Whale, or maybe they were kind of working on it behind the scenes, but it was not huge at the time and now it's massive. I can't turn around without either one of our clients using Triple Whale. Are people talking about Triple Whale, but how many years old is Triple Whale?

Rabah:

So we started again pretty much early, call it Q2 of 2022 or no, excuse me, 2021. So it's a little bit over a year old, but really it's almost just a year old because our big inflection point was when we launched the triple pixel and then gave people, there's kind of a bunch to it, but candidly, successful businesses are lucky, have great timing and a great product. That's really what makes it so we really got lucky. The market was very, very receptive. Exactly. And then if we, candidly, if Triple Pixel launched or Triple Whale launched two years ago or earlier, you could still drive within platform metrics. There just wasn't this need. And when people's businesses are blowing up, they're much more apt to see if something can help them versus when things are going good, it's really hard to sell somebody a text app.

Brett:

Yep, yep, totally. Yeah, yeah. And so interestingly enough, so we did a YouTube LA event. So at the Spruce Goose YouTube LA offices, Howard Hughes built these facilities back in whenever that was the movie that Leonardo DiCaprio was in called the aj, it's a wild back Howard Hughes. So the Hangar Google now owns that. So we did this YouTube event there and I was speaking talking about how to build your brand with YouTube ads and I met Max and aj. Max and AJ were there. No,

Rabah:

Yes.

Brett:

So I've got pictures I'll show you. We had a photographer coming so together there's like pictures of me chatting up with these guys, but they were there for one of their D TOC brands. And then later Max emailed me this, I don't remember when this was like, Hey, we're kind of working on this data thing, you should check it out. And so I saw the early stages of Triple Whale but then man, you guys have just exploded. And like I mentioned, we've got clients that use your platform to get a clear picture of their data. So I've got all kinds of attribution stuff I want to talk about. But first you guys also have a really inside look at ad spend, and I think this is one of those interesting things. What are the trends you're seeing, right? Because everybody's talking about, hey, you got to be on TikTok, and at the end of 2022 I heard people saying, well, we're going to reduce our Facebook ad spend, or I saw predictions that people are going to pull back on Facebook but what are you guys seeing in the data in terms of spend? Yeah, absolutely. And how many stores are you guys tracking because that that's an important part of this equation.

Rabah:

Yeah, absolutely. So before I go into that, I have to, every time Howard Hughes comes up, he's just one of the craziest characters ever. So have tell this crazy, crazy, crazy Howard Hughes story. So Howard Hughes, for people that don't know, he was this big business like magnate, but the end of the day he was basically inherited a lot of his business from his dad.

Brett:

He was from his dad. His dad was the business mine. Exactly. And he just lived off of that. He

Rabah:

Just, yeah, well, he just fell ass backwards into just super success. It was like he was trying to run his businesses into the ground and he would just print money Anyways, the too long didn't read. It's a crazy story, but one of my favorite stories of his was he didn't gamble and he became a recluse or later in his life and he went to Vegas and because he didn't gamble and he, while was recluse, he rented, I forget the hotel, but he rented out, I think it was the desert or something, I can't remember. But he rented out the top two floors, which essentially all the v i p rooms and Vegas, for people that don't know, the hotels don't make money from the actual hotel rooms. They make money from people going downstairs and gambling and he wasn't gambling and his whole security staff is Mormon and the Mormons don't gamble either. And so after the first month of staying there, the hotel person is like, Hey dude I like you, but we need these rooms for VIPs to spend money. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no. So eventually the guy's like, all right dude, you're out. We're going to kick you out. We need these rooms. And so you know what he does buys the hotel just so he doesn't have to leave. So that is what a gangster move there anyways,

Brett:

When got a money, you talking about printing money earlier, this dude was printing money thanks to his dad who built a real business, which is a cash cow. Yeah, that's stores buy the whole

Rabah:

Buy what a gangster move. Yeah. So right now we are tracking a little bit over 6,000 stores, actually probably closer to 7,000 stores in 53 countries. We're getting pretty close to almost 10% of Shopify's gmv. That's gross merchant volume for people that don't know essentially a fancy term for revenue. So proper, proper dataset,

Brett:

Shopify's gmv.

Rabah:

Yeah, it's pretty, it's insane.

Brett:

It's a

Rabah:

Lot. Kudos.

Brett:

It's a, it's awesome.

Rabah:

Yeah, it's a lot. And so the big trends that we're seeing is kind of counterintuitive what everybody was saying Meta's back meta's still by far the biggest ad spend that we see across all of our clients Google has exploded as well. Again, it's orders of magnitude less than meta still, but it's still a substantial amount definitely off the back of Pax. From what I've heard, people are just having, and you can talk to this as well, Brett, but it's, yeah, we're doing

Brett:

Max Tmax across

Rabah:

The board. Yeah, it's been, is

Brett:

Doing well.

Rabah:

Everybody's seeing some really good results there. The tertiary channel for most people is TikTok. Candidly, TikTok has fallen it, it's still on this hypers stick growth, but it's still really, really small. And in 2022, we had some people get up to almost, they would it leap fro Google in terms of the marketing mix. But what we've found is people have, I won't abandon as too much of pejorative, but people have really migrated away from heavy TikTok spend because the ads just die really quick and they don't give you any warning. And so you could be sending, so we had people, I think the biggest spender we had was spending on upwards of 50 K a day on TikTok. That was the most I'd ever seen. And they just couldn't do it anymore because one day would be incredible. And then the next day everything died and that all that money was just basically burnt up.

And so all things being equal, they would rather have a successful ad on Facebook that could live for three months, six months, sometimes a year. Versus TikTok, you didn't get it there. Then you had Pinterest comes in under TikTok pretty close to it in spend, but definitely not in terms of year over year growth. And then Evan Spiegels just laughing all the way to the bank. But Snapchat is it is as close to Defunk as a ad spend channel as you get across our data where that's interesting. Yeah, there's just not a lot of people putting any money into snap.

Brett:

Yeah, I don't hear anybody talking about SNAP right now. My teenagers use it, they like it, but I don't know anybody that's spending money there. And this is a unique data set. This is a big data set, 6,000 stores, almost 7,000, 10% of Shopify's gmv, which is crazy. But these are D TOC stores and these are not necessarily enterprise D TOC stores. That's

Rabah:

A

Brett:

Very good point. E-commerce stores that are growing and you're doing multiple millions, lots of them and beyond, but not, you're not getting data from walmart.com or that type of thing.

Rabah:

So that's a really good point. Our data set. So our biggest clients are around that 400, $500 million year run rate. So definitely not small, but to your point, it's almost like, I'm trying to think of a new term. It's almost like D TOC enterprise. Cause a half a billion dollar run rate is nothing but, or it's not nothing, but it's not, to your point a Walmart a target, a be like, these are proper balance sheets. That's what I would consider enterprise to really color in the lines about a mil. If you think of a bell curve, my first inflection point is about a million and the second inflection point's about 50 million. So the bulk of our users are in that 1 million to $50 million year run rate. Yeah. So that's a really good caveat that you made there. That's a great point.

Brett:

Yeah, it makes sense. Cause I think if you look at who drives the most ad revenue globally, Google's got a decent lead, but Facebook is a close second and then Amazon's actually third, and then everybody else is way below that, man.

Rabah:

Amazon ads

Brett:

Business, your growth mix meta is the, that's the winner. That's where people are spending the most money. And personally, and we don't manage meta at OMG Commerce. We're a Google, YouTube, Amazon, an email shop. But I love that it's doing well. I think everything does better. We do better when Facebook is working. So I'm glad. Absolutely. I did. Interestingly enough, I was at a trafficking conversion summit. Ryan Dice was speaking, he interviewed like 10,000 marketers who was showing some data. He said, Hey, what are the three channels you plan to spend more on next year? What are the three channels you spend plan to spend less on next year? And the number one channel to spend less on next year was meta. And I'm afraid. And then No shame on Ryan Ice. He asked people and he just relayed the answer. But everybody was lying or everybody changed their mind <laugh> because people are spending money on meta again. And YouTube was actually the number three, I'm going to spend more money here. TikTok was the number one. Anyway interesting times for sure. So any other insights that you have from all that spend data any other chats or any other points of interest mean?

Rabah:

The big things are it, it's kind of corny and it's kind of a little bit elementary if you will, but sometimes there's a great stoic line that people need to be reminded rather than informed. And so really what we're seeing is people that have great economics, so they have margin to play with people that have a really, really strong community and people that have a really strong retention game. So whether that be clavio or attentive sms, postscript, what have you and again, it's not seismic shifting or is this going to change people's minds, but candidly it's just what we're seeing. The fundamentals are fundamentals for a reason. And so those are what we're seeing the businesses grow on. So it just is what it is. Make sure you have a community, make sure that your retention game is really strong. And then understanding your metrics and understanding the economics of your business are really what's driving the biggest growth in across all of our users.

Brett:

I love it. And yeah, I actually just posted on Twitter about this the other day where we don't want to get obsessed, although you should look at it and analyze it or lowering our CAC or rising, increasing our row as important. But though ad costs are always going to go up, competition is always going to be shifting, changing and increasing over time. What you should look at is how can I raise my aov? And that happens by building a good brand and having a good community, having a good product, how can I raise my lifetime value that that goes into retention and your email and your sms, how can I increase my conversion rate? And that goes into branding and having the right messaging and all these components go in there. It's focus and obsess on those things. And that's what I think is going to be the trend going forward is these little hacks, little wins, little tricks, tips, whatever it's going to be, good brand building. And then just using your platforms and your data to the best of their ability where people are going to win. So

Rabah:

Take a quick

Brett:

Note A quick note on TikTok, and I love what you said there because we've like, we've even kind of felt the polling me, we should start offering TikTok. Everybody's asking for TikTok. But then I started observing, right? And we get to see inside of Triple Whale and other platforms and stuff, it's some of our biggest advertisers, they were going hard on TikTok, but it was still only 7% of their ad spend, 8% of their ad spend couldn't really go beyond that profitably. And so then it's like, well that's important, but man, if you got only so much time in the day, you should spend your time on Facebook and Google and what's going to move the needle. TikTok is fun, but for me, I don't like it. But yeah,

Rabah:

No, I mean I couldn't agree with you more and that that's exactly, again, anecdotally as well as quantitatively through the data is exactly what we saw where all the big spenders are just like it's way better to get a winner on Facebook than it is TikTok. The caveat I will give you, there are certain things that can do well on TikTok in terms of virality, but usually they're at the lower price points. So you're talking about under $50 a O V kind of impulse purchases type type of stuff. But I would push back on that and say that's not that it's not a business, but it's more akin to a drop shipper mentality than it is building a brand and creating value for your users that you can then have to your point like an L T V play of I acquire somebody for X, but I know in a year I'm going to get Y dollars out of them. So just kind of throwing that out there that I'm not saying TikTok is totally defunct, but people that are building totally a brand that have actual economics in terms of real price points, not down at these kind of impulse purchases have had a lot of headwinds to deal with.

Brett:

And I, I'd love to clarify that, and I'll clarify too. This is not an anti TikTok ran, it's just more of a understand where TikTok should likely fit for you in your marketing mix. So open and Facebook and Google and YouTube, they're going to be the big dogs, almost certainly TikTok has its place, but maybe it's 10% of your ad spend probably not going to be 50% of your ad spend for any large advertiser anytime soon.

Rabah:

And just to wrap that up, listen

Brett:

To this. Yeah, please.

Rabah:

Yeah I was just going to say the 10% of that ad spend might cost you 30 to 40% of resources to make sure that ad spend can perform. And so that's where you start to get into some real conflict of, dude, I'm only going to spend X amount of dollars on this. Why aren't I putting those resources where I'm spending 5 million on Facebook and I'm spending 50 a month on TikTok? Why am I putting another 50 grand to spend 50 grand where I could put 50 grand to spend 5 million? The math just stopped. Totally. The math. Just don't math. Yeah.

Brett:

Yeah. And you know said it with the Facebook creatives, you have creatives that can last several months or up to a year, and we see that on YouTube a lot, like boom boom, Joseph ER's company. We had some winners where each of them lasted about a year. And so we just hammered that video for a long, long time. That's pretty fun. And that's not resource intensive when you do that.

Rabah:

Exactly. Totally

Brett:

With you. Yeah, this last a day or a couple days or whatever, so awesome. Well let's do this. I want to talk about some misconceptions, misunderstandings that people have when it comes to multi-touch attribution and trying to make sense of what does the customer journey look like? What's moving the needle where I need to spend more money, less money in that type of thing. But maybe first if it's interesting or if you have a unique take on this, how do you guys define or look at multi-touch attribution or how do you do it differently maybe? And then let's get into some of the misconceptions.

Rabah:

So ultimately, without getting too much in the weeds, we're looking at a bunch of really unique identifiers. For example we'll store somebody's battery charge or something and then you can do some really weird metadata stuff that's borderline creepy but helps you make more money. So there you go there. But candidly, attri or multi-touch attribution is still a really hard nut to crack in terms of making sure that that's a hundred percent. And other thing too that you get into is attribution is, so there's something called an asso tope where it's basically two lines that will never touch, but they're always coming closer and closer together until they just get infinitely close, but they'll never touch. That's kind of how attribution is how I see it anyways, where it's just never going to be a hundred percent. And so if you come in with that expectation, the

Brett:

Thing is, I don't think that's the point. Right, exactly. Maybe one of the misconceptions, I'm stealing your thunder potential here, but the point of multitouch attribution isn't to get it exactly right because it'll never be right. And to use I think this is a great analogy, so I used to do offline marketing, tv, radio, prints, stuff that was kind of fun. But if you were a approach at a customer that just bought Nike shoes and you said, well, okay, well what did it for you? Was it the TV ad? Was it the billboard? Was it the magazine ad? The person would be like, I don't know, I just wanted to buy it. I don't know what did it like? So there's not really a way to say what moved the needle fully. We can get really pretty close with online stuff, but you'll never fully know and that's okay.

Rabah:

Yep. Now, and so essentially to wrap that up in a bow is the multi-touch attribution stuff is really, really important. It's awesome we do it but ultimately you're going to want to look at different attribution models to your point. And so there's first click, right? Okay, I invited Brett to the party. He was the first person that heard about the party. Okay, cool. Well John actually drove Brett to the party. Okay, great. But Sally actually got money from Brett at the door for the party. Who do you give credit to for getting the money? Well, is it the person that invited you? Is it the person that brought you or is it the person that took your money? And so the answer is to your point, what do you want to derive from that? And so that's really where we give people a bevy of different attribution operations.

First click, last click, fractional linear if you want to spread it across. And not getting too nerdy in attribution models, but that's ultimately the whole point of having different attribution models is do you want to see who's the best at bringing people to the party? You want to see these best is inviting people to the party you want to see the best is getting people getting money from people at the party. And then you can start to really level up the sophistication in terms of how you're deploying your paid media. Because if you're just operating on last click, so we run a SaaS company, which is totally different than D two C, but if you looked at our analytics, you would say, why aren't you spending more on Google search? Google search is closing all this deal for you. And you're like, well, is it that we have a ton of brand equity? We have a ton of these things. And so it's not to say that Google search isn't important and you shouldn't have it in your marketing mix, but there's a certain aspect of thinking through to your point, that customer journey and what's going on. And then understanding what attribution model is useful to derive the data you're looking for is to me more of the show than saying, Hey, we need this perfect multi-touch attribution solution that tracks everybody through the, it's just fantasy world and it also gives you a misrepresentation of what's actually causal.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah. It's so good. And I love that that party analogy by the way because yeah, if you were to look at that and just say, well, Sally's the one that collected the money, if I remember the name, the names, so let's just pay Sally money, let's get rid of Roba and let's forget about John. And eventually you got nobody at the party. Nobody. And I think I'm a Google ads guy, so I love Google ads, but you are right, especially for a SaaS company like yours where you got to understand it. And it's not like a 20 month thing. You're making a commitment. Exactly. It's totally worth it. It's awesome. But it's not going to just click on a search and buy it right away probably. But it, it's an important part of the journey. So yeah, you can't just say, well let's shut everything else off. Let's stop doing podcasts, let's stop speaking at events, let's stop doing other stuff and let's just do Google ads that would not work for your business. You would slow down tremendously. So really, really good. What of, we already talked about one misconception of trying to get perfect data cause it doesn't exist, but what are some of the big misconceptions that trip people up and keep them from being successful with their attribution?

Rabah:

Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question. I think the biggest thing is people think they need to be everywhere and across all channels. So I would recommend really trying to, so there's something called product market fit that I'm sure a lot of your listeners are familiar to, familiar with. But I like to think of things as well as channel product fit where finding the channel that really resonates. So I'm sure for you, there's a ton of people that you could just absolutely print money through YouTube ads that probably wouldn't succeed so much on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or something like that. And so I would say, especially if you're in that kind of one to 20 million kind of range where you're you in terms of run rate or you're, you're spending maybe a million dollars a month or below or something like that, really master a channel and really master your email, SMS and retention before you start to be everywhere.

Because when you get everywhere, it can one complicate the party analogy where you have this omnichannel that you have to track, but then two, it makes experimentation even harder. It just spins up complexity. And I think you should keep things as simple as possible for as long as possible. Complexity is really easy to introduce if you want to go across all channels, it's super easy to do. But I think being impactful across a specific set of channels versus I to your point, you were talking about where people, I need to be on TikTok, blah blah, blah. Sure, it's fun, test it, what have you. But I've, I've seen people that have way more success really ratcheting down, finding that channel product fit and then really drilling down into that channel and then once that channel starts to hit a ceiling. But I mean for example, for you, this is why it's in such a great business. The ceiling on YouTube is so high, I would argue it's one of the highest ceilings. It's huge.

Brett:

Yeah. I mean the inventory is almost limitless. Yeah, it's massive. And really every age group is there, right? I've got teenagers, they're there, my dad just turned 73, he uses YouTube for stuff and it's not hundred percent, it's not slowing down in any way. So it's massive.

Rabah:

So that would be, I guess my kind of misconception is you don't need to be everywhere. Be a specialist before you're a generalist. And so figure out what that channel product fit is, figure out how you can hammer that. And then really to your point back that up with a really strong retention game. Cause paid media's expensive and so you really want to bring that new blood in with that paid media. And then you want to close with much cheaper channels such as sms, email, community, things of that nature.

Brett:

Yeah, and I'm really glad you brought up simplicity. I was actually just chatting with a buddy of mine. We recorded a podcast too, but talked about, I think it was the Da Vinci said that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, right? Sophisticated sounds cool and sounds really smart, but great. It's like we have a tendency, we want to make things complex. Well, I just need more data, just throw more data at me and then something will make sense. Or let's just be everywhere, right? Because that's what customers want. Yeah. It's probably better to be simple. Let's be strategic, let's be in the places that have that channel market fit, a channel product, channel product fit, and then double down on that. And then let's not get all the data points, but let's get clear data and let's look at actionable data that we can look at and make decisions based on. And so let's talk about that. What are some of the things that are some of the ways you guys are demystifying or making data clear for people? If you have any examples, that'd be awesome.

Rabah:

So one of the biggest things, and it's our most used feature, is our dashboard. So it's available on mobile as well, which is pretty cool. So you can have any metric anywhere, anytime. And it's holistic as well. So it's your total business. So we have a lot of blended metrics. So in terms of blended ad spend. And then we also have a interesting thesis called three ROAS to rule them all where we essentially have these three different roas. So when you're deploying paid media, there's three things you care about. Care effectiveness, efficiency and profits. Those are the three things that essentially drive your business. And so we have a metric called MER or blended ROAS or whatever your preference is, but ultimately that's your effectiveness heuristic. How effective

Brett:

Are I that it's like total sales from all channels, total ad spend. So you're looking at bingo, this global picture.

Rabah:

Yeah. And so what's nice about that is you can say for every ad dollar spent I'm driving. So if you're MER is a 10 just for every ad dollar spent, I'm driving $10 in revenue. Fantastic. The challenge there is if you only concentrate on MER or your blended, you get into that party analogy where you're only playing painting the last click person and then there's nobody at the party. And so that person's trying to collect money from people that are no longer there. So that way, that's why we created a second heuristic for your efficiency. So this is called new customer. And so Shopify bifurcates to customers into new and returning what we're doing is taking the new customer revenue divided by your total ad spend. And so that's going to give you your efficiency heuristic so you understand how much of new customer revenue are you bringing in compared to how much you're spending. And then the last metric that we use again, the profitability heuristic is going to be your gross profits divided by your total ad spend. And so you can understand am I putting the ad spend behind the right products to generate profit for my company? Because what can happen is not every dollar is created equal. And so ideally you are only putting paid media behind high margin, high velocity products because there just doesn't make a lot of sense to have all this revenue and you don't take any of it home.

Brett:

Yeah, that's fantastic. And I love breaking that down, looking at the roaz for new versus returning, right? Because those should be quite different. It's more expensive to get a new customer and you don't want to overpay to get a returning customer. So breaking that down Yeah, exactly. Is really, really good. So that's all fantastic. What are some of the new features, new things you guys are launching that you're really excited about? Cause I know there's lots of cool stuff going on right now.

Rabah:

So we just launched our Amazon integration, which was really awesome. So we're bringing in all of your sales.

Brett:

There's definitely a roar going on at the OMG commerce offices. I mean a lot of us are remote now, so we're like Amazon, it's here.

Rabah:

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, so that was a big one for us. Again, having that visibility in real time to understand how much you're spending on Amazon, how much you're making, and then how does that blend into your Shopify which this is really important. So again, having that holistic view and really it's definitely helpful for the media buyers and people that are deploying the paid media, but really awesome as the owner operator to understand exactly where your business is at, not only in terms of revenue, in terms of across channels, but also profits because we do do profit tracking. So the Amazon was a big one. We have some really cool stuff that we're doing with ai. So right now we have internal testing a generative ai. So we're scraping all of your reviews, your website, your past ads, everything, and then you tell us the product or the sku and then we'll do all that and we'll actually make the ad for you in terms of the creative, the headline, the copy.

And so that's our big bet right now is that we want to give tools or we want to give the media buyers and strategists augmentations where they can start to really either refine that product and so we'll get that blank kind of slate problem goes away where we give you something. So I think there's a few, there's zero to one creators and then there's like shapers slash and I think that the zero one creators are very rare and really expensive, but if I can give you an iteration and you understand your brand, you're like, Hey, I don't like this, but I like this and I changed this and I can get you 80% of the way there for 20% of the cost. I mean that's almost quintessential disruption theory of it's not perfect, all things being equal. I'd love the zero to one creator, but one, they're really hard to find.

Two, they might not make economic sense, versus you can pay 20% of that price, get 80% of the way there, and then you mold it and massage it into the perfect ad for you. So that that's something that's really exciting to me is that augmented media buyer, we have our rules engine that'll kind of fold into that as well. And so I think that's kind of our big bet where media buying will start to get all the little bells and whistles and levers will start to be abstracted way. And it's going to be almost analogous to chat G P T T where it's more about creating the prompt than it is understanding all the things. And so if you can make better prompts, you're going to get better output. And that's kind of where we're headed. So that's really exciting to me. What else do we got coming down there? There's

Brett:

A lot of <crosstalk>. I think that's one of the keys to life run in businesses, learning to ask better questions. And so that's sort of what the better prompts are. It's not just that I have to do the thing, maybe I just need to, how do I ask the right question to suss out what I want and get the result that I want? And that's super cool. And I would agree with you, there's a lot of people that are great media buyers or strategists on their platform or just good marketers where they could be way more efficient if they weren't creating everything from scratch. So if they're a starting point for different ads or different suggestions and then we're just tweaking it. I love that concept. And I really think, and I know this is what you guys are thinking too, that's where AI is going to help marketers the most, I think in the near term is like, let us get you, let's let us help you so you're not starting from zero. And then you can improve and enhance and then go wild on things. So that is awesome. So yeah, I think I cut you off though. Anything else you're excited about right now?

Rabah:

No, I mean those are the big ones. We have some really cool stuff in terms of we're moving to a fancy infrastructure to be able to handle people that are over a billion dollars doing crazy transaction flow kind of the more architectural stuff. But to your previous point about ai, the way we're thinking about it is almost like the internet where pre, I'm old so the kids won't get this reference, but people that had the internet and people that didn't have the internet or access to the internet, they were just so disadvantaged. And so I think that's what's going to happen with AI is people that understand, to your point, how to ask better questions, how to prompt better people that are using AI to augment their output are just going to have an insurmountable advantage compared to people that don't. And I think it's going to be very similar to what you saw if you don't have the internet, it's really challenging to compete with against somebody that does.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah, that's a super good point. One thing I'll call out too, cause I've had the privilege of getting kind of front row seats and looking inside of Triple Whale and really I think you guys are top of the class, you're one of two. They're just a couple of platforms that I really like and really recommend that you guys are one of them. And one of the things that I like that I think you do better than anybody, I've never seen anybody that does this, and this is a simple ish thing, I'm sure it's hard to create, but the creative pilot where you get in the platform and you've got this view, and this is a podcast, so it's kind of hard to talk through, but it's just a beautiful way to look at here all my creatives and how are they performing, how are they stacking up against each other? Because sometimes it's a pain in the butt. You're looking at line items, sometimes you're looking in your ad account and you're like, this looks, this is looking at my tax return, right? Yeah. Just all great, all words and stuff. But the creative pilot is super cool. And I think I saw an early version, which may have only been Facebook because now the creative pilot works for YouTube as well,

Rabah:

Correct. And TikTok, yeah. Yeah. What's really cool about it is where the magic meets the road is you can make segments and then you can graph those segments against each other. And so what I mean, and those segments are built off of naming conventions, which is really cool because for example, you guys are an agency and if you take over an account that basically has no naming conventions in place or anything like that, you can actually change all those naming conventions without affecting any type of deployment or deliverability for the ads. And then you can do a post hawk analysis, which is really cool. And so what I mean by that, so say Brett is sell selling whale widgets and he has influencer one, influencer two, influencer three, he can easily make segments of those based off the naming convention. You can see what influencer is performing best or it angles.

So you have a price angle, you have a feature angle, you have a community angle, whatever, however you structure the deployment of your ads and your testing. And you can have a really easy way to not only visualize that, but you can also send a creative report card to whoever the stakeholder is to understand, Hey, here's how X, y, or Z is doing, or here's how that test went or for so on and so forth. Because I think creative is going to be, I mean everybody's preaching creative, creative, creative. So it's a little bit jumping on the bandwagon, but creative is going to be, if you can put better pardon in the war analogy, but better bullets in the gun, you're just going to have more success.

Brett:

Absolutely. Yeah. We believe that on YouTube. I know it's true on Facebook. It's true with search, it's true. Even with shopping and with display, the better, clear, more compelling you can get with your ads. And a lot of this comes down to testing and trying things and looking at the data and getting better and iterating. But those that can perform better with creatives are going to win. They can have a huge leg up. So awesome dude. Well, I'm nerding out and I've got so many more questions than I want to ask you, but we are right up against time, so No way. Yeah, I'm glad I looked actually, because we're about at time. I know you got a hard stop. So how can people check out Triple Will more? How can they find you? Cause I know you're active on the socials. We're not just real life friends, we're Twitter friends. I don't Twitter friend thing, but anyway. Yeah. So how can they connect

Rabah:

Current resurgence from your Yes, your defunct Twitter. You were back on the horse baby, let's go.

Brett:

I was Snapchat of twi. Yeah, Snapchat has, I took a 10 year break on Twitter. I was a big deal back at, not really, but I was doing something like 2010 and then I quit. Or 12 whatever.

Rabah:

10. That's good. Back.

Brett:

Yeah.

Rabah:

Feels good. Well, happy to have you back. Yeah, if you guys want to get more involved in Triple it's just triple.com. And then Shameless plug, we do have a fantastic newsletter that goes out every Tuesday, Thursday called Whale Mail. That's awesome. You can subscribe right@triplewell.com slash whale mail. And then I'm just on the Twitters at Robert Rahil, just my first and last name. Yeah, I'm pretty active on there sliding in my dms or mention me or anything like that. I try and get back to everybody. I'm not in the celebrity status. I am pretty terrible at my dms, but please DM me anyways. Now I'll figure out a way. I so dm,

Brett:

Just be patient like don't bug you if you're sliding. You got to be patient. Exactly. I'll, I'll link to everything in the show notes as well. But do check out Triple Whale. If you don't have a third party attribution tool, you need one. I really believe that as we go and grow in a privacy first world and all these things, like you need a third party attribution tool. Yeah, I do not say that lightly. Rabah did not pay me to say that but I believe it. And so you got to check it out. So yeah, I'll link to everything but the newsletter is fantastic. And also check out the podcast. So first one is your, you are not your Roaz. What's the other podcast name again?

Rabah:

Ad spend,

Brett:

Ad spend. So I'll link to those as well. So check those out as well. So Rava man, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much. Can't wait to do it again.

Rabah:

I'm crushed for not coming to the Whaleys. I'm I steak through my

Brett:

Heart. I'm so hard. The Whaleys. I know you got to come to the Yeah, yeah. The Whaleys in Austin, Texas. Check

Rabah:

It out Whale do com or the whales.com. But we'll have you out to some more stuff. It'll be fun. It's, it's always a pleasure. I got to see you. See you at the gorgeous event. Everybody gave really high marks on your presentation there, so it's always good to see you spreading your wings. And then good luck at the B Ball game, cheering for you and your daughters

Brett:

Bring home. That's the whales. I'm coaching my daughter at a tournament in Lawrence, Kansas. Go Jayhawks. It's

Rabah:

A high school. One of my best friends is from there. Yeah, one of my best friends is from there. So yeah. Yeah, wishing you all the luck. But Brett, thank you so much, man. I know I rescheduled a couple times, so I really appreciate the flexibility. You're just such a gem of a human. And let me know if you're ever out in Austin and we'll go grab a bite and a beer.

Brett:

Totally worth it. Thanks dude. All right. Really appreciate it. Chat soon.

Rabah:

Thanks Brett.

Brett:

Bye. And as always, thank you for tuning in and we'd love to hear from you. So if you'd like to let us know what you want to hear more of about on the show, leave that review on iTunes if you've not done. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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Brendan Bannister, the CEO of Naturalabs.io, is one smart marketer. 

We first met in 2018 when he was the CMO and Creative Director at William Painter. After taking my YouTube/Google course, he scaled ad spend on YouTube from $2k per day to $100k per day! 

We decided to start meeting and swapping ideas, war stories, and things we were testing. We soon realized the value of sharing this knowledge with others and decided to record a session and bring it to the world! 

In this episode, we dive into CRO, creatives, data-driven marketing, R&D for marketing departments, and the golden years for YouTube and Facebook Ads and how they achieved 13x growth for William Painter. 

Here are some highlights: 

• How the famous da Vinci quote, “Simplicity is Ultimate Sophistication” should be a guiding principle for marketers.
• Is media buying dead? If so, what is taking its place?
• How good brands are sort of like algorithms.
• “Design is hack” and what that means for your marketing efforts.
• The role “brand” plays in your ability to scale.
• Why Brendan is now living and working full-time in Dubai.
• Plus more!
  ‍

Mentioned In This Episode:

• Brendan Bannister (LinkedIn)
• Naturalabs (LinkedIn)
• Naturalabs (Twitter)
• William Painter
• Use Motion
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

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Transcript:
‍

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today I am delighted because I get to share with you a longtime friend, a guy that I like to talk shop with, a guy that I nerd out with, and we talk about all kinds of marketing topics together, and it's about time we shared that with the world. And so that's what we're doing today. But my guest is Brendan Bannister. We first met when he was the CMO and Creative director of William Painter, where he oversaw 13 x growth, 1500% growth on website visitors and lots of other cool stuff. So we'll unpack that, talk about that. Lots of lessons there. He is now the CEO and founder of Naura Labs, so we'll talk more about that and what they've got going on. They're pretty exciting stuff. And hey, we're going to talk growth. We're going to talk top funnel growth. We're going to talk about creative data driven marketing, and we're going to talk about CRO and other fun stuff as well. So with that, Brendan, how you doing man? Welcome to the show and thanks for coming on.

Brendan:

I'm doing good, man. It's been a long time coming and I'm excited. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Brett:

It has been a long time coming. And what I want to do first, so lot to unpack, talk about William Painter's success, the YouTube of Facebook success, all that was awesome. There we're talk about CRO and some of the data driven stuff you're doing now, but for those watching the video, they're probably looking and saying, dang, Brennan has got an amazing background. So it's a cityscape. You got these big windows behind you you got the microphone, everything looks good. You tell you're a photographer because you've like, you've positioned everything perfectly, but where are you in the world?

Brendan:

I'm in Dubai and well, it's not flashing anymore, but it wor was flashing or it is flashy now. It's the Burge Khalifa out there

Brett:

And that is that the tallest building in the world or second or something.

Brendan:

It's the tallest building in the world for now.

Brett:

Gotcha. Yeah, so Dubai, that is a place I've never visited heard lots of good things. My buddy Nick Shackleford has done some events there. I almost went, but halfway around the world, you are a California guy. And so when you and I met and hung out, it was in San Diego with the William Painter crew. But why, why'd Dubai? Why did you end up landing?

Brendan:

That's an interesting question. That doesn't necessarily have an easy answer, but long story short, my business partner partner and one of my best friends was already living out here. He relocated out here for another e-commerce brand that he was working with. And sometimes life just calls you in a direction and it called me out here and I came out here and it's been mind blowing, to say the least, probably I think the center of innovation in the world right now. And it's a great place to be for marketing life and just to be around the future of everything, in my opinion.

Brett:

Yeah, it's really, really interesting. I've heard stories and talked to a couple other buddies that were there for an event and they were FaceTiming me and showing me the hotel in the surrounding areas. It's a beautiful city. It seems to be a very clean city and just lots of really successful people from all over the world are hanging in Dubai. Right,

Brendan:

Yo, absolutely. It's the cleanest city I've ever been to. There's no trash at all. So that's really nice. And the level of success here

Brett:

Is that's basically downtown San Diego, downtown la No trash.

Brendan:

Yeah, it's pretty much the same.

Brett:

I love San Diego, but I was singing in Airbnb, speaking at an event, and I walked down this road, it was by Petco Park and lots of, it's beautiful, but I walked down the street and I was like, it smells like urine and pot and there's a lot of trash here. So it's like, it's part partially beautiful and partially just like, come on man, somebody's got to clean this place up. Anyway, so none of that.

Brendan:

That's a whole nother story. That's a whole nother podcast.

Brett:

Yeah, it's another podcast for sure. For sure. So that's awesome, man. Well really excited to dive in, love what you guys are doing now with Naura Labs, and we're going to talk about CRO and data driven marketing and some of that fun stuff. But I want to unpack the success that you had at William Painter first because such an awesome story, such a great product. Love the guys at William Painter. And so you were there, were the cmo, the creative director when William Payner really blew up. And also quick shout out to Raindrop and our boy Jacques Spitzer and the crew, they played an instrumental role in some of the creatives there, but really, you guys exploded. So kind of walk us through, what's that story, how did that unfold? Give us a few of the highlights and then we'll dive into some lessons there.

Brendan:

Yeah, we'll cut it down because I guess that was back in the glory days of YouTube. Some might say The Glory

Brett:

Days of

Brendan:

It. Yeah, hero. The Hero Video days. But yeah, long story short that was back in the day when Dollar Shave Club and Dr. Qua was kind of pioneering the YouTube hero video scene. And these agencies were just starting to pop up around. And we got connected with Raindrop Agency down in San Diego and produced that first hero video. And after quite a long time of studying YouTube, watching some of the courses that you taught, you put it on YouTube and it just popped. It just worked. And it scaled aggressively very fast, almost uncontrollably to amount to a period where it was pretty scary to see the level of scale that you would unlock in a matter of one to two weeks. I'm talking campaigns going from 2000 a day to upwards of a hundred thousand dollars a day in a week.

Brett:

That's pretty interesting. Those were the glory days, for sure. Yeah,

Brendan:

It kind of paved the way to, okay, this is working. Let's produce more hero videos. And we ended up producing several full top of Funnel Hero videos along with multiple Thanksgiving sales, black Friday sales, Christmas sales, and so on and so forth.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. And a lot of the world has changed. Cause that was, remind me, what was that, 2019?

Brendan:

Yeah, 2019 when we did the first one. And I think we made Selma 2019 and 2020 as well.

Brett:

Yeah. So a lot of change in the world, obviously, right? Pandemic, yeah, supply chain issues, inflation, all kinds of stuff, just kind of thrown a wrench in everything. So it's a different world and increased competition. And I was 14 and all that, but a, some of the same principles still apply, right? Yeah. Is it absolutely as easy to scale today as it was then? Probably not, but it's still doable with the right scenarios. But let's talk about what was your role in that process? So 13 X growth, 1500% of growth and online shoppers, just amazing growth. What was your role and what part did you play in that?

Brendan:

Yeah I'm sure a lot of people know that have, not massive e-commerce brands, but smaller teams. Everyone wears a lot of hats and plays a lot of role. Yeah. But

Brett:

I was, you got to do whatever's necessary,

Brendan:

Right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I was pretty involved on the creative direction side of things. I did a lot big collaborative process on writing the scripts. James Schrader and I, who was in the videos for William Painter and also Dr. We worked really closely in writing those scripts and then coming up with stories to be funny, different types of backgrounds and opening scenes, hooks. The hook is the biggest one. Breaking sunglasses, jumping through banners and things like that just to grab attention. And then also really trying to learn how to add in direct response marketing. So presenting a problem and then giving the solution and walking the viewer through it in a creative, funny, non-invasive way. And then I was running the Google ad, so I was behind the scenes putting the audiences, running all the YouTube campaigns, doing search and shopping and all that good stuff.

Brett:

Yeah, that's awesome. And that's a really unique skillset, by the way. And I'm sure people that are listening those that have been in the game for a while or tried to hire someone to run marketing or run marketing themselves, they know it's pretty rare to find someone that has both the creative skillset. You can really dive in and help write scripts and help come up with concepts and guide things and direct things. And to be the one in the background, building campaigns, setting bids, setting that account structure, and really managing the media portion and that strategy portion. So how did you balance both? It's super interesting.

Brendan:

I just love it. I love solving problems, and it's a different type of creativity. So being a photographer for the last decade or so, and then coming to the creative direction side of things, art direction, things like that. But then also creatively solving problems to be funny or to direct the actors on screen or to come up with unique ways to market towards people. One of the really cool things that we did is we built a whole full-fledged funnel using these YouTube videos. So we would remarket product page viewers with content that we created specifically for people that were on the product page, viewers. So for example, one of the scripts would start off, they'd already come to our website, looked at a product, and then we'd retarget them and the video would say, Hey, we noticed we were checking out our sunglasses. You look really good in them. You should go back and check 'em out. And I think that was a pretty unique type of remarketing where we're literally talking to the customer and it converted incredibly well. And that was fun because creativity mixed with marketing, mixed with psychology, mixed with just being fun, <laugh>,

Brett:

Dude. It's what I love about the game and it's what I've always loved about marketing, because there's some art and creativity and science and psychology, and why do people respond the way they respond? And you get to plan in all of that and craft a strategy, a playbook to navigate and say, Hey, how can we scale this brand? And how can we attract the right people and take them from interest to engagement to, Hey, I'm willing to shell out 150 bucks for a pair of sunglasses, all sight unseen, all just with online marketing and a great web experience. So yeah, exactly.

Brendan:

You've talked a little bit about demand generation versus demand creation. So that's also a really fun thing where you realize that there's a problem that maybe the organization, the brand you're working with doesn't have demand to capture, but it has to generate it and then capture it. So you have to create desire and then get them to purchase it, which is just another complex problem you have to solve creatively as well.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. And I've kind of played on both sides cause I've always loved Google search and shopping, and that's query based traffic. That's someone searching for a specific solution or a specific product. And so that's more demand capture. That's where you're saying, Hey, I'm looking for this kind of car accessory, or I'm looking for this type of sunglasses to, you're capturing that demand. But in the case of something like William Painter, it's titanium sunglasses. They're basically indestructible. The original one has the hook on it, the little thing that's like a bottle opener that allows you to pop bottles and look like a model. I still remember the majority of your script, by the way. And so no one's searching for that. I want titanium sunglasses that I can open a can of beer with or a bottle of beer. I didn't know that existed because I haven't seen it yet.

So you've got to show that to me and generate that demand and then yes, I'm interested. And so see, the blending of those two is really fun. And I think you can, what I love about the Google adss ecosystem is you can find both right there. There's going to be some opportunities even before you go hard on YouTube, there's going to be some demand capture opportunities. But then absolutely, if you can go big on YouTube and tell the story and say, Hey, this is why you need titanium. Tim Ferris likes it, all these other people like it, you can step on. It's not going to break. And you can wow your friends by opening.

Brendan:

And then the demand capture

Brett:

Gets a lot more, it actually scales that demand and now you're in the money. What's that?

Brendan:

I said the demand capture gets a lot more fun once you do that on YouTube because then you scale.

Brett:

Yes, yes, you're, you're seeding that audience and getting them interested. And then you can close the deal through your demand capture campaigns. And I also love that this idea, cause we see this a lot, and this is something I talk about with prospects and what I'm speaking on stage is, hey, remarketing something we all do. Most people are bad at it, we're lazy at it. We create a one marketing remarketing campaign. We're running all the same creatives that we run in our other campaigns. That's better than nothing. But what if we segmented that a little bit and said, Hey, you've been to a product detail page, you just haven't pulled the trigger yet. So let's talk to you. You've been there, you checked out the product, you maybe didn't like it. And if you can add some humor and some fun elements, all the better. So we actually met, tell the story of how we met, I believe. I can't remember who reached out, but you guys had actually taken my YouTube and Google ads course that I did with Smart Marketer, the original one. The original one. How did we meet after that? I don't even remember now.

Brendan:

I think it was at one of the Blue Ribbon events, to be honest, it must've been one of the first ones. It might've been in Seattle. I think that might've been the first one I went to was in Seattle, but I can't remember.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah. So we connected and kind of sparked a friendship where you guys took the course and ran with it and you added to it and your brilliance came out in that. And then we've just stayed in touch ever since, swapping ideas and taught and shop. Yeah. So pretty cool. Pretty cool. Awesome. Well, what are some of the takeaways from the William Painter days that you would say still apply today? Right? So if we're looking at and I like the delineation or the comparison you made there of demand generation versus demand capture. So what are some of the demand generation lessons that you learned through William Painter that still applies it? I know there are probably a few technical nuances that are different in a post iOS 14.5 world, but what are some of the lessons that still apply?

Brendan:

Yeah, that's a really good question actually. I think I'm a big person on branding. One of my biggest things is as being an artist creator is, I think, or actually one of my favorite quotes ever is design as hack. And I think that's true. And I think design goes into a magnitude of things. It's not just the product, it's not just the website, it's not just the creative, but it's all of them into one. And I call it the visual spectrum. And that is every visual touchpoint of your brand from the way you message people on a social media or on your text message to your email, to the colors you choose, to the fonts, to the type of creative, the iPhone creative, the professional creative, all of that creative comes into brand. And I think that is a very, very, very important part because when you're trying to create demand, you have to present yourself as bigger than life and bigger than you actually are.

That way people trust you, especially in this day and age when you're scrolling an Instagram or on YouTube and there's hundreds and hundreds of companies and brands and products being shoved down your throat. You have to stand out above the rest and people have to trust you. And if you have that niche for design and you have attention to detail and make the creative stand out, whether it's high quality or funny or attention grabbing, and the whole experience from point A to point Z is a smooth, cohesive brand experience, the demand capture and demand demand generation just becomes a lot easier because people trust you and they trust your brand.

Brett:

I love that so much. And I want to unpack that just a little bit, but explain that quote just a little bit to me. So design is hack, what does that mean?

Brendan:

So just as it sounds like if you're able to design something to a level that connects with people on a subconscious level, it makes everything easier. If I'm going to sell you a pen and the pen looks clunky or it's an odd color, I don't want that pen, but I want to sleek black pen, that feels good. And it might be the same components might cost the same to produce it, but if it's sleek and it looks good to the eye, it's way easier to sell. And I think just designing something and having the attention to the detail is that hack that makes everything easier.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. And to give a couple of examples, obviously we could look at the examples that are always given. Nike can charge. Now I, I've just bought my, oddly enough, I just bought my first pair of Jordan's. I've always been a Michael Jordan fan. I just bought my first pair. But you can find some of the retro Jordan's for three to $500. You can pay $2,500 for some of these shoes online. So what's the, between that and a $30 pair of shoes you buy at Walmart? Well, it's brand and the materials are better and stuff too, but are they a thousand times better? I don't know. I'm sure not. And so that's all brand, but one example, and I think this ties into both branding and design of the product. I've kind of gotten into tea a little bit lately, still drink more coffee. So I've not abandoned coffee in my Americanos. And I've done a few pour overs, although I just haven't fully mastered that art. But I've got a fellow kettle, and this is a really sleek, elegant, long neck kettle. It's seen, sits on, it's beautiful, beautifully designed, nice wood handle. It's ergonomically correct and it looks amazing sitting on the counter. It's got, do you know fellow, have you seen this?

Brendan:

Oh yeah, I've seen their ads. I've in

Brett:

Their funnel,

Brendan:

Got

Brett:

Deep in their funnel. It's a display where you can choose the exact temperature you want to eat your water up to. So if you want green tea, you can go in the one 70 s. If you're looking at coffee, you can go 2 0 5, 2 0 10, whatever, 2 0 10, 2 10 2000 degrees. So you can heat it to whatever you want. And it's like three or four x the cost of a, I could get just a simple electric kettle for 20 bucks on Amazon or 30 bucks or whatever this is, 300 or 200. And so what is that? It's design, right? It's design, it's branding. It is, yes, functionally great too, but it looks great on the shelf. And so that product design, that design element of your ads that builds the brand, the brand is, can't overstate it, right? And we do a lot on Amazon, how brands grow on Amazon and brand is what can allow you to charge a premium on Amazon and protect your margins on Amazon where there's a lot of pressure to erode those margins. So love that. So design is hacked. So awesome lesson, awesome takeaway. Any other takeaways from the William Painter days that would still apply today?

Brendan:

I would believe that the majority of brands are very similar in nature. The systems of the internal brand is the same. The way the emails operate, the way the text message operate, the way Shopify, Google, Facebook, omnichannel, I think the internal systems are all 95% the same. And it's that 10 is the 10, five or 10% of how you brand it really and connect those pieces together that the entire ecosystem works. And I've found that over the years, consulting for various different brands and seeing under the hoods of very different brands of their entire layout, all the ads, the Shopify, the creative and all that stuff, you really see a lot of the similarities. And you're like, okay, well if all e-commerce is relatively simmer, then we can build a system of equations that allows us to plug and play into different organizations. And that's kind of what we know we'll lead into later. But it's really interesting to see that the channels talk to each other in the same way. And in essence, I believe that <laugh> in a nutshell, an e-commerce brand is basically just an algorithm and it's a plug from, it starts at the ad level, goes up through the website and all the way to the purchase. And as long as you can make it all connect, it works. And it kind of, yeah, it's very applicable across many different brands for a DTC at

Brett:

Least. Yeah, I love that. And one thought that just sparked is that this idea that, hey, everything has changed, but everything is still the same. And I think this applies to maybe whoa, deep philosophical, whatever, but if you look at platform, let's just say Google as an example, mission, Google's mission is still to answer people's questions, to connect advertiser with ideal buyer and make both happy. And it's organizing the world's information, but it's connecting things. It's just that the methods have changed. It's not just search, it's YouTube and the algorithm and YouTube that that's really good at predicting what content do you want to consume next? And based on your behavior, what products would you like to see and what products would you like to shop and see demonstration videos on or see ads on inside of YouTube or inside of Google? And so it's still a lot of the same thing, right?

It's just the way we're guiding campaigns campaign structure is different. Yeah, the way we bid is different. The way we used to bid on shopping and the way we bid used to bid on YouTube, it's shifted some in recent years, the algorithm has gotten better. In some ways it's gotten worse too because of lack of data, but the platforms are figuring that out. So it's like, I think you're right, and 90% whatever is the same. Those little nuances matter and you got to figure those out. But at the core, it's still the same. And people still buy for the same reasons. They've always bought, they brand matters and they want to solve a problem and they want the benefits and they want to see themselves in the product and all these things. It's just the tools and the methods we have to bring that to life are a little bit different. So yeah, I love that perspective. I

Brendan:

Would say it, it's even just going as far as just getting more simple. Instead of everything being so complex and guessing, it's really just about optimizing your brand, optimizing your shopping experience, decreasing friction, increasing quality, creative and A plus B, equal C. It's not that complex, but

Brett:

I love it. I kind of set some intentions and talked about, and we're recording this just right after the new year but setting my intentions for the year and three words I'm going to focus on, one is simplicity one is intentionality, and one is consistency. But let's just talk about simplicity for a minute. Simplicity is not dumbing down. Simplicity is not being just, simplicity is about removing ambiguity, making things crystal clear. Because if a habit is not simple, we're not going to keep it. If the message isn't simple, consumers aren't going to hold onto it and take action. If the message we share with our team isn't simple, no one's going to embrace it. We've got to really embrace simplicity and and I totally agree, and I think that's a big part of landing pages too, right? Not, I mean, you got to have enough elements there to sell the product, but how can we simplify? How can we make things more clear?

Brendan:

No, we actually have

Brett:

Be increasingly important.

Brendan:

We have three principles in Intro Labs and two of 'em the first one, and it's kind of like our three principles to design in life and philosophy, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the first principle is simplicity is the key to brilliance by Da Vinci. The second one is the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and we apply those to all design, all marketing, all theory we do. And it's really just about being more, being simple, being minimal, getting the point across without all the fluff and unnecessary jargon that we often add. We always add complexity because we think it's a complex problem, but it's really just a simple problem.

Brett:

Yeah, and it's one of those things too where if you're trying to communicate something on a landing page or through a video, you want instant understanding where someone reads it and they're like, ah, cool, I totally get it. I get what this practice is going to do for me. I get what you're trying to say. Rather than it's like I read the headline, it's kind of interesting, but I don't really know what you're talking about. Maybe I'll read more, maybe I won't. But you won this instant understanding which is super powerful. Yeah, definitely. Awesome. I want to get into cro, want to get into data driven marketing but let's talk about r and d for a minute. So this is something that you and I talk about a decent amount. I know that's kind of a passion of yours right now, but where does research and development fit into good marketing and how are you at mature labs and you individually? How are you thinking about research and development?

Brendan:

Another great question. So I think research and research and development is actually going to be the future ev e-commerce. I think as media buyers kind of get phased out, we are going to focus more on some building simple websites and being creative and adding the creativity into the ads. But then what we're also going to have to do is either have a whole team of researchers or an independent organization such as ourselves that will identify problems and provide solutions for you. And one of the things we really focus on is being an independent external powerhouse that can work with brands that can spend time focusing on how to solve a problem, whether it's how to decrease our cost acquisition or how to better sell a product or what product to design rather than someone that's at the brand being busy all day focusing on putting out fires. We are on the outside kind of like, okay, our number one job is to find a problem and not just find the problem, but give you a solution. And I think a lot of that comes down to marketing, CPAs, creative, how to stand out, how to be different, how to execute and iterate faster than the competition.

Brett:

Yeah, I really like that. I think we talk about this a decent amount internally to OMG and lots of chatter on LinkedIn and Twitter amongst marketers that, hey, this idea that media buying is dead, and I agree with that traditional where we're just creating a media plan, bidding up, bidding down, that sort of thing, nah, that you don't really need. That alone isn't super valuable. But the strategic use of channels and the strategic combination of different campaign types, I like to think about it almost, I'd like to use a football analogy, like an offensive coordinator. So you're calling the right plays, you're creating this team of campaigns and team of platforms to work together to get the ball in the end zone. And you're reading the defense, you're watching how the defense responds to things, you're calling the next play. But a lot of that I is r and d.

And so to continue on the football analogy, and my apologies if this isn't landing for some people in the audience, they're like, Hey, football, who cares? The best offensive coordinators, the best quarterbacks, the best coaches, they are studying game film all the time, film of their own team, film of their opponents. They're dissecting the data they're researching and then they're applying that, they're applying that and they're game plan. They're not on the field anymore. And that's kind of the way to a good media buyer, good strategies. They're not on in doing some of the stuff anymore. They're directing it and they're calling those plays. So what are some of the elements of research and development that you guys are focused on or the marketer of the future needs to be focused on?

Brendan:

Yeah, I think we're really focused on top of funnel acquisition because as, especially during the holidays, like CPMs are through the roof, CPCs, through the roof, CPAs, a lot of 'em through the roof with all the competition. And I think our main focus is on landing pages because simplicity, instead of sending someone to a product page that might not be optimized for that specific audience, we're focusing on, okay, who is our target audience for this specific product or this specific offer? How can we build a unique customized shopping experience for this person that walks in through the entire point a point Z in a nurtured way? I mean, imagine walking into Target for example, or yeah, Target's a great example. You walk into Target and you're like, where do I need to go? Where's my piece at? Instead of going through the entire store trying to figure out where that thing is you want to buy, you walk in the doors of Target, boom, it's right in front of you. You're like, oh, perfect, I don't have to search for it. I didn't know I needed this, but now I'm going to get this and that. And I think that's where the r and d comes in. It's like, let's create a nurtured, unique shopping experience that you can also connect to the creative. So it can be a creative from an ad level all the way through the entire purchase level, from point A to point Z is a unique, experienced made for that person to solve that person's problem or whatever it may be.

Brett:

I love that. I often find myself, I way prefer to shop online if I do go to a physical store, which I do on occasion, I'm like, man, can I just search for something or is there a search bar? Or I always go grab somebody and just ask because I don't want to, otherwise I'm wandering around the store, I'm worn on and not finding what I need. But I love that curated experience designed exactly for that person, so get what they need and so that they convert. So I think it's a good transition. Let's talk about CRO a little bit. So you guys at Mature Labs, you've got a really unique approach. You're building on Landers and they're both beautiful and highly converting, so you've got to show me a lot of what you're doing. Very impressed. What's your approach to CRO and kind of, so what's your approach? And we'll talk about lessons we can pull from that.

Brendan:

So CROs a pretty broad term, you know, could have CRO homepage, you have CRO on ad level, you can have CRO on the product page, collection page, stuff like that. Our main focus, and this is our third principle on interior labs, a principle called Gals Law. And in a nutshell, it basically states that a working complex system must evolve from a simple working system. You can't start with a complex system. So if you talk about a brand website in the terms of a complex system, you have all these different products, all these different links and stuff, and it's very difficult, it's very complex, very confusing for someone with a simple thought process to navigate. So our theory is, okay, well let's build a landing page that is a simple landing page to solve a specific problem for a specific product, whatever that may be. And we build a modularized.

So our intention is to build the entire landing page with multiple different offers that we can have at the start, multiple different modules that we can swap in towards the middle and bottom of the page. But the goal is to build one simple system, one simple landing page that works. And if it's not working, because sometimes you don't work when you launch 'em, you replace the header, boom, new header, new header, new header, new color, and you just change that starting piece until it starts to convert. And then as it starts to convert, you know, keep doing O to have negative feedback and make iterations. And slowly over time you start building a page that's more powerful and more powerful, more powerful, even by changing button colors, placements, offers and things like that. That

Brett:

I got to ask. I want to dive into that a little bit more, but you've shared now two of your principles or two, three

Brendan:

Was the third one.

Brett:

So I guess simplicity is the key to brilliance. A working system, a working complex system must evolved from a simple system. What was the other one? I

Brendan:

Missed it. Yeah, the second one is the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

Brett:

Oh, of course you did say that. Yeah, so

Brendan:

It's simplicity, same

Brett:

But different. That's awesome, man. I love that. I'm going to writing these down that that's brilliant and love those key principles. So I think one of the things, and you're right, CRO is broad. It's like, hey, what's your marketing philosophy world? That's a pretty big question. But what we experience a lot, and I think what a lot of brands run into is maybe your issue right now isn't traffic. Maybe your issue right now isn't your ads, maybe your issue is your lander, right? The lander is not answering a specific question, it's not solving a specific problem, it's not talking about a specific product and in the right way to that shopper and getting them to convert. Obviously it all works together, but a lot of times people are blaming the ad or the network that they're advertising on the platform. They're blaming Facebook, playing Google, but blaming YouTube when really the lander just got to get better. Oh yeah. So how are you guys analyzing? So you've got a client with a product and if you can use a specific example, great, if not, no talking generalities, but how are you going about, okay, let's create a simple page for this. What are you trying to understand and then what are you trying to distill in that page?

Brendan:

Yeah, so it's so many different things and it's really just about finding what works. And that could be the design, it could be the messaging, it could be the creative. And I mentioned earlier about how I think all brands are an algorithm in a way. So let's just say in this world that we're in this imaginary world, we have a brand that has perfect creative and perfect messaging, and the ads are converting really well. We're driving lots of traffic to the website, but the website's not converting and we're not getting these purchases, but the ads are, we got good metrics at the ad level and that's because we're taking a working algorithm and plugging into an algorithm that's not optimized. The website could be super complex. The messaging's not right on the website, the color's not right on the website. So it's really about, okay, well how can we improve this website to make it convert better by changing the messaging or changing the offer or the colors make a big one.

We ran a really basic research case study for our client and we changed the color of the review stars on the product page. We had three colors. We had the on-brand black versus gold versus silver. And just changing the gold stars drove $5,000 of incremental revenue in one month. Just on one page we tested it, it was a one page isolated test, drove $5,000 of incremental revenue. And if you take that and extrapolate over the course of 12 months, you've got an extra 50 60 grand of incremental revenue there. But the interesting thing is all these ads convert on a metric called perceived conversion rate on the website, which is the algorithm guesses at what the conversion rate's going to be on based on the probability of that user converting. So if you can move that number up a slight incremental number by changing the product page colors or the button colors or anything, you're really making it easier for the ads to convert. And I don't think a lot of people are starting to figure that out in 2023, and I think 2023 is going to be the year of massive CRO at scale because they're like, oh, right, it's two, we've got a ad level b c O level on the website or whatever the lander is.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so good. Now I'm going to ask this question at the risk of leading people down the wrong path, and so I'm going to give a caveat and then I'm going to ask the question cause I know it's a question they never went right now is asking in their brain, and that is what color did you change it to? So it was gold. What color did you change as a review stars to?

Brendan:

So were for this specific company is very male dominated automotive industry. The on-brand color was black, that was the color they used. And we actually saw that gold had a 39% increase in conversion rate on desktop. Got it. Wasn't statistically significant on mobile. We didn't run the test for as long as we should have for various reasons but 39% is statistically significant on desktop, 39% increasing conversion rate for new users just for changing the stars to gold.

Brett:

That's awesome. So here, here's the lesson and the takeaway there. The lesson and the takeaway is not gold definitely, although it is in a sense, the sense is you start testing things, you'll get gold, but it's not that gold is now the winner in terms of your star reviews and how you display them. The key is you got to test it and the key is that these little things can make a big difference. I just led a training with our leadership at OMG on Atomic Habits and it's a great book. If you not read it, it's by James Clear talks about these little changes, these small habits, these simple habits, as you stack them, they compound. And one of the stories in the book, and I'll tell this in 20 seconds was about the British cycling team and the British cycling team for a long time, they were really terrible.

They won one tour of France in a hundred years. They were so bad that certain bike manufacturers didn't want to sell them bikes because they thought it would ruin their brand. They were like, Hey, if people see your cyclists riding our bikes, they're not going to buy it. So it was bad. This new coach comes along and he talks about this principle of the aggregation of marginal gains. So the stacking or the adding up of small incremental improvements. So they start doing crazy things like they clean the tires with rubbing alcohol and they test a hundred different suits to see what's got the least amount of drag. And they start testing pillows and mattresses for their racing team to see what leads to the best night's sleep. They start painting the inside of their trailers white so they can spot dust and get it out of there to keep the bikes clean.

They start doing all these crazy little things and you start adding all up all that together and you can see amazing results. They actually went on to it, I don't remember the years now, but they won five out of six tour to France races and then they were the pinnacle of the world. But it wasn't just like a lot of times we look at what's the one thing thing I can do? Give me a silver, silver bullet here. And that usually doesn't exist. It is, you've got to test lots of little things, but you stack a lot of little winds on top of each other and you've got amazing compounding results.

Brendan:

Absolutely. There's no shiny object and there is no one answer. Yes, despite what people think <laugh>.

Brett:

Exactly. We're all looking for it. We all want it but it's not there. And the bad news, it means it's hard. The good news is it's hard and your competitors can't figure it out either. And so it's where if you do, and then I love this idea of brands are an algorithm where it's all these things working together and if you can figure out the algorithm and guide it, you know, can see a big success. Well, I mean any other kind of general takeaways on CRO for brands and the way you guys approach it?

Brendan:

Yeah, I think it's what I've noticed over the last couple of years is that a lot of us marketers and creatives especially, we get too attached to emotion and brand. And I talk a lot about brand, but one of the important things is in the digital age of building a digital brand that's dictated by algorithms that are out of our control is that we have to use something called data driven creative direction or data-driven branding. And that is coming up with ideas that we want to test, but not being opposed to the potential that our theorized idea might not work. And we can't have our emotion attached to a color that we think is on brand. If the data's telling us to go for a different color, for example, the black looked better on this product page, it's more sleek, it just looks

Brett:

Smooth, it fits, it fit. It's more on brand, it fits the eye. Exactly, exactly. It's more plea

Brendan:

Into the eye and gold stands out a little bit more, but because it stands out a little bit more, converts better. And we have to be okay with changing and being fluid in the way our brand evolves, keeping some boundaries there, but being fluid with the way it evolves to work in the digital age to take advantage of the algorithms we have to work with algorithms not against them. And that starts at every level in my personal opinion.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so important mean, I know Gary V talks about you can't be romantic about certain elements in your business when the data changes you need to change. And when you see things that when the data is speaking, we should go in this direction, you need to go in that direction. And that doesn't mean you abandon your brand, right? You're building this brand, you're building brand equity. That's important. But sometimes we begin to think as business owners, as marketers, as CMOs, whatever, we're like, no, no, no. Black is our color. If we abandon black in this one element of our page, we're eroding our brand. Our customers won't like it. We know our customers, we know our brand well, you should probably test it. And so again, that doesn't mean scrap your logo every other month or something crazy like that, stick to your brand. But you got to test things. And being romantic about things that are not important to your customers is going to trip you up and really limit your growth and eventually potentially stifle your overall potential. So really good. Anything else you would unpack there on creative data driven marketing and any other ways you would describe that or unpack that? I love that. I love that term and I love the concept.

Brendan:

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So as I've talked about, I think the creatives being more important as we move on, and we found this really, really cool software called Motion. I think the websites use motion.com, shout out to them. They're actually a really cool organization, small team, but amazing. And they connect to your Facebook and they will give you full on reports. And I'm not endorsed by them full for the record. They'll give you full on reports of all your creative in your Facebook account and your Google account. They're bringing on YouTube soon I believe. And for example, if you, let's say you run ads for a month, right? On Facebook and you see your top three your top three performing videos, what you should do for the following month is take those top three videos, make some iterations on those videos that you think might convert better and test those and keep testing.

So the idea is to over time, test all of your creative, but test the best ones. Make iterations on your best creative. So month one, you start with zero creatives. Month two you have iteration one by month six you have six iterations of those creatives that are getting better every single month. And that is data driven creative direction. And you can take it into applying new creatives, say month four, month five, you say, wow, these are really working. Whatever this combination of testimonial or hook is working, let's go make some new creative using this structure and boom, creative direction right there.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. And you're always looking for that combination of right message, which is a combination of hook product, demo, cta, cta, a few other elements too. Audience in Lander. And so like, hey, are we tweaking that and was we're looking at the data, maybe we're seeing, hey, the conversion rate's really high, but the engagement isn't as high as it could be. So let's test new hooks. Or maybe the engagement's really high and the clickthrough good, but the conversion rate's not good. Let's test the landing page. So we're looking at the data, what is the data telling us? What story is the data telling us? And then let's iterate and make changes based.

Brendan:

Yeah, I do think data's becoming a buzzword in 2022 slash 2023. Cause I think a lot of people throw it around and I think maybe there's not as many people that understand it because it does get pretty complex. But basically just finding what's working, looking at that subset of what's working and making improvements on what's working to then guide your next decisions rather than just kind of guessing or using your emotion. Yeah,

Brett:

And I'm really glad you mentioned that because yeah, the solution is not more data. We need more dashboards, more complex dashboards. We need every data point possible that that's probably going to lead to share, that's going to get stuck in the data. What are the important data points? What are those important data points telling us? And then how can we quickly iterate and test and change to improve? That's all action. Exactly right. Take action. You are talking about data and that just means they're trying to get more of it and they still don't know what they're seeing even with more data.

Brendan:

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Brett:

Yeah. Awesome. Well dude, this has been super fun. I'm all charged up now, actually. I love it when there's certain podcasts where I record it and I've got more energy at the end of the podcast than at the beginning of the podcast. That's always a good sign we could go through. It was fun for me at least. Hopefully people listening enjoy it as well. But Naura Labs, so talk about this just a little bit. If someone's listening and they're like, dude, I need to hang out with Brendan or maybe see if I can work with them or whatnot, what do you guys do? Can people learn more about you?

Brendan:

So we have two major things. We have one's called brand architecture, and that's kind of what it sounds like. We basically just help brands build more efficiently, whether it's landing pages, whether it's coo, whether it's website optimization and we just want to improve your throughput. And then we also take, or we have a fractional CMO program, fractional ceo, CMO program. And it's basically just us looking at your brand, the whole holistic view of the brand. Not just the ads, not just the creative, but helping you come up with products to develop or when you should release those products, what the next step to growth is. Because growth is not just ads, growth is multiple different things, websites, products and all those type of things. And it's just a laboratory where we get to experiment and come up with ideas and test them and research and provide you with ideas to iterate on and to execute on. And our number one thing is identify problems, provide solutions and increase your throughput.

Brett:

Yeah. Love it. Love it. And so it's labs.io and we will link to that in the show notes. We'll share it on social so people can find it. What about on the socials? Can people connect with you on Twitter, LinkedIn, other places or with the company? How can people continue the conversation if they want to?

Brendan:

Yeah, no, we're definitely on LinkedIn. My LinkedIn is my name, Brenda bannister. And then you can also find Interior Labs on LinkedIn and Twitter at Naura Labs underscore io. And we're going to be coming out with a lot of content. We kind of created the studio here and we're going to be a content driven research and development firm. So hopefully we're putting out a lot of really interesting unique research stuff. We're finding what's working, what's not working, ideas, and just an overall place to just have an open dialogue.

Brett:

And so I think, hey, if you're in a spot where it makes sense, reach out to Brendan and start chatting with the team about what an engagement could look like. At a minimum, you got to follow this guy and you got to pay attention to what they're doing. And the content coming out here, I know it's going to be fantastic. I've had the privilege, like I said, over the last several years of just chat with Brennan on a regular basis and talk about what we're testing. And so as some of that comes to light, you're going to learn a ton. And so pay attention to that to content, to those videos. I will also tease, this is maybe a little premature, but I'm going to throw it out there since we're on the topic we're redoing that course. So the smart Google Traffic course is in a full reboot right now, which is super exciting. And so that'll be released sometime this year. Okay. We're working working with Ezra and team on that, so stay tuned. We'll keep you posted on the podcast and through other means, but we are, we're working on that as well, which will be really cool. So any closing thoughts, tools, recommendation, anything else you want to plug here before we sign off?

Brendan:

No, I just want to say thanks a lot for having me on. This is a lot of fun. I appreciate it. It's been great over the years working together. I've been building that Trail Labs for exactly a year now, and you've been a vital part in jumping on monthly and feeding back ideas. And I really appreciate that. And I think our core principle at the individual level, but also at the business level is build relationships, keep your reputation and work with the unicorn brands and unicorn people, and you're a unicorn brand and I truly appreciate that,

Brett:

Dude. Thank you. That means a lot. That means a lot. I appreciate that. And awesome. Yeah, good times. Really great content. Love seeing what you're doing, love the growth, and excited to see how this thing unfolds. And

Brendan:

Yeah, and I'll see you in Dubai soon. <laugh>.

Brett:

Dude, I got to get to Dubai. I guess I got to do it. I mean, it just seems like a lot of work to get there, but I got to check it out. I definitely do. So absolutely. Awesome. All right, man, fantastic stuff. Thank you so much for coming on.

Brendan:

Thank you.

Brett:

Awesome. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. Would love to get that five star review on iTunes if you think we deserved it. And also I am getting more active on social media. I had a Twitter account, or do you still do, but back in 2010 I was active or something like that. And then it took about a decade off. More than a decade, I don't know but I'm active on it now. So check it out at Brett Curry on Twitter, LinkedIn v Brett Curry. So I'd love to connect with you and continue this conversation on social media. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

Retention marketing is crucial for any business. 

When the economy is thriving, you need retention marketing to cut through the clutter and help you stand out. 

When times are tough, as they may be in the near future, retention marketing is essential. During a recession, it’s critical to get the most out of your marketing efforts. 

The most effective way to accomplish this is to maximize your Lifetime Value (LTV) through retention and loyalty marketing.

That’s why, at OMG, we launched email and SMS marketing as a service last year. (email growth@omgcommerce.com to find out more). 

In this episode, I had the pleasure of hosting Daniel Budai, a retention marketing expert and the founder of Budai Media. 

Here’s a look at what we cover: 

• The mindset shift needed to impact how you approach retention marketing and loyalty. 
• Why you are likely not emailing your list enough and how emailing LESS has the opposite effect. 
• How to maximize your results by combining SMS and email marketing.
• How to create a user-friendly loyalty program that incentivizes desired actions, such as referrals. 
• How to use postcards as part of your retention and loyalty efforts.

‍

Mentioned In This Episode

• Daniel Budai (LinkedIn)
• Budai Media
• Budai Media Email Marketing Checklist
• Stamped
• Loyalty Lion
• Yotpo
• Post Pilot
• Brett Curry (LinkedIn)
• Brett Curry (Twitter)

‍

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of Commerce. And today we're talking about a topic that is near and dear to my heart. This is something I'm a passionate believer in and that is retention marketing. We're going to go deep on email and SMS and loyalty programs and it's something that we've always been a believer about at OMG Commerce. We've been added it as a service, SMS and email a little over a year ago because we believe in it so much. And really as we look at what might be ahead or where we might be right now, when you're listening to this recession, difficult times struggle. You've got to be really dialed into your retention marketing, but I would argue even when times are great, you need good retention and loyalty strategies because when you have those, then you can be aggressive at the top of the funnel. And so today my guest is Daniel Budai, the fam founder of budai Media team of just under 30 people working in exclusively in retention marketing. Very sharp guy. Really excited to dive in and get into this topic. I think it'll be very helpful for you and it's always going to be always fun for me to talk about this topic. And so with that, Daniel, how you doing? Welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time.

Daniel:

Yeah, thanks Brett for the invite and for the great introduction and I'm very happy to be here and share some knowledge hopefully.

Brett:

Great. So really excited to dive into some tips and strategies and ideas and mistakes that people are making and really make this valuable for everybody that's tuning in. But first, how did you get into this? So kind of gimme your 32nd or 62nd background. How did you become a retention marketing specialist?

Daniel:

Sure. So my story actually starts with geology. I studied geology at the university.

Brett:

I had a dollar for every time I heard that I would have $1. Okay, good. Yeah, keep going.

Daniel:

So that's where my story started. Actually. I wanted to work in the oil industry, but I couldn't find a great job there. So I pivot into marketing, I think that's a 180 turn, let's say <laugh>. That was a U-turn. And I started out with sales copywriting at the beginning. I really liked it, but I never really wanted to be very professional and one of the best in copywriting. I much preferred building a team around me, managing people, working on strategy. So that's how we started our agency around four years ago. And by now we grew to almost 30 people all over the world and we mostly work with US based and Canadian clients, e-commerce clients, and we help them to increase the lifetime value of their customers with different strategies with different marketing channels.

Brett:

I don't think you could get any more opposite from rocks and oil to digital, online marketing, e-commerce very, very tangible and analog. Very, very digital and virtual soup. Super interesting, but love that you made that pivot and love that you're having this kind of success. So let's dive in. We're both in similar spaces, OMG commerce is all D to c e-commerce, we do retention marketing as well. So I'm thinking about this a lot myself, but what are some of the top retention marketing mistakes that you see DDC brands making?

Daniel:

Yeah, that's a great question and I think before I start sharing some knowledge on this. So I think it really matters the level of the company where they are because with smaller companies, startups or companies just starting out, let's say below 1 million per year in revenue, I think they miss out on several tactics that they could use. So one of the most common mistakes is that they don't really segment their email list. They just blast emails and everyone gets the same emails. So it's not very personalized, the experience. The other thing is they just simply don't send enough emails. I remember when I had one of my first clients, I sent out only one email to the list and then I was like, okay, what if I sent twice a week and surprise we doubled the revenue and then I was, okay, what if we send out four a week and then guess what happened? We doubled the revenue again. So the formula was very simple. Of course you cannot do it, you know, cannot double your revenue all the time with this thing. But many companies, they are afraid to email their list and they miss out on this opportunity. So

Brett:

Yeah, one thing, I wanna just talk about that for a second, Daniel, cause I love this. I point a lot of people think that if they email too much, they're going to get a lot of unsubscribes and people are going to be upset and turned off and they're going to leave. But usually the opposite is true. The more you email to a point, the more people are engaged, the more they know you see your name, they feel connected to your brand. If you shift to the point where you're only emailing once a month or once a quarter, I know some brands that are doing that, then really all you're doing is you're reminding someone to unsubscribe. You get this random email and you're like, wait a minute, I don't remember signing up for that and I don't even really remember who you are. And so people unsubscribe.

So in a lot of ways, sending less leads to more unsubscribes. And yeah, we're big believers in that at least once a week, plus all your flows and everything. But ideally you can do more than that. And I know some brands, some influencers that email daily and that works, that can absolutely work for a brand. So sending more frequently is almost always a good idea for any size brand. And especially when you are segmenting your first point, segmenting and speaking directly to that customer, then they want to hear from you more, which is great. Okay, cool. So those are top two mistakes not segmenting, not setting enough. What are some other mistakes?

Daniel:

Yeah, yeah. So simply the volume and the segmentation can be a differentiator. When companies, they start out, I know many founders, they don't have time to write their emails or their marketing manager, but email has a great roi. So this is something they should take

Brett:

Ar arguably the best, arguably the best o ROI of any single channel out there. Nothing really beats email

Daniel:

And same applies for SMS marketing, but now let's stick to email more. So these are the two most common mistakes I can see. Probably the third would be to set up email flows at least five below 1 million a year. So set up these email flows because they are automated and even if you don't touch them in the next one year, they will still work and generate revenue for you. So it's a one time thing and then they work automatically. And then if we talk about a bit bigger companies, let's say middle one to 10 million a year, then I think segmentation is still an issue. Many of them, they still blessed emails, the same emails to everyone, same creatives. I think volume nowadays, they are aware of that kind of thing that it's important. They hire someone, they hire an agency, they hire a copywriter, they take care of that. I think probably the biggest issue that is just being organized. So having a content calendar, campaign calendar or sales event. Also, one thing that everyone should apply is having at least one sales event every month because you want to give an opportunity for your list subscribers to buy from you. And in e-commerce, we all know that it's crucial, you want to have a holiday Black Friday, Christmas, but even in months like January, you want to have something like International Dog Day. If you sell dog products or you can't make up holidays, actually totally,

Brett:

There's a holiday for anything. I'll just Google it. There's a holiday for literally anything or make up your own, which is totally acceptable.

Daniel:

Yeah, yeah. So you can make up something, but this is huge in e-commerce. Like come up with a chance, give them a chance to buy from you and you should really internalize this mindset I think. And then people, they will come back again and again and

Brett:

Yeah, I love this. And one thing I would wanna underscore too when it comes to this monthly sales event is that this can apply also if you're a brand that does not discount. And we have a number of clients who either don't discount or they only discount around the holidays and maybe one other time per year. But what you can do is have that annual, or I'm sorry, monthly event. And it can be for anything. Grandparents day, mother's day, kid day, national donut Day. There's all kinds of, there's really a holiday for anything. But you can do free gifts. We know a couple of brands that they will utilize premium gifts and include a gift with purchase. And the gift is often a high perceived value, so likely the same as if you're given a 20% discount or something. It actually costs them less to fulfill it. But then it also has the benefit of it's not training someone to wait for the discount, it's teaching someone to pay full price. So that's a great way to do it. Another way you can do it is bundles, bundling different products and making it convenient by bundling. And then someone's going to maybe just pay the same rate, but now they can buy the bundle and they get all that they want and it's easy, it's easier to shop. Yeah,

Daniel:

You could link, I would add one more, which

Brett:

Is my prescription. And that's cheaper if you're doing subscriptions cuz then you can do a discount there and it doesn't feel like you're cheapening your product. But yeah, go ahead Daniel, you got get an idea to add

Daniel:

To that. Yeah, I mean I think discounts, they can really devalue your brand as well if you use it too much, right? And if you use it, make sure that they get the discount for something. So for a certain action, yeah, you shouldn't just give a discount for no reason, right?

Brett:

Get a discount for subscribing, get a discount for joining our email list. So doing sub subscription products or join our email list or something like that. Love that idea. And I also love that you pointed out a promotions calendar, a marketing calendar. This is something we talk about all the time with our clients at omg. And this is important because ideally what you want to have happen is you want all your marketing to be coordinated. So if you're doing this big sales event for, I'm not sure why I'm thinking donuts it is morning time when I'm recording this. So maybe I got donuts on the brain, but National Donut day for your brand or whatever, an alternative to donuts, if you're going to promote donut day you want your Facebook ads, your Google ads, your remarketing ads, your email, your sms, all of it to be coordinated around that event as best as possible. And the way you do that is through a marketing calendar and making sure all your team and all your agencies are communicating and on board with that. And it just makes a huge difference. So I'm really glad you brought up, I brought that point. And I would also say and you highlighted this, I think there's still bigger brands. We mostly work with bigger brands at omg, bigger brands that aren't segmenting and that aren't sending enough either. So gotta look at those things. But any other big mistakes that you see D two C brands making

Daniel:

And let's say above 10 million a year. What I can see is that they actually over complicated things. So that's the other end of the spectrum. They do segmentation, they send many campaigns, but they over segment actually, they could spend their resources in a better way. And actually when we start working with these clients, and many of them, they already have 20, 30% of their revenue from email marketing and the SMS marketing, all of these channels, loyalty programs. And actually we come in and we just simplify everything we cut. Sometimes we cut like 70% of the flows and we can increase their revenue, the percentage of their revenue from these channels, from 30% up to 50, 40, 50%. So actually it's also an organizational program problem, but here we have to simplify things. Can you see the same thing with your bigger clients? They over complicating?

Brett:

Yeah, that does happen. And I think that this becomes really important, especially as you're scaling. So you're going that 10, 20, 50, a hundred million you have to be organized enough for short and all the teams have to be on the same page and communicating well. But you can get over optimized or overly segmented and you're not doing yourself any favors. We see this a lot on the Google remarketing side, and we used to be guilty of this too. We would create all these different list, all these different duration segmentations, a one day list, a three day list, a seven day list, a 14 day list, a 30 day list, a 60 90. And then we do all these segments and stuff. We still often build those audiences, but for a lot of brands, sometimes you just lean into the one, three and seven day audiences and that's where you get 90% of the benefit.

And so sometimes less is more, and simplifying things a little bit really does make a big impact. And one thing I might add to Daniel, that this is a mistake that I see, and this is more mindset and strategic than it is tactical, but I think a lot of brands make the mistake of overestimating how much customers are thinking about them. And I think this is part of why people understand emails. They're like, well no, we just don't wanna overwhelm them. They're not thinking about you, they're not thinking about you today. They're thinking about all the stuff they gotta do. So you've gotta break through the clutter and email them more if you want them to think about you at all. Right? But we also begin to think, well, hey, they've already bought for me one time, they'll be back, our products are good, they've purchased from us, they will be back.

Not necessarily. So there's so many things competing for people's attention ads on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, email, everywhere. So you've gotta still fight to get that customer back. And then a lot of times people think, well if they've been to my store before I don't need to be aggressive to get them back. But you do. You need to be aggressive to get someone to come back because again, competition is fierce. People aren't thinking about you, they're thinking about their own life and their own problems. And so having that mindset of we don't wanna annoy people, but you've got a culture or you've gotta nurture and cultivate that relationship and be very intentional about it and do so in a way that builds your brand and compliments your brand. But yeah, people aren't thinking about you all the time. You're thinking about your own company, which just kind of makes sense.

Daniel:

And I can see the same thing with different marketing channels. So yeah, most mostly with SMS marketing. So I can see so many business owners to be afraid of using SMS marketing. We will annoy people, we send out too many text messages and in most cases it's not a problem. And same with loyalty program. They are just afraid to be everywhere using an omnichannel strategy. And actually the good thing is you can measure everything. So you can measure the spam rate, unsubscribe rate, you can measure literally everything nowadays, almost everything. So you should just track the right KPIs on them. It'll be fine.

Brett:

Yeah, I remember one of the lessons I learned from an old radio advertising guy, a guy named Roy Williams, wrote a book called The Wizard of Ads. It's pretty great, pretty great for copy and persuasion and stuff. But he talks about how once you get to the point where you are sick of hearing your message or where you think feel like it's overwhelming, like, oh gosh, we're everywhere. I'm sick of seeing my own brand sick of seeing that's about when people are noticing you, right? Yeah. So when it's annoying, it's probably just beginning to break through the clutter. And again, you don't wanna pester people or have the exact same message, be fun, mix it up, be creative, but you know almost can't overcommunicate if you don't feel like you're overcommunicating, you're probably under communicating. And so that's important to, that's

Daniel:

A yeah.

Brett:

Yeah. Cool. So we talked about some mistakes. What are some next level strategies? So what are some of those, either email or SMS strategies that just not a lot of people are doing, but they should be?

Daniel:

Yeah, sure. So I think email marketing, I can see the market is really educated on this topic. It was very different four or five years ago, but I'm happy to see that this completely change, I think. So nowadays we also focus on more SMS marketing loyalty programs, push notifications, and we even send out physical postcards, believe it or not. So we add more marketing channels and we sing them together. Basically. I think SMS marketing, it really has its renaissance in the US now, and it's probably one of the highest ROI marketing channels I can see. So use SMS marketing, we usually use one or two text messages per week. And during Black Friday we send out even more. I think what you could do is really combine it with email marketing. So for example, in your text messages, you can refer to your email tomorrow or in your email, you can refer to your text message like tomorrow we are sending you a gift. And if you want to know what was that was this v i P thing, then subscribe to our SMS list. So you can really combine it two channels. And then there is the loyalty program, you can implement that too.

Brett:

And let's what I talk about SMS for a minute, and I'm really excited to talk with loyalty programs too. Cause that's something we don't do at omg, and I'm really curious to pick your brain on that a little bit. But on the SMS side we take a very similar approach. It's kind of that one to two times per week on sms. I think you can overcommunicate on text just because it is a little more personal. Basically every people open all of their texts, but that one to once to twice a week I think totally fine. But I love that combination where you are mentioning, Hey, did you get the email? Did you get this offer? Here's a link to it, right? So what are you guys seeing on your end when you layer in SMS marketing on top of email? How does that change growth and conversion rates and and ROI on the retention campaigns?

Daniel:

So I think this is the real power of retention marketing, not just email being alone because it's really a kind of situation, one plus one equals three. I think they really add up together. And if we implement, so let's imagine we have a new client, an e-commerce store, and then if we implement the first few email automations, we can get to 10, 15% extra revenue with these automations. If we add email campaigns, this can go to 20, 30%. If we add SMS marketing, then we can add an additional 5%. But here the numbers, they can be more extreme. So here's an example. We have a US based kitchenware store and we generate 30% of revenue from email and 30% from sms. Wow. In q4. So the same.

Brett:

That's

Daniel:

Huge. 6% altogether. That's huge. And

Brett:

Yeah,

Daniel:

Go ahead. And one more thing, because I know people, they are skeptical, so it's not because we use some very early pop up on the website or some gimmicks with the attribution. I know all of those, we don't do these. I think we have a very conservative mindset on attribution, but we still got these numbers with the seven figure store.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. And then we look at it where if you're running a D two c, e-commerce brand and email and SMS aren't touching in that 30 to 40% of revenue, then you need to be doing more, right? And you probably need to rethink your strategy and your tactics. And I would agree with you, I love attribution. I'm also a top of funnel guy. I believe in the power of YouTube and Facebook and TikTok and other channels for top of funnel. And if all we did was focus on bottom of funnel, eventually our brand's going to dry up and we're going to run out of customers. So really, I wouldn't say that you could give full credit necessarily to email or SMS for 40% of your revenue, but it should be at least touching that much or at least should be a part of the journey for at least 30 to 40% of your revenue. If not, you're likely not doing enough and you are leaving sales on the table that are not closing because you're not doing enough with email and sms. So love that. All right. So let's talk loyalty campaign. So well first of all, how do you approach it? And then gimme a few, your next level strategies there.

Daniel:

Do you mind if I share another strategy or tactic regarding SMS and email

Brett:

Please? Yeah, before we go

Daniel:

To loyalty. Yeah, because this just came to my mind. So we have a few clients, and I really like these clients because they understand the importance of L T V. So they ran Facebook ads to a landing phase.

Brett:

And just to clarify there again, you said L T V, right? Lifetime value. Yeah. Okay, awesome. Yeah,

Daniel:

Exactly. Yep. Yeah, yeah. Customer lifetime value. So we worked together for a few years and I really like these guys. They really understand what we stand for as an agency and we really good clients. So they ran Facebook ads during Q4 and Q3 to a landing page where people, they could subscribe to the SMS list, v i p, early bird, early bird, black Friday list on SMS and email as well. And then we send these people regular emails in an email flow in Clavio and we could generate a big part of their sales before Black Friday with these early bird offers. And then Black Friday came and then we generated even more, but I think we collected a few thousand emails and contacts. And I think each email and contacts, it generated like 20, $20 in November. So I wanted to mention this because many people, they just drive the traffic to the product page or to the website, but here we really collected emails and then we converted them in the upcoming months. So I think that's still something very undervalued

Brett:

Now. Yeah, I love it. And think about that. So you're generating $20 in sales from one email address captured. Think about how that could change the math for your Facebook and YouTube campaigns. If you could start getting four or five or 10% of people to visit a page to opt in now and now you're getting $20 potentially per signup, that changes the math. That changes how aggressive you can be with your top of funnel strategies and you can push the envelope more and you can grow faster when you have those things dialed in. So love that. Thanks for mentioning that. Awesome. So loyalty campaigns how do you set them up? What are some of your next level strategies there?

Daniel:

Sure. So I think probably the biggest mindset mistake, let's say or mindset shift that everyone should have about loyalty. Many companies, they think about it just as a tool. You know, install this software, you plug it in, and then it'll generate loyal customers. But people, they are more complex than this one. Plugin and play two won't change their behavior. So you should really think about the strategy there. You should actively promote your loyalty program everywhere. Just look at the big brands, they do it really well. So the software is one thing, but you should be tactical about this, how you do it. There are several ways we usually customize it to the brand that we work with. But just a few recommendations. So I think where you should start, you can give them points based on their behaviors and probably referral is the most important.

You want to generate a good word of mouth. And then what we also do, we create a leaderboard so people, they can see where they are, how many points they have and other people, how many points they have so they can actually compete. It usually generates a very good competition between people and you should be creative what you give to them. So not just a discount or gift card, but you can do other things like again, I think you can take a look at big brands and you can get really good ideas. I think on Netflix, there is this movie now where Pepsi promised Jet or an aircraft and then there was a real guy who collected the points and he claimed the jet. And wow, of course he couldn't get it. But that's a crazy idea. That's sometimes crazy ideas for loyalty programs. They are really good.

Brett:

So you gotta have software. And then I think this is one of those things, and again, I'm not a loyalty expert, but I've talked to a lot of people that run 'em and stuff, but seems like it's gotta be relatively simple. They can't be overly complex or no one's going to really pay attention. Yeah, I love the fact that you've got rewards for the most important behavior, like sending a referral, the most important behavior that someone could have arguably. And then I love that that transparency of a leaderboard showing mate who's winning, who's out in the lead creates that healthy competition and makes people want to jump into the lead, get more points and they get more points by taking the behavior, taking the actions that you want them to take. So any recommendations on software or structure there? And no worries if not. And I know this is one of those things where strategy and tactics are more important than the tools you use, but any suggestions on tools?

Daniel:

We tried many. So if you are a smaller company, try stem, do io. It's also very affordable and they have many features, right? If you want to get more stamp

Brett:

Io, is

Daniel:

That right? stamp.io? Yeah.

Brett:

Yeah, cool. I'll link to that in the show notes too. Stamped, do io. Cool.

Daniel:

If you want to get more advanced, then Loyalty Lion is a great choice. And you can also check out your pool because it's a more like a platform. So they have several different things. SMS feature, loyalty, even more referral program. So check out YoPo as well. These would be my three recommendations.

Brett:

Great. So stamped.io, we have a number of clients that use that. It could be a review engine as well. Loyalty line. I'm not familiar with that one, but sounds great. And then I met those guys back in their early days. Actually. I met one of the founders at a magenta event in like 2014, but they've exploded since then, so. Awesome. Let's quickly, and we're on the back few minutes here, the podcast, but I wanna talk push notifications and then postcards. Let's talk postcards first. Cause I think this is one of those unique things that people miss. And in full disclosure, I am an investor in post pilot so I do like that solution for postcards, but I know that there are other solutions out there as well. But how do you like to look at postcards and why do you recommend them

Daniel:

Postcards? Sure. So it's still something that we experiment with. It's not like email or SMS that we use it regularly with clients. I think it can be a good fit for certain e-commerce stores. In my experience, it works really well with the older audience. So about 50, let's say. They are more used to this type of communication. I wouldn't use this with Gen Z or not even with millennials nowadays. So that's one thing. And then of course you should check the cost of this service as well. We checked it in Germany and in the US and I think it's the best for some special and big promotions. So I would use it a few times a year. I think we used it for Easter because it was related to this brand. It's a gifting brand, and we used it for Valentine's Day, which is, I think you all understand why it's a good choice for that holiday. So we tested this out and I think we just really sent out a discount coupon code with a very nice postcard. We designed it and also we connected it with other channels. So we mentioned this in the emails in the sms that look out because you will get a postcard, it's only for VIPs. And that's how we used it so far. The ROI wasn't that great. So we are still experimenting with it, but I think it's a place where you can stand out because yeah, it's really underused drive. So

Brett:

Yeah, it is very much underused. And I'm a marketing guy from way back. And I remember in the early two thousands, late nineties, I was really young then, but I still remember going to the mailbox and it was just full packed to the hilt. And most of it was marketing mail or junk mail. And now that's not an issue. So if you run a postcard or send someone something in the mail, they get physical mail from you, it's going to stand out. And so one of the things that, I did an episode with Drew Sak from post pilot I, I'll post that in the show notes as well, but one of the ways they use it, and I think this is worth considering, is they put it in their flows. So especially for reactivating customers that have fallen dormant and they're not purchasing anymore. If you think about email, and we're all believers in email, obviously that's what this podcast is mostly about.

Still your open rate may only be 30% or so. So there's just a huge chunk of your list that not getting your emails. So postcards can help fill that gap. I think it makes a lot of sense. If you're doing a big event or a big sale, get that to everybody through the postcard. You gotta track the roi, you gotta see it, you gotta be able to measure it and make sure it's going to work for you. But I think it also, I just got an email or a postcard from Smart marketer, Molly Pittman, my friends Molly Ezra and I was like, wow, this is really cool. And it's sitting on my counter and I'll probably see it three or four times before I either use it or throw it away or whatever. But it, it's just that it's something different and it will drive action, but it also cuts to the clutter, which I think is pretty powerful. So

Daniel:

Cool. It also integrates with Clavio, and it's interesting that you mentioned you use it for reactivation because actually we use it for the opposite. So we use for VIPs. Mm-hmm. And our thinking was,

Brett:

Sorry, I think that works too. Yeah, yeah. Use it for VIPs or your biggest clients. Yeah, that works too.

Daniel:

Our way of thinking was that this is a more expensive channel than the others we talked about. So let's use it for the highest LTV customers. That was our approach. But it's interesting to try it for reactivation. I'm sure we will try it for that as well. Yeah,

Brett:

It can even be a step in the flow of a welcome sequence or an abandoned card sequence where if someone doesn't take action after the first two or three emails, you fire off a postcard and see how that works and can integrate into clavia, which is cool. So what about push notifications? Is this something I'm familiar with but something I'm not an expert in? How are you guys using push notifications and what kind of results are you're seeing?

Daniel:

Yeah, so honestly, push is really simple. So the logic is quite similar to SMS or email marketing. And there is a prom message on the website and on the phone as well. I think only Android enables it. So it's not good for iPhones but it's good for Mac. So only iPhones they have limitations regarding push but there is a pro message people, they can subscribe there. And then you can send out automations, like abandon, car abandonment, welcome message or even a veba. And you can also send out campaigns. And we usually send out two campaigns a month. So it's not that many and quite similar to SMS in terms of length. So you should keep it short and to the point. I think you can also add an image there. So it's more visual than sms, but it's quite similar and you can add a few percentage to your revenue with this marketing channel. So it's really an additional thing. And talking about software tools, again, so we use pushout for stores, but honestly I really miss a great push notification tool from the market. And I'm still looking for something and my whole team. So if you know anything, then push out. Yeah, then

Brett:

Yeah, I really don't. And I remember first talking to some really smart marketers that they'll love push notifications a couple years ago as a shopper, as a consumer, I never say yes to push notifications, I just don't want 'em. But I know a lot of people do same here. And so I know it's a valid tool for marketing, but I don't know of a good tool either. But that's super interesting. Yeah. Well, Dana, this has been awesome, man. Lots of good insights. You're true pro. I know you guys run an amazing company. Any resources, tools, anythings you offer as an agency that we should mention to listeners?

Daniel:

Sure. So on our website we have many resources. We also have a podcast. Actually I invited you in my podcast.

Brett:

Yeah, it was on the podcast. Yeah, you do a great job, man. You're a great host.

Daniel:

That was a great conversation. Besides, we also have a blog. We have a lot of case studies, dozens of case studies, but what I would mention is we have a 50 point checklist about e-commerce retention and it's completely free. I think we can add the link to the description so they can find it, they can download it. Again, it's free and I hope it'll help you improve your own customer retention.

Brett:

Yeah, and we'll, we'll link to everything in the show notes, so check that out. But get that 50 point checklist. And Daniel, this has been super fun, man. I am with you. I am a big believer in retention and loyalty marketing. I think it's always important. I think it's even more important during difficult times or recessionary times. And I think it's what people need to focus on if we're pushing for profitability and pushing for overall health as a D two C company, you gotta get retention and loyalty, right? And when that's right, it opens up so many other opportunities for you. So Daniel, thanks for being so open and giving with your advice and thanks for taking the time.

Daniel:

Yeah, thank you. Thanks everyone.

Brett:

Awesome. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We would love to hear from you. So leave us at review on iTunes if you feel like we deserve it. Also I am now active on the socials, so hit me up on LinkedIn and on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on LinkedIn. I'm the Brett Curry on Twitter. I'm just at Brett Curry, but my commitment is I'm going to be active on social media. So find me there. Let's continue the conversation. Let's talk D to C and growth and good marketing and hopefully have some fun. So with that, thanks again Daniel, and thanks everyone for tuning in and with that. Until next time, thank you for listening.

Chris Mercer - aka “Mercer,” is the man when it comes to measurement and analytics. He’s the guy the pros like Justin Brooke, Mike Rhodes, and OMG turn to when we need help.

If you haven’t heard (and I’d be shocked if you haven’t), Google Analytics 4 or GA4 is coming, and Universal Analytics (the current version) will go away in July of 2023. 

GA4 isn’t just an upgrade. It’s an entirely different animal. It has to be! Given how technology, user preferences, and policies around privacy have changed over recent years - Google is forced to abandon UA and build something completely new. 

In this episode, we talk about what’s new, what’s different, what we’re excited about, and what you can do to prepare.

Here’s a glimpse of what we cover:

• A simple way to understand events and how Google measures them in GA4. 
• Data storage and how to hold onto your data - If nothing is done, your data will be gone in 2-14 months. 
• What’s going away vs. what’s here to stay? 
• How to use GA4 to make better decisions.

‍

Mentioned In This Episode:

• MeasurementMarketing.io
• MeasurementMarketing YouTube
• Bit Quiry
• GA4
• GA4 with Universal Analytics

‍

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today is going to be full of nerdy goodness but also practical wisdom and good insights for all business owners. We're talking about GA4, otherwise known as Google Analytics 4. It's coming fast and furious, so you gotta get ready. So we're going to talk about what do you need to know how to get ready, how do we leverage and maximize this? And I have the foremost expert on the subject, A man who knows all about measurement and attribution and analytics and all that good stuff online. And this is actually podcast number two for Mercer but we were just talking, it's been forever. It's like 2018 the last time he was on. So I waited too long to get Mercer back on the podcast. And for those that are Mercer, what kind of name is that? His name is Chris Mercer, but I don't know anybody that call. I don't know anybody that calls you Chris. Does anyone call you Chris other than your mom? Maybe.

Chris:

Probably was just the family. And that's it. It still feels weird. Yeah, it's

Brett:

So true. Yeah, I don't know how or when that happened and maybe you can enlighten us on that, but everybody calls him Mercer, so that that's his name. But he's the co-founder of measurement marketing.io. We send our team through his training and Mercer and I go way back. We actually spoke, you and I were some pretty early speakers at TNC. Yeah. And we had a long run, man. We were speaking every year running into each other. It was kind of our annual thing when we would hang out. So first of all, why Mercer? And then I've got another history question for you because

Chris:

Growing up there's always been another Chris in the room. And when I went into sort of professional world, it became things like, oh, big Chris, little Chris, fat, Chris, skinny Chris, that it's like, okay, <laugh>, at a certain point everyone just goes down to last names. And that's what they started using. So I just kept it. I was like, okay, just Mercer, it's easier. And Mercer. And if I'm walking down an airport and somebody screams Mercer, I know they're talking about me. So

Brett:

Exactly. Chris made it so much easier.

Chris:

Exactly.

Brett:

Even so this is interesting. So there's this concept in psychology and the way the brain works called a reticular activator where our brain's always scanning for things that are Oh, yeah. Familiar or things that are way outta place. Your brain's always scanning. That's why in a noisy, crowded airport or whatever, you can hear your name. Oh, someone said Chris, someone said Brett. Is Chris still? Does that still trigger you or is it just Mercer?

Chris:

It's mostly Mercer. I'll, I'll hear Chris, but I'm like, that's not me. Cuz people that know me wouldn't have said that. So I'll let it until somebody says it again and I'm like, oh wait, that's me. Hang on. But yeah, typically Mercer.

Brett:

That's hilarious. Okay, cool. And then the other thing I wanna dive into. So I've would consider you and I both OGs, right? And that's not an old comment, we've just been in the game a long time doing this for

Chris:

A while.

Brett:

Yeah. Been doing, been doing it a while. And so I've just seen you all the time at TNC and we'd always talk, but in prepping I was like, Hey, how did you get connected to Ryan Dice and Digital Marker and that whole crew? So tell that story if you would. Cause I think that's interesting. How'd you get connected with Dice and Crew? Yeah,

Chris:

Well when we first started getting into this, it was back when I had as I hit the mic it was back when I had a WordPress agency to do WordPress sites. And we were kind of doing like, Hey, we'll deliver the site and we'll do cro, we'll optimize the sites for you. Cause we wanted to differentiate ourselves. And in order to do that, you gotta measure stuff. So we were giving people complete setups with Google Analytics, et cetera, et cetera. When we started doing that, almost immediately the referrals stopped from being, Hey, we need a WordPress site to, we already have a site, but sudden and such is at a mastermind. And they were showing me what you did with their Google Analytics, how do we get you to do that? Or can you show us how to do that? So we started doing that for a few people and one of those people actually was Justin Brook back in the day. So big

Brett:

Guy, Justin Brookman, friend, friend absolutely personal friend, friend of the show. Dude's a legend. Absolutely.

Chris:

So we were talking to him about different stuff and things that we were doing and he actually recommended us to Digital Marketer way back in the day of Russ Henneberry and Molly Pittman and everybody being out there with

Brett:

Ryan and team also friends, love Russ and Molly, shout out Russ and Molly for listening.

Chris:

Exactly right. I guess Hello again. And it was those guys, it was Russ and Molly that brought us in and was like, Hey, how do we use this analytics thing? And then we brought in tag manager and started showing them some things and the rest is history.

Brett:

That's awesome. And what's so cool about this, and I'm really excited to dive in the GA 4, but it's one of those scenarios where basically everybody's using Google Analytics, everybody throws the code on the site, it's there, but not that many people are actually using it, leveraging it, customizing it, making it useful. They've, they've got the code there and they've got some data but they're not doing much with it.

Chris:

And on that note, and this is something that we're really hitting hard and happen for a little while, but this idea of tool versus trade. So what happens is, let's say I want to be a really good chef. So I go to the food network, I'm watching all these chef shows and I see their kitchens and I'm like, I need to be a good chef. I need that $45,000 kitchen they have cuz it's the oven, it's the stove, it's all the fancy tools they have. So I buy all that fancy stuff, I put it out, remodel everything in the house and I boil an egg on it because I didn't actually learn how to be a chef. I just got the tools that the chefs were using. And my confusion was thinking the tool's going to make me the chef. And that's what's happened with measurement. It's so easy to get started with any of the tools, Google Analytics, tag manager, Looker Studio, wicked Reports, highs, it doesn't matter anything that's a measurement related tool to think that, oh, because I'm doing this, I am now doing measurement and I'm doing

Brett:

Analytics, I'm doing attribution, I bought tools.

Chris:

Right. That's exactly right. But they haven't learned the skill of measurement and understanding why you should measure and how you measure. And when you understand that that's what allows you to unlock the tools like Google Analytics 4.

Brett:

Yeah. Awesome. So any little tidbits. So I love that. I want to dig just a little deeper into that before we go into to GA 4. But what are some of the things that you believe business owners miss when it comes to measurements? So this tool versus trade thing, and I know there's a lot and there's a lot we can unpack, probably make the whole show about the question I'm about to ask you. But what are some of the bigger mistakes or the bigger misses when it comes to, Hey, I'm just using a tool versus I'm really understanding what I'm measuring? Yeah,

Chris:

I think a lot. There's a couple of them. One would be this concept that measurement now is a department. It is not a project. And I think a lot of people think, oh, measurement means I set up a dashboard, I get a report, things have been measured, so I'm just going to use that. And that's not at all what a measurement strategy does. That's just a report. And a lot of times, and this is how that measurement's gone wrong, is if you have a lot of data and a lot of information and no actions, everyone's like, I don't know what this means. And all that stuff happens. And you're marketing by guessing, which is what happens all the time with random maxim marketing, which I think is a Dan Kennedy term. But this concept of like, well we should change the headline, we should change the product images, we should change, we should add reviews, we should change the offer, we should change the price. And everyone's just guessing no one really knows. Or they professionally guess, which is when you buy a hundred thousand dollars mastermind and you're sitting next to somebody else who did a hundred thousand dollars mastermind and they all just guessing at a hundred thousand dollars mastermind level, but they're just guessing, you don't really know what to do. So that's a problem of not having a proper measurement strategy. So that's the one mindset is like measurement is now a department and organizations are quickly realizing I love

Brett:

That, love that.

Chris:

The second thing and why it is so important to be a department is because the whole point of measurement, and this is you and I, right? We're having a conversation, I'm going to say certain things. You're going to adjust what you say based upon what I say and vice versa. This is normal, this is how humans work. Nobody thinks that's weird or different. And yet digitally we lose our minds. We're like, well how can I measure the, I can't hear the conversation. It's a website. Well, yeah, but they're still having a conversation. It's just that you're not there. The website is, so how do you listen to the user's side of the conversation? That's what measurement does. So measurement is how we listen to their side of the conversation. And then marketing is how we respond to the conversation. What mostly happens is marketing, marketing, marketing and marketing and marketing. So imagine if I just never listened to you and I just kept talking and talking and you were like, Hey, how's the weather? And I'm like, and another thing and blah blah blah. At a certain point you're going to be like, this doesn't

Brett:

Work. Sorry. Yeah, sorry me, this is no good. You're not even to listen to me.

Chris:

And people are confused why conversions aren't there because you're not listening to the conversation, you're ignoring them. They're like, well this doesn't work, I don't like this. And you can tell things. Is it the above the fold that's an issue. Is it the ad coming in the way the setup? Was that the issue? Was it, is it a process? That's a technical issue. You can see all sorts of things in measurement when it's properly set up, but it does take skill and strategy and that's why it's so important. It's almost like a turbocharger that gets added to your marketing department engine. It's like those, they're, they're not se they're separate, but they are made to work together. So when you snap on measurement, especially now that we're in 2023, you gotta be efficient in probably what's going to be a downturn year for a lot of companies. You gotta get efficient with your spend. So how do you do that? Turn on the flashlight, turn on visibility, add measurement to your marketing and then it's easier to figure out what to do because the users are telling you because you can hear their conversation. That's the whole point of it.

Brett:

And that's so brilliant. And it does come down to data does not matter. It is not valuable. It's useless if you're not doing something with it. If you're not first understanding what is the data telling us? And then two, doing something with it. And I love that view of the data is really just showing you the conversation, showing you the prospect side of it. How are they interacting, how are they engaging? You're listening by looking at the data. I think that's brilliant. And yeah, what's so interesting about this year, and we'll see, nobody really knows what's going to happen with the economy right up, down, sideways, Armageddon, blip, who knows? But what I'm confident in is there will be opportunities for growth. There'll be opportu opportunities to gain market share, to do good things. I think we should enter this year with lots of confidence. However just always, and maybe even more so if there is a recession or a bigger downturn, you gotta make every dollar count. So don't pull back, don't spend less, go hard, but make sure you're not wasting anything. That's

Chris:

Exactly right. Be efficient. Exactly right.

Brett:

Be efficient. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Love it. Okay. That was a brilliant setup. I appreciate that. That was super fun. So let's talk GA 4, Google Analytics 4. So many changes. So many changes coming our way. Come on man. We got iOS 14, which now seems like ancient history but

Chris:

Still really I remember that. Still

Brett:

Impact. Yeah, yeah. But still feeling the impact. Google's got all kinds of change with audiences. We got performance max and smart shopping's gone and Facebook is changing things like everything is changing. So now our dearly beloved, our beloved universal analytics, the analytics that we all know and love and have had forever, it's going away too. Say it, but why? First of all, before we talk about what and what we need to do and stuff why the change to GA 4?

Chris:

Yeah, good question. I mean the short answer is cuz they had being Google in this case. So there's really three main things that are occurring that are kind of the superstorms of our world that will be here. They're not going to go away. They're going to be here for at least the decade. So the first is tech, right? Tech is changing rapidly. You mentioned the iOS thing when Apple and Facebook got in their tiff. So it's like that's going to happen. But keep in mind that's just the one everyone talks about. It's been happening for a long, long, long time. Apple's been changing stuff in Safari forever where they're limiting cookies and everything else. Chrome is dumping third party cookies. Eventually they say 20, 24.

Brett:

Now we'll find out say 2023 or

Chris:

Seven maybe,

But eventually they're going away, right? You've got browsers like Brave and Vivaldi out there that just disconnect measurement from the start. Can't measure. You have to go in and turn that stuff on, which of course no users are doing. So you see this stuff, ad blockers, extensions, all this stuff is out there all the time. Tech is rapidly changing. So that's essentially causing less people to be measured on your site. That doesn't mean they're not on your site. It means you can't tell they're on your site. How do you deal with that? So that's one problem. Then there's another storm, which of course is that gets all the headlines, which is privacy, just the actual laws that are happening, right? GDPR being the famous one, but Utah has got theirs, California's got theirs here in the states. States will certainly have one, probably not in the next couple of years, but it will definitely have a privacy some sort of legislation for that.

So it's coming down. The big shift on that is that the data has to be in the control of the users. So it used to be that I would click on, let's say I go to your site, I click on the little button on Facebook. Facebook back in the day, it'd be like that's my right, I own that. I can do whatever I want. Now it's not the true. Now I should be able to go back to Facebook and say, you know what? I'm leasing that like to you, but I want you to get rid of all my stuff. And they have to be able to do it right? And that's happening. Power of the data is not the platform anymore that collected it. It's still the user's data and that's an important shift. So that's starting to happen worldwide, mostly in Europe right now for sure.

But it will certainly happen in the us. Then the third thing that's happening is the thing that's kicked off the other two, which is the users themselves are just really getting tired of what I think in a lot of cases was lazy marketing, not putting in proper kills pixels and following you around with the shoe store stuff for eight months. And it's like putting in and publishers who put in a billion different ads and it just makes it a horrible user experience. So that people go, well I need to block these and that's caused it. So the users themselves don't want their privacy out there. They want to be in control of their data. They want to not be measured all the time or followed around cuz it's a little creepy what's been happening. So you've got those three storms, the tech laws and then the users and they're all colliding at the same time.

And all of these are essentially causing challenges because if you're using laws and they don't give you consent, well now you don't see them on the site. So they're there, but you can't measure their behaviors if they're a user using an ad blocker. Cause they don't wanna be measured. You lose it. If they're using Brow Brave or Vivaldi or something else, it's not going to work. Right? So less and less still the users are on your site when I emphasize that they're on your site, they're doing stuff, they're buying stuff, but you have no clue that's happening until the sale shows up. That's a weird thing for a market to be like, now you have to make things work. How do you do that? Yeah. So enter a

Brett:

Platform, this is how Google makes their livelihood. Gotta be able to measure this and show you this stuff. So you spend more, you spend more time

Chris:

Because you wanna spend more money on Google ads, right? Gotta gotta have that Performance Max campaign. Yeah. Yeah. So what's been happening is Universal analytics was a tool, and I kind of think about the Model T Ford. It was this car that was built for a very different time. It was built for, I don't even know, they went, let's say it's a max of 35 miles an hour or something. It wasn't built for. In Texas, our speed limits are 80 miles an hour. It would never survive on a Texas road. This is not built for that future. Well what if there is no road right? Model T's not going to do anything, right? It's not going to make it through. What if I wanted airbags in it? Well I might be able to replace the tires, but I can't put airbags in it. Just the structure isn't ready for the new world.

So it had to be rebuilt and they've been trying to snap on new things and they, they've evolved it over the years, but it's the same model T Ford at the end of the day. And it can only go so far. But that's what a model T does without structure. So instead it's like, okay, let's rebuild this thing from scratch. What does it look like knowing what we know about the internet? If you think about a platform like the original Google Analytics, it was built when there was like, no, we had mobile phones, but they weren't connected to the internet. People weren't thinking that. They were barely thinking about laptops back then, right? Right. Yeah. Let alone the Nest thermostat. That's internet of things. That also has an IP address that can be measured. So it's like, yeah, yeah, okay, now what do we do? So we rebuild it and that's what Google essentially did. They rebuilt it from scratch saying, now that we know what the world is, and I trust Google just because they have of anybody in the world, Google has the best view of what the future's going to look like when it comes to impact because they're literally making it right. They

Brett:

Always have even from the early days. But now they're shaping, they got the power to shape it more than anybody. And yeah, now they know that the web is 80% mobile and they understand and

Chris:

You're going to have internet of things coming in. That's another people aren't even thinking about yet. But that's going to be a thing. It's a really good point. So it's like, okay, we need to make something that can do all of that. Think about apps on a phone didn't exist, wasn't a thing 10, 15 years ago. Now it's like why do you not have an app? Of course you have an app, right? Everybody's got apps. So this platform was redeveloped with the world of what it is now today and where it's going to go tomorrow. And that's why GA 4 exists. So it takes care of tech challenges, it takes care of tech challenges primarily through modeling. There's a lot of modeling that it does. So it will kind of say to you, well we see, we know there's a hundred people on a site, but we think it's more like 150 and that's what it'll tell you.

And they're working this stuff out. This is in progress. But that's what's going to start happening. So you're going to have these modeled information where the tool's saying, here's what we think is actually a useful truth of what's been happening all the way through attribution being modeled conversions, behaviors happening on the sites, being modeled, all that stuff. The laws, GD GA 4 gives you control of the data. So you can come to me and say, listen, I want you to get rid of my data in goo all the data you have as a company. I want you to delete everything cause you're, we're all going to have to be able to do that stuff. So universal analytics, I can't do it. It's impossible. Yeah, it can't get it out cause it was never built for that. But GA 4 is, so GA 4 doesn't hold data very long, which is a key point.

It holds data up to two months in the beginning when it first starts out it's two months or you can flip it to 14 months, but that's it. No more going back in time and seeing what happened five years ago that user certain user data's not going to be there anymore. You'll see generic data, but you won't see user behavior data as much. So it's like, okay, well I can now control the data going in and I can do things with it. So it makes it a little more flexible for this world of laws that we're in with GDPR and other privacy concerns. And then it's like, okay, what are the users wanting? Well again, privacy and consent and everything else that goes in there. And that modeling helps to say, okay, we only measured X amount on your site actual in terms of the cookies and everything else that's fired, but here's what we actually think is happening and there's going to be some

Brett:

And what is that going to be based on? Cuz really Google's still probably going to be able to see some of that, right? They'll be able to see the actual

Chris:

That's exactly the point. Google knows they were on Chrome, right? So let's say they say, and a little bit is how you set it up, but let's just say Google generally knows because they're using Chrome, they use Gmail, Google Calendar on your phone, all the stuff that's a Google infrastructure. They know that you visited this site, they might not know the intricacies of what you did on this site, but they know you were probably on that site. And then they can measure because some people will have privacy stuff not worried about it and be measured. So they can take that sort of sample of what the audience is doing and then extrapolate and say, well we know these a hundred people did this. So probably if that pattern holds true, this other thousand people probably did this stuff too. And that's how they come up with a modeling. But who knows better than Google AI and machine learning. I get open ai, it's got a ton of stuff going on, but Google's got tensor and everything else they're doing and they're staying eerily quiet on that stuff. Yeah, it's not like they don't have it. They're in a lot of cases they think it's better than what open AI's done, but they're just not giving it out pushing. They're

Brett:

Not giving it out Performance

Chris:

Max and they're, they've got all these diagnostic tools that are feeding that algorithm. Again, I have no insider knowledge total guess, but if I'm Google, that's what I'm doing. That makes sense. Yep.

Brett:

Yep. Feed. Yeah, I think it's a really good guess mean, think about the presentations Mike Rhodes gave about Google's AI and how advanced it was. And they bought that company out of England that had the built the, what's the game? That's like chess, but it's way more advanced. I forgot to go, oh it was go, yeah, yes, go this machine that became better than all the top go players in the world. Anyway, that was like 2015. So all those sizes, it

Chris:

Is not sitting on a shelf. I promise you

Brett:

AI is all that. AI has been getting better and better and learning. And so yeah, nobody's better at AI and machine learning than Google. I think we can safely say that. So awesome. Okay, that's really, really good. They kind of explains the why. And I also think when it comes to privacy stuff too talked about this on a chat I have with Molly Pittman on her podcast, but I think companies get to a size Google, Facebook, others, Amazon would be in this category too, where I think they wanna do right by users or I think the users are driving some of this, but there's also this case of we don't wanna get sued, we gotta grow and we gotta do these things and the price gotta be good, but we could gotta mitigate lawsuits. And I think that that's driving a lot of what they do as well from the absolutely the privacy standpoint.

Chris:

Google doesn't want this data. And that brings us to an important point about universal analytics. Not only is it the Model T, but they're literally going, you know what? We're going to repo this car coming up. They keep doing it, they're going to shut it down, they're going to disconnect it and one day it's not going to turn on. Yep.

Brett:

Yep, yep, yep. Totally Cool. So what do we need to know about 4 that you haven't already talked about? So how else is it going to be different that we didn't already mention?

Chris:

There's a huge difference. So besides the fact of the strategy, it's going to be a more useful tool in for today and in the future. So for sure if for no other reason of using it, do it for that. That said, it is completely different. So this is in particular to those of you who are like, I've heard of this thing and I keep pushing it off. Stop doing that. Yes. And this is Google's fault. I firmly blame Google on the rollout for this in universal analytics and even in the regular, what they used to call classic analytics. And this is how Google, they bought this company called Urchin Analytics. Then it turned into classic analytics, then it's Universal Analytics,

Brett:

Which that's where UTM comes from. A little bit of internet history. UTM is urchin tag

Chris:

Tracking module

Brett:

Tracking module. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a fun little

Chris:

Trivia for you. But the whole point of that was they were literally just snapping stuff onto that same model T thing. So they made better tires or whatever else, but at a certain point they just had to rebuild it. So when they did that, they didn't just say, oh well here's Universal that we have, we're going to iterate from there. They threw that out and they said, okay, we're going to build from scratch. So the entire thing is different. Do not think it's going to be like every other time you have upgraded Google Analytics. And this is why I blame Google, nothing against them love 'em to death. But they messed up this rollout because they kept telling people this is an upgrade, which is what they told people with Universal Analytics when I'm from classic Universal. And it was like, oh, just change the script on your pages and now you got all these new features, it's the same thing but better.

And back then that was very true. Now when you get into it, people that are doing that, they go, what is this? It's a completely different platform. So it's going to have a learning curve. It is not hard, but it is very different. And there's a lot of it just like Universal Analytics has. So people that have experienced universal analytics have gone through it a few hundred times. You get used to it, right? It's the same at the end of the day. It's the same old thing. I tell people it's kinda like this, back in the previous life as when I was a waiter at the Olive Garden og, so

Brett:

Olive Garden on yes,

Chris:

Breadsticks and Salad, baby

Brett:

Red sticks.

Chris:

I remember getting this menu and going through everything and being in training thinking there's no way I'm going to remember this. All these details of what gets what and sides and what's possible, blah. Then I realized after a few days of this, I'm like, oh, I'm saying the same thing a hundred times a day. It's going to get pretty easy. And that's how you memorize a menu. It just do the same thing over and over again. That is kind of universal analytics. It's the same stuff and you just do it. You only, it's a landing page report. Once you get used to that, you kind of, you know it right? Once you learn your source media report, you kind of just know it. And that is there in GA 4, they just came out with the landing page report just recently and they have the source media reports, what they call the acquisition reports now. So those are all back there, but they look different and they're in different places. There's a different layout. So everybody who is not yet, if you've listened to this, you're watching this and you're like, I haven't made that movie yet, do it now. Get in there and get started with it. Cuz you're going to have probably, I'd give yourself at least 90 days to start getting used to this platform to get something from it, but it's going to take some time to learn.

Brett:

Well, not only that, and if you're listening to this in January, which we we're publishing it you've only got what about six months until GF 4? Exactly.

Chris:

Going back to Universal being shut down

Brett:

And you want a little bit of data, a little bit of historical data ideally. And we were telling all of our clients last year trying to get them to upgrade or to in install GA 4 along with Universal Analytics for a while at least by July. So you get some of those year over year comparisons if you get the data for 14

Chris:

Hours. Exactly. I guess, and this goes back to that rollout too. They kept telling people it's ready, it's ready, it's ready. Switch, switch, switch. And people would switch and they're like, it's not ready. And it was like the boy who cried wolf story where it's like, okay, at a certain point you just don't believe anymore. So I don't think you should believe Google. However, it is ready enough to start using. So to your point, you're going to have your universal that you've got for the next maybe six months, six, seven, whatever it's going to be. And then you've got the GA 4 stuff. And what'll happen is you'll get more and more used to GA 4 and then Universal, you won't miss when it's gone and it'll stop the way they're currently most current truth of it's rolling out would be they're going to stop collecting information July 1st, 2023.

So you can still access Universal Analytics, but it won't be collecting new information no more, no more new data goes in there as of July 1st. So that means you're going to have to have everything set up and worked out and figured out with GA 4, hence the 90 days, give yourself 90 days to figure it out, maybe another 90 days after that to perfect it and then you'll be off to the races. It's not going to be that big a deal, but it's going to be a deal, right? It's not huge deal, but it's a deal. So focus on it and put your efforts into it. One of the things, this goes back to the benefits of it is, is be what makes it a harder platform to learn is that it can do anything. I was talking to somebody about this today actually, where we were talking about things like Infusionsoft, right slash keep slash max classic, whatever they're going to call it in three months.

So you get this platform that right? So sure, so much stuff. It does a ton of stuff versus active campaign, which just does emails. So active campaigns a little easier when it comes to working with emails because it just does that one thing. Infusionsoft does emails, does campaigns, has APIs, has the cart system, has the affiliate programs in it. So it's a little more and because there's so much more back there to do, it's a little more complicated to do it, but powerful. So with GA 4, it's kind of like that compared to Universal. Universal would say, I know what a page U is and I can say E-commerce information and there's really few things it does and that's really it. GA 4, the way that they think about it is everything's an event. And the way that I think about this in my head is just, it's a behavior.

Everything's a behavior. What behavior you wanna record, I would like to record a behavior of a page view. When they view a page, I will record that behavior. What else would you like to record? I would like to be, behave, record the behavior of a click. Okay, I'll record the click and where they're going. When that click happens what else do you like to record? I would like to record scroll when they reach the bottom of the page, I'm going to record that as a scroll. And this is all on its own. This thing does this on its own and it can even do things like YouTube video form submissions. It'll do it automatically. Whereas Universal Analytics, that required a ton of customization, right? Yeah. Now with GA 4, it kind of does it on its own and there's different ways to do it. There's different levels to this, but just out of the box you can turn that stuff on and it automatically collects not just regular page views, but clicks, scroll form submission, video embeds that you have on YouTube that they start the video, play the video, all that sort of things.

File downloads. So things that people might not typically be measuring because they didn't know how to get that behavior measured. GA 4 just sort of starts from these multiple set of different behaviors that it can do. And then because of the model that it uses, what they call the data schema to get technical, but it's an event. And then there's things that describe the event. So an example of a click that's just an event, a behavior, a click. What do I need to know about that? Where I wanna know where they clicked too. Where they going, okay, well that's information we'll collect too. So now the click and information about the click, that's all it really is. But the beauty of what they did is they made it wildly so you can make anything and then details about anything you want. So for example, I could, if I'm an e-commerce store, right?

Say I'm a Shopify store, whatever, I got an e-commerce store and I can create an event called product engagement. Literally just make up that thing and say, oh, I want a product engagement event. Well what happens when product engagement, I wanna know how they're engaging with the product. So it could be product engagement and then clicking on images. So I know that they're virtually pulling the product off the shelf and maybe looking at it because they're clicking on product detail images. I could do product engagement and looking for size. So now I'm looking, oh, there's different sizes they're investigating for product engagement, looking at colors. So now I'm like, and now because I can literally put that into GA 4, I can get a story back that's perfectly built for me as an e-commerce store owner. So I could say, well I need to see all my product detail pages and I want to see, in other words, how many people saw the different versions of products that I've got.

Then I can see the conversion rates of who actually bought that and I might see two or three products are really selling a lot more than the other ones. Well then I can go and find out why. Cuz not only do I know the results, but I would know how that's happening. So I can say, well what's the engagements on these? Well, these top products have more engagement than these other products do. But what specific engagement? Well the ones that are really outselling tend to be the ones that people are looking at the reviews, right? Oh, okay, well maybe we should go back to these other products and enhance reviews maybe. Oh there's these other products have reviews from three years ago. Let's do an email campaign and get reviews freshened up now and then we would expect that's going to prove sales. So now measurement is guiding the marketing actions and it's not a guess, it's a better than average chance of success type of thing. It's all probabilities, but that at least focuses the effort so you can start to move the needle a little bit faster. And that's cool about GA 4 because you can do some really cool custom stuff pretty quickly with it, but at the same time, because you can do anything, it's like, well what do I do? And that's where planning comes in and learning measurement strategy is why it's

Brett:

It so important. That's what I've heard from our internal analytics specialists. And of course we just do set up and troubleshooting for our media clients. We don't offer analytics services outside of that. But yeah, they, they've said, Hey, there's a lot to, this is super complex. So when you can do anything, it also makes it harder to wrap your mind around all of it. But what you're saying though is that some of these things that we can view all these events, some of them are relatively simple to set up because G4 is kind of built to do it. It's

Chris:

Built for it. And to your point, and I get it because okay, I hear that too with our students with like CASA is really complex, but at the end of the day you're like, it is because there's a lot. But that doesn't mean it's complex. It's actually really simple. There's just a lot of simple, I mean, here's what I mean by that. Everything that I talked about, page views, clicks, scroll, purchase, add to carts, all the traditional e-commerce things, these are just behaviors. So all it does is collect behaviors and then details about those behaviors. That's it. So everything's just a behavior and the details about behaviors and

Brett:

Details about those behaviors.

Chris:

So I wanna know purchase, but that's right what they bought, but

Brett:

It does,

Chris:

Right? Behaviors. So

Brett:

Now are you able to then build segments where you can look at people that engage with a pdp? I wanna look at the people that clicked on images and looked at reviews and compare them to people

Chris:

That not, let me give you just an idea of the back and forth or the differences between Universal and GA 4. So Universal, they had this thing where you could set up, they called 'EM goal funnels where you'd have to go in and set it up, but the problem was if you forgot to set it up and you set it up after all the traffic hit, you were outta luck, right? You had to set these things up ahead of time and you would go and see the Gulf flow and it's pretty useful. Well in GA 4 there's what they call an explorer section what they call workspaces. So you go into the explorer workspace and you can set up a funnel report and you can literally say, I would like to see people who landed on this page, watched this video for 30 seconds then went to this product detail page and added to cart within 10 minutes.

And then you see your conversion rates pop up. So you can see a customer path, talk about listening to the conversation, right? So now you can see the conversation, then you can say, I would like that to be an audience. Let's send that to Google Ads so they can retarget them because they didn't buy yet and I wanna give them a coupon offer and just refresh that every 30 days. I wanna have whoever's done that in the last 30 days. But the key thing that they're just to emphasize is that 10 minutes thing, it knows time. Universal analytics never

Brett:

Knew time didn't no time, yeah.

Chris:

4 is built, it knows every single second. So you can literally ask it and build questions like that. Well, who's going through, who's buying a product? Maybe the people who are your highest ticket people are buying by time. They see the product detail page, they add to cart, checkout and purchase. They're doing that within 30 minutes. And the people that are low ticket are doing it within five minutes. So then it's like, wow, how do we slow down people? Cause we slow them down, they'll buy more. Yeah. And that's counterintuitive. How do I maybe add a little bit of friction that might, what are these people, oh well they're seeing other products because again, you can tell GA 4, I would like to know when somebody considers also recommended products that you might wanna buy, you can measure for that. And that's the beauty of this platform is it can do anything which is, it's again, very simple and at least theory, it's behaviors and then what do you wanna know about those behaviors? But because it could do anything, you just really have to think it through. So I do lots of notes and whiteboarding of what are we trying to figure out? What questions are we trying to answer? What information do we want to collect to get those answers? And then what actions would we take if we knew what those answers were? And then assuming it makes it through that, it's like, okay, cool, this makes sense. Cool, now let's go set up the measurement so we can do that. And that's sort of how that whole thing works.

Brett:

Yeah, that's awesome. And yeah, that understanding and measuring every second is interesting, right? Because the way Universal Analytics worked, it was only if you closed the page or once you took one action, they could only measure the time between that and the next action, right? Exactly what they

Chris:

Called exactly right? Yeah. It would only tell the, so if you landed on a page and then you left and it had no measurable action, it would be like zero time on page. And even if you spent the time, maybe it was a really long blog post or a video or something, you watched it and did all these behaviors. Universal had no idea. Yeah, GA 4 will, GA 4 actually has, they technically brought back something called bounce rate. It was one of the most misused metrics in the world for sure. But they brought it back. But they have a better version of it called Engaged sessions. So it literally counts to 10 seconds and you can change it up to 60 seconds. So you have that ability in the settings, but within 10 seconds it goes, okay, they're still here, they're now engaged. So even if I land on one page but I stick around 10 seconds, it goes well, they're engaged, they're still here.

That's an important metric to know because there's a big difference between somebody that comes to a product detail page and leaves within 10 seconds and didn't buy and that's why they didn't buy. Versus somebody who comes to a product detail page, sees the product, investigates the different sizes, looks at the different colors, and then doesn't buy, right? Two different problems. One was, Nope, wrong place, I'm outta here. And maybe there was a mismatch on the expectation that brought 'em there. The other one is just didn't get 'em around. They're looking, but maybe they missed a color they were looking for. Maybe the,

Brett:

Yeah, maybe they're not ready. Maybe they're just shopping. Maybe they're shopping for something.

Chris:

Maybe they little push, right? Little discount coming in. But why give the discount to somebody that wouldn't even stick around 10 seconds? They don't need that. And more importantly, why put that crowd in an audience to have Google Ads do that? There's no point that you want the people who are engaged with your brand to actually be in that audience. And that's the power of GA 4. And that's really really why, I mean, at the end of the day, this is why Google's doing it. We mentioned earlier, so you can spend more money on Google ads, but that's okay,

Brett:

The money on Google ads. And so Google ads get sued. That's like, there you go.

Chris:

And hopefully it's driving more results because if you're feeding their algorithm, this is the buyer I want, and then you say, well go find other buyers like that and you're using Performance Max or whatever else to do that, well now Performance Max is getting smarter cuz their algorithm is getting better quality data from you because it's coming from GA 4, right? Right. So there's a lot of reasons to switch over to this platform and again, expect the learning curve. Nobody, the only reason I think people will really get spun out of this is if they think it's going to be exactly universal. And because they quote no Universal, they're going to know GA 4. That is not true. It is a completely different platform. So you're going to have to get in there and learn it, but give yourself 90 days and as long as you give yourself that 90 days of playing around with it and you don't really have to use it and it's not detrimental if it didn't work and all that sort of stuff, within 90 days you're accidentally going to start getting good at it. That's going to happen. And you're going to be like, ah, this is not a big deal. And then you just sort of build and grow as you go through.

Brett:

That's awesome. So you've already touched on a few of these things that are really cool, but anything else you're really excited about with GA 4 that's that's going to be an improvement. Make our lives easier, make our lives better, that you haven't already talked about. I know you've already said mentioned several.

Chris:

There are a, there's a lot in the exploration section that they have. So this is where it's, they broke it up in different workspaces, they called 'em. So there's the reports and Universal just had reports like that's all they had in GA 4. There's a report section that has some of the standard reports, not as many but I think that's okay. Cause Universal most people weren't using all the reports anyway. So you have the reports that shows what they call lifecycle of reports. So it's how did we acquire the users? What actions, behaviors did they take? What were the results of those behaviors? That sort of stuff. And you get some information around demographics of the users. Same stuff you would do with the Universal Analytics. Then there's this other section called explorations where you can really customize and that's what they want people doing.

It's back there going, okay, well I wanna build a report that answers this very specific question. And you can do that. What used to be Custom reports and user me Universal Analytics is now that it's called Explorations and there's a bunch of different ones. So you can do the goal of the funnels like we talked about before. You can do Path reports where you can see, I wanna see people who purchased, what did they do before that? What did they do before that? What did they do before that? Or people who landed on this page. And then you can go backwards and forwards with pathing reports, which is pretty cool. You got lots of segment overlap reports, user explorer reports that are back there, LTV reports, cohort reports. So anybody that is into data, it can do a lot more than Universal ever could hope to. So that's there, there's a whole advertising section that's really there to push budget in the Google ads for the most part. But it's useful, right? Because that's where you start to see, here's how all the different traffic sources are working together to cause a purchase or whatever the behavior is you're trying to measure for. And it's really easy to see

Brett:

How it's easy. Any insights on the advertising piece? Cause I have not dug into this much on Google Analytics, but I know what or g4, but I know with Universal Analytics as an example, it would severely under report YouTube ads, Facebook ads, anything top of funnel because it's still, even if you didn't have it set up as last click it still, it just favored things that were further in the funnel. Do you have any clear insights into how advertising measurement might be different, better and how attribution might be different?

Chris:

It's a good question. To some extent it's going to be the same. It depends upon how you set up the attribution though, right? So now GA 4 has this whole data-driven thing, which of course is what Google Ads is mostly set to where it's like, Hey, let us tell you. And to be honest, I don't actually like that cause I've just control freak and I hate black boxes or

Brett:

Not. What the model model you're using you, we were whatever model we want,

Chris:

Whatever we wanted, trust us. It's like the smart goals I used to do in Universal Analytics we're like, ah, don't use smart goals. It's like, we'll tell you what you should be going for and then we'll spend your money. You're like we'll tell you the goal. That's too much black box. I would prefer not exactly but GA 4 does have this data driven attribution that can be in there as default, which wasn't something that Universal is particularly good at. So it can start to get a little bit better when it comes to some of that. I personally still like last click. And then measuring for what is a much, much easier now because remember everything's an event. An event is just a behavior and it's collecting behaviors and details around this behaviors. And then because you have a list of all these behaviors, it'll start collecting stuff and you're like, oh, it's clicks and scroll and purchases and whatever else.

Lead generation, lead gens or signups or sharing. Imagine all the behaviors that are happening on your store that you don't know about. GE 4 can collect those and tell you. And what's cool about it is you can go in there and you can call them conversion events. So universal Analytics, people are probably familiar. You have goals, go goals don't exist anymore. Everything now is a conversion. So it's an event, but it's a particular important event. I would like this to be a conversion event. And you literally, you see your list of events and you toggle, you push a button, it's like, yep, make that a conversion, make this a conversion event. I wanna know when this happens. And that's it. Super easy to set this stuff up. Wow. And then you can start to say, okay, well that's a conversion event. Well I can hook that into Google Ads and now Google Ads can start going after that and say, oh, the objective is to get more signups and so I'm going to do that.

And I took a little conversion event, hook it into Google Ads and it's off to the races. So there's a lot of stuff they're doing to help with that. And again, it's in process. I absolutely don't wanna say this thing is fully cooked. I don't think it is, right? I don't think it'll be for years to be honest, but it is 80, 85% there. There's a few nuances that are a little annoying, but at the end of the day, I can use it to make marketing decisions. And for me I'm like, cool point. As long as I can do that, I can

Brett:

Make it happen. If you're able to make good marketing decisions, good business decisions, what it's there for. Do you still have your clients mostly running Universal, universal Analytics and GA 4 together? Or do you have some people that are just 4 exclusively at this

Chris:

Point? We are mostly GA 4. Let's say GA 4 primary is probably how I would say that. Where there is Universal analytics there, just in case we need something. But almost everything is GA 4 NICE primary. So all GA 4 would hook into Liquor Studio or something else and we can build a reports so that they can see it kind of on their CEO dashboards a little easier to get through than the GA 4 interface, but it is GA 4 that's powering all

Brett:

That stuff. Yeah. So is there any solution, and maybe it's through Looker Studio, which used to be Data Studio, it's what we use for our reports and stuff. So this 14 month expiration of data, is there any way to keep data longer, you just have to create customer reports and save 'em or

Chris:

What's a great question? So the answer is no, because that's a whole point is they don't want the data cuz they don't wanna be sued by Europe when Europe's like why do you hold people's data for five years to really need that for business reasons? And Google's like no, but we can't get rid of it. So they're automatically going to flush that data. However, one of the, again, benefits of GA 4 IT and it can get a little techy, but it's important because again, measurement's a department in an organization now. Yeah, it is not just gimme your report, you have to keep up with measurement because tech is changing, laws are changing, users are changing. You have to keep up with that. It's like seo, you didn't just learn SEO and then people it 20 years ago are not doing the same stuff they do now, right? They've evolved. Right, totally. Same thing you have to do with measurement, right? So when it comes to Google Analytics 4 and it's, it's got all this information coming into it again, it's got modeling. So I can tell you kind of what's going on there and forgive me man, I'm losing my train of thought. What was the question? God, yeah, I got caught up. Got caught up in that, but I had the answer in my head. I just lost it.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. That's hilarious. I was actually looking at the time, so what was I asking you? I was asking you, oh, the data, how long to can you

Chris:

Oh, perfect. Yes. 14 months. Okay. Big big query is the short answer. So the in Universal analytics, you could connect Universal Analytics into BigQuery, which essentially makes a copy of all your analytics. It is now your data you control, you can do whatever you want with it. It's not Google's anymore, right? Nice. So that's Universal Analytics. But that was only available for the 360 accounts, which was the paid version, the ones that were 150 K a year. So that was just something that most companies couldn't do with GA 4 by default, they give you this free connector to BigQuery. Nice. And honestly, I think this is what Google's doing. This is all conspiracy, but I believe this to be true. Imagine if Universal Analytics today, if everybody that had that account was paying two or $3 a month for it, everybody Google would be

Brett:

Awesome. It's insane amount of money.

Chris:

So what's happening with GA 4 is Google Analytics 4 connects into BigQuery. It's not that hard to set it up different. It's a skill. So it's a little different. But once you get it, when you get your account created, you connect it and every day it just dumps the data into BigQuery. So you have a copy of your data. So then what you do is you start using BigQuery as your database, as your data source. So initially you can use GA 4 for maybe the first 14 months, but if you start asking questions about what happened 4 years ago, well that'll be in your big query cuz you've made copies of all that data. And to your point, it is your data, it's your copies now. So they are automatically setting this up where it's easier for small businesses to have copies of all their data. But the important part is it's not Google's data anymore, it's yours, it's

Brett:

Your data. But BigQuery also you pay for, right? You pay for sure

Chris:

That. And that's exactly right. So BigQuery is a cloud-based database that requires it. But we've been doing it for months or more than months now at this point. And I think our about every month, give or take, and don't quote me on this, about every month I think we are almost paying almost 2 cents a month.

Brett:

Okay?

Chris:

Right? Not expensive. Not expensive. You could put a dollar in the kitty and that won't get spent probably for a year for a lot of companies. Now that said, what if it ramps up a lot? Right? Well it depends what you do with BigQuery database and how you use it. But if you're just backing up stuff, it's relatively cheap. So well within range for small businesses and over the years, maybe you grow into two or three bucks a month, not a big deal. Now if you start using it all the time, it'll ramp up. But you'll understand if you are using it all the time, you will understand that cost. And it's still relatively cheap.

Brett:

Still super cheap. But to your point, it's infinitely more than free for Google. It's exactly right. Makes a big difference. Well this is exactly right. It's super fast. I have so many more questions, but we're coming up against time and man, this has just been awesome. I really appreciate it. A couple thoughts, what do people need to be doing now to get ready? Cuz July is coming. So what do you need right now to get ready?

Chris:

So two tips. One would be start, you have to start get the code and put it on your sites and get an account up and running. The big, big, big tip I would give everybody is Google's putting this wizard out that says like, oh, connect universe analytics. And we're going to automatically going to port it over to GA 4. Most companies don't have proper measurement anyway. So if you just copy over the junky universal analytics and you put it into your fancy kitchen of GA 4, you were essentially just going to be boiling an egg with your fancy kitchen and now you're never going to figure out how to cook because you got all this junk in it. So I would recommend you start from scratch. It's like Google did start from scratch with GA 4. Build it in the way that you want to build it while you're using Universal Analytics.

Cuz right now we all can still do that. So use Universal Analytics as your primary production platform if that's what you're currently using, very quickly move into GA 4 so you can get practice. Give yourself 90 days and just constantly repeat this phrase, I'm getting good enough to get going and I will come back and make it better later. And give yourself permission to do that. Because I think a lot of people think I need to be perfect at this right away. I saw this person on a podcast and they said it was so easy. Well, it's easy for me cause I've been doing it for years, right? Yeah. But that's done the same.

Brett:

This is your language anyway. And so you do it every day.

Chris:

That's the thing. I'm numbers tolerant, right? Yeah. Like numbers. But I'm not a, I don't wanna stay in a report all day long either. I need to get marketing, I need to grow my companies like everybody else does. So if you just focus on using this platform to get a little bit better every time and you realize at a certain point you're just going to, there's no more to it. You just gotta keep rinsing repeating and then you get better and better and better and better and it'll happen naturally. So give yourself the permission to do that. And obviously we've got tools, tools that people can use if they need it. We've got migration checklists and everything else they can start working with.

Brett:

Love it. Love it. And I do love that mindset of give yourself permission, you're going to get better because you've tried to be perfect. You try to absorb it all in one fell swoop, you're going to get frustrated, you're going to get overwhelmed, you're going to quit potentially. So yeah, like that mindset and that approach for sure. So yes, let's talk about what tools, what resources, what do you have available to make this easier for folks and so they can really leverage it like they should.

Chris:

Sure. So I mean obviously our site is measurement marketing do io, so we can go there and check that out. We have a bunch of free training on the YouTube channel, measurement marketing.io 4 slash YouTube, and you can see some playlists there. We've done for GA 4 if people want that. If you want the tools, we actually give those out for free. We call it. It's a free level of the Measurement Marketing Academy, which is kind of our just in time learning platform to learn all this that you guys are familiar with. So we have that available as well. We call it the toolbox and that's just@measurementmarketing.io slash evolution. So measurement marketing dial io slash evolution will take you to the toolbox. You create a free account, it'll give you a login or password and you have access to all the tools. Plus we give weekly training back there as well. Just how

Brett:

People get. Yeah, and it's so good. I highly recommend it. So check it out. And thanks for creating the special URL for listeners. Measurement marketing I oh slash evolution on LinkedIn. In the show notes, I'll link to the YouTube channel. All that'll be in the show notes too. If you're driving and you forget or whatever it'll be there for you. But listen guys, this information is fantastic. This is what we send our team through. If anybody reaches out to me like, Hey, I wanna learn analytics, I'm like, go to Mercer site measure marketing dot, I like that. You are the source. You guys are awesome. So fantastic. Any final words of wisdom or where can people connect with you? Are you active on the socials or mainly active on YouTube? Or where

Chris:

Can people really not? We have the YouTube channel. That's about it. I need to get better at the socials, like LinkedIn. It's probably the one I'm going to eventually force myself into but I've definitely been that guy when it comes to social, I'm like, get off my lawn, you kids and your standard TikTok.

But I tell you, honestly, it's just the best advice I have. Obviously if we can help you out, the YouTube channel is a great resource. There's lots of people that are doing training out there for this. So us or somebody else. The trick is just get started. Get started. You give yourself permission to be not great and be like, Hey, that's okay. That's what I've expect. I expect it to not be good because it's a new skill. Right? Totally. But, and that's where I think people put too much pressure on themselves and they're like, I can't even do this. Someone's going to buy something else and then they buy something else and they will eventually come back to GA 4 anyway, because these other platforms that are out there don't model like GA 4 does. And you're going to have to get used to modeling and what that's

Brett:

Like. Modeling is a future just because of some data's going away. And so that's

Chris:

Exactly right. There's no other way to do it.

Brett:

Yep. Yep. Awesome. Well, Mercer, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much. We gotta do this again. And my commitment is I will do my best to not make it 4 years before you're on the podcast again, this again soon. Love it. All right, man. Thank you so much. It's been a blast. Thanks Brent. Awesome. And thank you for listening. Really appreciate it. And hey, we'd love to hear from you. What would you like to hear more of on the podcast if you've not done it? We'd love that five star review. If you think we've earned it on iTunes, it helps other people discover the show. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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The most difficult aspect of eCommerce is attracting new customers. 

With CPMs and CPAs on the rise, great brands must learn to increase the average order values (AOV) and customer lifetime value (LTV) of their customers. 

That’s where building a brand marketplace comes into play. 

Yes, you need to be developing new products and expanding your line. However, partnering with other complementary brands can provide immediate value to customers while also increasing AOV and LTV.

But if done poorly, it can actually hurt your brand.

Here’s what we dive into in this episode: 

• How Brooklinen thinks about brand marketplace and gives customers the option to "shop the room.”
• How Realtree expands its product line beyond camo to include high-quality rain gear and more products through their brand marketplace. 
• How to structure a marketplace to strengthen your brand, not erode it. 
• How a kayak brand used drop shipping competitors products to increase sales, trust, and customer loyalty for their own goods. 
• How Flxpoint makes it easy!

‍

Mentioned In This Episode:

Travis Mariea

• LinkedIn
• Flxpoint

Companies

• Realtree
• Brooklinen
• Curated

Brett Curry

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• OMG Guides

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Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today we are talking about a topic that I don't believe we've ever explored on this podcast. We're talking about drop shipping, but not really, probably in the traditional sense that you are thinking about it right now. One of the main things we're going to dive into is how can you use drop shipping to create almost a marketplace for your business? Turn your site into just selling your products into more a marketplace and the ins and outs on why you might consider that. And it's going to be a lot of fun and hopefully open your mind to something just a little bit new. And so my guest is Travis Mary. He is a fellow podcaster, so owns his own podcast. I was a guest on that podcast a few months ago. It was fantastic. He's the CEO of Flxpoint and he's been in the e-com industry for 11 years, which makes him a true og. Maybe OG is not the right word. I don't know. I was criticized one time for using OG for someone that's been around for eight or nine years, but whatever. Yeah, there's no true definition there, so I like it.

Travis:

Yeah,

Brett:

Yeah, yeah. Let's roll with it. Let's roll with it. But he and I both met speaking at the retail summit in Miami. We connected, we hit it off, so we're like, Hey, let's do a podcast. So with that, Travis, how you doing man? Welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time.

Travis:

Yeah, doing good, Brett I appreciate it. Glad that we can do this together and excited to kind of dig in.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah, it's going to be super fun. So tell us just a little bit we'll get right to the context. I think this idea of marketplace is really interesting but what is Flxpoint really quickly and what do you guys do there?

Travis:

Yeah, I mean it's an inventory and order management system really for online retailers and brands typically around the drop ship and marketplace models. So all the nuance and integration with partners automation between the vendors and the retailers, things like that. So we focus there really

Brett:

Nice. So as you and I were kind of talking and prepping about this, we mainly gear this podcast for brands and that's who we work with at OMG, work with people that are developing and designing their own brand, like a boom by Cindy Joseph for native deodorant, overtone, or brands like that. But you brought up something that was really interesting, and actually we have a large outdoor client that just started doing what we're going to talk about that's been very successful, where you take all, you got your core products, whether that's five SKUs or 30 SKUs or a hundred SKUs, whatever's your core products. Why not start to drop ship other products that are related, that are complimentary, that can be bundled together, that other people want to purchase with your products? Why not add that to your site through this marketplace model? And this is really interesting because, and I'll give kind of a quick bit of context here.

So we have an outdoor company. They sell lawn care subscriptions. And so they started selling, Hey, when you're doing that kind of stuff, people need rakes and they even want plants and they want all these other things that we don't wanna stock right now, but people are buying them anyway and they're asking us if we sell them, so let's add them to the site through more of a partnership or drop ship bottle. And then over time you can see, hey, these items are selling really well. Why don't we just manufacture them ourselves? Why don't we make them ourselves or extend our line into these products? But if you would give your overview for this model and why people should consider it.

Travis:

Yeah, sure. So we basically classify as a brand marketplace outside of the traditional multi-vendor marketplace you might see, which is an Amazon and eBay. But we, we've really seen this rise of the brand marketplace, which is centered around a brand that take hair shaving or brook linen linen and pillows and things like that. They're known for their products and then they realize that there's a ceiling to some extent. You roll out new SKUs or it becomes tough to get customers to come back. They've already seen all your products, whatever it might be. It's really not a shopping experience, it's not a strong enough brand really to sustain long term from a d toc customer acquisition perspective. It just becomes tough. You gotta roll out a new SKU to get people back. And so exactly what you said that we start looking at brands saying, Hey, we want to do a new concept.

It'd be more of a lifestyle brand. We wanna get customers to visit our site even if we don't have a new product to show them. And Brook Linen is one, they've executed well on this where they have this shop the room concept and whether it's seasonal or new styles, they'll, here's our linen in our pillows, but also here's the lamp, here's the dresser, here's the nightstand and everything along furniture, whatever it might be along with it. And you can purchase all those things in one spot. And then we have our team help you understand what goes well with in that room. So we've seen that we've seen the established brands really build a shopping experience on their site first, more of that transactional experience. You might think of just going to a brand to buy a new product that came out that season, which is obviously a different experience for the customer.

Brett:

Yeah, it's really interesting. And to use the Brooklyn an example, if I buy new sheets for my bed or maybe I buy a few pair, write a few sets I'm probably good for a little while unless I just wanna go wild on colors and I'm really, really into variety there. I'm pregnant, buy a few sets, it'd be good. But there are other things that go with linens and other things that are directly tied to it that I might wanna buy from Brook Linen if there's some trust there. So I think this model can work really well. So

Travis:

Interesting. Exactly. It's about getting 'em back to the site. You, you're interested, it's almost like a form of content marketing and just getting them back. So giving them value, you already have the audience leverage that audience. And so what we're talking about here is maybe making a couple dollars off the drop ship, maybe it's really slim margins, which it typically is, but it's getting them back and getting 'em into the routine of trusting you more and more and building that brand past your product more into a lifestyle brand. And then along the way, you can insert some of your new products or products they haven't bought yet. And really what we're talking about is lowering customer acquisition costs and increasing customer lifetime value. It's just a different way of doing that.

Brett:

And it makes sense because one of the most expensive things you can do is generate a new customer. And that's where we as an agency at OMG Commerce Focus, YouTube, Google Ads Amazon ads, Amazon dsp, things like that. But man, once you get a customer, if you can then sell them instead of on average twice a year, you can sell them three or four or five or six times a year and get them to come back, it creates more loyalty, it creates more profits, and then you can be more aggressive on the front end. So it makes a lot of sense. And I love the idea of launching new products. I think the brands that really scale and become valuable and have big exits, they've got a product launch model and formula, but it's still pretty slow. How often can you launch new products? And so this is a great way to supplement, I think, and really, really tie into or really accelerate that growth, get more from each customer

Travis:

Type of thing.

Brett:

So what are some of the recommendations here, and maybe one place I'd like to start this kinda interesting h how do you decide what are good products to add to the mix versus what are products that are like maybe a distraction, maybe even take away from the brand? I'll give you an example. I was actually just listening to an audio book by found one of the founders of Helzberg Diamonds and Helzberg Diamonds was founded in Kansas City, Missouri, which is just a few hours away from me. And very successful company sold a Warren Buffet, but for a while. So one of the original Helberg guys, he said, Hey, we're going to be a diamond store, just focus on diamonds. It was very successful. One of the other kids or whoever came in and like, Hey, let's sell radios and let's sell luggage and let's sell some other stuff and actually really hurt the brand. When they got rid of that stuff and focused, they actually grew top line and bottom line because now they're like, they're focused on jewelry. So I think there's much benefit for them to expand their jewelry lines, but you don't want to go wild and start selling radios. Who goes to a jewelry store of buy radio anyway? Do any tips or advice there on what makes sense to build that brand marketplace without eroding the brand or without becoming irrelevant or too fragmented?

Travis:

Yeah, no, it's a great point. And the worst thing you can do is implement this endless aisle of all these different products. Now you can buy everything you can think of and it's doing the exact opposite of what a brand marketplace is supposed to do. It's eroding your brand where a brand marketplace is really about solidifying and transforming your brand. And really it's transforming it into more of that lifestyle and leveraging the trust. So to answer your question for an established, an established brand that they have an audience and they've been around, the best thing you can do is really look to add other products that build your brand or solidify that brand. So I'm trying to think about can you partner, they're more of a partnerships, can you find another brand that is well known that has the same audience that you wanna be associated with that is high quality, things like that.

I'm not a big furniture out home furnishings guy, but you can imagine if there is a high luxury item that would go into a room at Brooklyn would grab that just because we're using them as an example to associate their brand with their brand and to further drive home who we are. And then also that's one reason. And also just to add value. So go going more into how you become a lifestyle brand. How do you add value to your customer? It's about shop the look for apparel, shop the room for furnishings, how do you add more value? We recommend this product because we've tested it that kind of thing. For the outdoor kind of side of things where you were mentioned like lawn care, right? We've got professionals that have tested this day in and day out. So adding value and your customer, it feels logical, they'd want to buy that in the same side. That's where the season brand happy to talk. We talked a little bit before the podcast around the inexperience or the newer brand just launching. They would buy different or they would bring in different brands for different reasons.

Brett:

Yeah. L let's continue with the season brand for just a minute. And then yeah, I wanna talk about the new brand as well, which is really interesting. But can you about told me about an outdoor brand that you guys work with? Can you talk about any examples there at all or is that Yeah, yeah. So real tree outdoor, so they sell camo and stuff like that and they're always partnering and licensing and stuff, but how are they using this model and what kind of products are they using to create that lifestyle brand marketplace?

Travis:

So they've always been that kind of camouflage print and things like that for apparel and different deer camps, things like that. Now they're bringing in their partners that have licensed their designs and they're bringing those in under their other brands. Like Frog Talks is a great example of a brand on that sits on its own without Realtree known for its great weather rain jackets and we Boots and things like that. And so bringing those in and saying, Hey, if you love realtree, you also love Frog Talks. You know, can shop it all in one spot. And so it's really about just kind of saying, we know you as a customer, we know what you, let us hand select our brand partners and put it all in front of you. So it's one nice easy shopping experience.

Brett:

Yeah, and I love it where if you think about what's a company that you'd partner with, how are you adding value? What creates this? You know, gotta think very complimentary and very natural extension. And you talked about it with Brooklyn and hey, I'm going to shop lamps or maybe it's pillows. If I'm buying new linens, I'm probably thinking about the whole bedroom. I'm thinking about how do I change the look of the bedroom if I've up upgraded my bedding probably want some of this stuff around it to be upgraded. Whereas maybe something that'd be kind of unnatural would be like, Hey, buy kitchen appliances here as well. Then that's become more like you're trying to be a department store, you're trying to be Amazon. That's probably not it, right? But this brand marketplace further builds the brand rather than eroding it. And then I also like the model of, hey, if you're thinking about getting into some other lines, why not drop them for a while and see do your customers want them or not? And what feedback do they get? And maybe just find a partner that you drop ship with forever or maybe you find something where you're like, Hey, we could create something of our own here as well. Which is pretty interesting. Yeah, so awesome. What about a new brand? How would you recommend they use a ship model to augment what they're doing?

Travis:

And so it works very differently for a different purpose I guess, but it's an interesting one to see. I've seen both and they work well. This side of things, I'm a new brand and so I have this kayak company that I know and I used to work with actually prior to this company, but I consulted with them for a little bit and they were brand new and now they're massive. They're one of the leading kayak companies out there. But when they were first getting started, they started drop shipping and listing other kayak companies on their website that weren't exactly the same persona they were going after. Were more of the lower end. I'd only spend six, 700 bucks at the most, maybe something like that for the 400 $600 range. They were putting $1,200 kayaks on their website next to their kayaks with a different brand. But it was strong brand

Brett:

Recognition. So wait a minute. So Kayaks were more or less than the average.

Travis:

They're like six to 800 at the time. They didn't have a high-end model yet. And I can't remember the name of the popular kayak company. Maybe it was like a Hoby or something like that. But they put those kayaks, the high-end brand, well-recognized brand on their website, one to build trust, like oh, they can sell hos, right? So I know I've heard of that but two, and I think most actually more primarily is to get people who were shopping for Hobi on their website and then this world, the ads or the

Brett:

Shopping probably totally Google shopping, very efficient ads to run. You've already got this B, you got hoby or whoever that's building this brand equity and they got lots of demand out there. So you started to get some of that traffic to your site. Really, really smart. Yeah. Yeah,

Travis:

Keep going. They didn't get em on a mailing list or they'd sell the hoby, who knows. But they would build an audience like that and that was their approach. It was really smart way of doing it. And then as they became more established, they migrated into that more established brand approach and would add kayak anchors and kayak trailers and ship that to just complete the package. So they went the full spectrum there and they really leveraged the ship and marketplace model as really a one to, I think they had three skews. They had three skews for the first two or three years. And so they used it well to get a lot of traffic and build a shopping experience in the

Brett:

Community. That's super interesting. And it is a great way, I mean we talk a lot about Google shopping or now that most lives within perform Google Performance Max, but it's such an efficient way to drive traffic. I mean people that click on a Google shopping ad or product listing ad, they're pretty interested in buying. They see the price, they see the title, they see a picture. Those are shoppers who have their wallets out typically. But you can't get a ton of volume with Google Shopping if you got three SKUs, right? You just can't. Right. But you start shipping hundred SKUs or how many additional products were they drop shipping, do you know estimate there

Travis:

Probably only 20 to 30.

Brett:

Nice, nice.

Travis:

Something like that. Very curated. The key

Brett:

Super curated. Yeah, super curated. But it expanded the line allowed them to drive traffic. It created that trust where someone knows Hoby or knows some other big brand and they see your brand right next to it. I mean in some ways this is the, I know it's not, it's not exact, but I think the shopper mentality is kind of the same, where you're in a retail store, you see the brand, the branded product, and then you see the private label, right? So you, you're in Kirk Kirkland, is that Costco? I can't remember about it. Costco. Costco, yeah. Yeah. So you're in Costco, you're seeing the name brand, then you see Kirkland and you're like, well it's cheaper and it looks fine, right? I'll, I'll try it. Right? And so you're playing off that same model of leveraging other brands, leveraging other traffic to establish your brand. So that's super interesting. Do are they still doing that today? Do they still have the marketplace model or now are they just focused on their products?

Travis:

I believe so. I don't believe they've gotten too big for probably Hoby allow them to do that and they expand into that market. They use that as the that beachhead if you will. But I do know they still kind of do the trailer stuff and the anchors. And to your point, from what I remember, at least last time I spoke to 'em, they were starting to buy in-house cause they're already shipping out their own warehouse or kayaks they would buy now wholesale. And the line became blurry of we're a brand, now we're kind of a retailer cause we're buying wholesale anchors because we can make more margin on 'em and we can control the shopping experience. So we see that more and more. That line getting blurred

Brett:

And I think it's totally fine. And again, as long as you have the mindset of I'm strengthening the brand, yeah, I'm either building good partnerships or I'm becoming a true retailer it can work. And those are some good examples. Other examples of either that new brand using drop shipping to build this marketplace or established brands. Other examples you wanna mention

Travis:

The marketplace. Those really cover the gamut. There's tons of 'em out there. Apparel, I will say this much that it works well in apparel and home furnishings and in general when you have an industry where ship is kind of normal or standard heavy goods, the trailers I talked about or outdoors where there's a lot of anchors and heavy items that retailers want to drop ship rather than carry and keep in stock or bulky. But yeah, I mean those are two really.

Brett:

And those are items too cuz with the drop shipping model, how's that impacting ship times, right? Because we're all kind of spoiled with the Amazon next day, same day, two day, whatever. But if it's a heavier item, I think most people expect, hey, it's going to take a little bit of time. How does the drop shipping model, how does that impact delivery times?

Travis:

Yeah, it's a great question mean that's really why, depending on who you talk to, drop ship might be a dirty word and they're like, oh we don't do that. Really the idea behind that is because you have to work with a partner, you have to trust that partner. And the reason why it fails for some is that you don't pick the right partners and compliance is the issue. You're not shipping within my s l a, like you said, heavier items, furniture and stuff like that. That's why it, it's so big in furniture they expect a two week or whatever. But with that said, what I'm bullish on and why we are mostly folks around the drop ship model with our product is that the rise of three pls and competing with Amazon and the rise of Shopify's acquiring deliver, but also their fulfillment network. More and more brands are storing their inventory in places that know how to get items out quickly and have SLA and have APIs connected.

So you can have lead times pulling into your OMS like a Flxpoint and you can know when that's supposed to be shipped out. So it really shouldn't affect, it can if you don't pick the right partner and they don't have the right facilities, but it shouldn't, if you pick the right partner, it should be shipping out just as cost if not faster. And it's worth noting while we're on that topic because we'll be okay, well it's great they buy a kayak from me, an anchor from someone else. Where do they get it? Two different two packages. How does that work? So you do need to analyze the shipping cost for one, you need to pick the right items that would ship it would make sense to ship from a ship directly or have enough margin on 'em from whatever it might be that I've seen. Cross stocking is a big part of what we help with because I don't want it to be two different experiences. I want to bring the item into my warehouse first package that kayak and the anchor and send it out together and what it, sure, I gotta pay an extra $8 on shipping or whatever it might be. Anchor's probably not a good example there cause it's probably more $8. But that, so that's another part to kind of consider and just gotta weigh the pros and cons on what makes sense

Brett:

There. Interesting. And yeah, that is another thing to manage that cross docking as you said, or yeah, do I want this to be two seemingly very different delivery experiences where it's almost like I'm buying from two different brands or do I wanna consolidate it where it's one experience And yeah, I think that's worth discussing and evaluating. So I wanna talk about point just a minute. I would like your take though, and I remember watching the news and following Shopify's announcements as they launched the Shopify fulfillment network and committed to something like a billion dollar investment over the next however many years, which is really impressive and which is really cool. Although if you compare it to what Amazon invests, it's a total drop in the bucket. But I just talked to a brand brand that we actually invest in as a very minority investor, but we invest in it and they're like, Hey we, we've been using Shopify Fulfillment network for eight months or whatever and they love it. So it's a little more than what they were paying with their previous three pl, but it's fast. Customers are loving it, it's super easy to work with. They say they're just kind of gushing about it, haven't talked to anybody else. So about the Shopify fulfillment network, do you have a take on it? Do you have experience there? Any thoughts are, I know it's kind of an A beta and maybe now it's opening up a little bit, but any perspective there?

Travis:

I love the concept of vertically in vertically integrating to provide the best customer experience possible, which I think is what the play is there. If they just get to the point of just as good as any other three pl, great. But it's so much more because it's vertically, vertically integrated. Because I envisioned that, I was thinking to myself, the reason why I admittedly shop mostly on Amazon is I know they're going to have the item I want and I trust it's going to get to me in a quick two days around. Totally. I love to be able to do that with individual brands, but you take that risk on that new brand you find every single time. And they have that concept of Shopify promise, which I haven't really seen in the wild. And I don't know how far along it is. I

Brett:

Haven't seen it a whole

Travis:

Lot either. No, but I love that concept of I can go to a website now and I can see little Shopify promise and feel the same feeling I do when I'm shopping on Amazon. They still have that problem discoverability around. Now we're getting into Shopify for example. They still have that problem around discoverability in marketplace to find that brand in the first place, which I think they're working on. But in general that is a big hurdle if they can feel good about it. And I think they need to own the three PL and the fulfillment network to do that. Yeah,

Brett:

Yeah, yeah, totally. Totally makes sense. Very cool. So talk to us about point. What do you guys do and how do you make this process of building a brand marketplace? How do you make it possible and smooth and integrated and yeah, what do you guys do? Yeah,

Travis:

So we've been in the ship world for almost 16 years now and different brands and products that we've been kind of rolling out. And Flxpoint has been our first kind of enterprise mid-market if you will type of operation and product. And really it's the whole concept and why we built it, it's only been around for three years now, was that current order managed systems and inventory warehouse managed systems are all built around this traditional retail model of I'm a brand, I have all my inventory in my warehouse, I sell it wholesale to a retailer who then puts in their brick and mortar. That's typically, and they might sell it online, they might have a DC but that most of the OMSs and imss out there were built around that model. We wanted to build around the concept of virtual inventory that can be located in multiple three pls and drop ship partners and really build around this concept of integration to virtual inventory that is stored that's outside of your system and outside of your people's control.

And they're not cycle counting it. You're getting all your data from a third party logistics warehouse api or you're getting it from some integration with a ship provider. So we help with the integration piece. We have a full team that integrates if you need it, but we also have API E D I specs for your team or anyone else to build on. And then we have a ton of, what I think is really interesting and most exciting part of our business is we have a ton of pre-built connectors to easily just connect in. So we work a lot with retailers who connect to vendors to connect into the vendors website directly. Just you're on Shopify, I I wanna oversell some of your products, tag it with Ship for Realtree and I will automatically pull those products into my catalog, be able to curate there as well, and then push 'em up to my big commerce store, my Shopify store, my whatever. And then when I get an order, I'm going to send it directly into your Shopify store. You're used to accepting already today and your team doesn't have to go through any portal. We have portals for those that want to, but that's the concept of just easily partnering and connecting because the line is becoming more blurry. We want it to be. And because now we live in this world of open APIs, we're really excited and bullish on the concept of brands and retailers and brands and brands partnering together and needing to connect system.

Brett:

And then if you are pulling in directly from Shopify or big commerce to big commerce, whatever the two carts are, you should be able to keep track of inventory. You should be able to see that in relatively real time and it should all be smooth and accounted foreign and whatnot. Exactly. Which is pretty awesome. Yeah, yeah,

Travis:

Exactly. Evolving from the files that people have been sending back and forth to each

Brett:

Other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's crazy. So where do you recommend someone gets started? So got a brand out there, they've got 5, 10, 15 SKUs, whatever the case may be, they're considering, hey, maybe I should look at this a little bit. Where should they start and where does Flxpoint come in? Is Flxpoint very towards the end once you've got your partnerships and stuff in place, or does Flxpoint help with even that part of it? Where should they start and where do you guys

Travis:

Fit? Yeah, that's a great question. I was about to say they should start talking to their partners and their other brands first, and which they should feel it out should have that first conversation with a couple maybe however we do help with it because a lot of times it's like, well yeah we'd love to do that. How do we do it? And it's really tough and then it's like, okay, connect to my Shopify store, but how's that work? It pull all of my data. I don't want you to have access to these products. And yeah, I think you're probably going to want us to come in earlier, sooner rather than later. And we're going through an exercise right now talking about what our, who Flxpoint is. And really it's you need to have that partner, that partner that it's not just a product you buy, it's the service and the team behind it that will work with your partners and jump on a call and go back and forth an email to say, okay, Shopify, the Shopify's going to work here, or no, it's not because of X, Y and Z reason an API integration sound to you guys and kind of having that conversation.

So get started, feel it out, but then when it comes into technical conversations, loop in someone like a Flxpoint that has the team that will have that kind of technical talk for you.

Brett:

Nice. So, and I know we talked about both established and new brands, so I know this that's going to be a pretty broad question, but who do you guys work best with, who's kind of your ideal client profile type of thing?

Travis:

So the brand marketplace is a small emerging strategy. We obviously we'll have a handful of those. The biggest customer is traditional ship and that might, we talked about, so Stetson the boot and hat company is one of our customers and so is Jessica Simpson, the apparel company. And both of them have a very similar model where isn't traditionally drop as you think about it. They're not retailers, they're brands, but it's not a brand marketplace necessarily either. They're not advertising other brands and using it, it's more of this kind of white labeled, their manufacturers are in multiple different warehouses that just store their inventory for them because at least for the Jessica Simpson world, and I've wrote about this and Tina Simpson's talked about it, but they're not in the world of warehousing and logistics and they launched their D TOC brand only less, I think about five, six years ago now. And so got away from just the wholesale drug of just sending, getting those big pos and they really pivoted really early on for what I think and did a good job of pivoting away from the Nordstrom and the Macy pos and building their own brand. So we work with them and that kind of white drops of approach, a lot of these marketplaces curated.com, a really cool up and coming retailer that if you wanna go snowboarding, they'll have live experts talk you through what

Brett:

Kind of snowboarding and which, what brand are you talking about right

Travis:

Now? curated.com. I would check them out. Really cool concept that they basically allow you, they have dozens, if not maybe hundreds of experts in different fly fishing and snowboarding and all these different niche parts of retail and they will actually walk you through what you should buy and then they drop ship a good portion of that. So another cool brand that we work with.

Brett:

Really, really interesting. Very cool. So love it. This has been super helpful. This is, like I said, a new topic and a new concept. I mean it's not new drop's been around a long time, but just thinking about it in this way of brand marketplace, I really like it and I think it's super interesting and something that someone should consider if someone is interested and they wanna find out more about point how can they do that? How can they check you guys out? Any resources you guys have, things like that.

Travis:

Yeah, sure. Flxpoint.com, flx point.com and then feel free, I'm on LinkedIn, Travis Mary, a m a r i e a. So I'm usually accept most of those coming through and yeah, I'm happy to chat through LinkedIn or whatever it might be.

Brett:

Awesome. So check it out, Flxpoint, we'll LinkedIn the show notes, but Flx Point and Travis Meier give him a follow on the socials. And also as a little side note, I don't know how much you guys are paying attention or being on there, but I've not been overly consistent with my social media profile. I was off Twitter for eight years or something, but I'm back and I'm posting almost daily on Twitter and on LinkedIn. So connect with me as well at Brett Curry. At the Brett Curry. Geez. Okay. I should guess I should know this, but you should be able to look at Bread Curry. Yeah. And VRE Curry on LinkedIn. So Travis, I'll link all your stuff in the show notes give Travis a follow check out Flxpoint and hopefully this is good food for thought. And ideally you're motivated to think about building your brand potentially through a brand marketplace. So any parting thoughts, Travis, or any other recommendations or asks that you wanna close with?

Travis:

Nothing too crazy. I just think it's a great time to be in e-commerce. A lot of new stuff. It is showing up and so even though it's been a little wild last year kind of watching that, we are already seeing it picking up and just so a lot of exciting times really

Brett:

Is really, I think so too, man. And I'm very bullish on e-commerce. And look, we've had three super strange years in a row. Covid never seen anything like it. It started super horrible for a couple months and it was like the e-commerce explosion to end all explosions. And then 2021 we had inventory issues and other things. So crazy growth. And then 2022 is kind of the coming back to earth in some areas and inflation and margins being crushed and it's just been an interesting time, but still a great time to be in e-commerce. But I think it's also time to look at how do we strengthen the brand and how do we add profitability and how do we increase lifetime value and all those things, which you guys can certainly help in that conversation. So Travis, really appreciate it man. Thanks for your time. This was super interesting and I enjoyed it.

Travis:

Awesome. Thanks Brett.

Brett:

Fantastic. And as always, thank you for tuning in and hey, we'd like to hear from you. What would you like to hear more of? What would you like us to dive into on future episodes? Do connect with us on the socials and with that until next time, thank you for listening.

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Cyber 5 2022 is in the books! 

In this episode, I’m joined by two OMG Commerce veterans to unpack the juicy tidbits and key takeaways from BFCM. 

Bill Cover is a senior Google Strategist with 6 years of experience at OMG and over a decade of experience in eComm. Amber Norell is the Amazon Director at OMG. For 8 years, she has helped large brands with scaling on Amazon in the most competitive niches!

This year’s data was both fascinating and surprising. Some speculated that high inflation and economic concerns could squash the holiday sales rush and turn Cyber 5 into a downer. However, the data tells a VERY different story. 

Here’s some of what we covered:

• How did Cyber 5 2022 compare to last year? 
• How did BF compare to CM? When we looked at Amazon sales versus DTC sales, the answer was different. 
• Did Prime Early Access - Amazon’s sale in October - impact Cyber 5 or holiday sales in general?
• What was the level of discounting this year vs. last year?
• How did ad costs change during Cyber 5?

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Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG commerce. And today is not just any old episode, this is a special edition, special Black Friday, cyber Monday holiday edition where we're recapping how the cyber five, if you will, or Turkey five or Black Friday, cyber Monday, how that shook out this year compared to years past. And I have some amazing guests, some very special guests that I know you'll be excited to hear from. The first is Bill Cover. He's a senior Google strategist here at omg. He's been with us for six, yeah, six, got it. Six years. I'm having trouble with my, I was trying to see the mirroring on my, yeah, so six years he's been with omg, but he is been in the advertising community and e-commerce community for what, an additional decade or something like that Bill. Yeah, give or take 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. So really excited to have Bill here. So Bill's going to be sharing perspective on all things Google and all things DTC, so basically non-Amazon. And then also delighted to have with us our Amazon director, the world famous Amber Norell. Amber how's it going?

Amber:

Good, Brett. Super excited to be here today.

Brett:

Now a little caveat, you guys hear my voice a lot and you may be like, you don't sound normal. And that's because I'm not got hit pretty hard with the flu. I, I'm feeling better ish, but my voice is just a mess. But holiday will not wait it, it's peak season, we gotta talk about it. So we can't keep delaying this. But I'll also say Amber has been on the weather too, so if we say something silly, if we say something that doesn't make sense, I'm going to totally play the sick card and blame this on the flu if I say something that's incorrect or incoherent. So hopefully we'll avoid both of those, but just a little caveat there. Alright let's dive in guys. So I'll look at this from both perspectives, Amazon perspective, and then also the off Amazon perspective. Start with you, bill. What are some of the key takeaways? How did this Cyber five or Black Friday, cyber Monday compare to last year? And I wanna give this caveat every year for the last several years has been weird. We had the covid year, then we had supply chain issues last year. All the goods were stuck sitting outside the port of Long Beach port this year we're got inflation and all kinds of craziness. So it's like three not normal years stacked up back to back back. But what are you seeing from a comparison standpoint this year versus last?

Bill:

Yeah, you bet. And I think if anything, you could make the case that this year should have been the year to normalize because the last couple years were very quarantine heavy and supply chain issues like you mentioned. But I think going into it, a lot of analysts were thinking this may not be as exciting as the years before, but the news is out this Black Friday, cyber Monday was better than last year from a monetary standpoint and sales standpoint. So sales are up, I'm sure we've all seen the stats that Black Friday sales were up 9 billion in the US popular stat that's out there on the internet. We are also seeing the same when we

Brett:

Look, they're up to 9 billion though, not up 9 billion. Is that

Bill:

Right? Yeah, my bad. Thank you for correcting me there. And we are seeing the same with our own data that when you assess all of our clients as a whole or a sample set of specific clients, or even anecdotally talking to various specialists on our team everyone did very well. Not everyone that would be a blanket statement, but the majority of businesses did very well. This Black Friday compared to 2021,

Brett:

It was essentially across the board, very few exceptions where someone was down this year versus last year. We did have a few that I saw that were down this year versus last year, but they were typically clients that were outta stock. So even though last year was the big supply chain nightmare, sometimes stuff happens this year too, where there were a few clients where some key skews were outta stock. And so that impacted sales.

Bill:

And I don't think anyone who did not do better than last year was expecting to do better than last year. You have to work for it. And I think retailers are savvy enough to understand that now you have to give an offer that's compelling to consumers and meet them where we're at because they're looking for a deal this time of year. And I think that retailers understand that and the ones that provided an offer where there is perceived value, they won out.

Brett:

And what's interesting, we got the Salesforce numbers in front of me, so I'm just going to mention these. So according to Salesforce, black Friday was a 15 billion day, so that was a record up 12% year over year. Cyber Monday was a 12.2 billion day, day up 8% year over year. And everybody's numbers are a little bit different. We looked at some numbers from Adobe, which is different dataset, different clients they're pulling numbers from. And Cyber Monday was actually a little bit bigger than Black Friday according to that. But regardless, record breaking days, record breaking holiday pretty substantial year over year growth for sure. Amber, what about on the Amazon side? What did you see this year compared to last year?

Amber:

Yeah, so I think the main thing that stood out was that there was a less notable lift between Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. So you obviously will see a lift on Black Friday, but we would see an extreme lift on Cyber Monday. That did not happen this year. It was more level and even keel. Also looking year over year to bill's point, we were expecting to see more normalization we're in a recession and instead we saw a pretty significant increase over the daily average from the week prior, which was not something that we were expecting.

Brett:

So what kind of lift, comparing those weeks, the week over week lift, what kind of lift were we seeing?

Amber:

So taking a look at 2021, the daily average for that week prior we saw about a 37% increase during the four days of Black Friday through Cyber Monday weekend. This year we saw an 87% lift.

Brett:

Wow, interesting. And one thing, and we were kind of talking about this earlier, but one theory there is that last year there weren't a ton of discounts because retailers had limited inventory. So they're like, Hey, this is all we got. We're not discounting it. Also, people understood, hey, if you want to get this buy Christmas or by the holidays, you gotta order now. So people started shopping earlier and they were less discount sensitive, but this year more inventory, less concerned about getting it and time for the holidays. And so people waiting back to the traditional, the traditional shopping approach of let's wait for a Black Friday, cyber Monday, or at least the Turkey five of Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday and see what kind of deals we can find. And we definitely saw that huge year over year lift.

Amber:

Absolutely. Yeah. And I would say a lot of the clients that we work with, they've even adopted that shift. Even ones that were vehemently opposed to running any sort of discount, they are finally understanding that we need to have a meeting of the minds with the customer and they're willing to do that one-off promotion, which has been just awesome.

Brett:

Yeah, I mean customers expect it. They kinda frown upon a business that doesn't do any discount over Black Friday, cyber Monday. It's kinda like, what? What's wrong here? So yeah, what did we see? Did we see a lot of people discounting for the first time in terms of our client set for Black Friday, cyber Monday, and any other insights on the impact of promotions?

Amber:

Yeah, so I would say there was a definite increase in our clients who are running promos. We've always encouraged it during this time of year because it is something that's expected overall conversion rates, cost for advertising, the performance is much lower than if you're running a promotion. So that was definitely something that we saw some of our clients that just did not have the margin or had very strong map policies that they weren't able to discount at all saw an increase in C P C and ad performance, not going as strongly as if they were run running promotions.

Brett:

Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. Cool. Yeah, and so I think you got a stat on with promotions versus without promotions. What kind of an increase did we see there?

Amber:

I believe we saw 170% increase with promos on Cyber Monday versus an 82% increase without promos on Cyber Monday.

Brett:

So basically you're taking your increase in cutting it in half if you didn't provide a discount of some kind. It is interesting though, you will probably see a lift even without a discount because people are just shopping and their wallets are out and they're ready to buy, but probably cut your growth potential in half without having those discounts. Yeah, super, super interesting. What about surprises for the holidays so far, or for the Black Friday summer Monday bill, and we'll start with you on the, I think you already mentioned a few things, but what were you surprised to see this year? Yeah, maybe you weren't expecting.

Bill:

Sure. So CPMs were much, much higher this year. When you look at CPMs just in our client base CPMs, were up 50%. So going from say $10 in 20, 21 to $15 in 2022, we always expect CPMs and CPCs to rise a little bit, but that's quite a jump. Also on that note, and this is all just this next part is just anecdotal, I don't have global numbers, but Facebook CPMs were much higher. The spike was much higher than Google Ads CPM spike, so Facebook was super expensive this year during cyber week,

Brett:

Which we always expect that. So CPM is a supply and demand kind of game. So the platforms are going to raise the cost of ads based on how many people are entering the auction, how many people are bidding, things like that. I think those numbers you share, were kind of across all Google channels. So those numbers may not line up for you as you're looking at your YouTube costs or Facebook costs or whatever. Everybody's, as you're kind of aggregating across all Google channels, that's where I see those numbers, but still about a 50% increase year over year. That's significant. So that means conversion rate's gotta go up significantly. That means AOVs gotta go up significantly to be able to weather or absorb that increase in CPMs. And what do we see on, in terms of CPCs, how much should our cost per click

Bill:

Go up there? Yeah, so CPCs, and we're talking probably a hundred ish clients, so this is pretty good data. CPCs went up 15%, nice year over years.

Brett:

Yeah, we're talking millions in spend. So this is not a small data set. So okay, so CPCs went up 15%. That's a little more what we're used to that. That's not unusual for a holiday lift to be in about that 15 to 20, 25%, but the CPM lift, that was super interesting for sure. Great. Other surprises, bill?

Bill:

Yeah, when I asked the team for which channels were performing best, of course branded ads performance Max that's not a huge surprise. Performance Max was definitely part of the conversation for which channels perform best. One channel that I personally really like and that a lot of people were seeing very efficient and positive results from was Discovery. So Discovery ads, both top of funnel and remarketing were performing on par better than Par during cyber week.

Brett:

Can you explain Discovery? Yeah, you bet. Where those ads show up.

Bill:

Yeah, so Discovery Ads on an Android phone, when you swipe to go search Google, it's below your Google search page and it's basically a feed, right? So Facebook is a feed style format. So this is Google's feed style format where it recommends different articles, news articles, and there's some ads mixed in there and things that you are interested in. So for me, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Kansas City Chiefs and maybe something about Tesla or something like that. And then intermixed in that is Ad Space. So the ads are also things that I am that Google perceives that I'm interested in because of how the targeting works and that sort of thing. And Discovery ads are a very media format, so you get to do a very big image, you get to do some rich copy and click through to a nice landing page. So we've seen a lot of good results from Discovery, but a lot of specialists were leaning into that during cyber week.

Brett:

And then some other placements that also can show up in the YouTube app as an image, it can show up in Gmail, it can show up across the Google Display Network. Really just a great versatile, useful ad unit. So Discovery Ads coming up big this year. That's awesome. What about you, Amber? What were some of the surprises we saw on the Amazon side this year?

Amber:

Yeah, so one of the biggest surprises we saw this year was reporting going down in the campaign manager on Black Friday, cyber Monday weekend. So Saturday and Sunday having a lot of struggles with sales coming through and spend coming through. It was really difficult to gauge what performance actually was. Obviously you're running out of budget, so you want to increase, but our team was very conservative and cautious with that knowing that there was a reporting error in the system. But I know that was a huge pain point for sellers this year, and a lot of them just abysmal results on Saturday and Sunday,

Brett:

Which is just terrible. It's like, Hey, this is only the busiest weekend of the year, have you fly blind for a little while? Does that sound good? Does that sound helpful? So what do you increase? What do you change when you don't really have accurate numbers? So that was a curve ball for sure. What other surprises did we see?

Amber:

Another big one that popped up this year was the first year that Amazon kicked off their event on Thanksgiving. So they had promotions running all during Thanksgiving. A lot of deals that day, prime Exclusive started that day and their language in their coupon setup actually said it would start on Black Friday. Our team caught that and checked out the date, saw that it started on 1123, and were able to proactively adjust everything, make sure there was no coupon stacking or anything like that. But from the consumer standpoint, something that I noticed was there were thousands of sellers with just 70, 80% off discounts where they had coupons, they had lightning deals running, they had prime exclusive discounts. So definitely a curve ball that came up this year.

Brett:

Super interesting. Bill, any other, I realize I may cut short. Any other surprises this year versus last year? No. Or what were some of the other big takeaways? I know you did something really cool. You interviewed all of our top Google ad specialists, so they're the ones in the accounts managing all the details and hey, we get super excited. We treat this weekend, it's a Super Bowl, it's our Super Bowl for e-commerce agencies. It's just a lot of fun. We're all online, we're all chatting throughout the weekend keeping tabs on things. But what was some of the feedback that our specialists gave some of their key takeaways?

Bill:

Yeah, you bet. So one of the questions that I asked our lead specialists this year was what's a tool or a feature or something that everyone should adopt? And some of the most popular answers included rules for adjusting budgets and scheduling ads, search add extensions using a combination of countdown extensions countdown for sale launch, and countdown for last chance to get a deal using sitelink extensions. Of course, using promo extensions. They also recommend using tools to watch your numbers during the day. So for us internally here, we get a tool from Google that allows us to monitor every hour how spend is doing compared to budgets, so forth. But if you don't have that, then using something like Triple Whale or North Beam, like say if you have the North Beam hourly updates, then you can watch your spend as it goes throughout the day and make sure that your budgets are lifted so that way you're capturing all of your branded traffic and all of your profitable traffic. You can also watch your sales of course through that and just mapping out all of your creative schedules, your promo schedules, because some retailers might have varying promos throughout the days or weeks. And so mapping that out, making sure you're ready.

Another thing I should have said, this was one surprise, the Black Friday, cyber Monday specific text in ads, it had a little more trouble this year serving right out of the gates.

Brett:

Interesting.

Bill:

And so what we learned, and we learned this with early promotions, so our clients who had promotions in early November allowed us to kind of see what was going on. If we were to stop Evergreen ads cold and launch save Black Friday or some sort of promo ad cold, it had a lot of trouble building that momentum. So what we learned early in November was to overlap those ads and to run Evergreen for say, half a day, a few hours a day, whatever as your Black Friday or Cyber Monday ad ads are ramping up and Y you're not losing out on that messaging because with your Evergreen ads, you can still put site links and promo extensions under those Evergreen ads. So users are still getting that promo messaging with an Evergreen ad is just through a site link.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. I love all those tips and tools to use there. And I think that's really what it comes down to is one planning, really mapping it out and planning, and then two, using as many tools as you can, or not as many, you don't wanna overload but the right tools to really make sure, is this working? Can we make adjustments? Do we need to make adjustments now, having the right tools in place to really maximize the weekend because, and I love the hourly reports because one hour over the Black Friday, cyber Monday weekend is the same thing as whole day other times of the year or half a day or something like that. And so really good tips, Phil, really good insights. I appreciate that. Let's switch back to Amazon. Let's talk about prime early access. So we had our first ever primarily access deal in October. A lot of people wondered, Hey, is that going to pull forward a bunch of holiday shopping? How is this going to go? How is this going to impact Black Friday, cyber Monday? And a bit of a spoiler, you already saw that Black Friday, summer Monday's been great. So primarily Access did not torpedo Black Friday, cyber Monday. But can you tell Amber, did it have any meaningful shift in holiday shopping? What's your take on how primarily access impacted the holidays?

Amber:

So I don't know if I can definitively say that the primarily access sale is the key contributor to the change in shopping behavior where we saw that increased lift, but I do think it played a role. I also think it set up a lot of our clients for better success with organic traffic. They got that initial boost of sales and then maintained that ranking maintained bestseller badges leading into Black Friday, cyber Monday, which was amazing. I can also say, and I'm literally going to knock on wood here, this was the smoothest year we have ever seen in terms of operational performance listing suspensions, takedowns. Normally I am pulling my hair out on Black Friday, cyber Monday trying to get listings reinstated because Amazon's team is looking at things so closely. And it just seems like that kind of happened during the prime early access sale where they were taking a closer look at the catalog and pulling those listings at that point. So we were able to combat that early and things were just really, really smooth sailing from that perspective.

Brett:

That is amazing. And it kind of feels like merchants should catch a break right after three years of <laugh>, pure madness everywhere. It makes sense. Maybe we get a little bit of Slack this holiday season. So yeah, super, super interesting. Bill, did you guys notice anything on the Google side, on the D two C side? Did we notice anything? Prime access, primarily access related? Do you notice anything around that time period? Any trickle down from that or any other impacts that you noticed? And it's okay if not

Bill:

Based on memory. I think we did get a little bit of an organic or natural lift during primarily access. I don't have the numbers in front of me. I came prepared for if you were to ask if primarily Access pulled sales forward this year and created a lackluster Black Friday Cyber Monday. And I'd have to say no, right? The data speaks for itself, it didn't, so

Brett:

Totally. Yeah, and I think that's been the trend has been, or what merchants want to have happen is, Hey, let's get shopping to start earlier and earlier. Let's start in November. Whatever helps the merchants have a more predictable holiday season. But it just kind of appears like unless there's this massive global supply chain issue where everyone's talking about, Hey, you better order early or else, then people are probably going to stick around and just wait for the biggest discounts, which they know are going to be a Black Fridays ever Monday. So yeah, I would totally agree with that. Same sentiment, bill. I know Bill, you already answered the advertising cost question and it definitely went up this year on the Google side. What about for Amazon, Amber? How much did ad cost go up this year?

Amber:

So the performance this year on advertising costs was pretty similar to 2021. Overall. We saw an improved roaz on Black Friday. It kind of stabilized during Saturday, Sunday, and then the best return was on Cyber Monday. So nothing crazy there. C P C was relatively stable, but as I mentioned earlier, that was a little bit higher on products that weren't running any sort of promo.

Brett:

Okay. So the A ad cost went up more if they were not running a promo?

Amber:

Exactly.

Brett:

Interesting. And why do you think that is?

Amber:

I think you just have to get so competitive and the conversion rate drops so significantly if you're not running a promo at that time that you just burn through spend.

Brett:

Yeah. And does Amazon reward for higher click through rate like Google does? So having a discount or promo, does that impact your ad cost at all? On the Amazon side?

Amber:

It'll impact ad placement, it'll impact, got it. Organic ranking, all that good stuff.

Brett:

Got it, got it. Okay, cool, cool. Awesome. Well, I know Bill, you already touched on this a little bit, but guys, what takeaways, right? So it's been a super interesting holiday shopping season so far. We'll see how it closes out. But any takeaways, any pieces of advice for you, bill, just that you haven't already mentioned but any takeaways that we can share with our listeners?

Bill:

Yeah, you bet. So I actually asked all of our specialists team this question, what was the one specific thing that all e-commerce brands should do to increase success during Black Friday Cyber Monday? I got a variety of answers. Things like aim for brand lift, use search at extensions, make the sale simple. One of my favorite answers was one of our lead strategists or senior strategist, Greg Macock, he said, put out your best offer of the year. And that doesn't necessarily mean your biggest discount of the year, but your most compelling offer and your most valuable offer. And I think that's good advice.

Brett:

That's what people expect. I think shoppers are more savvy than ever. We can sniff out if it's not a real offer if you've just been kind of manipulating the numbers to make it feel like a big offer. We we're pretty good sniffing that out as consumers, so that's awesome. Really good stuff. Bill what about you, Amber? Takeaways, tips for next year and beyond?

Amber:

Yeah, and I think this even applies to Prime Day this year. We just saw such great success with D S P so it does obviously take a specific type of account and client and goals, but if you're kind of at a ceiling and you wanna kind of push there and maximize your retargeting efforts, we saw an average 12 x return on Black Friday Wow. Across D S P clients. So if you're not running D S P for Prime day, get on it.

Brett:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Awesome, all guys. Very good. Any closing? Dang it. Lemme try that again. Any closing thoughts or final words of wisdom?

Bill:

Actually, one, in terms of methodology and getting the most out of cyber week when it comes to the weeks leading into cyber weeks. So we're talking about going all the way back to, say the beginning of October. What we found we had have a client that saw a lot of success with Performance Max and just in their account in general. And what that team did was they started preparing in early October and ramping up momentum on Performance. Max and I haven't spoken enough about Performance Max. I think that's something that I need to cover a little better here before we go. With Performance Max this year, we found that a higher spend on or a higher budget limit on Performance Max allowed Performance Max placements to be higher quality. It allowed the campaign to go out there and find higher quality placements along all of Google properties and so forth. And so we also found a way to eliminate some of the lower quality placements early on. And so ramping up that budget going into Cyber Week allowed us to get good momentum. It brought in some really rich top of funnel cold traffic, and then we flip that upside down and we prioritized remarketing during cyber week. So we deprioritize top of funnel. We don't turn it off, but we deprioritize it and we prioritize remarketing because those lists are primed and they're ready to go. And we saw very good results where we followed that methodology.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. I'm so glad you pointed out Performance Max because it is rocking for us right now and we're talking about millions in spend. I think over the last couple months we spent about 5 million on performance Max alone. And so we're seeing good results with a amount of data. So if it's not working for you, you should reach out to omg. We'd love to chat with you. And also, quick plug, I completed a Performance Max Blueprint with Smart Marketer, Ezra and the gang over there. So we'll link to that in the show notes. Check that out if you want more training on Performance Max. Awesome. Thank you, bill. Amber, any closing words of wisdom?

Amber:

Yeah, I mean, I feel like every time I've been on one of your podcasts, Brett, I've said it, but double check your promos. Like I said, I saw a lot of coupon stacking this year, which was insane. And then Amazon has been making a ton of changes to their ui, to their interface, adding new dashboards, betas be cautious, going into to peaks with bid automation and budgets. That's not something we wanted to roll out right before Black Friday, cyber Monday, and we didn't with the reporting going down. So just always be super cautious within your account.

Brett:

I love it. Bill. Amber, you guys are the best. Thank you so much for coming on. Super fun. Thank you. Awesome. And hey, if you're listening and you're like, dang, wish I had someone like Bill run my Google Ads account, or holy cow, if I just had someone like Amber running my Amazon efforts, how much more would my business grow? Well, good news, dear your listener. You can reach out to OMG Commerce. So shameless plug we are accepting new clients right now and Bill and Amber are two of the best. But we've got a team loaded with really smart people and we'll love to help you on the Google, Google side, email side, Amazon side, wherever you need help there. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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Allie Bloyd is a podcast host, consultant, Facebook Ad pro, and marketing juggernaut!

In this episode, Allie and I talk about several elements many eCommerce brands overlook or simply under-leverage.

To use a golf analogy, many eComm brands are focused on impressive drives when they also need to consider their short game. You know the saying, "Drive for show, putt for dough."

That’s where offers, audience building, and list nurturing come into play. Here’s just a few nuggets you'll learn:

• How to completely change the math on your cold traffic by creating irresistible offers that don't cheapen your brand.
• How to utilize tripwires and micro offers as an eComm brand.
• Audience building and how it can lower ad costs (especially during peak seasons like a holiday).
• The best book written on remarketing and loyalty (hint: you’ve probably read it to your kids before).

‍

Mentioned In This Episode:

Allie Bloyd

• LinkedIn
• Website

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Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today I have a treat for you. I have a real expert, someone who is engaging and dynamic and smart. She speaks at events, she's got a podcast, she's written books. She's all over the place. And what's interesting and what I love about my guest today, Ali Boyd, is that she's not just the typical e-commerce guru, right? She works with agency owners and marketers and local businesses. And so she's gonna have a fresh perspective, a unique outlook on some really important topics that each of us need to master, or that each of us need to have someone on our team who has mastered. And so we're gonna talk about audience building and content creation. We're gonna talk about list building. We're gonna talk about building great offers and things you don't know about offers.

And this is gonna be a bit of a smorgasboard of marketing goodness that you can take and apply to your business. So before I welcome her on, I'm gonna give a brief bio. Now Allen and I met just recently, we're in San Diego at tnc, and I was talking to Michael Stelzner shout out to Michael Stelzner. What's up, man? Social media examiner, social media marketing world. And so Michael and I are chatting, and then Allie comes up and Michael said, Hey, do you know Allie? And I said, I don't know Allie, but I've seen Allie speak and I've seen her. She's all over the socials. And so we met there, hit it off. We're like, Hey, let's do some podcasts. And so here we are. But Ally is the founder of Valley Boy Media, a marketing agency and consultancy working with locally based businesses, marketing agencies marketers and small businesses. Shelves are clients and students, increased revenue by leveraging paid ads, content marketing, effective sales processes, and automated systems that make you money. She's the host of the Marketing Inc podcast. Spoiler alert, I am on an episode there. So check that out. She's a Facebook and Instagram ad expert, seven figure entrepreneur, ClickFunnels, two Comma Club. Shout out to Russell Brunson. And she's been featured in Forbes, social Media Examiner, digital Marketer, smart Marketer, and more. That's quite a bio alley. Welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on. And how's it going?

Allie:

Thank you so much for having me. Yes, what an introduction. Excited to be here. Like you said, I do not specialize in working with e-commerce companies, but truly what I try and focus on are things that apply to all businesses and that every business out there really needs to know. The question is, how do you implement that for the specific type of business that you have? And I definitely have seen some of these concepts not necessarily be taken advantage of with e-commerce brands specifically. So excited to dive into those with you today.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. And I do enjoy occasionally bringing on a real expert, a real pro to the show who eCommerce. eCommerce is not their only game. And that's where you live. You plan a lot of different spaces, but good marketing, good marketing principles apply to different businesses. And I think sometimes a great breakthrough or an unlock that you may have in your business often comes from either outside your business or from just taking a unique look or unique angle at things. And so excited to dive in. Let's just dive right in and talk about offers. So what is it, cuz you'd mentioned to me like, Hey, I don't think e-commerce brands are great at creating good offers or even creating offers at all. Yeah. So what advice would you give to the e-com brand out there about creating good offers?

Allie:

So I think probably the biggest misconception that I see across the board with the different types of businesses that I work with, which like you said, small business owners. I do work with some e-commerce businesses marketers, agencies, coaches, consultants. I kind of see a lot of different industries out there, up close and personal. And I have found pretty consistently that offers are one of the most misunderstood or not understood at all concepts in marketing. Yet it is the single most important thing in my opinion, because without a good offer, it doesn't matter how great your ads are, if people don't want what you're selling, if you're not giving them a reason to be interested or to be interested right now, they're not gonna pay attention. And so where a lot of people really fall flat is they spend all this time and energy focusing on the platforms and the technical and the creative and the copy and the funnel, but they don't spend any time on the offer.

And so when things aren't working out, they continue to try and tweak these things that maybe we're actually fine to begin with if they just had a better offer. And so it's this vicious cycle. So at the end of the day, an offer is not your product and service, it's how it's packaged, how it's presented, how it is going to engage that end potential consumer and say, Hey, this is something you should take advantage of now this is not something you should sit and wait on. And I think that's even more important for eCommerce businesses than for most local or small businesses or service based businesses. Because in general, eCommerce companies at least believe they have a shorter buying cycle where somebody's gonna see my ad and maybe I've got seven to 30 days to nurture those people. Whereas I think the mindset is a little bit different in service based businesses where that window of opportunity tends to be larger.

And so you've gotta take advantage of the moment. So I think the biggest issue that I see with e-commerce specifically on offers is they don't focus on gated content or lead magnets. So they're not really focused on building the list. The list. It doesn't matter what kind of business you have, it's one of the most valuable assets that you own because there's only so much you can say to someone in an ad, there's only so much you can share. Maybe it's one product or service that you wanna present on the front end, but maybe you have a whole host of things you could provide to them. Outside of that, they're not gonna get to know those things if they're not on your list. And if you're not actually nurturing that list, which I know we'll probably talk more about as we get into this, but being able to create gated content offers is step number one for just about everyone. And I do think that historically e-commerce businesses feel like this doesn't apply to them as much as a small business. They're like, I don't need leads, I need purchases. Right. Well, and of course that's true for all of us, but a lead can make a purchase. That's the goal.

Brett:

Exactly. Yeah. And so let's unpack this a little bit. So I do think that most eCommerce brands, they focus on headlines, whether it's search or display or now on Facebook, or they focus on the opening of their video ad, whether that's YouTube or social or whatever, and some of the benefits that the product brings. But then the only offer is buy it it now and often buy it a full price, which is not bad. I'm a fan of getting full price whenever you can. But what would be some of your recommendations? And so you talk about gated content, <affirmative>, lead magnets, trip wires, you may not have said trip wires, so that goes with it. But what would some of the offers look like <affirmative>, and why are you structuring these offers that are not just by the product?

Allie:

Yeah, for sure. So your gated content offers or your lead magnets, they serve one purpose. And that is to typically hook somebody that may not be ready to buy or maybe they need more information. It also could be for somebody that's product or problem unaware. If somebody's not aware that they have the problem that your product solves, you will not get them to buy. They have no use for it, at least in their mind. So using a good gated content offer can hook somebody who has the need. They have the problem, they have the interest in this piece of content, you can get them in on the backend and then sell the solution to that problem. So it could be a video tutorial. It again, depends on what you sell, but let's say that you sell handheld massagers. Okay, <affirmative> selling this product, but your product is solving a problem, which is helping people with pain.

So if I'm somebody with pain, what type of information would be relevant to me? Well, it could be a five ways to reduce your pain naturally type of video or PDF or something like that. You're selling a natural pain relief product. I get somebody that has the problem, I get them on my list. I could even send them directly to that product in the funnel itself. I don't have to wait until they're on the list. I just hook 'em on the front, then I present the solution. So that is somebody who's typically gonna be more problem unaware or just not quite there yet in terms of being willing to buy. So you mentioned trip wires. So trip wires are a great example of a loss leader. A loss leader is gonna be that first step in the right direction. Something should be useful. It should not be the hole enchilada though.

So for example, if I'm this massager company, maybe I have a little mini massager, or maybe I have a low cost heating pad or something like that to where it's not my core product that I wanna sell, but it does still solve the problem in some way, but it doesn't give them everything they're ever gonna need. So what I could do is I could have an offer that is a very aggressively priced first step type of product. So you're right, you shouldn't feel like a discount on your core product is the only type of offer. Nobody wants to discount their core products and services. And that's understandable. But you don't have to, you know, can discount something that is not your core product and service. So find a product that you've got really good margins on. That's one option to where you can afford to go really aggressive on the price or something that historically is a first step purchase for your buyers.

What's that thing that gets them in the door and then you sell them more on the back end? Sometimes it might actually be just your core product. Maybe you only have one core product. In that case it could be kind of a teaser or a taste test. So for example, there is a company called Relief Factor that is a natural pain. It's like a vitamin pain reduction type of brand. They have a 21 day quick start kit. Okay, that's their loss leader essentially. So it's a very aggressively priced three week pack because they have shown that three weeks is what it takes for the average person to start feeling the results and the relief, which that's a really important component. You wanna make sure you can actually provide some sort of benefit inside of that window or that product that you're offering so that they'll want more.

But they price this at like 1995. Their month of vitamins though is almost $90. So it's definitely a discount, but it's only for that first month. And it's not a whole month, it's only three weeks. So it's a very specifically packaged offer. They know that people in kind of the pain relief space tend to be skeptical because they probably tried a bunch of things. Maybe they haven't really found relief from anything. And so if they were to just say, buy my subscription based $90 per month vitamin pack, probably gonna be some crickets there, it's just not that exciting. And it's also kind of asking a lot before you have shown any result for that person. So their 19 95, 3 week quick start allows someone to try this product with very little risk. It gives them a window of time with that product that they can see results and then they get you on the monthly recurring subscription. I myself got suckered into this offer. I wouldn't call it suckered in because it's a great product.

Had I not tried it and had I not gotten results from it, I would never have spent $90 a month on this pain relief vitamin. But I have, and I've referred other people to it along the way and now I'm telling you about it. Cause I think it's a great offer. So that's a good example of a product based loss leader. And yes, you are discounting your core product, but if you believe that your product is good and you wanna get it into the hands of people who need it, that can be a great solution. Especially because that specific company, they don't make their money on the first purchase, they make it on the recurring sale. So that's the question you have to ask yourself, are you a one and done type of purchase? If so, that's not gonna be your best type of offer, but are you recurring revenue business? And if you are, that could be a good offer for you there.

Brett:

I love it. I wanna add a couple things to that cause I love that example and I've got a few others that kind of tie into it. So I think that there's a distinct advantage if you sell a consumable, like the pain relief or any kinda supplements, food based things, makeup, that's consumable great client that we worked with for years now live bearded, shout out to the boys Macon Spencer at Live Bearded. But they have a great irresistible offer that's just crushing it right now. It's their 24 top 24. I always wanna say flavors, but it's actually sense. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, not flavors, don't eat your beard products, this is sense. But 24 top cents shipped to you in little sample thingy plus you get a $10 gift card and it's only 10 bucks. Wow. So it's like, hey, you can just try our best stuff, just little samples.

And you get a $10 gift card <affirmative>. And so they're getting a huge take rate, high percentage of conversions there. And then once people get that, now they have an email sequence and follow up sequence to get them to go and spend that $10 they just got in the gift card and to buy more of that, get on subscriptions and things. So yep, I love that. And it is not the core product because you're not just saying, here's my beard product, I'm giving you 50% off. Yep. Here's some samples, try it <affirmative>, just try it before you commit. And then when you go to buy it, you're gonna pay the full price. And I would argue that the supplement is the same. It's not a full, it is three week and it's like the quick start kit. So it's getting the kit for discounted rate. So I love that.

I also heard a long time ago, I think it was made from Jay brand back in the day, that if you sell a service, and this could be in your world, it could be coaching or information, or it could be a service plumber or whatever if you sell a service and you wanna do a freebie or a giveaway giveaway product. But if you are in a product business, then you wanna do a freebie or some kind of deal, give away information or a service because you don't wanna discount or cheapen your core thing. So if I'm selling that massager, by the way, I love the percussive therapy devices like Thera Gun, I don't know, thera Gun on some other stuff. But I could those things. Do you own one of those devices? Is that the kind of handheld massage you're talking about

Allie:

Those And then I also, I pretty much own any type of massaging, heating pad, pain relief device out there, honestly.

Brett:

<laugh>. Yeah. So I like the progressive therapy devices. I tweak my back one time on a trip surfing and I say with same with a buddy of mine, I'm a terrible surfer, but I like to do it. And I thought, I was like, man, I'm done. I threw my back out, I'm done. I didn't throw it out, throw it out. But I thought I was done. And he was like, Hey, try this. Let me use this gun. And my wife was using it on my lower back and I surfed the next day. It was crazy. So it wasn't a major injury, but I felt off. But I think you could take something like that and say, and package up different information bundles for athletes and for leg pain, back pain, shoulder pain, <affirmative>, whatever, stress induced things, you know, start packaging up information or offers on hey, here's how to treat this type of pain and oh hey, and then here's how our device does that. So anyway, wanna throw that out there. But I love where we're going here with offers and I think you had a couple more things you were gonna share there.

Allie:

So another type of offer is the product preview offer. This is really where I sometimes see e-commerce businesses getting it, but honestly there's still a lot more room for improvement. So this is if you are presenting that product to somebody who they know they want it, they want that core thing, but you kind of just wanna get 'em to buy now and you want them to get something that's maybe higher in value or to purchase purchase a little bit more. So a great example of a product preview is a bundle. So a bundle offer, it's not discounting anything. Maybe you give them a percentage off of what it would be if they bought those things individually. But part of the beauty of bundles is removing the confusion, removing the choices that somebody has to think about when it comes to buying that product. Because when there are a lot of choices, people oftentimes they won't buy anything cuz they don't know what's right for them.

So for example, you could do a skincare bundle if you sell skincare products and you could do it for the person with dry skin. Maybe you've got one for somebody with oily skin, maybe you have one for somebody with acne. You know, have these different bundles with different products, but they've already been prepackaged for that person. So you say, oh the dry skin skin skincare regimen bundle. And I get it cheaper than I would if I bought them individually cuz I'm buying 'em together. And maybe you throw in something special like a lofa or a rag or something that goes along with that as a nice little thank you. Well I'm spending more, cause I'm not buying one product from you, I'm buying multiple, but I'm feeling like I got a great value and you made the decision really, really easy for me. It could also be something like a buy one, get one, whatever price.

It could be 50% off or it could be something for free. Or you could do a buy three get one free. So it's anything that is an added value on the back end, but they have to buy the core thing that you want them to buy in order to receive that. So that can be great for holiday stuff because we're talking about people who need to buy gifts for a lot of people in their life. So you can incentivize them to buy all those gifts from you. If you want to make holiday shopping easier, let me just get all the gifts that you need right here. I'm gonna give you a price break for doing all your shopping with me, which you should. And I'm gonna give you a discount on shipping because you are getting everything from me as opposed to multiple places. So I worked with this one e-commerce business that did really, really well.

They did natural like body products, bath products, different things like that. And so they created some cool bundle offers on the front end. So things like the new mom box was one of them. These are products that anybody could have used, but it's specific to an avatar. Somebody who needs to relax, they need a little self care. So it also makes it easy to gift those things because if I see something that says the new mom box, I'm like, oh, I know someone who just had a baby. Let me get them the new mom box. I never would've thought of that if I'd just seen these products stand alone. You would not have ever considered that.

Brett:

You wouldn't have put together a little bundle on your own. Right, exactly. And that's what I love about this. The bundle is really about convenience. <affirmative> where, and you talked about it, you're removing the need for someone to think. And I think people <affirmative> expect bundles to be reduced price and that doesn't cheapen the brand, right? Because we all know book discounts, you get book discounts on tickets or other things like book discounts just apply. So I think you can discount a bundle and people are not worried about it, doesn't cheapen the brand, but yet love this advice. So the new mom box Love it. Yeah.

Allie:

And then they also had a coworker box again, a coworker box. What is that? It's just products to show a coworker that you care, but it makes you want to give that gift that you would not have given otherwise necessarily. And so then on top of that, for their holiday offer, they had a buy three get one free. And this is a higher dollar bundle already. So they could be anywhere from 60 to I think $90. So you were buying a bundle that was already an offer in and of itself, but then if you bought three of those bundles, you're an even more valuable customer to them. But then you were going to be able to get that fourth one free either for somebody else as a gift or for yourself if you wanted to have that little extra holiday gift for just you.

Brett:

I love this so much. And is, I like that we're talking about offers here because a lot of people stop short of getting the deal closed. It's kinda like to use a quick foot football knowledge. Are you a football fan alley? What's your sport of choice?

Allie:

Golf. <laugh> golf. Got

Brett:

It. Yeah. Okay, so this, let's make a golf analogy. So I was about to make a football analogy, but let's make a golf analogy. So I used to play golf in high school. I was on the golf team mainly because the golf coach liked me and mainly because I could crush the golf ball. I could, but my short game was terrible. A lot of

Allie:

Fun

Brett:

<laugh>, like this fun part, you go to the driving range, you try to Happy Gilmore it for those that are too young, actually most people listen this for sure know who Happy Gilmore is. But anyway, doesn't matter if you get on the green in two and then you for put right, which is, I've done that before. So it's like a lot of times we focus on the fun stuff like headlines and audiences and some of these things and those are kind of fun. But the offer, that's what sinks the putt. That's what gets it in the hole. That's what allows you to cross the goal line, to use the football analogy. But a lot of times we stop short, we stop short of that. So getting the offer can really be an unlock a game changer because I love, I'm a traffic guy, so I love Top Funnel YouTube Performance Max, Google ads, Amazon ads. When you have the right offer, the right offer, that can increase conversion rates, it can change the game. It changes the math on your ads. I know you're a big Facebook person. Absolutely. So if you got the right offer, you can really scale your marketing efforts. If you have a math offer, you're gonna be stuck. You're gonna be stuck at a certain spin level. So love that we're doing that. Any final thoughts on, I know we could talk offers all day, but any final thoughts there? Otherwise we'll move on to the next topic.

Allie:

Yeah, just one final little golf analogy. They say you drive for show and you put for dough. It's put for dough. Same concept. Yeah. This is where the real money is made if you can get it right. So great analogy. So

Brett:

I'm just curious if you and I went to Top Golf, who's winning the drive contest, wondering if you might beat me. You seem <laugh>.

Allie:

I, I've got some good drives, but I'll say my short game is pretty strong most of the time. I'm pregnant right now.

Brett:

Definitely be to me if

Allie:

I'm pregnant right now.

Brett:

I've got real golf,

Allie:

I've got this little obstacle in my way when I try and golf right now. So it's a challenge. But yeah, in general I'm pretty good at driving, but my short game is where I try and improve the most.

Brett:

And for those that can't see, cuz you're mainly, obviously you're listening, you can't see, but you, you're pregnant right now. Yeah. And when do you do?

Allie:

January the fifth. So coming right up.

Brett:

So depending on when this comes out, it can be like anytime. Okay, cool. Absolutely. Awesome. Yep, yep. So let's talk a little bit about audience building. Cause it's something you're great at, but I think a lot of eCommerce brands are not. So what are some of your top audience building tips and why is it important?

Allie:

Yeah, I think every business needs to focus on audience building and it does also tend to get pushed on the back burner. Everyone wants to go straight to cold traffic. They want to exist and rely on cold traffic. And while it's true, if you can crack cold traffic, you have endless opportunities <affirmative>. But that is not necessarily going to be the highest value customer, the best and most loyal long term customer. So we find that with the warm audiences, your cost per conversion, your cost per acquisition go down significantly. Your customer acquisition costs are just way better. In general, your conversion rate to that backend sale or that core offer that you wanna sell are much, much better. So this can kind of be your bread and butter. Let's say times are tough for a month or so and you need to cut your ad spin down.

Well, you can cut out your cold traffic and you can rely on your warm traffic if you've got it and still do extremely well. So it's just a more efficient way to spend your budget. But again, most people, they never focus on it. Even those who might have some good audience building elements going on, they never take advantage of it. They're not really running traffic to their warm audience consistently. And this is where you can build a relationship with people online as if they know you. And I don't care if you're a product based business or a service based business. People buy from brands that they like and from leaders that they like. And so you want to do this. So video always the best, easiest way to go because it's cheaper. The platforms, they like video, they know that their consumers like video, and so they will allow video to get out there easier in terms of cost per thousand.

You're just always gonna crush it with video. The problem is most people, if they're just going for a video views type of optimization, you're not really gonna see the conversions there. And that's okay. It's not the point of those ads. So you have to know there are certain ads that are there for audience building. There are certain ads that are there for conversions, but even a couple of dollars a day on your audience building video ads is gonna go a long way in reducing your customer acquisition costs when it comes to those offer focused ads. So videos that again tie into that problem that your end consumer has, taking them from problem unaware to problem aware, from problem aware to solution aware solution aware to your solution aware, and then hitting them with that amazing offer. So everybody's gonna be at kind of a different stage of their levels of awareness, but you kind of wanna have something out there for everyone.

The people who are not yet aware, let's take the Thera gun for example. Maybe there are people that they just don't really know that there are people who live without pain. Maybe they just, they know they have a problem. I think that's a given. Most of those people are gonna be problem aware, but maybe they don't know that there really is any solution that's viable for them. You've gotta start presenting those people with some solution content. The people who are solution focused. So let's say we know that a handheld massager could be a good solution. Well okay, now let's present you with some gun content, the different ways that gun. Exactly. And what types of pain does it help? How does it work? So it could be actual product focused content, but it could just be more of that. Let's go back to what we were talking about with the gated content offers.

It could be more of just that problem solution focused content that's not even specific yet to your product. You can paint yourself as an expert in this space as the go-to brand for content related to these products. So for example, if we wanted to use that business that I mentioned earlier with the natural bath and body products, this could be content focused on harmful chemicals in your makeup and skincare products. So it's not even talking about their products yet. That is a big selling point of their product. So it already is planting the seed in their mind that, hey, wow, I didn't even know there were so many harmful chemicals in some of these products that I've been using. Wow, that's eyeopening. Okay, maybe we drip a little call to action at the end because if somebody wants to learn more, we don't wanna make it hard for them.

But we're starting to already position our product as the best without them even realizing it. But we are also building an audience of people who care about holistic health because at the end of the day, urine consumer for that business is not necessarily just somebody who likes body products. Maybe it could be, but there's so many brands that you could choose from. Their ideal consumer is somebody who wants natural. They do not want these harmful chemicals in there. So if you can hook somebody who has that desire already, whether or not they're looking for body products is irrelevant. They could want body products. And even if they don't want it for themself, they could want it for gift giving to other people. So I just need to identify my avatar through my content and then slowly start introducing them to other solutions, other products that I offer, and then hit them with those retargeting ads if they start to engage more with those pieces of content so that I can make sure that they do not forget about me and really advertise to them till the end of time. It's my motto. Yeah,

Brett:

I love this and I love that you're talking about the different stages of awareness. So we're riffing on the Eugene Schwartz breakthrough advertising five level of awareness, but to kind of stick with the Thera Gun example, cuz it's kind of fun and it's fresh in our minds right now. We actually worked with a good competitor for a while and so we built audiences based on people's search behavior on Google, cuz we have the ability to do that through YouTube and other platforms, <affirmative> or other channels on Google you know, could have people that are searching for things like do percussive therapy devices work? Or what are percussive therapy devices? So they're asking questions that would indicate they've kind of heard about it, but they're like, what is this thing? So I need some education here. So for that, we had this ad that opened with, Hey, have you ever seen devices like this?

And wondered, do they work? And if they actually do work, are they worth 600 bucks or whatever? And then they kinda went into the <inaudible> product. You could then also target people that are saying like Thera Gun versus Hyper Ice, right? <affirmative>. So they're searching for two of the leading brands or gun versus whatever else. So now you're like, okay, they're aware of some of the players, but now they're really evaluating. So it's like, okay, hey, do you really need to pay premium price to get the benefit of these devices or is there another alternative? And then you begin to just think about what are the questions people are asking at the different stages? <affirmative>, I think you create organic content for that and paid content for that. Amplify it and you're so right. People just focus on cold traffic. But if you look at some of the nurturing along the way, that's when things become interesting.

So looking at both organic and paid traffic at different stages of awareness. And then you've got your remarketing that's tied in. And when you think about this, the way you're describing it, it really helps then for when we go through seasons when ad costs are really expensive. So this is coming out as we're approaching actually some lower cost times of advertising of the year. But if you look at say the holidays, that's when ad costs are at their highest. Well, if you've got a good audience building in place, then you can shut off top of funnel for a little bit during peak ad cost seasons if you need to and just focus on that warm audience

Allie:

A hundred percent.

Brett:

And it really is a total game changer. But you gotta have the audiences before you need them.

Allie:

Exactly. Yep. Yeah,

Brett:

Yeah. Awesome. So this kind ties in into list building. This is kind our last topic before we talk about ways people can get in contact with you. But what about list nurturing and list building? Cause that's really related to audience building. What are your thoughts? What are your tips on list building and nurturing?

Allie:

Yeah, so like I mentioned early on, I think it's really important, I do believe that e-commerce brands just, and again everybody, so I don't wanna point my finger, but most people have a really shortsighted view of their customer buying cycle. They think if I don't convert this person when they see my ad, they're not a potential customer. And that is so untrue. I mean, I just want people to think about their own buying behavior. I have seen ads for e-commerce brands over and over and over and over and over again before I buy, but the reason I buy is because I continue to see them or because I get their emails and I finally read that at the right time, or I have that need or maybe the pain is great enough of whatever that problem is at that moment for me to go ahead and make that decision to buy. Or maybe it's a really special offer. So there was a at home manicure kit that I got not too long ago and I had seen the ads for a long time. I'm a marketer, so I save ads that I like, me too, so I'm always able

Brett:

To go back to them. That's a true marketing nerd. When you're building a swipe file, when you're saving ads or screenshotting ads, that's when you're

Allie:

Marketing all the time. And I don't know what it was. I think I just had a moment where I saw the ad and I was like, man, your nails look really bad. You should probably do something about that <laugh>. And I can't stand to go to the nail salon. I don't have the time to sit there for forever and do all that. So whatever, I bought it and they had a great offer for the holiday. It was some sort of holiday at the time, labor Day or Memorial Day or something. I got it. It's loved it. And I've again referred it to multiple people since because it was great. And I bought the upsells. I bought six different nail polishes instead of the one that came with the pack. And so you just have to remember that people are not always gonna buy the first time they see you and you can't give up on them.

And that's where the warm audiences come into play. So you're nurturing them through your ads, but if you can have the right gated content offers or even promo code offers, so even if you don't have gated content, having a promo code that somebody can use at a later date I think is critical, especially with social advertising. It's slightly different with search based because the intent is a little bit higher there. But I talked about this with one of my students who owns five different pizza restaurants. So they're running ads to different videos. They just have this direct link for people to go ahead and order online right there. And I'm like, Hey, I could be seeing this hat at any point of the day or night, not necessarily gonna be ready to order pizza that second <affirmative>, but I could be tomorrow at lunch. So what you wanna do is you wanna take that person who's got the interest and give them a reason to give you their contact info right away.

So a promo code for that same offer that they were talking about doesn't have to be any different, but giving them, Hey, opt in right here will send you the promo code, even if a promo code does not exist, just make it up and send it to 'em. It could be the same one for every single person, and it could be completely irrelevant to them actually needing that code to acquire the offer. Get them on the list. And now hopefully you're gonna start by just reminding them about that thing. If it was more of a direct offer that wasn't a direct offer, you're gonna kind of take them through that same sort of informational sequence we just talked about with potentially the video content and the ads. Those same articles and those questions about the Thera gun. Do these devices really work? What's the difference between this one or that one?

What types of pain does this help? You're gonna start nurturing them with that informational based content, and it could be content that you already have. So blogs sending them to a blog, maybe you give them a snippet in the email, send them to your blog, hopefully on the blog you're tracking their activity that they've been there. And you also have easier opportunities for them to convert right there on that page. Maybe it's sending them to a video. So today I sent out an email, I did a video for YouTube on what is a funnel, what is this and why does somebody need one? I embed these videos into funnels on my website. I have specific content focus funnels. I drive people from my email list to that funnel. So I'm not sending them to YouTube with all the clutter and distraction of these other videos.

I've got 'em right there focusing on me, and then I have an easy opportunity for them to schedule a call right below the video. So you know, can hook them with that content through your emails, and then you can still get that conversion. You can even send those same people who've already opted in other lead magnets. So I had a lead magnet I sent out a couple of weeks ago on a KPI calculator workbook, and the next page after they opt in, it's like, Hey, here's a video on how to use it, but also if you need extra help, schedule a call to see how we can help you. I mean, I got 20 booked calls from that email and the first couple of hours, and it's not a complicated funnel, it's not a complicated anything, it's just having the people on the list first who actually have an interest and have a need and then giving them a reminder, Hey, I'm here.

Hey, I can help you. Hey, I have something that if you're ready for it, I am ready for you because not everybody's ready at the same time. Sometimes it takes people a really long time to even trust a business to give their money to people can be more particular. I have a guy in my mastermind right now, I just launched the mastermind recently. He opted in on a gated content offer two years ago. He had never scheduled a call with us. I had never heard his name before. I wasn't familiar with him in terms of being a lead or anything. And then he converted to my highest level offering because it was the right time. He had the need. He trusted me because of the content I had been nurturing him with for the last two years, and now he's one of my best clients.

And if people really could think about it like that, whether or not you're selling something high ticket, it doesn't matter. For a lot of product-based businesses, like the money's in the long-term relationship and the loyalty and the repeat purchases, your very best buyers may start out as someone who opts in for info and your nurture convinces them that you are the right business to help them and they could become your best customer and your biggest advocate if you would only give them a chance. But I think most e-commerce businesses, the only emails they might ever be sending are about direct offers. So it's always an ask, it's always a take. It's never a give. You gotta balance it out. The give and the take should both be there, but the give is where people see who you are and what you're made of. And again, establish that relationship.

Maybe you've got humor to your brand that insert that. It doesn't have to be about your product all the time. It can be about the culture of your product. It can be about that avatar and just get creative with it and have some fun with it. And I think you'll be surprised at what a little nurture to your existing list. I don't care how big they are, what that can do for your sales. If you give it 30 days of like, I'm gonna consistently email with great content for 30 days, I'm gonna look at my sales and see what happens. And I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Brett:

I love it. Love it so much. I think, yeah, it's one of those things where we just stop short, we stop short or we don't approach this properly. I was actually speaking at an event in LA a couple weeks ago that the gorgeous put on their e-commerce help desk company, but it was about retention based marketing. And so I gave a talk on next level remarketing and a loyalty advertising, right? <affirmative>, because this is something that a lot of people, like, everybody's doing it, everybody's bad at it. We're just not running remarketing campaigns properly. We're not nurturing our list properly, just like you said. Right? And I love the story of the guy who got a trip wire offer two years ago, but he is consuming your content. Finally, the timing's right, the trust is there. We should be looking at how do we build this?

No. And trust where people know us, they like us, they trust us, and they're gonna buy from us. Anyway, I just shared this example when I was talking at this in LA and I said, Hey, the greatest book ever written for remarketing and retention marketing is this. And people are getting ready to write it down. And I'm like, it's Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Ses. Right? <laugh> just a joke, but it's actually kind of real. So if you look at Sam, I am, he's saying, Hey, would you try it with a fox? Okay, okay, got it. But would you try it with a box? What about on a trainer? What about in the rain? What about? And so it's like coming at this from different angles. Would you try it here or there? Would you do? And eventually, and obviously he's a little bit pesky, a little bit too much maybe but eventually the guy's like, fine, I'll try the green eggs and ham, and then he loves it. So that's the story. But that's sort of what we should do, but in a cool way, in a charming way, in a fun way, in a funny way. How do we just approach it from all different angles and remind, remind, remind until someone is like, yeah, the timing is right. I want that and I want it now. And so

Allie:

I know, I think we overestimate a lot of times how much our potential customers are thinking about us. Truthfully, they're not thinking about us that much on their mind that much. You've got to, you have to remind them that you're there. And often because life's busy for everybody, your customers, they have a family, most likely they've got a job, they've got hobbies, they've got things on their mind, and they are not sitting around thinking about you. Even if that problem that you solve is pestering them on a regular basis. People get just comfortable with their problems sometimes. And they're not in that solution seeking mode always until that moment that the pain, physical or emotional or whatever is great enough to make them act. And that's when they search for you or that's when they convert on that ad when they're, they've got an ear ache and they're scrolling at three o'clock in the morning and you've got some sort of solution for it or whatever.

So you just have to stay present and stay consistent and truthfully believe that your customer's worth waiting for. And that if you are asking them to give you their money and their time and their attention, and hopefully create this long relationship with you, you have got to be willing to do whatever it takes to gain their trust and their business. And luckily with ads and automation and all that jazz, it can be pretty easy once you get those things set up. You don't have to be spending your personal time doing it, but the tech will do the work for you if you do it the right way.

Brett:

Absolutely. I think we overestimate the amount of time our customers, even existing customers, think about us. We overestimate the amount of attention that prospects are giving us, <affirmative> and we underestimate the allure and the number of competitors and other direct competitors and indirect competitors that are competing for our customers attention and absolutely interest and action. So yeah, ally, this has been fabulous. We could keep going. I don't really want this conversation in this, it's been super fun but we are running outta time. So as we wrap up, if someone's like, okay, this is great, I need more Ali boy in my life, where can they find you? Can they connect with you on the socials? Any specific offers? What should they do next?

Allie:

Yeah, so you can go to my website, ali boy.com, A L L I E B L O Y d.com. You can see potentially how I could help you on a business level. Other than that, you can connect with me on social media. I'm on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, primarily at Ali Lloyd or at Ali Lloyd Media. And I do have the marketing podcast, which is I think fabulous. So if you wanna hear me in your ear a little bit more, that's a great place to go as well. And ultimately, my offer to you is this, you're not really my customer if you're just a straight e-commerce business, but if you have a local business, if you are an info product seller or coaching consultant, and you wanna say, okay, how can I get that piece of my business really rocking and rolling? Then I have a great 12 mentorship hands on lots of resources and easy buttons provided to you. So if you wanna check that out again, just the website, schedule a quick, quick call and we'll see if it's a good fit. If it's not, we'll let you know. So would love to connect with all of you,

Brett:

Allie Lloyd, ladies and gentlemen. So I will link to everything in the show notes so you can check it out there. But Allie, thank you so much. This has been a blast.

Allie:

Thanks for having me.

Brett:

Really enjoyed it. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love your feedback. Hey, we'd love that review on iTunes if you haven't done it yet. If you've been listening for a while, haven't left the review on iTunes, today is the day. We'd love to see that five star review. If you feel like we've earned it and do check out all's information you will not be disappointed. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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‍

What you don’t know about YouTube is hurting you.

Justin Sardi is the founder of Tube Sift and Video Ad Vault. He is a true YouTube OG.

He’s been running ads and geeking out on YouTube organic growth since 2012.

He’s built two of the leading YouTube research and spying tools on the web - Tube Sift and Ad Vault. The team here at OMG actually uses both regularly. Justin is a sharp dude with a wealth of YouTube knowledge. 

Here’s what we dive into in this episode:

• Misconceptions about YouTube holding you back from growth.
• How to capture top-performing YouTube ads to learn from - for FREE!
• What’s changing on YouTube, including some of our favorite targeting options?
• Why Google’s first-party data and AI is second to none.
• Some YouTube SEO tips you probably haven’t thought of. 
• Do you need a 2nd YouTube channel?
• Video Discovery ads - what are they and how to make them work for you? 
• Plus more!

‍

Mentioned In This Episode:

Justin Sardi:

- LinkedIn‍

- Facebook

TubeSift

TubeSift Bookmarker

‍

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of O OMG Commerce, and today we're talking YouTube and YouTube ads. And YouTube organic and YouTube spying. And how to find out what your competitors are up to on YouTube. This is gonna be super fun. I'm talking to an OG in the YouTube space. So Justin Sardi is my guest. We first met through Blue Ribbon Mastermind and Ezra Firestone, our mutual friend, and Justin is just a really smart guy, legend. He is the founder and CEO of Tube Sift and Video Ad Vault. And so one of the leading tools platforms will allow you to find out what other top ads are running on YouTube and allow you to spin on your competitors a little bit. And we'll unpack more of that today cause I think this is a tool you're gonna wanna check out.

But more than that, we're gonna dive into, hey, what are some misconceptions about YouTube and what do you need to know about YouTube to make it work? And then some other formats that you maybe aren't familiar with. And so if you listen to the podcast regular regularly, we talk about YouTube ads. I've got a couple episodes where I dive into YouTube ads. Of course we have a recent episode with Jacque Spitzer from Raindrop where we talk about creative again, a couple of episodes with Andrew Ebl where we talk creatives, but this is gonna be a little bit different. So I'm excited about this with that intro, with that intro. Justin, what's up man? How you doing? And welcome to the show.

Justin:

Thanks for having me, man. It's been a long time. I know we rescheduled a few times and then yeah, just hanging out. But in California just the other day.

Brett:

Exactly. Yeah, just hanging out at Blue Ribbon San Diego a couple weeks ago and one of my favorite spots, one of my favorite events. And so it was always good to see you there. But yeah, this was sick. This podcast specifically has been in the works forever and it just seems like something happens with one of our schedules. We have to punt and reschedule, but we're doing it, man. We're here, we're making it happen. So do this. We're gonna get into some education on YouTube ads and misconceptions and new things you should be trying. Before we do that, what is Tube sift and video ad vault and yeah, just give us kind of the low down.

Justin:

Yeah, so Tube Shift is basically a precision targeting tool for YouTube advertisers. Helps you do placement targeting, basically that was the original function of it. Of course there kind of moving away from content targeting. So thanks Google. But honestly the thing I was bummed about

Brett:

And what is the latest update on that actually? So we're hearing rumors, we're seeing some things in some accounts, but not all accounts. So Google's wanted to move away from content targeting if you're running a conversion based campaign. Right. So what's the latest or what have you heard most recently?

Justin:

Yeah, so I mean that, that's basically it. As of they said they're going to be removing them from accounts basically. So you gotta set up a YouTube ad with a goal just a video campaign for example. Used to be able to choose topics, keywords placements, those three things. And those were content targeting, they called it or, Yeah, and they ended up, they're pulling that. So certain accounts, some accounts that I have still there, no, not even

Brett:

Aware. And we're still doing that in a number of accounts, but yeah, yeah know

Justin:

The's a number. They don't even let you add it anymore. So they said they're going to be doing that by 2023 and it's what, November. So we got two months and they said they're actually going to remove, if you have any existing campaigns, they're not even gonna be grandfathered in. They are getting rid of it.

Brett:

Dang. Just putting the,

Justin:

But you can still set it up without a goal of like you used to have to do back in the day before they had goals. And you would just have to manually go in and see, hey, this placement's working, this one's not. Instead of Google saying, Oh, this is working, we'll shift more of your budget here and them doing some of the optimization, you just have to go in and manually do it. And we've, we've run some side by side tests with a goal and placements and without a goal. They were pretty similar, honestly this is a little more work, which is,

Brett:

Yeah, and that's interesting. I, I'd love to chat with you more about that. We, we've run some tests looking at conversion based campaigns and non-con conversion based campaigns. We can't get the view based or non goal based campaigns to really perform well. Some of the metrics are just fine or even better view rates are better cost reviews, lower on a view based campaign versus conversion based campaign. But we just can't get the CPAs to equal out. So would love to see what you're doing. I love content targeting. And so basically if you're doing keyword targeting, what Google is doing there is they're finding it's contextual. So looking at that keyword and saying, Ah, okay, we're gonna put your ad next to content about that keyword. And that's going away and it's super sad, sad day for sure. The

Justin:

One good thing though is that you can still, with their custom audiences, you can actually go in, you can still do keywords. They just moved them. And actually I just got this idea cause you can actually target people who have visited sites similar to whatever. I'm just gonna try exactly put placements in there and see if that does anything. I don't know.

Brett:

Yeah, so the custom segment where you're giving Google URLs, so basically for those that don't know, you go into Google, you build a segment, you be called now called segments, but custom segment. And so basically you can either give Google search terms, so keywords people have searched for recently on Google or on YouTube. You can also give them keywords. But with an in-market focus, which kind of means people are looking at this stuff online or they've keyed it in a variety of things. Or you can give Google URLs. And basically what Google is doing there is they're building a lookalike audience, like you said, where it's like people that have visited those URLs or people that look like those who have visited those URLs that build an audience there. So I think you can do placements there and I think that's an interesting angle.

Justin:

So we're gonna test that. But back to the original question that that's what Tube sets was originally for. We recently added a custom audience builder as well that'll find all the websites for specific keywords so you can quickly and easily extract all those and create those custom audiences because we saw that working really well and kind of had a feeling they were moving away from placements. So

Brett:

Very cool. So basically then you could go into Tube, type in a keyword as an example. It's gonna show you all the videos that show up for that search and then you can basically scrape those URLs and then use those for targeting.

Justin:

And then video Ad vault is our other piece of software that's basically, I think of it as a massive swipe file of, we have almost a million unique YouTube ads and landing pages with a bunch of historical data. So you can search by advertiser name domain, keywords a number of different things. And you can basically find all the ads running in any niche, see what's working, what's maybe not see all the different hooks, angles you get, all the landing pages, all that good stuff. So

Brett:

Yeah, I love it, I love it. And one of the best ways to learn is by watching successful ads and video ad vault as a way to do that. And you get the landers, you get the whole deal there, which is fantastic. So highly recommend it. My team uses it, we love it. So check that out and we'll talk more about how you can learn more and how you can dig in here in just a minute. But let's talk first, Justin, you've been in the game a long time. What are some misconceptions people have about YouTube and YouTube ads?

Justin:

So I mean the number one thing, and we've talked about this before, was people are like, Oh, I have to have a video. Now I do think that videos work best, you probably should have a video, but with all of these new types of the PAX campaigns, all those things as well they'll actually still serve display ads on YouTube and you can actually set just those display ads up to Target YouTube as well. And you can basically run image ads and just display ads on YouTube also without having to have a video. So that's

Brett:

App. And just to key in on that just a little bit, I love this and we're doing a lot with Performance Max at omg we run discovery campaigns, which that discovery placement does put image ads or carousel ads on YouTube, <affirmative> and what a powerful placement. And likely if you pick up your phone and scroll through the YouTube feed you'll see some image based ads. So you'll see videos, then you'll see if you see a still image, it's most likely an ad. And those are pretty compelling. That's a key placement feels a little more like a Facebook or an Instagram ad but we're seeing a lot of success there, especially with our larger advertisers, both for top funnel targeting but also for remarketing. And so love that placement. That's a way, and hey, getting the YouTube video creatives, it's a little more difficult, but through Discovery or performance Max, you can run those display ads on YouTube, love that call out. And that's probably a traffic source A lot of people are missing

Justin:

For sure. Another thing, a lot of people, this is something I've always heard, like, oh, your video needs to be 30 seconds, that that's the magic number. I think people are getting away from that now. I know Google, they actually recommend that you keep it under three minutes now. And I've actually heard some rumors that they might be not allowing ads longer than three minutes as Instream ads in the future. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but I've heard that. We'll see. But yeah, I mean you're paying for that 30 seconds or whatever and that's where that came from. Obviously they're changing. It depends, I think on the campaigns with goals, you're actually paying after 10 seconds now

Brett:

Is especially if there's a conversion. Yeah, yeah. So what's interesting there and yeah, so I think probably where this came from is with TrueView, with YouTube TrueView ads, basically your charged, you're only charged for an actual view. So that view comes at about the 32nd mark. We can kind of use that as a working number. So if someone watches the whole video, if it's less than 30 seconds or 30 seconds, if it's longer, then you pay a cost per view. If they skip at a shorter time period than that, you don't pay for that. But yeah, that's it, right? There's no reason to have a 32nd ad. We, we've found if you wanna run a conversion based ad, so an ad that's driving a click and hopefully then driving a conversion minute and a half to three minutes is kind of the sweet spot. We've seen some as short as like 45 seconds.

It'd really scale at a target CPA at a customer acquisition cost goal. But typically that closer to a minute or a little bit longer. Great example, we actually had had a deodorant client where they had the same video. They had a minute 10 version of this video and a 32nd version of the video, same video, it was just a cutdown. So same actors, same script, basically just one was a minute, 10, one was 30 seconds, so it was cut down the minute 10 version had a 10 x of the number of conversions. And so the CPA was just wildly different. The 32nd version had a better view rate, but the minute version had better clicks, better conversions. So I'm still leaning to that longer area. And then to key what you said, yeah, if you go longer than three minutes, Google has basically said they're going to tax you or they're going to increase your cost.

Perview <affirmative>, we haven't seen that really make a difference if it's a good video. So if you get a three and a half minute video, that's great. Or Ezra Firestone at boom, they've got some five minute video, six minute video, seven minute videos, they're still working, we're still watching the Target CPA and they're, and they're still working. So I'm not too concerned about those longer videos. But I do wonder, we have one client in the automotive space, they're running 15 minute VSLs on YouTube, which not really my recommendation at this point, but it's working. I do wonder when that's gonna maybe be taxed or taxed is the wrong word, but Google's gonna maybe charge more to where it doesn't make sense, but that day is not just yet. But I would be thinking, hey, how do we get a killer video under three minutes? And for most brands that should be easily doable.

Justin:

Oh yeah, I remember we used to upload, I used to upload entire three hour webinars and run them as ads <laugh>. And those did, we actually used to run 'em as video discovery ads back in the day. But those did amazingly well. We used to just sell webinar products like crazy with those and

Brett:

Interesting. I wish that was never done that. So I do wanna talk about video discovery, so let's put a pin in that. Let's come back to that. Cause that's super interesting. You've done way more of that than I have, and so I wanna talk about that for sure. But what are a few other misconceptions or surprises about YouTube ads that you wanna share with folks?

Justin:

I mean, a lot of people are, we have a webinar product, we do some training and a lot of people coming in are coming from the Facebook ads world <affirmative>, and they're always worried, well what if I get banned? I'm like, Dude, it's probably not going to The number one thing I actually do see people getting banned for is suspicious payment activity. And it's because they don't have matching. They'll set up an account and they'll use a different credit card like that. You need to have, make sure your addresses, especially with all the advertiser transparency, that's basically what they're looking for. If you make a mistake and throw up an ad, it gets disapproved. You can literally call Google and they will, I've had Google reps send me screenshots of my landing page with highlights being like, Just do this here, do this here and you'll be good. And then we'd fix that and they fire it right up like nothing. So you can get away with a lot more on Google obviously you need to stay within their terms of service and all that, but they are pretty lenient and they actually, you know, can actually talk with somebody that will even help you get things fixed pretty easily.

Brett:

Yeah, I do. The fact that you can reach out to somebody either through chat or a phone call once you start advertising on Google, getting ahold of customer support is relatively easy. Now I will give a couple of caveats. One, you don't always get a super helpful person. So sometimes we get someone and you're like, Wait, I don't think this person knows what they're talking about. <affirmative> always good to just be polite, hang up, call back, get somebody else. And I'm not a Facebook advertiser, I don't know, but I've heard it's quite a bit easier to get ahold of someone at Google than it is at Facebook. So that's a win. There's still some categories that you just gonna have no luck anywhere. So C, B D type products or if you want to go hemp to get around C, good luck. It can happen.

But Google and Facebook are both pretty strict about that. <affirmative>, we've worked with some supplement companies that like to lean into testosterone claims or things like that, and that's pretty tricky. Anyway, you slice it. So I don't want to give the, I think you are right that the YouTube is probably a little more open or flexible than Facebook in certain cases and in certain verticals but it's not just the wild West. So you're still gonna potentially have issues, but the good news is you can get ahold of somebody and occasionally you can get ahold of someone who's helpful. So yeah, that's nice. So that's awesome. Cool. So any other misconceptions or surprises that you want to key in with YouTube ads?

Justin:

Yeah, I don't know mean, the one thing I will say is they, they've come a very long way over the past

Brett:

Even

Justin:

The past year or so. They have made, when I first started running ads, you had to go to Google ads slash video to even set up a video campaign. And they've made some massive improvements. Some of them I'm like, I wish they didn't do that. But overall they are going in a positive direction. And I think that just the fact that you can connect with somebody on video prior to making other interactions, I think that in itself just makes, especially if you're doing personal coaching, anything like that, just being able to make that connection in the beginning, I feel like it helps build that trust and that follows through the whole funnel. So

Brett:

I love it. And I'll just kind of share a couple of things that I think are unique about YouTube that make it pretty attractive. Two main things that I'll key in on. One is data that YouTube and Google can use. And then two is the number of users and the audience on YouTube. So let's talk data. So Google provides some unique ways to target, you talked about custom segments a minute ago, or custom audiences that allow you to use keywords. And basically Google's saying like, Hey, we're gonna target people that have searched for those keywords or similar keywords on Google, on YouTube. So that's unique information that really no other platform can leverage because Google owns YouTube and Google owns search. So they've got all that search data. Now here's interesting, even a amidst privacy concerns and stuff like that data, that search data is first party data, right?

Google owns that. You're on google.com directly giving the keyword search to Google so they can use that data however they want now their complexities with privacy and we we'll see where things go, but for the most part, Google can still leverage that targeting to try to find users who are likely to convert. Now as things get a little stickier, a little dicier with privacy concerns, I think Google's gonna remove some of the controls from advertisers and make more automated, but they're still gonna be able to find people likely to convert based on that data that they have. So that's one thing. I think the data that Google has is fantastic. I think the smart bit algorithm that Google has built is amazing. I think their AI and machine learning scientists are better than anybody. And so I think there's real improvements there. The other thing on audience or the amount of people using YouTube.

YouTube is just huge. It's the second most visited website on the planet, the number two search engine behind Google on the planet. But here's interesting, if you look at teenagers and younger people, a lot of them are moving away from Facebook. And this is not me reigning on Zuckerberg's Parade or saying that Facebook is dying. I think it's gonna be viable for the foreseeable future anyway. But YouTube is growing and if you talk to teenagers, you talk to older senior citizens, whatever, everybody's using YouTube. I was recently at TNC in San Diego and Ryan Dice pulled like 10,000 marketers and said, Hey, what are the three channels you think are gonna become more effective in the coming year? And the top three were one short form videos like TikTok, Instagram reels, things like that. Two was email, no surprise there, email, everybody thinks email's gonna die. It's not. And then the third was YouTube. So YouTube is is on the uptick. I think you gotta really dig into YouTube, so love it. Really good insights there. Let's talk about this, Justin. Let's talk about video discovery ads because that's something I know you've done a lot of. I'm familiar with them. We have not run a lot of video discovery ads, so what are they? And then how do you recommend utilizing you two video discovery ads?

Justin:

Yeah, so the recently, I think they rechange or they just recently rebranded them as just discovery ads or whatever on YouTube and essentially, or

Brett:

Is it Discovery and not discovery? Yeah,

Justin:

It's not, I forget what they did is they combined Instream and discovery ads. And so basically with those changes it's now more important than ever to have. Previously when you had an Instream ad, nobody was ever gonna see that video unless it was an Instream ad. Now that they are video action campaigns, they're calling them now that they have those, your ad is gonna be shown as a mix of Instream and also discovery ads, which is basically you're scrolling through the feed on your phone or something, even on your YouTube on desktop and you see a thumbnail. So previously I would just have a random, not even a thumbnail, not even worry about it, not put a title on the video, literally call it add one or whatever. Now the way they're showing those, it's more important than ever to number one. I mean your ad title or your video title is a lot like a headline now. So just because that it's

Brett:

Gonna be more visible cuz used to, yeah, you're right, nobody would see it. But now people do

Justin:

And I've seen people doing that with their ads. I'm like, Dude, you titled it this and it's showing it just come on, you're spending money on this. Yeah. So that's one thing. And then it's also very important to have a custom thumbnail now. And the thing we do when we're making those is go search for content on YouTube about whatever topic we are running and running the ad on and then we'll see what the top thumbnails are. Just scroll down the first 10 videos and you'll start to see some things that are, they all have in common.

Brett:

And so then we will start some patterns. Yeah,

Justin:

And a big part of the reason that those are ranking is number one, obviously they have their keywords and a lot of them have big channels, they're getting a lot of views and Google's gonna reward that. But a lot of it does have to do with a catchy thumbnail, a catchy title, things like that. That's the first thing that people see. And a lot of times that thumbnails gonna, that's like your, it's free ad real estate really and you should be taken advantage of that. And something we've done with the discovery ads is actually use them sort banner ads as for retargeting. So when we have a promotion going on, it's we'll start swapping the thumbnail out, two days left, one day left, things like that, <affirmative>, and essentially hitting people, it's almost like a fr because you also don't pay unless they click on it, which

Brett:

Is grow, right, with discovery ads, they've gotta click on it, then they'll start viewing it and that's when you pay. So it's someone choosing to watch it.

Justin:

But if you just want to use that as banner space on YouTube and not pay a CPM or anything like that it's a cool way that you can use those and you can set those up in the campaigns without a goal still and just specifically choose that type of ad.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. Super interesting. So let's talk as we move into our final section here before we talk specifically about Tube shift, a little bit more YouTube seo, right? So I mentioned YouTube's the number two search engine on the planet, more searches conducted on YouTube than on any other search engine, not named Google. And so what are some of the keys? How do we get our organic videos to rank better on YouTube so that we can drive more volume there? Cause I think that's a traffic source a lot of people are missing. If you can get some videos on YouTube to rank organically, that can be a great source of traffic. So walk us through some tips there.

Justin:

Yeah, so funny actually guys, I've got my silver play button right over there so I actually have a

Brett:

Dude look at you. That's an elite club man.

Justin:

I know we have 110,000 subscribers on one of our YouTube's channels and that was all organic. So I do know a little bit about the organic side of things and I will say that if you can build up an audience and anytime you put out a promotion or anything like that, it is so much more trusted. If it's an organic result, the conversion rate is through the roof on organic videos versus paid ads. People just trust them more. They're like, yeah, no, this is legit. So yeah, I mean a few tips that we had, obviously I was talking about earlier, the thumbnail is extremely important. And then really that initial, obviously you need your keywords, your tags, things like that. Your descriptions an important one. But the number one thing is getting a solid view rate or well really that's what it is, but getting as many views as you can through that video in the first 48 hours or whatever. Because if you can start,

Brett:

It's not view rate Justin, it's view rate plus like time wash, watch

Justin:

Time as well. So keep, and that's really what the algorithm is trying to do. There's actually a really cool podcast called Down the Rabbit Hole. They talk all about the YouTube algorithm. I've just been

Interesting this out, I'll link to it. That's definitely worth to listen. But they have YouTube CEO on there talking about what they're looking for and a lot of it is initial watch time in the first X number of days. And so if you can get that up and you can actually use discovery ads to do that. So what we used to do is boost some of our ads that we were like, or our videos that we were like, Hey, we really want to get some additional views on this and give it a slight boost in the search results. It used to work I haven't done that too much recently. We're more running the Instream ads honestly. But yeah, we were targeting the keywords we wanted to rank for using campaigns without a goal and then basically just going for views cuz that's all we wanted and we're like, hey, we're willing to pay whatever a penny of view. And they would start, they'd show up at the top, people would watch them and hopefully they're compelling enough to get that watch time and that would really boost us in the search results. So

Brett:

Yeah, you gotta be kind of careful there from what I hear, and again, I'm an ad guy, not an organic guy, but if you have a video that gets really good watch time, then it can help. If you accelerate a video through ads and it's got a poor watch time, <affirmative>, you're accelerating, the other way you're gonna prevent it from ranking all depends on creating great content. So

Justin:

We used to split our basically had a clone channel that I would run ads from if I was running the Instream ads because if people are skipping it would actually tank the watch time and hurt that don't.

Brett:

Interesting. So are you still recommending that? So to explain that if people aren't following, so a lot of people, and it sounds like you do this too, I know a couple friends that are big organic YouTube peeps, they'll have a separate channel that they use in for Instream ads because your view rate goes down, your watch time goes way down when you start running Instream ads cuz you're really pushing those things hard. Then they'll have a channel that's organic where they're just trying to rank organically and trying to really build that watch time because Google looks at it not just at the video level but at the channel level that that's at least how it seems. Yes.

Justin:

Yeah, I mean that's what I've seen that I've actually seen when people started running in mats from bigger channels, they're like, Hey, I want to get some additional fuel, whatever, start running those and then slowly their stats started going down and they don't say it's because of that, but we've seen it happen. And so if you do already have a big channel I would recommend running from a different

Brett:

Not worth risking it, maybe it's not 100% confirmed, but I know enough smart organic YouTube people that kind of recommend it that I would be caught. If you've got a huge organic following on YouTube, then maybe be cautious about ads or spin up a new channel for ads. Cuz the interesting thing is when you run an Instream ad, you don't click through that ad to the YouTube channel, you click through that ad to go to whatever lander you specify. So it doesn't matter if that channel is built out or not when you're running Instream ads. So that's an important point of clarification. Cool. Any other YouTube tips or ideas or suggestions before we kind of move into talking about Tube sif a little more?

Justin:

I think that's about it honestly. Mostly I focus on the ad side of things now a lot more. I still have the organic thing that was cool, but it's a lot faster to just run ads, honestly.

Brett:

<laugh>. Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. Totally agree. So if the way you laid it out in the beginning was awesome, it's a way to build placement lists and the ability to laser target on YouTube, but give us more details. What are you hearing from people that use the platform? What are the best use cases? Kind of walk us through that just a little bit. How should people use Tube sift?

Justin:

Yeah, so I, one of the things, obviously the custom audiences, those are huge. We're seeing Google remove some of that content targeting, which is a bummer. But that being said they're removing that. But their AI is, it's absurd. They really do know how to put your ads in front of the right people at the right time. You were saying it's all that first party data they have. Not to mention Google Analytics, how many websites have Google Analytics that are also feeding, cooking, people, feeding all of that data in there, the amount of data they have is insane and it's cool that we get to tap into that. That being said, I think going forward more than ever it's going to be, I mean obviously your ad creative was always an important thing, but the number one thing since Google's starting to basically be like, Hey, upload these assets, we got it.

We know we can take care of you, it's fine. And I do think that that's the way that they're clearly what they're going for. They, the less inputs they have, the easier it is for people to get or to not make mistakes. I guess the more areas you can break something, you're probably gonna break it. And so I think that's part of the reason that we're moving it, removing all that friction, making it extremely easy. Be like, hey, upload these 10 things and we've got it right. I do think it's a smart move on their part, but that being said, your ad creative is more important than ever. And really just being able to stand out, know what types of things are resonating with your audience and what types of hooks, angles, things like that. And so for example, video ad vault, what I do a lot of times is I'll go find a bunch of ads that have different hooks and a lot of times what you'll see is people are testing three to five

Brett:

Hook. So hook is the, that's thing that if you dial in the hook, that can shift the performance of a creative or a campaign more than anything else. So I love that you call that out. So you're looking for hooks and ideas

Justin:

And I've actually done some case studies on breaking down different ads and things like that. And I've noticed that a lot of these, something that'll separate an ad that maybe gets 40,000 views from one that gets two to 3 million. It's literally the first 15 seconds in pretty much all of these ads. So what these advertisers are doing is they're having one chunk, which is the content, and then they're just bolting on five different hooks leading into it faster there. And a lot of, they're pretty similar, it's just a different delivery. But you can really see, or sometimes they'll go a curiosity hook where they're starting off by asking a question or they'll make a bold statement. They both do the same thing, but they'll be like peeking somebody's curiosity versus being like, Whoa, that's unbelievable. I need to watch more or I do need to continue watching this. And so you'll see that a lot with these bigger advertisers specifically. They're just running a few different hooks with the exact same campaign, same landing pages, and you can tell which ads are doing better cuz they're running millions of use through 'em and it's literally the first 15 seconds.

Brett:

And that interesting sometimes, sometimes the opening can be the difference between something that can get tens of thousands of views profitably versus something that can get millions of views profitably. And that is, I'm sure it's obvious, but that is a game changer.

Justin:

And that's what a lot of my focus has been on recently is just figuring out how to what, what's really working. I enjoy breaking down ads like dissecting what's working, coming up with cool new ideas edits that we can do. And sometimes it is just the edits too. They'll just do the same kind of thing and just make it a little more splicing some B-roll instead of keeping it stale. And really just seeing what the audience likes. Also checking out some of the organic videos that are ranking for people in that audience. It still is, you wanna make your ad seem like it's part of the platform. You don't want to make it seem too much like an ad, obviously it is an ad, but if you can make it, people are on YouTube to consume video content and a lot of YouTubers have a specific style that they're just try and make it fit the platform.

Brett:

Totally love it. So talk about how people can find out more about Tube Sift or give it a try for themselves. And then you also have a free Chrome extension. Talk about that a little bit.

Justin:

Yeah, so the free Chrome extension is the tube shift bookmark. And essentially what that is is lets you bookmark any YouTube ads that you see. So it'll save the last 50 ads and landing pages that you see on your computer. Been, I love that mean, obviously I love studying as a marketer. I love studying what's working up with me too, with new angles, different hooks. Even if it's not in my niche, I'm like, Oh, that's a good, I can slightly tweak that and apply it to what I'm doing. That caught my attention. I wanna remember that. So if you just do a Google search, I can get you the link for it as well if you got show notes or whatever. But basically the tubes of bookmark is what it's called. It's a free Chrome extension and yeah, just lets you bookmark any of the ads and also see all the last 50 ads and landing pages that you've seen. Cause a lot of them, they're unlisted and you stats for nerds and pull with a little code and it's just kind of a pain. This just makes it super easy.

Brett:

And what often, and I love this cuz there have been many times when I'm on YouTube and I'm a YouTube ads guy, so it's maybe a little bit different for me, but I'm sure for other marketers it's the same, right? You're on YouTube for whatever reason, you see an ad, that pre-roll ad and you're like, whoa, this is a good ad, I gotta save this. So you go, well lemme just grab the url, I'll save it. Now you do that, all you're saving is the ad, you're the video you're about to watch, not the ad. So you need something like this extension to help you easily bookmark that video or the ad itself. Yeah, most of those are unlisted. You can't go back and search for them later. So the bookmark makes that possible. And then what if somebody just wants to check out Tube CIF or Video Ad Vault? How can they check you out?

Justin:

Yeah, so tube cif.com or video ad vault.com. Yeah, video ad vault. We're closing in, like I said, a million unique YouTube ads and landing pages. Awesome. It's basically a massive swipe file that you get to tap into that's searchable. So

Brett:

Serious about YouTube ads or serious about getting started on YouTube ads. You gotta check it out. Justin, what about you? If somebody just wants to connect with you, are you on the socials? Are you hanging out on Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook or somewhere? How can people connect

Justin:

With you? I am on Facebook. I am terrible at posting, but I get on there and I run my groups, so I see messages and friend requests, so shoot me a message and yeah, would be happy to connect and yeah, always meeting cool people.

Brett:

Love it. Love it. Hey man thanks for coming on. Always good to talk to a true YouTube ads og, so thanks for being generous with your time and generous with your tips. Appreciate it. And we'll have to do it again.

Justin:

Yeah, for sure, man. I'll see you. Thanks.

Brett:

Puerto Rico, right? What's that? Oh,

Justin:

I said I'll see you in Puerto Rico next, right?

Brett:

I don't know if I'm gonna get to, I don't think I'm gonna get to go to Puerto Rico, another blue ribbon event. I don't think I can make it cause of the timing. I'm super bummed. But yeah, we'll see. Hey, fingers crossed, maybe I'm not gonna say no for sure, but we'll see. But alright man, well thank you so

Justin:

Much. Thanks for having me.

Brett:

Yep, absolutely. And thank you for tuning in and as always would love to hear from you. Love to hear that feedback. If you feel so inclined, if you feel like, Man, this podcast is making my day better, leave us that review on iTunes or hey, share an episode with someone that you think will benefit from this. So your other marketing nerd friends or your other eCommerce friends or that eCommerce forum you're a part of, Share the podcast. We'd love to just love to help people, love to connect with people, love the community, love making it stronger. And so with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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Kurt is a legend in the eComm space and hosts one of the most popular podcasts in our industry.

His show, The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, just crossed the 2 million downloads milestone.

Kurt and his company are all about one thing - helping Shopify store owners make more money. And the best way to do that is by split-testing everything. 

An important first step of split testing is questioning your assumptions. (We all know what happens when we assume.)

Here are a few recent tests Kurt and company have run. We discuss the results on the show...yes, that's a teaser. Listen to find out what test won! 

• Does free shipping always result in better performance (and is it even worth testing)?
• Should I put a slider on my home page? 
• What about hero images and banners on my category pages?
• Do add-to-cart buttons on your collections pages help or hurt conversions?
• What about stuffy old early 2000s breadcrumbs - are they helpful or not?
• Plus, favorite tools, tips, and tricks that Kurt uses often.

‍

Mentioned In This Episode:

Kurt Elster
- LinkedIn
- Ethercycle
- The Unofficial Shopify Podcast

Jay Leno’s Garage
ShipScout
Intelligence
Google Optimize
Hotjar
Overtone

‍

‍

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Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO O M OMG Commerce, and today I have a longtime friend, a legend, someone that you have undoubtedly heard of. You probably follow this guy on the regular. We were just researching prior to hitting record, we were wondering how long have we actually known each other? And turns out we first met in October of 2016. That's forever ago in internet years for sure. So my guest today is the man himself, Kurt Elster, co-founder of Ether Cycle, and the host of the unofficial Shopify podcast, One of the best podcast on there. Oh, I heard that, I heard that. That was the your, what was that sound effect, Kurt. Let's dial it up one more time. Go ahead.

Kurt:

The air horn.

Brett:

Yeah, man. So I think you, in fact, I'm confident you were the only guest I've ever had on this show that brings their own sound effects. And that's just one of the benefits of being a podcast host yourself.

Kurt:

Yeah, it's a dubious honor. But you got, I have fun with it

Brett:

<laugh>. That is awesome. And so we have a really close mutual friend, Ezra Firestone. And actually we, you and I kind of were able to sync up again, I guess back in when was that? We were in Miami together. We both spoke at Ezra's event in Miami. And I heard your presentation. I was like, Dude, you gotta come back on the podcast. It's been too long. But you've got the best clip, the best sound effect from Ezra Firestone that I hear in a number of your episodes. But dial that up if you would, and then explain to folks what that means.

Kurt:

Tech nasty. That's Ezra <laugh>. Like

Brett:

Te nasty.

Kurt:

Two years ago he would call me Tech nasty. And then two years ago outta nowhere, he writes a freestyle Rap records it. That's what he does, sends it to me, in which he refers to me as tech nasty. And so I was like, well that's great. And I play it on my show. But the one time, but the tech nasty sound bite I took. And now every time I introduce myself, I use that like a sound signature <laugh>. And it, it's a fun thing, was like, I'm your host Kurt Elster Tech Na. And then I just moved past it. I don't address it.

Brett:

People are like, That was cool. I don't know what that was, but that was cool. And I embrace it

Kurt:

By the eighth time. They're like, Yeah, that's tech nasty

Brett:

Te nasty, nasty. So Ezra has that skill set. He will freestyle rap for you. He did that on a podcast episode with me one time. I need to go back and listen to that. But I would love to hear the te nasty freestyle rap sounds, I think sounds amazing.

Kurt:

Skill one, can you freestyle rap? That's hard enough on its own, I'm

Brett:

Sure. Yeah. Can you even do it? You

Kurt:

Could really practice it like fake it once. Step two. Do you have the insane level of confidence required to just start freestyle wrapping as a 40 year old white man? Just

Brett:

Do it. Just do it As you're recording, just lay it out there and lay it out there with some, some bravado. And he does that, which is awesome. So hey man, I'm super excited about this. So we're gonna talk about split testing everything. So assume nothing split test everything. So how do we improve our performance? How do we make more money with our Shopify podcast? But I'm sorry, with our Shopify websites, Shopify podcast, you run one,

Kurt:

You just hit

Brett:

<laugh>. You guys just hit a milestone not too long ago, didn't you? With the shop unofficial Shopify podcast?

Kurt:

We did. We just hit 2 million downloads.

Brett:

2 million downloads. I want to be as good as you one day, Kurt Ster. When I grow up, I would like to be a podcast host. All

Kurt:

Right, here's the trick. You could brute force it by just never stopping. I'm, I'm never stopping. I'm over 400 episodes every week. We never miss one

Brett:

400 episodes, one episode a week. You never miss it. That's awesome. I've been doing this now since 2017, this show. I did another show prior to that, but I haven't been as consistent. I went through a period of time where I was like once or twice a month, you know, kinda lose momentum. So consistency,

Kurt:

The trick is key. Get yourself some sponsors now it's a client deliverable. Yes. And if you miss it, a you gotta send that refund. That hurts.

Brett:

That does hurt. Yeah. Make it like a client where it's like, I can't let a client down. I can let myself down or Right. I can push it to the side if it's just for us, but yeah, for a client. Gotta make it happen. So a couple things. You guys work with some really impressive brands, including gans and a few other automotive brands. And maybe my favorite, most interesting in my point of view, Jay Leno's garage, right? Which is cool. So I want you to talk about that. But before we do, I would like to talk about Kurt Ester's garage because oh, you and I are friends on Facebook, we get to hang out and chat a little bit, but you've got a bit of an eclectic collection of cars. Maybe not to the size or scope of Jay Leno. A few people do, but you's got some cool rides, man. So talk about what is in Kurt ER's garage.

Kurt:

All right, so the daily driver, the crazy one, I got a 2017 model S 100 D, that was the quick one, The big sedan. But it was boring silver. I don't want silver. So

Brett:

This is a Tesla. Those that may not not know the Yeah, it's Tesla. Yeah,

Kurt:

Yeah, yeah. The

Brett:

So zero to 60 in what? What's your zero to 60 time

Kurt:

3.9 on this one.

Brett:

Nice.

Kurt:

Yeah, it's quick and it just goes, it makes jet's noises goes and you're just do it with 60. That's crazy. But we vinyl wrapped it this satin yellow gold color. It's the same as this microphone if you've got the video version, it's like that's the vinyl we used and that is the, I put wheels on it in tense. And that's the coolest thing. I love that car.

Brett:

It's a beauty man. I've seen you got some stylized photos of that thing. It is a beauty. Oh,

Kurt:

I got a client's product photographer to come shoot photos of it. It was really cool. <laugh> awesome. But my wife's the cool one. She has the really cool cars. She always wanted a Volkswagen Beetle. I said I could figure that out. So she bought a 79 Super Beetle the last year they made in the US and it had been repaid as good shape, but it lots of deferred maintenance. So I got that back on the road running strong. I love that car. It's got 60 horsepower, slowest thing in the world. And that is pure driving experience. It's

Brett:

Such a good juxtaposition, right? So it's such the opposite of the Tesla. Yes, it's it's so fun that you go digital then you go analog. Yeah,

Kurt:

They're like, we gave you just enough what you need to not die <laugh>. And then the one that the car she daily drives, she also, she found negotiated, bought and had shipped here and then I discovered it had a ton of problems and we had to pull the motor and 84 Ford Bronco.

Brett:

Dude, that's my favorite. The 80 for all

Kurt:

Original. It's just that's my favorite too. Yeah,

Brett:

Yeah.

Kurt:

Oh we love the thing. Yeah, it's like 10 miles per gallon

Brett:

<laugh>. Which isn't the best right now, but hey, come on again. You balance it with the Tesla ex. Yeah. But yeah, it's so fun. You and I live online, we're always doing digital stuff. We're thinking AI and machine learning and algorithms and all this stuff. And sometimes it's fun to just have something that has no internet connectivity. It's still just that's you smell the exhaust and you hear the sound of the engine as you rev up. But it's a beautiful

Kurt:

Thing. It's like driving a lazyboy recliner. It's great. <laugh>

Brett:

Just comfortable. So that's awesome. Well hey for some of you that was a blast. For others you're like up with, I don't care about what's in your garage. So we get, it will dive into some content. So like I said, we were both speaking at this event in Miami, heard your chat thought, okay, this is brilliant, let's talk about it. So we're gonna dive into split testing everything. And first of all, I wanna ask you, is that a real thing? Should we be split testing everything or what should our mindset or approach be as we look at split testing?

Kurt:

Okay, so the reality and practicality of split testing every single individual element on a website, <laugh> just not realistic. You can't do it. But the phrase split test everything it really mean, you gotta question your assumptions because there's so much info out there where someone just goes so just posts and goes, this is the way to do it. This is the best I have declared it and here's like a screenshot of the 7 million. I made it 25 seconds this morning and it's all bs. You don't know what you're looking at. But that's how a lot of the common sense wisdom in e-commerce, cuz it's such a young industry comes to be. It's just like whoever was the loudest voice with the best presentation in their tweet becomes our best practices. And I, I'm guilty of doing stuff like that too. I think we all are.

Once you have an audience online. And so 2020 I went, I'm gonna really figure out split testing and really question this stuff and figure out, put my money where my mouth is. It gives some legit advice and it took some efforts of playing and I ended up two years later really mastering Google Optimize. I feel very comfortable with it. And so I've amazing the other. So number one, mastery Google optimize to the point where I could figure out, all right, this is a realistic split test to run. We could figure this out and we don't have to guess, well will this perform better? Does X perform better than Y? I don't need to guess anymore. I could just go have Google tell me, just test it. And so that's really freeing. But what also blew my mind was the number of times I was wrong about what the winner would be.

Brett:

Yeah, cuz you've been doing this a long time. I've been doing this a long time. We talk about this with ad copy a lot, right? Pros is we do day in and day out, we're spending tens of millions a month, we know our stuff. But you still gotta test cuz sometimes your gut, we trust it a lot. Sometimes your gut is just wrong. You need to lean on data. That's the better way to go for sure. So one quick note on tools to optimize with, and we'll dive into the first couple points, but you mentioned Google Optimize. What's the quick pitch or quick thought on why that tool versus some of the other optimization tools that are out there or split testing tools?

Kurt:

I really think Google Optimize has become the standard here because it's free and it's already plugged, it's halfway integrated. If you're using GTM Google Analytics, you already have most of your Google Optimize set up done.

Brett:

Great. Makes sense. Which really, essentially all the clients we work with, they've got Google Tag Manager, they're using Google Analytics anyway, so yeah, makes sense at that. That all just plugs it in. Okay, cool. So let's dive in. Let's, let's go through some interesting split tests, which I would say have some kind of surprising results, which I think will be a ton of fun for people to listen to. So first one, this is something you guys recently tested, I want you to talk about and the results you saw, but should price appear on the collection slash grid pages. So first of all, describe what that means. There's always difficult in a podcast setting, but what is that test? And then what did you guys find out?

Kurt:

All right, so you're shopping on a jewelry store and you go to, you're, I wanna shop product by type. I'm looking for tennis bracelets. I don't know who still wears a tennis bracelet these days.

Brett:

I think they're pretty popular.

Kurt:

Yeah, click through to tennis bracelet. You are now in Shopify, this would be a collection page and the rest of e-commerce universe, this is a category page on that page, which is a listing of products. Do you include price which will perform better with price or without? I don't know.

Brett:

Dude, that's a good question, right? Cuz you think, hey, you want people just clicking on stuff they feel comfortable buying that they feel like fits their budget or whatever. So yeah, maybe you think you want price to be visible on that collection page, but what say you, or more importantly, what does the data say?

Kurt:

And the answer is maybe you do, maybe you don't. It depends so much. So you have to test this yourself. But the first time we ran this test, it increased revenue procession. So this revenue procession, good way to combine conversion rate and average order value, increase revenue procession 23.6%. And this was in an apparel store with 97% confidence. So pretty good. This one, this test had a sample size of 10,000 or more really solid results. So we ran it again and we did it on mobile and then we did it on desktop and we did it on new and we did it on returning customer, same result every time. Then we ran it at some other stores. Consistent result. Ran it a few more times and we found it really depends on the category of product. It is either going, this is one I just wouldn't blindly do.

You have to test this yourself, but I suspect what's going on here is when someone is on, this is my hypothesis, I'm on the product page, I see the item with no price, then my brain is going to decide, yeah, the category page, my brain is gonna decide a value for that price. Whether I think about it or not, value subjective, I click through, I'm on the product page, I see the actual price. Is that below or above what I thought it was gonna be? If they're consistently less than what people thought. So you had this really great presentation and your prices are a good value. I think it's going to, I think that's when conversion rate goes up. When it's the other way around, I think that's when it goes down. But in testing it, I think my guess is two thirds of stores fall into the former category where this is a win.

Brett:

Interesting. But I wonder, let's say there's a good value, let's say you, you've got this value in your mind or maybe you don't, but when you view that category page with the price, if it's a good price, if it's a good value, I think they would still have a benefit, right? You're still looking at it, you're thinking, oh that's great. Let me just let dig in a little bit more, right? So someone may have a mental win or get excited, even just seeing it on the collection page, but regardless, interesting, that's what you

Kurt:

Can test.

Brett:

Gotta test it. So worked in most cases, but not all. I like that. So here's a good one, and this is one that I wouldn't have thought to test necessarily, but it makes sense. How important is font size? So the size of the text on your pages, does it matter? Does it not matter? What did you find out and why? Why did you test this by the way?

Kurt:

So I'm a big believer in, I'm a big typography nerd. I like type fonts,

Brett:

Which I notice looking@ethercycle.com, whichever to go check it out just to see. It's a super fun well-designed website. You can tell you typo typography, beautiful and interesting fonts. Yeah,

Kurt:

That one's got this real retro look. But I thought easier to read will perform better, we'll convert better if a site's hard to read, I'm not gonna fight my way through it, I'm just gonna leave. I don't think there's really any dispute there. So I wanted to prove this with data. And so I set out and I started testing different sizes of font. I'm gonna split test my way to determine the exact right font size. Well it turns out you a test with a really subtle small change like that, it's so hard to get to statistical significance. Yeah. And so I couldn't, no matter which way I set it up, no matter how dramatic that change was, I could not get a statistically significant answer out of it. But I knew font size and was important. But really it turns out readability is what's important.

I was looking too granular. The real picture here is readability. So this is one ends up being a trick question you would have to do in different layouts and split test those. And so we didn't do it, but around the same time Bayard Institute came out with a usability study and they do like these, they call them large scale usability studies. And they figured out here is guidelines a starting point for ideal readability on fonts. And if you think about magazines and newspapers, they have those real narrow columns. That's what makes stuff easier to read is you wanna follow print type setting that we have at this point used for centuries ever since the Gutenberg Bible. Yes. It's a line length is 60 to, you want a line length of 60, 80 characters. And so if you go on your website and you put it full screen and the text just goes end to end, all right, we're not optimized here.

Brett:

Not, it's not inviting to it, it feels like it feels work. It feels really difficult to get to the meaning of what you're putting on the page.

Kurt:

I remember at school you used to double space your paper so that you could fill out more. Well

Brett:

It turns out you just promise.

Kurt:

Yeah, 1.5 is an ideal readable line height. And then you can also real mess with paragraph spacing, word spacing, letter spacing. They have those. I tried just putting them blindly into a few websites. It didn't look quite right. So I think it's a starting point. You have to tweak it from there. But if it's, it's really just that how many characters are on a line? You got two sentences, they're not gonna read it. You got five words, perfect. Easy to read. And so I like those narrow product descriptions. I think that performs well.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. And just to illustrate this point, I don't know if you guys are this way as well, but just to share a little bit of my weirdness the friend of mine got me a leadership book, gave me this leadership book that he raved about and I believed him, I believed him. It was a good leadership book. But when you open up the pages, there are certain pages that are one paragraph. So the entire page is a paragraph and then wall to wall text, right? Is the least inviting page ever. And I'm like, I still just have, I've not read it for that reason, which is silly. There's probably some great content there and I'm not reading it because it's so uninviting to read. So

Kurt:

Yeah, no, so if you format it poorly, no matter how good the content is and you look at it and it's just wall of text, Yeah, it's a turnoff. People aren't gonna bother

Brett:

My back. Use

Kurt:

The inner. You put some line breaks in there, man.

Brett:

Exactly, exactly. Okay, so readability is greater than font size or readability is what really matters. Font size, you could kinda go one way or the other, but the goal,

Kurt:

Yeah, I would say just as a rule of thumb for body font, really 16 is probably the minimum. If it's a really chunky font, maybe 15. But I'd say for most sites it's like 16, 17, 18 pixel.

Brett:

Nice, nice. Okay. Good stuff, good. Easy win there and helps us focus in the right way. Let's talk about one that I know is a real hot button. This is something that, and honestly this may be something that people have a four gone conclusion on. They believe in one way very strongly but that's free shipping, right? Free shipping is a must, right?

Kurt:

Free shipping, oh my gosh. Free shipping is a must have. We've been told forever. Forever that you have to have three

Brett:

Years

Kurt:

That the number one cause of abandoned checkouts is unexpected shipping expense. My god, these monsters charging for shipping <laugh>.

Brett:

That's,

Kurt:

That's a good firm service.

Brett:

What is this? Early two thousands with this website charging for shipping.

Kurt:

Ugh, disgusting. So is this the case? It turns out split testing, free shipping not the easiest thing to do, but at least in the shop in the Shopify universe you could do it with dedicated apps. And there, I'm sure there's several, but the two we use successfully ship scout and intelligence will let you do split test shipping rates. And so we tried this at several stores with, they got different results. But I'll illustrate one here. The effects were always very similar. And so we were able to track checkout conversion rate when we offered no free shipping at all. Everybody just paid 20 free shipping at $25 and free shipping at $75. And what was interesting is the checkout conversion rate for all of those things were within a few points of each other. Our checkout conversion rate, meaning people who get started, the checkout for no free shipping was 72% for free shipping at $25. That was the highest. Or we got the lowest, but it was still under 80%. And then free shipping at $75 right in the middle, right at 70

Brett:

Five's.

Kurt:

Interesting.

Brett:

But 72 was with no free shipping at all.

Kurt:

So I'm really not gaining, I'm gaining very little, it's just marginal gains with these free shipping. And so I think we should reward our whale v i p clients. If your average order value is 50 bucks, then it should be a no brainer that someone who spends $200 should get free shipping. Fine. I'm not gonna dispute that one. But it's more as customer service really. And so I think it gets interesting when you start to consider profit per order, profit per checkout because especially since shipping keeps getting more and more expensive. Totally. And people are, so many people switch to e-commerce more than they ever had before in 2020 that I think as consumers get more sophisticated, they're also more willing to pay for shipping and be understanding about it depending on the item. And so in this particular test, we knew our average fulfillment cost was seven 50 in order and when we ran so we could calculate profit per visitor, our $25 rate was where we performed the best. That had a $12 profit per visitor. But when we didn't offer free shipping at all, which we only lost a little bit of conversion, that had a almost $20 profit per visit.

Crazy. I sacrificed a little bit of conversion, but then I gained considerable profit like 40%. And so that's why it really pays to take a hard look at what does shipping cost us and what's free shipping cost us in profit as a cost center.

Brett:

I love that. And I think, again, this just underscores the need to split test things because a lot of us just believe, hey, because Amazon's been free shipping forever, we have to be free shipping with our products on our stores. And the reality is you need to test it cuz maybe it's not boosting your conversion rates that much and maybe it's just eating in to profits. So you gotta test it. Love

Kurt:

That one. Well, and what I like too is when you're not offering free shipping just all the time as a threshold, then you can use that as a promo instead of having to do the traditional like, oh we discounted our product. Yeah, hey boom, we're offered free shipping this weekend. Only go.

Brett:

Yep, yep. Super easy. Then built in promotions and now it's legitimate. Right now it's real because you don't offer it the rest of the time you are offering now. So built in promos. Love it.

Kurt:

That urgency. Yep.

Brett:

Yep. That's awesome. Cool. So let's go back to collection pages. So you wanted to split test hero images. Do we put hero images on our collection slash category pages? What is that? And explain what is a hero image and then what did you find with that split test?

Kurt:

All right, so I'm shopping on funky t-shirts dot com, I click men's funky t-shirts, boom at the top there's like three dudes and robo cop and a banner image. By

Brett:

The way, do you have a tech nasty t-shirt? Cuz if not, you should probably have one at time.

Kurt:

Nasty. I don't but I gotta work on that. Yeah, <laugh>

Brett:

Funky.

Kurt:

So yeah, men's funky and there's like three dudes of Robocop T-shirts looking funky but it pushes all my products down the page. Uhoh like I've got this big banner at the top, I gotta wait for it to load <affirmative>, but it looks great. So I'm like pro hero image. Cause I think it makes a difference when you've got a really nice well done image.

Brett:

That's the image at the top of the category page kind of frames. What is this category or collection? All that's

Kurt:

That banner. And it's always a lifestyle image almost always. Or an action shot. So this is pretty cool, I love these, but it does this matter. Should we test it? So we did. And this was in a store where they look great, they had put in the effort and it cost us conversions. Having it there, it performed way better without it. Crazy revenue procession up 16%, 92% confidence. Well maybe that's just cuz on desktop it doesn't look right or on mobile it doesn't look right. So we tested that, we ran this one again, same store, mobile versus desktop new versus returning. Every single one of 'em performed better without the darn banner image. And my thinking is it's scrolled it. There's like, I got this banner at the top, but I'm already shopping so all you've done is presented me with a thing I have to load and scroll past just to get to what I wanted to do. If they're at that category page, they're already shopping, stop selling, They've already started shopping.

Brett:

I like that. And I would agree with you too, if you look at a good collection page, good category page, it's got that brilliant here, hero image. You're like, Yeah, I like this. You show me two pages. One with one without the hero image is gonna look better. But you make a very good point. If someone lands on the homepage, they get to the collection or category page, they're already in shopping moat, just show me the freaking products at that point and let me shop. Or if they land, the only time you really land on a collection or category page is if you are doing non-brand search or something like that where it's a very specific search that again is very product focused, otherwise they're gonna be landing on something else first and then getting to a collection page. So yes, this makes a lot of sense. And with a 16% increase in revenue procession yes please, I'll save that load time, pull that hero image and make more money there. So you would, and I love the way you framed this, that this is kind of a great way to look at both conversion rate and AOV at the same time. But talk about revenue procession and how you guys landed on that. Has that always been the key metric for you guys And no, Yeah, you guys land on that?

Kurt:

No, I mean, so as far as my e-commerce KPIs go, if I'm just yanking on levers to scale businesses, average order value is my favorite because you don't have to get new customers, which is the hardest thing. And you don't have to convert more customers, which is tough. You could just sell not even a ton more, just a little bit more a on average to every customer and you make significantly more money. I love AOV as this, but in conversion rate optimization, it's in the title, we would always look at conversion rate as our main kpi, but it's certainly, it's not the only one. It's not perfect if the further your test is away from that checkout where the conversion happens, the more noise that's getting introduced to you,

Brett:

What really raised the conversion right there if it's not there at that checkout. Yeah.

Kurt:

And certainly there is so much statistical noise and questionability in split tests and you just can't post a split test on the internet without a whole bunch of people coming outta the woodwork to be like, here's why you're wrong,

Brett:

Here's why you're

Kurt:

Like, okay, well wrong. We all know it's cuz this disagreed with what you assumed it would be, right

Brett:

<laugh>

Kurt:

But no. So in with another, this always turns into a pitch for Google Optimize. I swear I have no association, it's free.

Brett:

It's a free tool. People, yeah,

Kurt:

In Google Optimize, it'll ask you what's your primary objective and transactions is what they call conversions in. And you could do revenue, which now we're revenue procession and we're combining really conversion in average order value. I like that. But then a whole bunch of others. But you can choose multiple so you don't just have to commit to one. And so when you see consistent results across conversion and revenue procession, that's usually what I'm looking for. But you could also do add to cart, bounce rate page views. Sometimes we'll use those if it's more engagement focused. But no, you don't just have to use one. I'll usually set two or three and then that way I feel more confident when I see that results are fairly consistent across multiple KPIs.

Brett:

I love it, but I love that it's a good blend there because what's the benefit in increasing conversion rate if our AOV goes down, which can happen sometimes. That's where shifting that free shipping threshold can really have an impact. Yes, conversion rate went up but AOV went down. So in the end we made less money. But that's where that revenue procession really kind of helps combine those two and clarify things, which is great. So awesome. Let's move on to the next test. I got a couple more here. These are super fascinating. So should you include recently viewed products on the product detail page? So here we are, we're at the product detail page, we're looking at this funky. Should we also there show, hey remember you also looked at these other funky, is that a distraction or does that actually help with conversions? What did you find?

Kurt:

So alright, as the designer in my heart just wants to get rid of extraneous elements on a site, that's the easy way to conversion rate optimization is just try and keep people captive. Declutter by getting rid of distractions, declutter. And a recently viewed products widget on a cart. Who is this for? I have a history button, a back, I got history, a back button. I

Brett:

Not remember what I looked at five seconds ago.

Kurt:

I'm gonna get emails, browse abandonment, I'm gonna get marketing ads. And so this was the thing I wanna justify really just for a client, I wanna justify getting rid of a recently viewed items widget <laugh>.

And they're like, Yeah, you could do whatever you want as long as you show us the data first. All right, fine, smart challenge accepted. And so I tested this thing and it was net improvement. Let's see. Yeah, it was rev. Everything increased when it was present versus when it was removed. And this annoyed me, I'm like, now I'm getting rid of this thing. So I run the test again, mobile versus desktop, same result. Darn it. Run the test again. New versus returning. This is where it got interesting for returning visitors. It's increasing good version rate by 33%. And we had this thing on the cart page and the product page new visitors, it must have just been weird for them to see it decreased conversion rate by 9%

Brett:

<laugh>. So decreased conversion rates for

Kurt:

Them. It was for,

Brett:

Yeah. Huh.

Kurt:

So in Google Optimize you could deploy, it's called deploy personalization. So when I ran the test that said, hey, hide this for new people and that's a win. I could just have Google optimize do that. So you could use it to run personalization. So if it sees a new visitor, don't it hides that recently viewed item widget and if it returning visitor then it doesn't do anything.

Brett:

But returning visitor increased conversion rate by 33%. That's crazy. But I would tend to agree with you, or at least I could make the case there that yeah, it's just a distraction, why have it there? But your client was wise and said nope, show me with the data and the data said otherwise. So you have the recently viewed products, you keep it on the product detail page at this point. So brilliant test. Love that. What about, now this one's super interesting to me. Add to cart from the collection page, yay or nay. So I'm on that collection page or that category page, there's that quick add button or add to cart right there. Or do you want to view it or do you wanna do quick view or whatever? So what happened there? Do we put the add to cart on the collection page or not?

Kurt:

It depends, but I think the answer is yes.

Brett:

<affirmative>. Okay.

Kurt:

And so we ran this test again, I tried to do, at least for pulling these examples with data, I tried to do apparel stores for everything cuz it's very relatable, it's very general and that's also one of the biggest categories in e-commerce. But in this case, adding it increased revenue per visitor 15% with 85% confidence. So that's right at the minimum for where we're still statistically feeling this is statistically significant. But having the add to cart on a collection or category page aspe is really convenient. Especially if you're on a slower connection, you're making multiple purchases and items. And so I think it's definitely gonna depend on the store's catalog and what the products are. If I'm buying body jewelry, if I'm buying nuts and bolts, if I was just buying buttons for an arcade machine and I was like, I swear I wish this site would let me add to cart cuz I need two 16 buttons in different colors and I have to go back and forth, back and forth. And right away I knew that's the use case. And so if you have these less spec driven, lower price, similar items add to cart for sure. For sure. If it's a MacBook, real high price technical items, I don't need to add five

Brett:

Different, We're always gonna go to the product detail page before you purchase. Right?

Kurt:

Yeah. So certainly some common sense needs to be used here. And Bay Mar Institute, they did a usability study recently. They felt they made a similar argument but they liked quick view where it opens a window with more info. Right, right. That keeps you on the collection page. Yeah, I don't wanna have to go back and forth, which on a phone could be annoying for sure.

Brett:

Yeah. So then you just look at maybe turning that off for the mobile experience and keeping it running for desktop or is that an option?

Kurt:

I think on mobile you do. Oh for sure. I think increasingly we need these mobile specific and desktop specific optimizations. I think they help a lot. But no, I really think it's more product and category dependent. If it 50 bucks and less, definitely consider this. And if it's a lot of similar stuff, definitely consider it.

Brett:

Totally makes sense. But if it's a high ticket item and you're gonna be digging into that product detail page every time we add to cart, then it's less important. Yeah,

Kurt:

You could also do it if you wanna get fancy, do it per category or collection. Yeah, let's say

Brett:

Other, Yeah,

Kurt:

I'm selling drones. All right. I probably don't on the drones page, I don't want it. But then on the accessories I'm buying SD cards

Brett:

And batteries parts, the replacement parts

Kurt:

Page or whatever, then I could use it.

Brett:

Yep. Yeah, that's interesting. So maybe go collection by collection or category by category. Super interesting.

Kurt:

See what

Brett:

The price split test to me. I like it. So last one that we're gonna last split test result. We're gonna dive into them. We got some general tips which are super helpful as we wrap up. So what about breadcrumbs? Do we need the breadcrumbs? And in the early days, in my early e-commerce days, we supported a Magento agency and so we ran all the marketing for Magento agency and all their clients and super fun. But I know breadcrumbs were a big part of Magento, at least back in the day. But so first of all though, yeah,

Kurt:

Magento went hard on really making these gigantic faceted breadcrumbs.

Brett:

They loved the breadcrumbs. So for those that maybe don't know, explain what breadcrumbs are and then what'd you find with the test results?

Kurt:

So a breadcrumb, it's always in, there's a consistency to it. It's always like 14 point font in the upper left and it tells you starting from the homepage where you're at on the site. So really it's like it's a drill down, it's home department product or subcategory then product. And this just seems like a thing in the way I'm on the site, I I'm on the product page, I can just click the back button. So I thought, I'm like, this is just, what am I doing with this? I don't want this thing. And so again, I'm like it's extraneous, I'm gonna remove it. And so I gotta split test it. And it turned out on that when I was wildly wrong on the product page increased revenue per visitor by 53% with 92% confidence. That's insane. Cause what's going

Brett:

On? People love their freaking breadcrumbs. But yeah, why?

Kurt:

This is another one where when you get rid of the breadcrumbs, if I had just by straight conversion, it improves conversions. But at what cost? Because it's like they get to the product page, they go cool, add to cart, and then they leave. Whereas when I had the breadcrumbs, and you could see this in heat maps and screen recordings, they're using it as navigation. So they go back and they shop more. And so when I got rid of the breadcrumbs, all I did was sacrifice people buying multiple items. Nice. Cause I made it a pain.

Brett:

It's crazy. So people were adding to cart and or purchasing. So conversion rate went up. And again, that's why you gotta look at it holistically. Conversion rate isn't the only metric, right? People are buying less, they're spending less. So conversion rate only in this case actually hurts. So yeah, they're adding that item to the cart, but then they've got the breadcrumbs there where they go back to the category or two categories go whatever they can, they now easily continue to shop. So

Kurt:

That's sell more than one item. You probably have to have the bread crumbs. There's like only there'd be a rare handful of scenarios where you didn't want the bread crumbs. And so now I'm like, all right, we gotta make breadcrumbs work, look good, be even better. Gotta optimize my breadcrumbs.

Brett:

Now gotta, So we wanted to get rid of 'em stupid breadcrumbs but they make a difference now we gotta make 'em smarter better. So which by the way, how do you optimize breadcrumbs? Do you have any thoughts or theories there?

Kurt:

So in shop by the breadcrumbs are a little limited. They normally look at like, hey, what's the collection url? They look at the URL to fix it. And so we rewrote it, what it act one where it can use, if it doesn't know how the person, if they just landed on the product page, how do you develop the breadcrumb? And so adding some logic to backfill that in either you can have it check what was the last collection they look at with a cookie and add that in. And then if that's not present, okay, let's look at the products, maybe the vendor or the product type and then use that to try and backfill collection. This. If you, you're really getting deep in the weeds by the time you're doing this one, you're

Brett:

Getting deep. This essentially, I mean this happens. So we run a lot of Google shopping. Traffic's one of our core channels, but a lot of people then parachute in on that product detail page. So if I land,

Kurt:

So in that use case, yeah, this is a win

Brett:

For sure. Having those breadcrumbs there, they're gonna buy more items for sure. Okay, love it. So we have it. There were seven unique, interesting split tests, several of which surprised you and would've surprised me if you hadn't already told me the results. So super interesting there. What about, let's close out, which is some general tips. What tips would you give people as they're going on this journey to increase conversions and AOV and all that good stuff?

Kurt:

So for sure there's some good advice here. I tried to keep it to things that will be generally helpful, but you gotta question everything. And that's like when you see people sharing their wins and the results and their split tests, this is what I did. Okay, that's what they did not, that doesn't mean it's what you should do. And

Brett:

You know how they did it. What if they didn't even get a statistically significant result? What if they just got the result they wanted and they wanna share it?

Kurt:

And even if they did get it statistically significant, it was significant for their audience, their catalog offer, et cetera. It's not the same for you. And so what people are like, oh, they'll like, I'll post something and they'll start questioning the, not often, but they'll question the methodology cuz they're trying to get to, well here's why this is invalid. And to those I'd say like, look, I'm sorry that it disagreed with what you thought, right? Cause that's really what they're saying. Or

Brett:

You don't like the truth, it's okay. Yeah,

Kurt:

Yeah. But also it doesn't matter for you just go, you run that same test on your store and see what happens. And so I think question everything about other so-called experts, there's just being in this space, there's a fire hose of great info. So many. So who do you listen to?

Brett:

So many experts. Yes.

Kurt:

And certainly part of the problem here. And then also question your own assumptions. And so there's all kinds of elements on your homepage, on your website. Why are they there? What are they doing? Until you've split system, you really have no idea if they help or hurt. You're

Brett:

Just, I think I heard you and Paul talking about this on a podcast episode where we all, were in love with the sliders on the homepage, right? We all want sliders at top our homepage. Yeah, because that's what you do. That's what you've done since 2000 or the late nineties or whatever. But what, what have you guys found there? And I know we kind of finished the split test, but you found some interesting stuff there, I believe recently.

Kurt:

So that collection, homepage test or that collection test where it's like, does the hero help her hurt? Yeah, we did the same darn thing on the homepages and same result, it always performed better without the homepage hero image. And the reason real is what's going on is because the second thing is always featured promos and a product grid, a featured collection on a site. And so you're just getting them shopping faster. Again, it's the same premise. That one really blows people away. They're like, but we have to have them. I dunno, have you been to google.com lately? Where's their slider? Right? You don't have to have a slider.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. So other tools you had mentioned, so you mentioned Google Optimize, love it. What other tools would you suggest people check out?

Kurt:

Well, I really like Hot Jar you know, also wanna combine this with a heat map tool screen recording tool. So you can see, get a macro view of how people are using the site and micro views. But then I think ultimately the real deal, number one conversion rate optimization hack is talking to your customers. So few people wanna talk to their customers and that's where you get the really great test ideas is when you talk to people and you go, Oh, you know that because every customer will be like, well they'll speak for everyone. I want this and that and that. Well maybe they're right. And so when you go test those things, that's what we've had the biggest wins is taking a customer suggested idea from a phone interview and put that onto a site and then test it.

Brett:

Super interesting. So you actually, let me get this straight. You're actually calling customers on the phone, talking to them with words, not typing or something like that, but you're getting feedback from the customer and then you're implementing those into split

Kurt:

Tests in rare occurrence. Yes. Yeah, <laugh>, that is the most powerful thing you can do is pick up the phone. No one wants to use phone.app, but that's the one that prints money.

Brett:

But it works, man. It absolutely works that. That's awesome. Any final tips? And then I wanna point people to you so they can check out more of your brilliance as they go. But any final tips? I know we could talk about this for hours and

Kurt:

Hours. I mentioned a few tools. Use the tools you, I don't care what tools you use, so long as you're doing the work, whatever you're comfortable with, that's great. Perfect. You don't have to justify it to anybody. We mentioned it earlier, but I think it's a mistake to just solely and laser in on conversion rate, especially Google Optimize, where you can have secondary goals and I think revenue is a really good one to work with. And then certainly I think the other mistake is lumping everyone together. And so I would do consider segmentation, especially mobile versus desktop and new versus returning

Brett:

Mobile versus desktop to very different experiences and different modes, different mindsets people have. And then, yeah, it's another simple segmentation, new versus returning. Cuz like you showed with several of your tests actually that new visitors behave differently than return visitors. Which makes a lot of sense actually if you think about it. So Kurt, this has been awesome. So go listen, check out the unofficial Shopify podcast, one of my all time favorites. You gotta listen. But if you listen to this and they're like, Dude, I wanna hire Kurt and his team to work for me. Tell us a little bit about Ethercycle. Who do you work with and how can someone reach out to you?

Kurt:

Ethercycle.com, you could find us. And we work exclusively with Shopify store owners. We've been since 2014, I think. And that's awesome. We do really, we're a theme shop. We build a lot of custom themes. We do do store migrations but we also do maintenance programs and conversion rate optimization work.

Brett:

Yeah, and you guys did, did all the work recently for Overtone, which is as a Firestones company. We worked on that together. So you guys did a lot of the build side. We're doing the Google and YouTube and Amazon side. But yeah, what what'd you do for overtone specifically?

Kurt:

Overtone? That one was interesting. They were on Shopify, but it was headless. And so we built an entirely custom theme and that designed to develop to custom theme and then migrated back to Shopify. Got rid of the headless solution entirely, which is simplified it and admin for them made life a lot easier. And some of these split tests

Brett:

We mentioned too, didn't it?

Kurt:

Some of these split tests were run in that store.

Brett:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's done quite well. I think it was an improvement. I know kind of the, there's this rage for headless, which is a topic for a different day and there there's scenarios where it makes sense. But for, in this case, simplify, run some of these tests. It was definitely a win for overtone for sure. So awesome. Kurt Elster, ladies and gentlemen, hit that tech nasty button one more time. <laugh> Tech message. Awesome. Kurt, this has been super fun, man. Thank you so much. And we will have to, It's been too long. I think the last time you were on this show was like four years ago so we will four

Kurt:

Years ago. That is too long.

Brett:

I know. It's no good. So we'll have to just get it on the calendar, get you back as a regular guest. So much appreciated, my man. This was awesome. Please do. Looking for to next time.

Kurt:

Thank you so much.

Brett:

Absolutely. And as always, thank you for tuning in. Could not do this show without you. In fact, it'd be pretty lonely. It'd be pretty pointless to do this show without you. And hey, if you're listening to the show and you think, man, this is enriching my life, this is making me more money, this is improving my e-commerce experience, then share it with somebody else. We would love that. And leave us that review on iTunes if you think it deserves it. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

John Parkes and I go way back. 

In the early days of OMG, we partnered with Russell Brunson on a project called DotComSecrets Local. John helped oversee the project. It was pre-ClickFunnels in 2010 and an excellent time to work as an online entrepreneur. Having an upfront seat watching Russell and his team was inspiring and educational. 

Fast forward to today, and John is the Chief Traffic Architect for ClickFunnels. Or CTA for short, which is a nerdy and satisfying job title for a media buyer. John is a great media buyer, strategist, and marketer. He’s wicked smart and fun to talk to!

In this episode, we dive into rethinking Facebook Ads. Plus, we talk about the grandfather of direct response marketing - Dan Kennedy. Interestingly, many people (myself included) thought Dan was dead. He’s not, and now he’s part of the ClickFunnels team. 

Here’s a look at what we dive into:

• The experience of buying Dan Kennedy’s company and brand. Opening up new markets and introducing the current market to The Godfather of direct response marketing.
• D.W.E.L.L. - audience strategy for focusing.
• How to build “set it and forget it” remarketing ads.
• How Google and Facebook Ads work together - this can really unlock growth when you understand it.
• Is TikTok really a game changer from a marketing and business growth perspective?
• A sneak peek at ClickFunnels 2.0.

‍

Mentioned in This Episode:

John Parkes

   - LinkedIn

   - Instagram

Click Funnels‍

Dan Kennedy‍

Reddit‍

Google Analytics

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of O OMG Commerce. And today I have a legend on the show. Not only is he a legend in the industry, but he is an old friend. We go way back like 10 or 12 years. We'll tell that story in just a minute, but we're gonna be talking about Facebook ads. Are they dead or are they not dead? And, uh, spoiler, They're not dead. We're gonna talk about ways you can maximize. We're also gonna talk about some trends and the interconnectivity. I'm just trying to use big words now. Uh, between Facebook and Google, we're gonna talk about ClickFunnels 2.0 and some other amazing things happening. And so with that, I wanna welcome to the show, um, and longtime friend John Parkes, who is the Chief Traffic Architect, which, if you are paying attention, if you're thinking that acronym is CTA Baby, which totally makes sense for markers. So c uh, Chief Traffic Architect, John Parkes. How you doing, man? Welcome to the show and thanks for taking the

John:

Time. Yeah, awesome. To awesome to be here,

Brett:

Dude, I was so excited. We, uh, well, I, I think you reached out to me on Voxer, right? Which is the old walkie talkie app, which the only reason I ever got on that app was because of you and Russell Brunson back when we were working together. And, uh, and I hadn't, like, I hadn't had it in for years, but a notification popped up. I was like, Whoa, is John Parkes that I, that I suddenly, uh, teleport back to like 2012 or what happened here. But it was present day and I was excited, uh, to get that message from you. But, uh, but yeah, let's, let's actually tell the story of how we met. So you are now celebrating how many years working with Russell Brunson?

John:

I'm in my 15th year now with Russell. I know, it's been a while.

Brett:

It's crazy. And so back in, I think 2009, 2010, I could check. I'm terrible with dates, but I think that's, I think that's right. Uh, I partnered with Russell and, and, and you to, to launch, uh, an old project called.com Secrets Local. Right? It was super fun. It had what, a three or five year run it, it was great. Yeah. And you guys were just, I, I remember, I remember meeting Todd and hanging out with Todd at some events and Boise and you guys were just like kind of noodling on, uh, ClickFunnels. Cause when did, when did ClickFunnels launch?

John:

Uh, yeah, let's see. Can me on a date? I'm gonna say it. We played around in 20, 20 15 ish. There was something Yeah,

Brett:

You guys were like, just kinda

John:

Like, but yeah, like, we're

Brett:

Working on, we're working on something big. I remember you guys, so working on something big and I'm like, cool. I can't wait to see it. And, and something big was an understatement because ClickFunnels has been a monster success. And we, you know, we focus in the e-com space, run an agency, but we use ClickFunnels and a lot of our clients use, like, everybody knows ClickFunnels, right? So, um, uh, I, I wanna do this first. Maybe can you kinda explain like, what, what does a, a chief traffic architect do? What, what does like a day to day look like for you John Parkes?

John:

Yeah, awesome question. Awesome question. So we, uh, it's interesting as we've grown, cuz I mean, you've been with us since we were tiny. There was like three of us in the office and you know, <laugh>, you're like, There you go. There's, I

Brett:

Remember, I remember one, uh, one year I was there for Halloween. Uh, me and Chris Brewer, my business partner were both there. Uh, Brent Co. Peters was there and everybody, everybody wore costumes and sweets, like made stuff up. Yeah. I put a big, uh, mailbox like around my waist and I went as Lumpy mail, if you remember like the, the field three 3D or lumpy mail. <laugh>. Absolutely. Anywho. Yeah. Crazy.

John:

That's hilarious. Um, yeah. So, you know, back in the day, I, I, uh, I'm gonna close this tab here just to make sure we don't get too crazy, so No

Brett:

Problem.

John:

Yeah. Back in the day, like when I was, uh, running just kind of all of the traffic, I mean, I had to produce the ads, write the copy, you know, make sure the sales funnel got made, do the customer service. Like there was, it was everything, right? And that was back in the day where you were on board and uh, um, and, and it was crazy. But when we, as we grew, we started to specialize more and more and more, right? And, and so we had to come up with this, this concept of the chief traffic architect, somebody who's like driving all of the traffic. Like, what are we doing organically? What are we doing paid? What are we doing, You know, when it comes to branding and search and are we doing anything offline, direct mail, all kinds of stuff like that. And it's like, who's this person that does all of that and is slightly different than the person who's, who's, um, coming up with the new ideas for, for offers and landing pages and stuff like that.

Cuz that's a different focus, right? In our company. So we have, we have, uh, a team focused on putting up the new sales page, the new sales funnel, putting up the, you know, or, or even deciding what the Black Friday, Cyber Monday offers gonna be. All of that is in this channel over here. And so a chief traffic architect day to day is, is, um, basically taking the pass from the, um, from the funnel team and, and making it grow, making it, bringing it, you know, making it rain, bringing it in the sales. So it's like that's what we do all day long is we're, uh, we're, uh, iterating on ads that worked, looking at what works in other industries, bringing that back to the table, creating new, you know, images, video, getting copy written, trying it, failing, trying again, 16, you know, that whole model of, it's a, it's a like a whole suite of media buying.

Brett:

Yeah, man, I, I love it. And I really like the way you laid it out there. It's, it's thinking about all the traffic options that are available. Yeah. How do we, how do we optimize, maximize, really get the most out of that? And, and I, I've never really loved the term media buyer. I mean, we use it all the time in our industry. I use it too. It's, it's fine, but I think it's just kinda limiting. It's like a retail buyer. I'm just buying products, right? I'm just buying some media. I mean, right. But, but Chief Traffic architect, come on, man. Like that, that's what what it is, right? We're, we're architecting this traffic, which I love that. So Kudo, kudos to you for a, a great, a great title. Yeah. So I, I wanna, I want to talk, uh, briefly about Dan Kennedy mm-hmm. <affirmative>, before we get into, uh, some specifics on Google and Google and

John:

YouTube together. Yeah.

Brett:

Yes. Yeah. So, uh, and actually, uh, so, so those that don't know, and if you don't know, it's because you're probably just new to the marketing world, but Dan Kennedy, he's like one of the godfathers of, of modern marketing, of direct response marketing. And in fact talked about dotcom Secrets local, where we all worked together. I met Russell at a Dan Kennedy super conference. I, I'd just been reading the newsletter, you know, Russell wasn't as huge, uh, then as he, as he is now. And I was just at this Dan Kennedy event, saw Russell in the lobby, and we started chatting it up and hit it off and, and kind of went from there. Uh, but so Dan Kennedy is what kind of made that, that possible. I, I read his newsletter for years, man, It really formed my, my marketing perspective. But, um, I gotta say, I was surprised.

I think a lot of people were surprised. I thought Dan Kennedy was dead, right? So there was this time, and then you can maybe, uh, fresh me up on, on dates, but, but Dan Kennedy wrote this letter from what he thought was his death bed, saying like, Thank you, it's been a great run, whatever. Like, and, and I remember reading this letter and I was just so sad. I was like, this is like, you know, a guy who was a, a mentor from a distance, but a mentor for me, and he's dying, you know? Yeah. And then, and then not too long ago, I'm on Facebook and I see a picture of Russell with Dan Kennedy, and I'm like, Wait a minute. Was is that, like, is that an old picture? Is that a new, what's going on? And, uh, lo and behold, uh, Dan Kennedy's not dead. And, uh, I just never heard that he pulled through his, his illness. He really was terribly sick, but pulled through that illness. And, and so, uh, you guys now bought that company, Dan Kennedy's company, Magnetic Marketing, the rights of that. So talk about what that experience has been like and, and kind of why'd you do it and what the vision is there. But yeah, just, just tell us about that.

John:

Yeah, yeah. It was fascinating cause we were, we were on the same train as you. Like he was, he was dying. And then the next date we saw people publishing that, that it had happened, he had passed. And so we were all sad in the office. We were like, Oh, I can't believe it happened. This is, you know, and in a way it kind of, kind of revival as, as the legend, you know, moves on to the next phase of his existence and we're reading old Dan Kennedy books and stuff like that, and then all of a sudden it's like, wait, he's not <laugh>, he,

Brett:

I go, That's right. Yeah.

John:

And it was, it was fantastic news. I mean, you can only imagine, you know, it's like, it's like a Hollywood movie, but the, but then, um, I, I wish I knew the exact moment that Russell then kind of reached out and, and they started to mastermind this idea of, um, of combining, you know, of, of, Hey, let me, let me take on your business and help your legacy grow. And it kind of, I kind of stemmed from that moment where we're like, well, now Dan's passed on into legacy status, right? He's, he's, he's the, he's a legacy. Well, well, not really. He's, he's still alive. Well, let's make it a, a legacy anyway, right? So <laugh> <laugh>, of course. So yeah, we, we, we grabbed that brand, We knew that we know sales funnel and we know, you know, online acquisition and stuff like that.

Like, like that's our bread and butter. And so we're like, let's take this Dan Kennedy offline old school marketing genius, and let's publish it to the internet marketing world, um, and, and just, and just grow and scale in a way that, that, that that brand hadn't done. And so we thought it was the perfect match, um, bringing in a new demographic into our world that, that we hadn't reached before, as well as introducing the young bucks to this, to this marketing legend to the past. So, um, yeah, in a, in a really cool way to like reverse mature the brand. We, we acquired an old brand and now we're a part of the legacy, right?

Brett:

Yeah. It's so smart. And, and if you look at, at some of the legends that a lot of people will know, like Frank Kern and Ryan Dice and, and Russell Brunson and Alex or Mosy and, uh, Roan Fraser, some of these, these legends, you know, in our mind, like they all learn from Dan Kennedy in the beginning, right? Like Dan, Dan shaped all of these, uh, current rock stars. And so yeah, you guys are able to track like that, that old following Dan Kennedy audience to ClickFunnels and also take the, the young pups and introduced them to Dan Kennedy, Right? Which is just awesome. So,

John:

And what a neat way to, um, to, to also, um, like garner relationships with some of those old legends. Like you're saying, if, if, uh, if I can entice you to like, Hey, would, will you support a Dan Kennedy offer or Dan Kennedy launch, then heck, you know, all of a sudden it's like, like doors are open, right? And so it's a way to open new doors that, that weren't previously open to.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so cool. Can't, can't wait to see more there. And so, and you guys are using the magnetic marketing brand, right? You guys are, are, are kinda reviving that product or building things around that right

John:

Now? Yeah, we re we relaunched an offer, oh, I'm gonna say not six, maybe nine months ago at this point. Um, no BS letter, The no BS letter that, that Dan Kennedy's used that no BS concept for a long time. And, um, he's had his newsletter going out for a long time, but we, we put a new fresh face design on it, matched it up with our own behind the scenes, you know, Russell Brunson letter. And so now you get a two for one, um, you know, twice a month you get, you get these just dynamite marketing newsletters. And so we, we have been able to revive that brand and that, uh, not, not only the, the brand and revive the people who are already subscribed to the, to the Dan Kennedy world, but, but bring our world into the Dan Kennedy brand, right? Which is kind of a cool thing when you acquire, is how you get a cross sell, especially when you acquire a complimentary thing. You know, you get that cross sell, and so you get kind of a double subscription happening as well as, uh, it's been able, we've been able to attract, you know, other JVs and affiliates who are, they're all about promoting Dan Kennedy, you know, that's, that's a thing that they wanna stand by and stuff.

Brett:

Totally. Yeah. It really, I didn't even think about that, but it totally makes sense. Like, if you're digging into affiliate marketing and joint venture stuff, which you guys have always been great at, at, this opens up a a whole new realm of people to work with, or just a fresh excitement, like of course, Right. I wanna promote Dan Kennedy to my list, that type of thing. So that, that's awesome. Uh, super excited to see where that goes and, and dig in more. And I'm just curious, has, has, like Dan been by the office, has, like, have you guys got to hang out with Dan or, or, or I guess maybe not in a, the covid world or post covid world,

John:

Right? He's, yeah, he <laugh> he's a very, he's a very interesting cat. We have been able to hang out with him when he comes to an event, you know, like behind the scenes at our funnel hacking live event, you know, we can hang out with him. Um, but he, he, he rarely travels here, but Russell does go travel there and hang out with him. Yeah.

Brett:

Yeah. Totally makes sense. That makes sense. Cool. All right, awesome. So let's, let's get technical, let's get strateg, let's get tactical. Yeah. Um, and so let's talk about Facebook. First off, uh, let me ask you this, John Parkes. Yeah. Is Facebook dead? Because, you know, I, I hear people a lot saying I was 14 killed Facebook, Right? Right. I'm mad at Zuck, like, you know, Zucks catching a lot of heat for a lot of things and whatever you'll probably be catching for forever. And the meta versus silly and just all all kinds of stuff, right? So, but from your perspective, how are you viewing Facebook right now? And is it that

John:

Yeah, that's a fantastic question and it, and it's different if you ask a stock investor <laugh>, right? Versus, versus a chief traffic architect, right? Yeah. Is is is the, is the Maita stock grow? Is the growth curve still there? Is it, And, and, and the thing to realize is that it's, it's saturated, right? It's hard to find places for Facebook to grow, but that right there by definition means it's a great place to advertise cuz it means they're omnipresent, right? They're everywhere. So

Brett:

Everybody, everybody is still there, right?

John:

Right. Should you go out and buy Facebook's stock? Well, I'm not a stock investor, not gonna buy you on that, but should you go buy ads on Facebook? Absolutely. Shit, <laugh>, it's a fantastic place. And you and I were chatting, um, earlier and it, the concept that like almost every brand we work with, and a lot of 'em, the ones that you work with, from what you're saying, um, 50% of their spend is in the Google Suite and 50% is in the Facebook suite. And in those two monsters, you've kind of saturated everything.

Brett:

Yeah, totally. It, it's so interesting to me. And, and yeah, there, there are potentially issues with Facebook, right? Like one of them is, hey, young people aren't really on it. Like, I've got some older teens and my oldest is, is 20 now. Like, none of them really wanna be on Facebook, but they're all on Instagram, so, so kudos too Zuckerberg for getting on Instagram. One in the same when it comes to ads. Um, but yeah, it really does still come down to those two giants, Google, which includes YouTube and Meta and, and yeah, we got an advertiser that's spending, you know, six to 8 million a month on ads and it's probably not quite 50 50, but I mean, Google and, and Facebook, those two are, are by far the biggest. And then you got native ads, which are pretty huge chunk for this particular brand.

And I'm, I'm focusing on one brand, but this is true for other big advertisers. And then you also get TikTok and, and Snap and some other things there. But, but one of the things we talked about, and this, this is not, I do not want to, uh, be a downer on TikTok. Cause I think I'm bullish on TikTok. It's, it's a cool platform. It's growing. There's, uh, I mean, it's cool. I don't get on it, uh, for fun, but I think it's creates some good opportunities. But I don't know anybody, big advertisers, I don't know anybody spending more than 10% of their budget on TikTok. Right?

John:

Most

Brett:

It's like six to 8% type of thing, which is fine. Like, I think the way you said it was like, we spend a little bit on, on TikTok and it helps a little bit, right?

John:

Yeah, it's interesting. We, and we do the same with Snapchat and with Pinterest. Those are kind of the three where we've been able to find some, some extra room is, um, well, B too, I mean, we do advertise on Boone.

Brett:

Yeah. Bing is actually a great little add-on to what you're doing it

John:

Maybe

Brett:

10% what you doing Google?

John:

Yeah, Right. Giving us that five, 10% lift over here and there and over there, you know, but Snapchat mostly your targeting. Pinterest, we do some prospecting on Pinterest, and it is, and it is working for, you know, for certain offers that we have. But again, it's, it's a small piece. It's not anywhere near the size of what we spend on the, I guess it's now called maa, right? The Maita Ad State or the, or the Google, Google site. So yeah.

Brett:

Yeah. I'm still, I'm still not used to calling it meta, but, uh, I don't either. It, it'll happen more as we go, but, uh, but yeah. Okay. So let's talk about this for just a minute. And then, and then I want to talk about, uh, your system that you and, and, you know, kind of inspired by Russell developed for Facebook ads. But let's talk a little bit about the, the interconnectivity or the, the, the connection between, uh, Google Ads, including YouTube and Facebook, and how do you see the two working together?

John:

Yeah, I love that. So, um, Nicholas GoIT, I'm sure you're familiar with him. He wrote a book, um, and I read the book on a plane once, you know, and, and this interesting thing he brought up that I hadn't ever seen in this way, he, he likened under a swimming lane, right? And there people who swim fast, medium are slow. And there's the people who the fast swimmers, right? And they just take action. They, they see an ad, they click a buy, right? My wife accuses me of being that <laugh>, and

Brett:

It's like, it's Mark research, babe, I gotta see what this funnels like. I gotta buy the product, write

John:

It off, I'll use her business card. Right? It's no, exactly. It's the people who are just like, it's the type of person that just sees lives, right? And, and those are the ones that can, you know, run a conversion ad on Facebook and you get 'em, that's great, fantastic. You're measuring your CPAs. You want, you know, your, your average car value is higher than your CPAs right there, right then and there kind of a thing. But then there's the medium swimmers who are gonna think about it or need to see the ad a few times, but then there's the slow swimmers, right? Who, who aren't getting any less of a workout, it just takes them longer to do it, right? Kind of kind of concept. And those medium and slow swimmers, um, find themselves elsewhere on the internet interacting with you, right? That's what's really interesting to realize.

So when you run a Facebook ad, or you know, whether you're on Instagram or Facebook or anything, you're running the ad, you know, you immediately tend to focus on, well, how much should I spend and how much should it cost me to get that sale? But the other number that is right next to it in your stats is, how many impressions did it have? How much reach did it have? And it can be in the millions, right? And the millions of video views, depending on how much you're spending and the millions of impressions and stuff like that. Well, those, while nobody's necessarily clicking on those, or maybe they are, maybe you could have hundreds of thousands of clicks too, you know, and only somebody turning into sales. Think about the amount of branding that's happening. Think about the, the, the literal reach that you're having there with those ads.

And if the message is intriguing, and if you, if you've got the right kind of hook story and offer, um, you might not be closing anybody, but the fast swimmers and the slow ones are finding you elsewhere, right? And so that relationship with Google Ad Suite, where then they might go to YouTube and search, Well, tell me about this e-comm, you know, this, this e-comm product, this new thing that I found out saw on Facebook. Or they might go over to Google and, and, uh, and actually search for your brand. Or you might <laugh> gotta gotta throw my wife under the bus on this one because it was really funny looking over the shoulder. I mean, love her to death her, but I was looking over her shoulder, she was using the computer the other day and um, and I was like, Go to this website.

And so she opened up a new tab and the new tab, you know, in Chrome and it just said Google. And there's this big old place down there, right under the word Google. So she typed in the URL right there, and she, and she clicked enter, and then it caused a search to happen. And then <laugh>, luckily the URL she was looking for was the first thing that she clicked about. So like, there are people searching for your brand intentionally, unintentionally. And I'm, I am, after watching that and watching how she uses the internet and how some of my parents use the internet, some of my neighbors use the internet, I'm convinced that that unintentional search is a huge number. You know what I

Brett:

Mean? Is a huge number. And, and we see this too, and I'll, I'll, I'll make it a little correlation here. Cause I think this will help paint the picture. There's a lot of people that wanna buy something on Amazon, uh, but they still start on Google. And so we see this a lot with a lot of our Amazon brands where they're, you know, hundreds of thousands of searches a month on Google of someone typing in this product. And Amazon. And I think it's just for a lot of people, the internet begins on Amazon. I'm sorry, the internet begins on Google, right? So you go to Google, you just to even type in the url, but it triggers a search. It's insanity. It's super interesting. Yeah,

John:

No, it's, it's interesting. And like, even if, even if they know, I mean, so we're like talking things like URL and, and address bar. People don't know what those are. I mean, the, the majority, I'm gonna say the majority, and I'm shooting from the hip here of, of, of consumers don't know what I mean when I'm like url, you know what I mean? Or, uh, you know, kind of a thing. They're just like, I don't know. I just searched for the thing. I searched for the soap and I typed in the word Amazon and then I, it just magically leads me to this place called Amazon where I buy the tho, right? Yeah.

Brett:

I Googled it and then I got there. That's all, that's all I needed to

John:

Know. Yeah, you survey them, that's what they say. And so the fact that you are just throwing out millions of impressions over here on the social media side, and then you're basically retrieving them on the Google side, those things work hand in hand. So with our budgets, we've noticed, um, like we, you know, we'll find this fantastic, you know, cost to get the sales over here on the Google search side, right? And so we're like, well, we're gonna take some of our budget off of Facebook and you mentioned doing this, see my budget off of Facebook cause that's kind of expensive over there. We're gonna put it more on this Google search side. And it doesn't work because it throws the balance off. All of a sudden you have so many fewer people getting introduced to your brand and so therefore less searches.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. We, we notice that, you know, as an agency, we don't run any, any traffic on Facebook, but, but we're big fans of it obviously. And, and we'll notice that too, Like say, Hey, branded search is down this week. Did you guys do something different on Facebook? And and oftentimes the answer is yes. Yeah. And so we immediately see that. Yeah. We've also seen a connection, a correlation between YouTube and Facebook. So as we boost spend on top of funnel, YouTube, uh, Facebook often performs better. If, if someone's going hard on top of funnel, Facebook often top of YouTube works better. Oh, yeah. Uh, but we, we do a lot of measurement on, you know, YouTube brand lift studies. And one, once a once a client or once a brand gets to 30, 50, a hundred thousand a month on, on YouTube, we're usually seeing lifts of like, uh, 20 to 35% on their branded campaigns.

Mm. And, and, and I'm, I'm confident we haven't done the same study, cuz we don't do, we don't run Facebook, but confident the same numbers are true on Facebook, Right? You, you start spending a certain amount, your brand campaigns, your, your lower funnel search campaigns are gonna see a 20 to 40% lift. And so, so yeah. Yeah. You can't just look at what, what are the, and I love that. I love the Swim Lane thing. I, I think I'd maybe heard that, but I've forgotten that. I love that analogy. I'm gonna use that. But you can't just look at, okay, well this campaign only closed so many people because it just got the fast swimmers, right? The medium and slow swimmers are, are being converted through other channels, but wouldn't have happened without your top of funnel efforts. So, Right. That is awesome. Good stuff. Um, so let's talk about your dwell method. D W E L L. And it's an acronym. And you know, as marketers, we love acronyms, right? Right. We love, uh, shortening things. You know, there, there are more. I think there are more acronyms for marketers than any other group of people in the military, right? We got, we got ct, we got cv, we got ecr, which is E-commerce conversion room. We got, we got CPAs, we got cac, we got, we had CTAs, Right? Which now has a new meaning. Thanks. Right?

John:

And we even like to use our acronyms wrong too. I mean,

Brett:

<laugh>. Yeah. So gimme an example. I know, I know that, Oh, you mean, you mean what your acronym?

John:

No, no, no. I just, it's just funny cuz the accountants use C in one way and the marketers use CAC and it doesn't mean the same thing, you know? True,

Brett:

True, true, true. Yep. CPA is not certified public accountant. It's, you know, cost proposition and things like that. Uh, but, but anyway. So explain to us what Dwell is, and maybe also explain why it's kind of got a double meaning. You'll, you'll, you'll talk through the acronym, but it also kind of means something else. So, so walk us through that.

John:

Absolutely. So, so, uh, you know, Russell's written a a variety of books, fantastic books. And, um, in the books, he talks about finding out where your, where your target audience congregates, right? Finding out where they congregate. And it's an interesting concept cuz like, if you think way, way, way back when, you know, you, you brought yourself a literal soap box and you find out where the people are congregated, you'd drop it down, stand on top, say you're one foot taller than everybody else, and you'd start shouting, and hopefully somebody would buy something, right? Or you'd be preaching or whatever it was. But the whole soapbox concept, because you were finding congregations, right? You were finding wherever they were, and they were there because they liked to be in the park, or they were there because they, you know, you'd go to where you'd think your target audience best was.

So in the internet world, you gotta figure out where your people congregate, especially back when this concept was developed. And there was things like forums, right? But at, but they still, they still exist right now. They're in the forms of Reddit, you know, and things like that where people still congregate around topics. Um, Facebook groups or pages likes, interests, right? Uh, YouTube channels and, and all kinds of stuff. They still congregate. So you gotta find where they congregate. And so with that concept of congregating, I needed an acronym to help explain Facebook audiences, right? Because we, we teach a lot in, you know, the ClickFunnels brand. We, we have, we have coaching programs and we teach from stage at our own, at our own presentations and other people's, our events and other people's events and stuff. So I needed a good acronym to teach these concepts that I developed. And so I kept thinking about, you know, so I came up with Dwell, right? D W E L L, whereas where do your people dwell? What do they congregate? So that was a way for me to remember it, and hopefully the audience do.

Brett:

Yeah. I love it. It it, it, it will stick in my brain for sure, and I think for everybody else as well. And so, really the acronym relates to audiences, right? And, and such a huge part of we do as marketers, right? So the right message to the right person at the right time, right? And so it's message market match. Uh, but walk us through that. So the D and Dwell mm-hmm. <affirmative>, what, what kind of audience are we talking about there?

John:

Okay, So this is some, when I teach Facebook advertising to people who, who really don't know it yet, or maybe they just wanna learn this method, um, they, they forget all the different audiences available to them, right? So that's why Dwell makes sense. So the first D in Dwell is your data. What data do you already have? What's your data? Do you, do you already have, Are you a pizza restaurant? And you once put a fishbowl out and people threw their credit or their, their business cards in there to get a free topping or something like that. That's, that's data. You have data, you've collected so many email addresses or phone numbers, right? That data audiences that you can then upload into Facebook as what's called a custom audience. So d helps you think data and it helps you think you, you gotta start just like brainstorming, what data do I have?

Do I have data from a previous launch? Do I have data from five years ago? Do I have data from my fishbowl? Do I have data from my cousin's business, which is a lot similar to my business? And he'll share that list. You know, like, what kind of data can you access so that, um, you know, um, obviously legally and uh, and, uh, ethically what kind of data can I access? So yeah, get, get the data you can, you can get, and then refine it. Make sure that it's, it's good data, you know, it's data that that's gonna work and convert the best you can think through. And then you upload that into Facebook. The fun thing with Facebook is you can give them an email address, first name, last name, all kinds of shipping address. You can give them, you know, male, female, you can give 'em phone numbers. So sometimes you have data and you don't realize you have it like maybe your dentist's office and you have a whole bunch of phone numbers, but you sure that's not available for online marketing? Well, you can, you can upload a list of phone numbers, you know?

Brett:

Yeah. I love this so much. And, and really as we look at where, where is marketing headed in the future? Data's always been important, right? It's always been about, uh, you know, who you're speaking to, right? Is almost more important. I would say it is more important than, than what you say, right? You, you deliver a mediocre message to the perfect audience, it's gonna work, right? You deliver the perfect message to a terrible audience, it's not gonna work. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But, you know, with, with privacy changes coming, uh, like the, the people, the businesses, the brands that have the most first party data are gonna be way and are, are likely gonna win. So get more first party data. And actually, I think this is why you see, like, you know, Google's in a really good spot as far as first party data. So all that search data, that's their data, right? You're giving Google that search data on google.com first party data, they can use it, right? If you look at Amazon, all the shopper data and what you've bought and stuff like that, it's all done on Amazon. It's first party data, they can use it. Uh, you've got first party data too, and you've gotta put it to work. And that's the best place to start. So, love that. So D is for data,

John:

D is for data it

Brett:

Audiences, I like it. What's but

John:

The w Yeah. So I'll, I'll give this caveat as we head down. The first L is gonna reference the other three as source audiences. Okay? So as you think about that, D is our first source audience. The w the w is for website, what's happening on your website, right? And the, uh, you know, you've heard the Facebook pixel, the Google Pixel, the tracking things you can put on your site. Um, it's the, it's the website. So what, what's happening on your website are people, you know, all the people who hit your website, all the people who hang out longer on your website, um, people who go to the next page in your sequence. So all that pixel data is, is the second layer of audiences. And again, a source audience for the, for the looklike. We'll talk about when the first L, So the first D is that data. Grab all your data, refine it, upload it into Facebook

Brett:

From purchasers, subscribers, wherever you can get data about your customers. And then website,

John:

Right? And the website, Yeah. Yeah. The people who are hitting the website, cuz they haven't necessarily given you data, but the tools are in place to let you capture it into an audience.

Brett:

Yep.

John:

Love it, Right? Google has tools to do that. Yeah. Facebook too.

Brett:

Cool. So we got D, we got W Next is E

John:

E the E and the, and the dwell. The E in the dwell is cool. It's the engaged audiences. Okay? So you, you've got your, you know, your, your YouTube subscribers and watchers and stuff like that. You've got your Facebook page likers and shares and you know, so you got this, people

Brett:

That have engaged with video ads, like people that have watch a certain percentage of a video ad you can put them into an engaged audience.

John:

There's all this engagement happening. Some of the cool coolest engagement audiences that a lot of people miss are on, on Facebook, on the Facebook and Instagram platforms. You can save a post. Some people are in the habit of doing it, some aren't, but an audience, a lookalike audience based off of people who've saved your post or even interesting who save your post, Save the post that hot, hot market. Yeah. It's a really interesting one that a lot of us just don't think about. It's smaller, but it's almost like a, a very refined buyer's list. It's really cool. Hmm. So think about

Brett:

I know that I've ever done that. Wait, is that, is that just on Instagram? Is that right to say post

John:

Facebook watch you too? Facebook people

Brett:

Never done that on Facebook. I have had

John:

Three dots that list.

Brett:

Okay. Super interesting. So I have done that on Instagram where I'll see like a, like a stoic philosophy quote or so I'm like, Oh man, it's so good. I gotta show that my kids or my team or something. I'll save to collection or whatever mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But I've never thought about that. So that, that happens on Facebook too, yet that's a, that's a white hot audience. Uh, so that's an interesting one and that's one that I do not hear people talk about too much. So love that. So yeah, we got, we got lots of ways to measure engagement. Who is, and you know, if you look at like Google with, uh, Google Analytics, they can build, um, oh, I just forgot the name, cu uh, shoot. Um, it's the audience of people that are most likely to convert next.

John:

That's to maintain

Brett:

What, what's that?

John:

Affinity or custom intent?

Brett:

No, it's neither one of those. Those are both brilliant. But there, there's an audience that, like you, you get, it's a smart audience, uh, that you can build inside of Google Analytics. And Google is saying, Hey, this audience is likely to convert next because of what they've been doing. Yeah. But that's really what they're looking at. It's certain levels of engagement. And then Google's saying, Hey, I'm gonna package all those people for you. But what you're able to do here at Facebook is say like, okay, I want, I want these types of engagement, right? Because those people are showing that, hey, they're likely to convert if we just give them a reason to say yes and push them over the edge. So

John:

That's, you know, one thing we do with, one thing we do with engaged audiences is we, we boost them, right? We intentionally grow those engaged audiences and then we, we harvest out of it. So we, uh, we have our organic social team and they'll throw out posts, you know, all the time, a couple times a day, whatever, whatever seems to be working organically to get maximum, you know, maximum engagement. And then they'll notice a certain post has, has legs, right? When the other three didn't that week or whatever on that one, they'll throw another $200 behind it and just grow the engaged audience, right? Five, you know, 5,000 people watched this video. Well, let's make it 50, 50,000 people now watched it and now we have this big audience that we can then throw conversion ads at, right? And so growing intentionally kind of bolstering those engagement audiences, um, has been really helpful for us.

Brett:

That's super smart. Uh, so, so I love that where you're looking at, okay, say three, call it three organic posts a day, whatever the winner is, right? If there's something that's doing pretty well organically, that's a good sign that people like it, it's gonna be good. Throw some money behind it, Build up that engaged, uh, audience, and then now you can Yeah. Harvest it. Super smart.

John:

Right? You know, another crazy thing that we've tried recently on that same note, I'll just throw this in there as a, as a little nugget. Oh, I like this, uh, an organic post that, that performs really well engagement wise. If you, so like, let's say it's a carousel, right? And it, and it can be a fairly standard Instagram carousel where like, sp scroll to the right five times and I'll tell you five book quotes, right? Or whatever it is. Mm-hmm. But as long as it's working engagement wise, if that final part has some kind of call to action that's relevant to the care cell, you can turn it into an ad and it becomes the best performing ad. We had a certain ad

Brett:

Interesting,

John:

We ran it for months and months and it had, I mean, no one who crafts ads would've said, You know what? That's, that's the winning ad right there. That's the one. It was just this really silly Instagram engagement care cell, right? And it, I think it was about Russell and potato guns, right? He loves, we love to rely on that one. So Russell, Russell, yeah. I started this potato gun business first I did this, then I did this, then I did this. Learn more on how to start your own business. Click boom, right? And it was crazy.

Brett:

And it was your best at. And that, that's, that's so cool. So, uh, love that little nugget there. So, you know, organic post, find the winner from, from just organic reach, boost it, you find a real winner. Yeah. Say a carousel ad, just make that closing card, a call to action and voila. Yeah.

John:

Had a winner. Yeah, that was a really fun one. But after we've built up these audiences, these data audiences, and we've scoured around and got our best ones, these website audiences and got our best one, these engagement audiences and get our best ones, the next letter in the dwell acronym is L and that stands for lookalike or in Google it would be, it would be similar audiences that doesn't work from acronym. So, um,

Brett:

D Weel. Yeah.

John:

<laugh>, right? That works. But yeah, the lookalike audience. And so these, these, these audiences then serve as, as sources, right? The, the seed audience for then these algorithms, whether it's the, whether it's the Facebook algorithm or the Google algorithm to, to see who, who the type of audience you're looking for is, and go out and find more of them, right? Anywhere on Facebook, anywhere from 1% of the nation that's similar to you, up to 10% of the nation, that's the most similar. They've got all this data that you don't have. Algorithm has more data than, you know, than we even know. So like they're able to go out there and just juggle away at it.

Brett:

Yeah. It's awesome. So lookalikes and, and that's, yeah. That's the beauty of these two platforms of Facebook. And also Google is yeah, you, you build these profiles, right? Engage, you know, those us your website data and then yeah. Build lookalikes and, and often that those are the audiences you can, you can scale with. So,

John:

Um, I'll give you some, some caveats though on that, on that, on that fourth audience that looked like audience, um, garbage in, garbage out, right? We learned that in elementary school and we had our little typing computer program class. So if, if the audiences that you're giving Facebook, if you're saying, Hey, these are 10,000 people who liked my organic host in the last month, make it look like off of that, that's garbage, right? But if instead your engagement audiences, all the people who've saved my post in the last five days, something that's like really, really tight, tight, then it's gold, right? Gold in gold out. No one ever told me that in elementary school. Yeah,

Brett:

Gold in gold out. I like that better. That's cuz that's way more motivating. That's

John:

Way more motivating. So you gotta make sure you're giving really, really good seed audiences for those similars and lookalikes to work.

Brett:

Totally makes sense. All right, we've gotta, we've got the, the, the first four, uh, of dwell here. Uh, but bring us home. What's the second L

John:

Okay, the second L. And this is the one that you're supposed to ignore until you've paid attention to the first four. That's why it's at the end. And this is the one too many people resort to right outta the gate. And those are the provided interest that Facebook provides. So layering interests, right? And l for layering interests. Um, Facebook has all these demographics and interests and stuff. And you can say, well if they liked Martha Stewart and they like home cooking, then they're probably gonna like this, this new spa I'm selling, right? But, but the thing is, is that you're just guessing at that point. You're taking the algorithm out of it and you're just going like willingly guessing and too many people start there. That's not where you start. You gotta start with the other one.

Brett:

Yeah. You'll find some winners there, right? Like going, going after these broad audiences, right? In in the Google ecosystem. It's in market audiences and, and things like that. And we love, you talked about, uh, custom intent audiences or building audiences around what people are searching for. Um, you know, it's still going beyond your data and your, your customer stuff and, and similar audiences. You'll find some major wins there and some major opportunities to scale, but you also find a lot of stuff that doesn't work and that's okay, that's just part of it. But that, that's why you start with those other areas, those lookalikes. Yeah.

John:

Yeah. You, you lean deep into your, to, into your other audiences before, especially if you're, I mean, I'm talking like you're starting a company, right? You've got 400 bucks a month to spend. You, you're just trying to figure out where to spend it. It's not that last month.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah. Totally, totally makes sense. Yeah. Uh, cool. Alright, so we got our, we got our dwell. Uh, let's talk a little bit about, uh, you, you told me about kind of a, a set and forget it. Uh, Yeah.

John:

You, you know about

Brett:

That. Accept versus never refresh. Yeah. So, so tell me about this.

John:

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, so another way, another way I help beginning advertisers understand ads is that there's, there's a world of prospecting and a world of retargeting. Two different kinds of ads, right? And the prospecting ads, the way you can think about that is that's when you're reaching out to find cold people, people who who don't yet know you, your brand, your attractive character, whatever your leading thing is, you know, your, um, and, and they don't know that yet. And so you're reaching out to maybe problem aware people, but not, or maybe even solution aware, but not product aware, right? When we're using the Eugene sports model Yeah. They're not, not yet familiar

Brett:

With it. Did I just read, I read a big chunk of that book again on an airplane recently. Yeah. It's so good. Like, it, it just, it triggered all kinds of ideas in my mind. It was written in one like 1960 something, 1970. I don't remember Eugene Schwartz. Yeah. Um, uh, uh, what's the book? No, not scientific. That's uh,

John:

That's the other one.

Brett:

That's track cables. Uh, yeah. Breakthrough Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz. Yeah. It's, it's a masterpiece for sure. It's

John:

Fantastic. Um, yes, it's breakthrough advertising and it's fantastic. And the, um, the fantastic things, you know, the, the, the layers he taught about the, you know, the problem aware, solution aware, um, even product aware at the top. So when you're prospecting, you're reaching back a couple layers, right? And you, and you've gotta have these ads and, and they, they tend to burn out quickly depending on the audience size. You've got, you've got these, um, you know, these ads, the prospecting ads, and you've got, especially, especially in the Facebook world, I hear this more burn out there, right? For sure. Every, every three weeks you gotta come up with a new ad because this one stopped working, it worked for a while and then didn't, right? And so that there, there's a lot of work there, especially for a new entrepreneur starting up and maybe they don't have a lot of, you know, creative power behind them.

Um, but the cool thing about the separating out the retargeting is that if once you've figured out, you can set it and forget it. And this is why, because you have, if, if you set up the audiences right, and if you test your ads, then you can get this done. So figure out what you wanna say to these, to these retargeting audiences. You know, try it out. Figure, run some creative until you get some that work, right? And then, and then those, and then once you have that, you've got that. And then you gotta make sure your audiences are structured right? So I, I do retargeting audiences off of, off of website action, off of engagement action. And, um, and even off of the data. So it goes like this, if they've engaged with your brand, right? You know, they've, they've watched them YouTube video, they've liked to post, shared it, commented, anything like that, any kind of, um, engagement.

Then I will retarget them for a small period of time, right? Maybe three, five days, right? We're talking for a small period of time. Um, but, but I set up those audiences in Facebook so those people only hop into the audience for five days and after five days they fall off. It's almost like a conveyor belt. So that audience never gets old so they can't burn out on your ad, the ad last nice indefinitely, right? Right. Pop in, they hang out with you in your ad five days, boom, fall off the backside, right? They didn't take action, they're out the next layer. Yeah. The next layer is people who visit, who then click through and visit the website. Well hey, they visited the website, that's a little bit of an action. I can hang out with them a little bit longer. Let's go for 10 days now. You know, But again, you structure that, you structure the audience. And so, so they hop in, they see that ad, you know, they see it in, and I'll tell you how I, how I like mechanically how I structure these in the, in the campaign, um, in the campaign settings. But they hang out for 10 days and then they, they fall off of that audience and they can't in essence, burn out on that ad. They're only there for 10 days. Yeah. So the, this is a set senate, forget it kind of model, you know?

Brett:

Yeah. Love it. Love it. So then you find these winning ads Yeah. For retargeting and then they could maybe run for a year or more. I'm, I'm guessing like it could just run Yeah. Uh, that and I that actually because of that. That's why in YouTube some ads will just run forever because a lot of the audiences like a custom, uh, intent audience is refreshed by Google about every 14 days. Yeah. And so then you, you, it's not, the ad doesn't wear out cuz the audience is refreshed all the time. Yeah. So I love that. That's super, super cool. Um, so any, any thoughts here for those that like to get nerdy on the, the mechanics of, of how you set that up and, and understanding with podcasts? It's hard to visualize things, but in any, uh, specifics you want to add there.

John:

Yeah, definitely. So depending on the depth, the, the, the amount of steps they've taken with you or how refined that audience is, however you wanna kind of think about it. If you've got a very, very refined audience, you don't need Facebook to back you up and double refine that audience. And what I mean by that is you don't need to rely on the algorithm and you don't need to run conversion, um, conversion objective campaigns. Okay? You can run reach campaign, right? True, true of your campaign, right? You can run campaigns that, that are there for saturation more, more so than are there to, to snip out the winners. Cuz I mean, if you only have, let's say you only have, you know, a thousand people who, who clicked through and hit your landing page, you should retarget every single one.

Brett:

You wanna hit all a thousand. Yeah. Right? So go for a, so making an impression based campaign ensures that that Facebook or Google's gonna just hit everybody. Versus if you do smart bidding, the algorithm's gonna be kind of choosy on who they should. Right?

John:

Pull, pull, pull the smart out of this version, right? And I'm saying, I'd say this with a huge caveat of make sure you have a refined audience or you blow your budget. You know, you don't, you don't do this on a cold audience,

Brett:

A few million people or something. Yeah.

John:

See a super refined audience where, where they've taken a ton of actions, you know, that the likelihood that they buy is high, go for a full saturation. Usually what happens, you get cheaper impressions, right? Cuz you're not having, you're not, they don't have to be choosy. They don't have to like, use their algorithm to just like the winners, right? Do you get cheaper impressions often do you get, you get more brand saturation, you get to reach 'em all so you get more conversions.

Brett:

Yeah. Super smart dude. I love this. This is awesome. Uh, well I'm a little bit bummed. Uh, we are, we are completely out of time. Uh, so we do need to wrap up, but, uh, kind of final questions. Uh, tell us a little bit about ClickFunnels 2.0. Huge, uh, sure. Release that depending on when you're listening to this is either about to come out or is barely out or, or whatnot. So talk us a little bit about that and, and what are you excited about, uh, for the future of click

John:

Funnels? We're, we're super excited about ClickFunnels 2.0. So yeah, it's coming out in just a few weeks. Um, we're super excited. You know, ClickFunnels 1.0 will still remain people who are in there and and loving it can still keep using it. And if they've got their pages built there, their sales funnels and they love 'em, by all means stay there. But just like base cam does where we're coming out, ClickFunnels 2.0 and it will, it will, it will also be an an option. ClickFunnels 2.0 has like all the features you always wish base or ClickFunnels had at 1.0. You can build your blog on it, you can build your website on it, you can build your sales funnels in it. You can have brand controls, you know, if your brand's purple and this exact, you know, shade of purple, you can brand the whole thing purple.

You can make, you know, these, these static elements that are always there. You know, branding things, whether it's the website, the blog. So anyway, all of the pieces you always wish you had and get this br It also has a store and it just like Shopify so you can have all your income store listed right there. So that's why we're so excited. It's all under one house. So the ease of use will be fantastic. The, the interactivity between them and the coolest thing that I'm so excited about cuz I'm the, I'm the, you know, the numbers guy is, is the integration of the stats.

Brett:

Mm.

John:

Love it. Like, like since it's all in one system, I'll be able to see the person who hit my shop and then the sales phone, like all of that will be so interconnected and the data will be so clean because it's all under one, one roof.

Brett:

Super, super smart. Awesome. So if people are like, Hey, I wanna learn more from John Parkes, or I just, I wanna check out click funnels, I know most people already know about it, but, or I wanna check out ClickFunnels 2.0. How do, how do they do that?

John:

Yeah, just hit me up on Instagram. I'm, I'm most active on Instagram, um, you know, uh, the handle of John O. Parkes and you'll see me right over there. And yeah, if you wanna find more about click Funnels, click funnels.com. That's where find Oh, right. It'll be up in just a few weeks. If you're listening to this in a few weeks, then it'll already be there. But Click Funnels 2.0. We're super excited for that launch.

Brett:

Awesome. So I'll link to everything in the show notes, but, but John, this has been a blast. Thanks for doing this, man. Super fun. We'll have to do it again.

John:

Hey, for sure. Thanks for having. All

Brett:

Right, brother. Thank you. And as always, thank you for tuning in and we'd love to hear from you if you've not, uh, reviewed us on iTunes yet. I would love that. Love it if you leave us, that five star view on iTunes helps other people find a show, makes our day, uh, and is just super fun. So with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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Preparation is the backbone for success during the holiday season.

Today I am talking to  a few of our OMG experts on preparing to win the 2022 holidays. Joining us is Amber Norell, OMG’s Amazon Director, Bill Cover, one of OMG’s amazing Google Strategist, and Savannah Knight, one of OMG’s rockstar Google Specialists. 

This holiday season should be quite interesting. Inflation, rising ad costs, privacy issues, and new campaign types have this year shaping up to be anything but ordinary. 

In this episode we cover how to: 

• Drive MORE traffic profitably
• Go omnichannel
• Turn every interaction (even support) into sales opportunities

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Mentioned In This Episode:

OMG Commerce Resource Guides

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Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today I have got a treat for you. You get to hear from not one, not two, but three rockstar OMG Commerce traffic experts. So today it's a traffic panel and we're unpacking what separates the winners from the losers when it comes to holiday season. Now, I know when you're listening to this, we're right on the edge or maybe in the thick of holiday shopping season, so this may be kind of one of those. Use this for last minute tweaks and maximizations and optimizations and things like that. And also use this information to get ready for next holiday season because the best time to start planning for next holiday season is right now. So I hope you'll use this episode to do that. And then also there's gonna be some nuggets, some bits of wisdom, and some truths here that will help you even beyond holiday season.

So at OMG Commerce, we're a digital marketing agency. We work a lot with Google Search shopping Performance Max, YouTube also on Amazon, and we're managing tens of millions of dollars a month in ad spend. So everything we share is based on data, based on real results, and I can't wait for you to meet the team. And I hope you enjoy this episode with the OMG Traffic panel. Are you a D to C brand spending over six figures a month on paid media? If so, then listen up. My agency, OMG Commerce, and I have worked with some of the top e-commerce brands over the years, including Boom, native Groove, moan, Organicy, and dozens more. And every year we audit hundreds of Google, YouTube, and Amazon ad accounts, and we always find either significant opportunities for growth or wasted ad spend to cut or both. For example, are you missing YouTube ads? Whatever you're spending on top of funnel Facebook, you should be able to spend 30 to 50% of that or more on YouTube with similar returns. So if you're spending 300 to 400,000 a month on Facebook, you should be able to easily spend a hundred to 150,000 or more on YouTube. Visit OMG commerce.com to request a free strategy session or visit our resource page and get some of our free guides loaded with some of our best strategies for YouTube ads, Google Shopping, Amazon DSP and more. Check it all out@omgcommerce.com.

All right, I am so excited about this session. We, we've done a lot of webinars now, it's something we do at OMG Commerce, and almost every webinar, the favorite session, the session that people keep raving about is the OMG traffic panel where you get to learn from some of the best and brightest that OMG has to offer. And today is gonna be amazing. We got Bill Co, we got Savannah Knight, we got Amber Norell, and so I'm gonna intro them for you. I'll keep it brief, but I'm gonna keep this I'm gonna be the hype man for just a minute just so you can feel confident in who you're about to learn from. So I'm gonna go the way I'm seeing them on my screen, which may be different than what you're seeing but first up is bill cover. Now you probably see their balloons behind Bill.

I'm gonna have him explain that in a second. But Bill is an mba. He is 10 plus years in e-commerce forever in e-commerce. Years prior to that, he worked with Fortune 500 brands through big ad agency for about four years. And so Bill's just a wealth of knowledge for all things marketing, all things branding. He is a strategist on the Google side and really just one of the smartest guys I know and somebody that we bring in to a lot of discussions on, Hey, how do we grow this account? How do we make this bigger? What's the angle here? What do we do here? So Bill, thanks for taking the time and anything you would add to that intro, and then also please explain to us why you have balloons, larger balloons behind you. Yeah, no, the intro was perfect, actually. I wish I could capture that and just use that as my intro for everything going forward.

So we have balloons, omg, OMG, Commerce, and yesterday we found out that we won the 417, which is a local publisher here 4 7 20 best places to work. And four 17 is our area code. So it counts for more than Springfield, Southwest Missouri, Southwest Missouri region, southwest Arkansas. And so this is the second year in a row that we've won this award. And so we're number one, baby number one. Yeah, super cool. So glad you chose that. As a backdrop, look at these giant OMG balloons, which is fantastic. So next up Savannah night. Now Savannah is what I would call this quiet warrior. She doesn't say a whole lot all the time, but when she does speak, it's very powerful and she knows her stuff. So we hired her as a Google support specialist. So kind of behind the scenes doing stuff, grew into a dedicated specialist. Now she's a lead specialist and really helping grow some of our biggest brands. She was the first one on the team to scale Performance Max. And so we trust her with some of the biggest clients. She's a hard worker, she's super smart. You're gonna love her ideas. So Savannah, welcome. Thanks for taking the time. Anything you would add to that. And is there any reason why you don't have balloons behind you? <laugh>? I don't

Savannah:

Think so. So I think you did a pretty good job, but yeah, no balloons for me. Bill stole 'em all.

Brett:

<laugh>. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Bill, yeah, there's three balloons you could've shared, but he decided the word commerce is on its way. <laugh>, <laugh>, fantastic. And then Amber Norell last but not least, Amber is our Amazon director. And when the smartest people I know on Amazon don't know how to solve a problem, they go to Amber. Amber has helped grow multiple seven, eight figure brands on Amazon. She helped launch Boom by Cindy Joseph on Amazon, grew them from zero to 5 million per year in sales and growing. She runs our Amazon department. When you think the impossible can't be done on Amazon, just call Amber and it's gonna be done. And so Amber, thanks for taking the time. Anything you would add to that intro and anything else you would like to say before we get started?

Amber :

Well, I'm excited to be here, Brett. I would've liked some balloons, but they probably would've deflated here in Orlando. <laugh>.

Brett:

Yeah, so omg, we're 65 strong. We're spread throughout the United States. Bill, Savannah and I are all in Missouri, which is where the HQ is. Ambers in Orlando, hot, muggy Orlando. And you say that all year round. So yeah, balloons probably do not survive there. Okay. Awesome guys. Super excited to dig in here. So we're talking about winning the holidays. So how do we win the holidays in 2022? It's a unique environment, a lot of pressure with inflation and rising costs and supply chain issues, although some of those are getting better in a lot of cases it's just a unique environment. And so I think one of the things we have to look at, and you guys know, and I've mentioned this on the podcast and other places before I coach basketball, but I love sports. I love the focus on fundamentals. If the fundamentals are sound, then you can build on that. If fundamentals are off, then creative stuff you do on top of that just isn't gonna work as well. So what are some of the fundamentals we need to get to make sure we win the holidays? And I'm gonna go to you first, Savannah, if you're up for that.

Savannah:

Yeah, for sure. So I think the biggest thing in the holidays is just having a good attitude because it's easy to get stressed out during this time of year. So maintaining a positive attitude is my number one. But just having larger discounts than usual people expect a discount during this time of year. So keeping that in mind with all those supply chain issues, making sure you have enough inventory of your best sellers. And then the last one is really having a plan B. I think that's really important in this case that something does go wrong, then you have something to lean back on.

Brett:

I love it. We're going attitude first. This is great. This is what I tell my kids every morning. Hey, good attitudes. So it's where it's at. But I do agree. I think you solve problems better with a good attitude. And that's one of the, our core principles at OMG is we believe that positive attitudes create better results. So it's not just like, let's be positive for the sake of being positive. It creates better results. So I love that. So really appreciate you bringing that to the forefront. And I also love to have a plan B because I think now more than ever, we need to think through contingencies. And maybe we don't need contingencies, let's hope we don't. But think about, hey, what happens if something goes down? What happens if we can't rely on this channel? What if? So plan as best as you can and you'll be stronger for it. So we'll go around the horn here. Amber, what about you? And Amber's gonna be on the Amazon side, of course, Bill and Savannah are more on the D to C that the Google and direct tier Shopify store, whatever, Amber's Amazon. What are some of the fundamentals we need to get on Amazon?

Amber :

Yeah, I think the basics are really just planning out your budgets, upping your bids, leading up to that big event, getting your listing content ready, making sure you have inventory. And then once you have those three things in place, what are you doing to promote what you've put into effect? So are you doing discounts? Are you pushing it through outside ads? Are you running it through influencers? Those would really be the four core things that I would focus on.

Brett:

Cool. So how do we make sure everything is ready that we're geared up, and then yeah, how are we gonna promote, How are we gonna make sure that whatever we have is actually visible and available for sale? And so yeah, love that. Bill, what about you from your perspective? Fundamentals? Yeah, so I feel like advanced prep is key. I was listening to Nims UJA on Joe Rogan, and he's the guy in 14 peaks, if you've seen that on Netflix. And as a Sher, I'm not in that, but that looks amazing. So he is a Sherpa. Yeah, we talk about that. I think that's the role of a good agency is to be a Sherpa, right? Which you dunno, it's a, yeah. So explain what a Sherpa is, Bill, if there's, Yeah, it's a perfect analogy because a Sherpa is there to help anyone who wants to go to the top of a mountain, get to the top of the mountain and back.

So it's a perfect analogy. So NIMS has a 100% success rate of getting his team to the top of the mountain and back. And when asked, how do you do that, he said advanced prep. So I really feel like that's a good analogy for walking into q4, is prepping in advance. Yep. Love it. So hey, you're here, you're listening to this. You've already hopefully done some prep already, but now we're gonna bring it to the home stretch, finish things out for you so you can really capitalize and maximize this all season. So let's talk about then so we got some fundamentals in place. What are some of the things that people overlook? So if we're trying to maximize this holiday season, what do people overlook? And I'll start with you, Amber.

Amber :

Yeah, so I mean, outside of just planning the fundamentals in general just overlooking seasonality. So you hear a lot of brands saying, Well my products don't really see an impact during Thanksgiving or Christmas, and they don't realize how much of an impact it can have to put lifestyle images in your listing on your storefront. So it's like, well what did you really do to make an impact? And I think that's what you need to be focusing on seasonally.

Brett:

Yeah, so talk a little bit about that. So we're gonna potentially look at updating our listing to be more holiday friendly. So maybe updating some of the images up, updating some of the A plus content. What are we doing specifically here?

Amber :

Yeah, I mean depending on how well your product does as a gift, I would definitely add it to a plus. Your gallery, your storefront, even the copy just give customers, help them paint that picture of them using it at the holiday table under the Christmas tree. That kind of stuff really, really is effective.

Brett:

I like it. And if we think I was comparing the digital shelf to the physical shelf in store and everybody has to buy a gift, we all wanna buy a gift, we wanna look like a hero or we don't wanna look bad on holidays for forgetting a gift. But also we don't have a ton of time and we maybe wanna shop kind of quickly. I know I like to shop quickly at times and occasionally procrastinate. So yeah, how do we make it easy? How do we make it clear that hey, this is a great gift idea and this is how it could be used as a gift. And so how do we make it easy and clear and obvious for a shopper to choose our product? And yeah, I think, you know, brought that up a second ago, Amber. I think there's some people that think my product's not really gift product or my product won't do well in the holidays, but you'd be surprised stuff sells in the holidays.

I always love using the example, and I know Bill, you know him well, but our good friend Brett from Microfiber Wholesale, he actually they sell mops and Microfiber Claw and other stuff too, but they started running ads that say the worst Christmas gift ever and it's like, don't buy your wife a mop or something like that. But it worked like everybody's buying mos like okay, that's funny. And the eye duty to mos, I'll buy one. So yeah don't underestimate the power of the holiday, even if your product isn't an obvious gift, but if it is, then really lean into that. So what about you Savannah? What are some things that people overlook on the D to C side?

Savannah:

I think one thing is overlooking the buildup to the holiday season. So the pre-holiday by the time Black Friday comes around, people already have a general idea of what they're gonna buy. So you wanna be there whenever they're making those decisions and making that list. But then also just being able to take advantage of those cheaper CPCs and things like that to build up your marketing list and your email list during that before the big showtime. And then also putting yourself in the mind of the buyer. I think that's easy to overlook when we get caught up in the stuff on the back end, but just remembering to think how are they looking, when are they looking, what are they looking for that can really help you level up during the holidays.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that so much. Really as we look into October, early November, that's the time to be building your remarketing list, beefing up those email lists, getting people interested and into the funnel. Because yeah, by the time Black Friday hits, people kind of know, a lot of people know what they're gonna be looking for, what they're gonna be shopping for. So while the purchases might not happen until right around Black Friday, that's when things really take off from a conversion and a purchase standpoint, build that up and take advantage of those lower CPMs and lower CPCs early in the holiday. I love that. Bill, what about you? What are some of the things that you think of people overlook for the holiday? Yeah, so as Aana was saying, put yourself in the mind of your buyer. And on the Google side ads need to match your landing page.

So the message should be continuous, Hey, we're running this deal. And certainly as the abbreviated version of the deal, the hook. And then when they get to the landing page, it needs to pay off that message in the ad and help people understand that this is a rare deal that this is a great product because as we were saying, you know, might not be buying for yourself, you might also be buying for yourself. So I don't wanna discount that either. Cause I buy for myself selfishly, nothing wrong. Buying for yourself. Yeah, absolutely. And so when someone lands on that landing page, do they see the same message that was in the ad, the reason that they came in the first place? Is it clear? Is it simple? Do I understand how to achieve the deal If it's different here, spend a hundred, get 15 off, spend 200, get 30 off.

I don't know what it is, but make sure that's clear. Walk through your own add to cart process once it's live, make sure that this is clear that I understand that I'm getting a deal how I get the deal. And so I see a lot of times ads are the evergreen ads and lead you to a great landing page or vice versa, the ads are promoting the deal and lead you to an evergreen landing page. And I think either of those scenarios will reduce the amount of impact you could have in q4. So totally agree. It's one of those things where sometimes I'm surprised by how much merchants make their shoppers work to get a deal or to figure out what's going on with a deal. So you see a deal promoted in an ad, a discount free shipping, something for the holidays, you click to the landing page and now there's no mention of that promotion, it's the product page or it's whatever.

And you're like, wait a minute, what was that deal again? I think it was this Well do I need to go back to the ad and look at that? Or now do I need to look for a promotion page on the website? What do I need to do? And at that point, often then people are just gonna bail. So yeah, create that congruity between ad and landing page and make it super clear, super simple, super easy to say yes to a deal because hey, a confused shopper where a frustrated shopper does not buy. And so we gotta make it it easy. Awesome. Any other kind of things that are often overlooked? Tactic strategies that are overlooked during the holidays for many of the three of you?

Okay, so I'll throw one in there that I, it's a bonus, right? But I read recently through a shop of I blog doing the post-purchase survey. And what I really like about that is that that's next year's learning. So you can ask them, yeah, how did you find out about us? Is this for you? Is this for a loved one, a friend, whatever a gift you know can ask any question you want and you're not gonna get a hundred percent completion rate on a post-purchase survey, but that's all right. You're gonna get data that then you can use to structure your strategy and your message next year. Yeah, I love that. Don't miss an opportunity. This is an opportunity when you've got more traffic at any other time of year, more conversions, hire buyer and have all of that. So obviously we wanna capitalize, make sure we maximize sales, but we also wanna maximize learnings. How do we capture enough information and data to know, yeah, how do we win next year? How do we win during the next big sale opportunity and how do we get better? So love that. Call out Bill. Really good. Anything else? Savannah? Amber?

Amber :

I think just go ahead Savannah,

Savannah:

You got I said that I think that just caught it

Amber :

For me. I was gonna say I think back to Bill's point about keeping things consistent across your landing page and your ads, also keeping your branding consistent. So when you're up to you get in the groove and you're setting up promos and upping your campaigns and you kind of lose your brand voice. So just staying playful with that and staying true to your demographic. Yes. So you can say like you said, this is the worst Christmas present and people love that or they say you'll be the hero at Christmas. Play into your target customer for sure

Brett:

Earlier. Yeah, don't just abandon who you are and your brand identity and go full on promotion. Keep that voice because that's what's gonna resonate and make everything work better. So similar question. It's okay if we don't have too many answers here, but what are the best doing that the rest are not? So you may have the privilege of working with some amazing brands like Native deodorant and boom, my Cindy Joseph and Truvan and many others. So what are the best doing that the rest are not? And whoever would like to go first, go for it.

Amber :

I'll go ahead Seth <laugh>, we'll keep petting you. I

Savannah:

Say keeping it, I like to follow the kiss rule, the politic, keep it simple and specific. So we're really competing for buyers. Stupid

Brett:

Part cuz I've also heard kisses keep it simple, stupid. So keep it simple. And what was your other ass

Savannah:

Specific?

Brett:

Specific, I like that, right? Less insulting. It's good.

Savannah:

Yeah, so we're competing for the buyer's attention and we're competing for their time as well. So if we're not keeping it simple, then there's a lot for them to have to do. They're probably gonna go to somebody else and purchase. So really just making it really straightforward for the user and also starting early, so building your lists early but also offering discounts early. So we've seen that people are buying early in the season and not waiting until Black Friday. So offering discounts early is a big one too.

Brett:

And I think that trend kind of started during the pandemic. I remember I saw Lowe's doing it. So a lot of big retailers doing online that hey, Black Friday deals all November long, that type of thing. I think that's a trend that's likely to continue. And while we're not hearing as many supply chain issues, I know there's still some but not as severe as last year. I think there's still gonna be some people that maybe shop a little bit earlier, Hey the procrastinators like me, were still out there but I totally agree start earlier and that's definitely a good suggestion. Amber, what's your perspective here?

Amber :

So I would say the best are testing. So you're never gonna find a better time to test entire level and actually be able to get a good return. So I would say be testing the experimenting as much as possible.

Brett:

Yeah, it's one of those things where some people don't want to test during holiday shopping because they don't wanna screw something up. And we should talk about that in a session in this webinar. We're gonna talk to Matt for peak activity about that, what's safe to test on the holidays, but this is also the best time to learn and you can also test little things and learn quickly and then take a winning learning and scale it up cuz all the traffic is here right now. So yeah, now's the time to be thinking about, hey what do we want do type of funnel? Is there some top of funnel DSP ads wanna run on Amazon or we wanna do some type of funnel on YouTube? What is it that we wanna test here? So love that idea Amber for sure. What about from your perspective Bill? What are the best doing at the restaurant?

Yeah, so if you had to keep it simple and you have to be lean, please ignore this. But you asked about best. So what I would suggest is playing off of Savannah's Justin to start early is also varying your promotions as you go. So I would drum up excitement through October, but maybe you hit November and once a week, something like that. I'm picking an arbitrary interval that we'll say once a week you switch up your promotion. Now that doesn't mean you go, hey this week it's 10% off and next week it's 20% off. That's really gonna offend some people. But you can switch up the type of promotion so that the math is not really apples to apples. So this week it's 20% off. Next week it's a BOGO or free shipping or something of that nature maybe a limited time product or something around the holidays.

And so switching that up and looking at a calendar and going, okay, we've got October, November, we've got Black Friday, we've got Cyber Monday, we've got cyber Monday week, we've got what's the one Green Monday or whatever that's called. And then last chance for shipping just before December 25th and that sort of thing. So look at that calendar and go, this is where we're gonna start. New promo messages now you're gonna freak out cuz you're gonna go well the creative, we have to create new creative for all that. Now you can have evergreen images and the best images convey that this is a holiday sale and that's important for the user cuz think about your own experience. If you don't recognize it that an ad is for a holiday sale, you're less likely to act because you think, well this is evergreen. So we are savvy as customers and your customers are also savvy.

They're gonna react better to something that looks like and feels like a holiday sale. So a good evergreen image, maybe your product with a bow or snow or who knows. But then you can swap out headlines, all these ad platforms, Amazon, Facebook, Google, they're now made so that you can put one image in there and swap out your headlines and descriptions and that sort of thing and deploy different messages with the same image that's built for q4. So yeah, I love it Bill and I like having those kinda limited window opportunities. So if you can execute on this, you're having Black Friday type deals, all of them are long let's say, but then it's changing from week to week and that can create some urgency for someone to say, okay, I will buy this first week of November, second week of November cuz I want that particular deal and I know it ends on Friday or whatever.

So really that super, super smart. Cool. And while we're talking about promotions what are some of the ways you suggest we structure promotions? And I do wanna say this can be different for everybody. Some brands don't discount at all, some only discount a little bit. Boom by Cindy Joseph as an example. They usually don't discount at all except for around the holidays and occasionally like a customer sale and they'll usually do 10%, they do not discount very deeply most of the year. So you don't have to do big discounts, but a lot of people do. A lot people expect it. That's what shoppers are looking for. So how do you suggest we structure our deals and a we'll start with you?

Amber :

Yeah, so I would say structure your deals based on your margin. That's something that is missed a lot on Amazon, so pay attention to that first look at your deals and your prime exclusive discount badging. So I've probably said this in a couple other webinars, but that's how much I love Prime exclusive discounts. They work really well. Set those up, work them around your deals and this is kind of like a new one, but stay away from lowering your listing prices on Shopify, Walmart, Target. If you are very set on a deal running on Amazon, those are already getting flagged today in September because of the prime fall event coming up. So you definitely wanna make sure if you want to maintain buy box that you are keeping competitive pricing across all marketplaces.

Brett:

Right, I love that. So let's just double click on that real quick so that we are saying, so we're about to run a deal on Amazon, but we keep our list price, let's say Amazon, but then we offer a 20% discount. Well everywhere else online we're maybe already 25% below list or something like that. What does Amazon do in those cases or what could they do?

Amber :

So lately I've been seeing a lot of brand health issues and that is essentially just saying it's listed cheaper at Walmart, it's listed cheaper at Target and they are removing your buy box. No, yeah.

Brett:

And this is really, I think one, it's frustrating as a seller cause we wanna be able to just control our price how we wanna do that. But I get it from Amazon's perspective, what Amazon does not want shoppers to do is that buyer's remorse to buy something on Amazon and then turn around and say you got that 25 bucks cheaper over here. And so Amazon's scouring the web, they know what you're charging on other places. So if you lower your price everywhere, but Amazon, Amazon very likely is gonna remove the buy box, which just means they tell customers they'll buy this here, it's cheaper over here, so don't be disappointed and buy it here. Awesome. Okay. Savannah, what would you say, how do you recommend merchants structure their deals and their promos?

Savannah:

So I'd say that sitewide discounts usually perform the best without a code

Brett:

I can easy to execute on as well.

Savannah:

Yep, exactly. Without a code is preferred. But if you have to have a code, make sure it's really visible everywhere on site. And if you don't like to discount your products, I would say still offer people some type of incentive. So free shipping, maybe a free gift or a bundle offer because they are expecting some type of discount. So I've worked on accounts where they didn't have any discount during the holidays and we really saw that revenue go down during that time. So offering some type of incentive is really important.

Brett:

And I love that you mentioned the free gift and we've seen, we have a few other brands we work with that don't like to do discounts. And so what they'll do though is they'll bundle a really cool item with their core product. So now, and then let's say this is in a category where maybe your core product isn't the best gift and like boom, I said Joseph would fall into this category. Some people want cosmetics for Christmas or whatever holiday they celebrate or they want skincare, but a lot of people don't. But a lot of people will buy boom for themselves around the holidays. And so if you include a gift, a tilt bag, water bottle, something kind of neat to go along with that, then that could be something to push someone over the edge where they can say, Hey, I can buy this for myself. Still get that little gift that I can use as a stocking stuff for something else for someone else. And so yeah, love that. You gotta do something around the holidays so love that. Bill, what about you? And I know you just talked about promotions and gave away a cool bonus tip, but anything else you would suggest on the way we structure our promotions?

I think we're talking about the digital shelf. So if you picture a brick and mortar scenario and someone walks into your store, they're a little bit unfamiliar, this is for a gift how do you want that customer to go about looking at your set of products? You don't wanna point them to the accessories and the things that only your advanced customers are aware of and understand, point them to your bestseller, point them to a good entry level product. And so you get to set how that works on your site, whether it's on the homepage, on a category page, on the landing page, what products you push through ads and that sort of thing. So point them to a best seller or a good entry level product because then they're gonna be more likely to comprehend it, understand it, and act upon it. And then on the back end of that, go ahead and recommend additional cross sell, upsell products that fit with that product that also drive up your aov.

So if something makes sense that it goes along with this and it's easy to comprehend and understand build the technology on your side or whatever it takes to recommend products that go with that. And then I wanna address bundles real quick because I don't wanna make a blanket statement. You shouldn't do bundles cuz if you sell something that's easy to comprehend, say a necklace, a bracelet, a ring, a bundle probably works really well. But if it's hard to comprehend and it drives up that initial price point for someone who's not really familiar with your product, they'll probably more likely to act on a best seller that's say 30 to 50 bucks than a bundle that's 130 bucks. Even though it's a good value and a good deal someone who's new to your brand and new to your products and buying it for a gift made out and understand that right out of the gates.

So you gotta be careful sometimes with bundles. Yeah, I like that a lot. So remembering that someone may wanna buy a gift and so just buying a one-off is what they want. But I do like having the bundles available and I love the idea of cross sell, upsell add-ons, right? This people's wallets are open and once you make that initial decision to purchase, once you've already sent money, spending a little extra is easier. And so it's always good to have those upsell cross-sell opportunities. I love that. Any advice? I don't wanna kind of key in on that just a little bit. Amber, any thoughts there? Cause I know there's some creative things we do on Amazon to get cross-sell and upsell opportunities on each of our product detail pages, but anything you would recommend there to either sell bundles or cross sell upsell on Amazon during the holidays?

Amber :

Yeah, I mean to Bill Point, it can definitely get confusing if you're just throwing bundles out there. But if you check Amazon market basket analysis, it gives you a pretty good breakdown of what's actually getting purchased together within your brand and over zone specifically, they've had a ton of success with virtual bundles. So I would,

Brett:

Overtone is a coloring conditioner, so temporary color. So if you want you're hair to go green, pink, gray, whatever mine's already going gray naturally, so I don't need it. But add that conditioner washes out over time. It's made of avocado Ezra Firestone, own the brand. So yeah, market basket analysis, super, super cool. Amazon will tell you what people are buying together. So you have that and then you create a virtual bundle. Was that right Amber?

Amber :

Yeah, so just set up a virtual bundle in Amazon. It's its own listing, but it kind of ties to that main flagship product and we've seen them do really well with Overtone, I think several other brands too. And it's something you definitely wanna get in place for the holidays.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. It's like understanding, hey, customers are already buying these things together. You can do the same thing in inside of Google Analytics or Shopify or whatever. Just Amazon makes it easy. And so then you say, All right, let's create a virtual bundle, let's bundle these together. Cause people like to buy 'em together anyway, so it's super, super smart. Cool. Okay. So Amber, we're kind of tease this in the very beginning, but having great promotions having the good attitude, having everything prepared and ready, having contingencies, all that, none of that really matters if we don't promote stuff and promote it. Well, if we're not visible, if people don't see our stuff on the shelf if they walk through the virtual store and miss us, then it's all for not, right? So how do we make sure we're maximizing visibility and maximizing traffic for the holidays? You wanna go first, Savannah?

Savannah:

Sure. So one big thing there is to have a robust marketing build out. So making sure that we're taking advantage of that traffic that is brand aware, so that way we're taking advantage of those cheaper CPCs and things like that. Really just being everywhere. Don't wait for them to come to you. So we wanna utilize all our channels, search, display, discovery all of those. So impulse buying is higher during the holidays, so keep that in mind. If you have a great display ad, someone's more likely to click on it during the holidays than maybe they were beforehand. And here I'll get into some technicals too. So

Brett:

Love it. I love, let's get technical, let's get tech nasty for a minute.

Savannah:

So if we have a clear definition of success, I think a performer based budget is something I like working with better. So that way we're not missing out on opportunities. So say it's Black Friday, your campaigns are out of budget before noon. We wanna make sure that if we are seeing good results, we can go ahead and boost that budget. So that way if you're out to dinner with grandma or something like that, we're not interrupting and waiting on that approval process.

Brett:

So that's, grandma doesn't understand, we like, Grandma, I gotta update my CPCs, I gotta get a promo approved. She's like, What whatcha doing right now? <laugh>.

Savannah:

So that's a big thing bidding up as well. Our bids that have been working throughout the rest of the year probably aren't gonna be competitive enough for the holidays. Getting our ads up early, this is a big one. There's longer approval times during holidays, so getting those up early is going to ensure that everything's gonna be approved. And also more doesn't always mean better. So if our promotions are a shorter duration using 20 images, five headlines, five descriptions is kind of too much for the smart bidders to really find the winning combination. So more doesn't always mean better.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. I love that. I love all those by the way last one's great. So yeah, if you had a limited window, you don't necessarily wanna follow Google's best practices for responsive display where load up 15 images and a ton of headlines. No, maybe you just need a couple, right? Maybe it's just two or three that you really feel good about and then you can still have a little bit of testing going on. But yeah, you don't wanna overwhelm the smart bit or set yourself up where you can't succeed because of that limited duration. Love that. Bill. From your perspective, how do we maximize visibility? Yeah I think using the gray overtone is one way. <laugh>. Just kidding. So <laugh>, Brett, don't you think you would? I just have a question. You think you would look younger if you intentionally use the gray fully silver and I'm like, No, I want to go silver.

You may be onto something cause the kids are doing it. So yeah, actually I ordered some overtime for my kids. My 17 year old daughter chose silver. She wanted to go silver. Yeah, okay, well, and 30 years you're gonna be doing the opposite, but yeah, is cool. So I mean I'm getting pretty gray up here too, so I was considering it. I was like maybe I'll look younger if I do what the kids are doing. <laugh>, but <laugh>. No for real though. I think making sure that your messaging on Facebook and Google matches and any ad platform that you're promoting your sales on I think compelling headlines. Headlines that convey that this is a sale save big, our biggest sale yet Black Friday sale is fine. Communicate also with your team. If you're working with an agency, an internal team, whatever, communicate with your team what your vision is for the sale.

What is the discount? What is this called? Maybe you have a name for the sale. You wanna match that across all of your platforms because your customers are on all of these platforms, they're on email, they're on Facebook, they're on Google, Amazon, et cetera. And so match that title. If you have a name for it, maybe you don't, maybe it's just Black Friday sale, which is totally fine. And then also using a copy that will convey that this is not gonna last. So play on that. Fear of missing out or fomo these deals won't last, don't miss out. That sort of things trigger us to go, okay, I understand this is limited and I need to act now. So making sure that you match, making sure that you hit on some of those copy points I think will get action. So I love that. I think sometimes we may take for granted that people are gonna buy during the holidays and people will.

And so we may just think, well, I don't need to really worry about my copy too much. Still good copy makes a difference. And you wanna lean into it and it can be simple. It can be something like Black Friday sale, Black Friday deals, cyber Monday deals, whatever. But you do need to think about messaging and you do need anything about sense of urgency, even though it's already kind of built in. People have a limited window to shop for holiday. You wanna lean into that. So really, really good. Amber, what about you? How do we maximize the visibility during the holidays?

Amber :

Yeah, so I think if you are setting up some sort of promo, you're putting in that effort. I mean obviously driving additional traffic through ads, it's a no brainer, but you really need to go all in, add those deals to your storefront on Amazon, get influencers involved test and Amazon live event, try DSP during the holidays. Anything you can do to drive additional eyeballs to that promotion and get them in the door I think is super impactful for getting additional visibility. For instance, I think last year during the holidays we had one client that they actually didn't have any sort of deal. They just did like a strike through pricing, but they had mommy bloggers like go crazy for this strike through pricing. And I guess mommy bloggers are where it's at because they just had astronomical sales.

Brett:

Is there a greater source of influence than mommy bloggers? I mean, mommy bloggers run the world basically <laugh>. That is amazing. Yeah, it's one of those things where I think you gotta be nimble, so you gotta get the foundation laid, which the foundation is for most people. On the D TOC side, it's Google search and shopping and remarketing and likely Facebook a little bit top of phone, a little bit of remarketing. That's foundation on Amazon. It's your sponsored product sponsor, brand sponsor brand video, right? Little bit of remarketing, That's the foundation. You gotta have that. And then you gotta be nimble there where you raise bids, raise budgets so you can really capitalize on traffic. But then yeah, try some other things. Try some top funnel dsp, Lean in the top of funnel YouTube. It's a great time to do that. Do some additional things, reach out to influencers, find some mono bloggers and send them some free product.

You never know it. Do some of these little things that might move the needle and then be nimble and be ready when you say, Aha, this is working, I'm gonna lean into that and put more budget behind that. Same could go for email, right? Hey, this subject line worked, how can I tweak that, create variant of that, send that again so I can maximize that own media of email. So really, really good guys. Thank you for sharing. I feel better, I feel more equipped. I feel ready to win the holidays. Any final tips or suggestions? Yeah, I do have a burning one actually. All right, <laugh>. So I really appreciate it when anyone, I'm working with a client, any retailer is coming to me and giving me what the sale is and then they're open to how right? And the sooner the better because the how may include, well you need a video or you need to resize a video, which may take a few weeks.

Something that won't take as long, for example, is a shopping promo. So I know how to set that up in Google Merchant Center, but I have to know what, I have to know what you're planning on doing so that I can then go and use my tools that I understand to set that up and make your holiday Q4 work that much better for you. So communicate with your team and convey the what and let them come up with some of the how's. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, lean in because there's so many little nuanced ways to maximize the sale, but you gotta kind of know the details early, you gotta know the why and all that, and so then you can really, really maximize. Love that. Bill. Anything else?

Savannah:

I'm gonna go ahead and hit this one again. So just starting early. I think that's a big one that's overlooked. There's so much we can be doing now to start in October for holiday promotions and things like that. So just really getting prepared now I think is the most important thing.

Brett:

Love it.

Amber :

Yeah. Now outside of testing things now, I would say be monitoring on the Amazon side especially. We have our team there, they've got reminders already checking every day, because if you're not in the dashboard looking actively, you're already missing deadlines for q4. So that would be my biggest thing right now.

Brett:

Totally know what the deadlines are and know what's happening on the Amazon side, on the Google side, and monitor your competition, know what's going on so you can adjust and adjust quickly. Awesome. You guys crushed it. Thank you so much. You nailed it. We do have to transition to the next session, but this was awesome. Thanks guys.

Savannah:

Thank

Brett:

You. Thank you. Sweet.

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Preparation is the backbone for success during the holiday season.

Recently we just recorded a holiday webinar featuring Kristina Muntean and Jenna Galardi. Kristina works for Gorgias, an online customer support service who has worked with big brands such as Steve Madden and OLIPOP. Jenna Galardi has over a decade of experience helping businesses grow online. In current role  as Senior Omnichannel Growth Manager at BigCommerce, she focuses on helping merchants strengthen their online presence and adopt social commerce, marketplaces, and product feed optimization solutions to scale their growth.

This holiday season should be quite interesting. Inflation, rising ad costs, privacy issues, and new campaign types have this year shaping up to be anything but ordinary. 

In this episode we cover how to: 

• Drive MORE traffic profitably
• Go omnichannel
• Turn every interaction (even support) into sales opportunities

‍

Mentioned in this episode:

Kristina Muntean:
- eMail: Kristina.Muntean@Gorgias.com
- LinkedIn

- Gorgias

Jenna Galardi:
- LinkedIn

- BigCommerce

‍‍
WOXER
ILIA
feedonomics

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Transcript:

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Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. Today I have two amazing guests for you. I recently recorded a holiday prep webinar and had some of my friends and some of just the smartest minds in e-commerce and marketing join me and talk about how to maximize your results for this holiday shopping season. But here's the deal. A lot of what we talked about in that webinar applies to holiday, yes, but it also goes beyond holiday. And so I wanted to bring these topics to you on the podcast. And so my two guests today are first Christina Mont and Christina is with Gorgias and e-commerce help desk. I probably don't need to tell you what Gorgias is. You likely already know and you already you it. And she is one of the partner managers at Gorgias. She works with OMG Commerce. We actually knew her from a previous life check.

She used to work for one of our clients. And so I've known Christina A. Long time. She's very bright. Christina and I talk about how to turn every customer interaction into a sales opportunity. So any time that your team interacts with a customer, how do you use that to further your brand, further the relationship and turn it into a sales opportunity? That's huge during the holidays because all the interactions with customers increase, right? But this topic is valuable beyond holiday as well. And then guest number two is Jenna Gordi. And Jenna is the senior omnichannel growth manager at Big Commerce. Now, I was speaking at an event in Miami several months ago. I ended up meeting a couple of the managers at Big Commerce. We kind of hit it off, started talking and I said, Hey, I'd like to know more about what Big Commerce is doing.

So they invited me to their partner Summit in Austin, Texas. Got to hang out with Jenna Goria a little bit. And so Jenna and I talk about going omnichannel. Now, Jim, I just made up a word. Jenna has been in the industry for a long time, used to be in the agency world, now works with some of the biggest brands on Big Commerce, Works with Theos team, which Feos is kind of best in class in terms of feed optimization for Google Shopping, of course, which is now mostly Performance Max but also Amazon and Walmart and Target. Plus, we do talk about Target plus here. And so again, we gear this discussion, this interview around holiday, but the concepts, the tips of going omnichannel certainly go well beyond holiday. So you're gonna love the interview with both Christina and Jenna. So sit back, relax, and enjoy.

Are you a D to C brand spending over six figures a month on paid media? If so, then listen up. My agency, OMG Commerce, and I have worked with some of the top e-commerce brands over the years, including Boom, native, Groove, Moan, Organify, and dozens more. And every year we audit hundreds of Google, YouTube, and Amazon ad accounts, and we always find either significant opportunities for growth or wasted ad spend to cut or both. For example, are you missing YouTube ads? Whatever you're spending on top of funnel Facebook, you should be able to spend 30 to 50% of that or more on YouTube with similar returns. So if you're spending 300 to 400,000 a month on Facebook, you should be able to easily spend a hundred to 150,000 or more on YouTube. Visit OMG commerce.com to request a free strategy session or visit our resource page and get some of our free guides loaded with some of our best strategies for YouTube ads, Google Shopping, Amazon DSP and more. Check it all out@omgcommerce.com. All right, for this next session, I'm delighted to welcome a longtime friend in the e-commerce space and a true expert in how to get more from your e-commerce brand. I'd like to welcome Christina een from Gorgias Christina, how's it going? And thanks for coming on this live event.

Kristina:

Hey Brett thank you so much for that intro. And yeah, it's always wonderful to be here and to get to chat with you.

Brett:

Absolutely. So we, we'd go way back. As it turns out, you used to work for a brand who's a long time OMG client. So you were on the brand side making e-commerce happen, growing a brand, working with omg and now you're kind of on the SaaS side of and that's s a s side of E-commerce now with Gorgias. And so for those that don't know, and I think most people probably do, but explain what is Gorgias and how do you make merchants life lives easier. And then we're gonna dig into some specific tips for the holidays.

Kristina:

Yeah, so no, it's been really cool Brett, as you said, first of all to get to work with you guys and the econ brand side, but to be able to really dive in on one brand and see, alright, how do we scale this? How do we acquire new customers? How do we keep them buying from us? But now moving to Gorgias, we currently work with over 10,000 e-commerce brands, so it's been such an awesome opportunity to really see e-com as a whole. What are those trends and what's working and what isn't so Gorgias specifically? Basically we work with only e-commerce merchants and we basically support them as an e-commerce help desk. And what that means is, as a brand, you guys know that you're being reached out to by customers across many different channels. It used to just be customers, my email or call you on the phone, but that now they're expecting you to respond to them in your dms and respond to ad comments.

They're expecting you to be able to live chat you maybe SMS text you so Gorgias. Basically empowers your brand to be able to actually manage all of that. So it pulls in all those different communication channels into one central hub and then links up with your eCommerce platform. So your Shopify, your big commerce, your Meto store, and basically allows you to actually take action on customer requests like changing of shipping address and all of that directly from one place. So tons of efficiency in terms of the customer support, customer experience side of things and really allows brands to have amazing customer experiences and drive more revenue on the CS side of things,

Brett:

I love this so much and really we get to work with some amazing top shelf e-commerce brands. Most of them are working with Gorgias. And really you make life simple and easier for merchants. And you guys talk a lot about conversational commerce and I love that term. And I also love the concept of what if we turn every customer support situation, every interaction with a customer, whether that's through live chat or someone tweeting at you or using Messenger or whatever, calling you on the phone. What if we turn that into a sales opportunity because they are. And if you do it the right way, you can turn all of those interactions into sales opportunities. So I love that, I love that perspective that you guys bring. So let's dive in because the holidays present a super unique time for all of e-commerce, but especially on the customer support side of things. And so I wanna do a few things, but let's dive into this topic first. How should we address customer feedback before Black Friday, Cyber Monday? So as we're getting ready so that we can leverage and get the most out of the holidays, how should we be collecting and addressing that feedback ahead of time?

Kristina:

Yeah, so Brett, this is one of the greatest pieces that I've been supporting brands on just getting ready for the biggest influx of sales. And of course customer inquiries is really taking a look at what are people actually writing into us about? What are they asking us questions about what isn't clear? What's the positive and negative feedback? And really understanding that customers will tell you how to win and then keep their business if you're listening and if you're,

Brett:

You're telling you now, right? They're giving you this feedback. Now if you are listening and if you're paying attention,

Kristina:

Exactly. And so we like to just empower them to take a step further. Don't just wait for the feedback to come to you, but really proactively reach out to customers. If someone happens to leave a poor review or if someone asks for a return, don't just like go ahead and fulfill that return, get the information from them that could maybe even actually save the sale or lead to a change in the product or your website that actually leads to way more sales down the line. So it's really this cheerful piece. It's like ask for this feedback, ask for this information, Do customer interviews, do surveys, Do you know net promoter score, CSAT satisfaction score after the purchases? But also right now, anyone can actually take all of their ticket history, whether it's from a help desk like Gorgias or another help desk, export that and really understand what are the areas that people are writing in about. So with Gorgias, it will actually tell you it'll categorize the different feedback into different areas. So you'll be able to see what are the themes, what are we crushing and doing really well, and what are we sucking at and we really need to improve. And then to be able to make meaningful changes and really set you up for success and for people to have the best experiences leading into holiday.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so valuable and you made a really good point when you are chatting earlier that hey, if it gets to the point of a negative review, someone leaves that negative review online, it's already done at that point, they've already moved on, they're already gonna do business somewhere else, almost certainly. So don't let it get to that point. Usually people's first step is they reach out to customer support, they chat with you, they send you a message to Messenger. So address that there, but then look for those trends because if one person's having an issue, probably several people are, and then when you know what those trends are, then you can fix things. So you got two examples that I wanna dive into from real merchants. From Gorgias merchants. The first one was Waxer and that's W O X E R which tell me what that brand is and then what was something they uncovered through paying attention to their tickets.

Kristina:

This is a really cool and impactful example for them, but yeah, walks are a really cool retailer for women's boxer shorts. But basically they noticed in the data, they were like, Wow, what the heck just happened? We just saw 10% monthly drop in subscriptions.

Brett:

Significant,

Kristina:

Very significant. And thanks to taking a look at this and looking in their CS system, their team actually kind of flagged this and looked at the various tickets and saw basically the theme. But what was happening is customers actually couldn't update their credit card info on the website. So any subscriptions where the credit card had expired, the subscription would just automatically churn. So this issue was basically surfaced by the CS team just seeing kind of the theme and the tags around this and they realized it was actually leading to this huge 10 steps subscription revenue drop. So they caught this though via seeing this trend come in via the tags in their cs.

Brett:

Interesting. Other, they hadn't seen that through tagging the messaging system then who knows what they would've looked at? Maybe talk about the marketing maybe talk to the marketing team, Hey, send us better traffic or talk to the conversion rate optimization team. Hey this is not converting as well. Fix this thing when really it's just a simple technical thing that they had to fix that hey, we need to alert people that their credit cards about to expire and make it easy for them to go in and update it in the back end system. But they had to look at those tickets to identify that awesome example. Next one you had told me about, I'm gonna pull this up. This is Ilia which is a beauty brand. So as I pull this up, let me give people kind of an understanding of what is Ilia Beauty and what did they discover?

Kristina:

Yeah, Brett. So Ilia is a f freaking incredible brand. All about Clean

Brett:

Green Site. It's an awesome site.

Kristina:

Yeah, beautiful site. All about clean skincare and basically their best seller. You can see Brett is right there, that first one. Exactly. And the IEA team basically noticed also by looking at all of their customer feedback, that 50% of the contacts, 50% of basically all reach out to cross channels were actually questions about, Hey, I'm really excited to try this product, but I'm really nervous that I'm not gonna find the right shade for me. There's so many options and I'm a little bit concerned I'm buying this online, I'm gonna have to return it. That's a pain. Just people feeling a lot of friction towards actually initiating it, moving into a sale basically for this product. And this is, there

Brett:

Are 30 shade options here and some of them are pretty similar looking, right? How do I determine between the whatever these names are of Shades while just looking at it online? It's typical.

Kristina:

It is on one end it's beautiful cause you're like wow,

Brett:

I can get the exact right shade for me.

Kristina:

Exactly. But that's even more of the key here Brett, because it's like we gotta get people into the right shades to have that amazing customer experience first. And we know if we nail it where it's just a perfect match, it's highly likely cuz the product is badass that they'll continue to purchase. So this first touchpoint is incredibly critical to Ilia. So what they did, Brett, if you actually see that, find my shade that's kind of right underneath all of the 30th shades that you said, which it's yep right there. And then if you click get matched by our team, they basically put in this form. So it's asking customers or potential customers to dr. Go ahead, take a quick selfie, drop a photo fill out their email. Just a couple quick pieces of information. This was basically built with the Gorgias team and Ilias team, super involved. So what happens is when someone fills this out, this form actually populates straight into Gorgias and gets assigned to a specific team. That's responsibility is basically getting answers to these customers asap cuz we know if someone's taking the time to take a selfie, inquire about this, they're warm leads, they want to buy from you. So the last time I looked at the respond time was about four minutes, which

Brett:

Is awesome.

Kristina:

Great. And when they instituted this, they basically found this was leading to seven figures of sales in one quarter alone, just from this form over 25% conversion rate. So pretty dang powerful and epic tool. And again this came to light because they looked at the feedback of dang 50% of the reach outs that we're getting are about people being concerned and frustrated about finding the rate shade for them.

Brett:

And so then if you just make it, so I'm sure not only does conversion rate increase when they do this, it was a million dollars in sales in one quarter. But I bet you that repeat rate increases, LTV increases substantially when you nail that color on the first purchase. And even if that returns are possible, and even if that returns are relatively easy, there's not gonna be an argument or a fight with the brand. Everybody hates it, Nobody wants to, wants deal with returns. So making that clear, easy super, super powerful. Love that example. That's awesome. Okay, cool. So next point is let's talk about repeat business. So we all know that the name of the game with e-commerce is getting those repeat purchases in most cases. I know there are a few exceptions. If you're selling mattresses or whatnot maybe you can get a couple repeat purchases, but it's more rare.

But for most brands, for Ilia, for sure, for walks or for others for companies like Boom, Ace to Joseph Ass Company or Overtone, it's all about the repeat purchase. Given me a stat earlier, which I thought was awesome which 21% of all customers are repeat customers. So it's only 20%, but it's like 45% of all revenue comes from repeat customers. So disproportionate amount of revenue compared to true customer count comes from repeat purchases. So how do we make the most of our repeat purchases and our repeat customers? And what are some tips that you guys have there at Gorgias?

Kristina:

Yeah, and I mean Brett sitting on the brand side, I know it was always very sexy to go after the next new acquisition channel and the perfect funnel and offer and all those things. And of course it's like we love it when we find something works to bring us more people, but at the end of the day, what we're seeing too is it's such an important bucket where 300% more revenue is typically generated by repeat purchases than first time. And we know that it takes a while to break even. So the more times we can get someone to purchase, it's just so critical to the success and longevity of a brand. So we really want to help brands make that not an afterthought, but make it something that's upfront and really important. So a couple of the just tips that I've had that work really well, first is v i p tagging.

So with Gorgias a brand based off of their AOV and ltd, obviously they're going to have a specific parameters by which they decide someone's v i p, but say this makeup brand decides that A V I P is someone who's purchased more than five times or has spent more than $250. You can also tell them if you're using YPO or Loyalty Lion, one of those other programs, you can say hey, or if someone is Gold Tier and YPO or Loyalty Lion, if they reach out to our brand at any point, put them in the V I P category. And you can even assign a specific agent or a specific team to v i P. So say we know that Brett is the most just our customers absolutely love working with him. He's kind of assigned to

Brett:

Your top tier customer support reps type of thing.

Kristina:

Exactly. So maybe we just say, Hey, we're gonna funnel all the VIPs to Brett. He knows longstanding relationships with some of them in rapport and he's gonna get back to them asap. Maybe there's certain parameters or things we're willing to, flex is a brand for our VI I p customers, but just having them really called out, put into a separate bucket, assigned to a specific team who can really cater to them and give them the fastest like absolute priority is something that I've seen a lot of success and people have really loved and felt valued as incredibly important and supportive. Customers

Brett:

Love it. I mean the data is there and so we should treat all of our customers well, we should love on all our customers, but you wanna know who your VIPs are and you wanna make sure they have the best experience possible. So I love that. I love VIP tagging. Now you'd also talk to me a little bit about what Dr. Squa does and what they kind of did in preparation for Black Friday ever Monday in the past, but talk about that a little bit.

Kristina:

Yeah, so Dr. Squa really thought long and hard, especially setting up for the rest of the year about setting up a dedicated team, solely focused on building the customer relationship and focused on retention. So I loved this, especially leading up to black fighters side by Monday. Cause they basically have a team that's just looking at the whole customer journey and really focusing on key areas with customers. So pieces around subscription anniversaries or birthdays and reaching out, making that personalized touchpoint. Additionally, they're responsible for things like communicating unexpected supply chain delays or unexpected out of stock or just anything that might be out of the realm of expectation that we might hope for. But that's important to communicate on. Also really identifying cross sell opportunities. So maybe checking back with someone who's purchased 30 days ago, we might know that we can expect another purchase soon, let's check in, let's see how that's going. Let's see, is there another product that would suit to bring them into? So they really looked at building out this team and building out almost these touchpoints, starting to have those touchpoints with customers, which brings out almost like these wow amazing opportunities. Building that loyalty heading into Black Friday I think is really powerful and I'm excited to see how that plays out

Brett:

For them. Yeah, I love that so much. Totally makes sense that that would pay off. So we tease this during the intro, but treating every customer service experience or every interaction as an opportunity to upsell, cross sell, things like that. How do you recommend brands go about doing that?

Kristina:

Yeah, so Brett, the CS team, the agents that work with a team really have the opportunity to influence revenue in either direction with each of their interactions. So something that we've really been working on with brands is consider helping them set it up where their agents are actually really incentivized in line with driving a great customer experience as well as revenue. So instead of just having agents say, I did my job, I closed all of my tickets, that's really not just what we're looking for in terms of

Brett:

That's like minimum, right? That's like baseline like that. That's expected. That's required, right, exactly. Anybody to do

Kristina:

That. Yeah, exactly. But really we've been helping brands align their agents with actually how much revenue are they driving, what is the customer satisfaction rating for them of all the tickets that they actually went forward and closed. And we know that again, customers who ask questions on your site are 30% more likely to actually move into the purchase. And we know that those CS agents are the ones talking to them. So it's like how can we incentivize them to have to give the customers the best experience possible and drive more revenue. So of course some brands are doing things like in Gorgias, you can actually see, okay, here's Brett, he's driven this much revenue, his CSAT rating is this and actually sending them gift cards or additional bonuses or commission related to that. But really it's that piece and also supporting, then also with training these agents almost like salespeople. So training them on what other products after someone's B bought product A, what is product B? That's the next that makes the most step for most sense for them to move into next. So really training them on those areas as well.

Brett:

And I love this so much because if we're providing the right incentives, then our customer service support team, they're going to take the action that we incentivize. If all you're doing is saying, Hey, close more tickets, close them more, close 'em faster, then that's what people will do and they'll wanna try to rush through those support tickets. But if you say, Hey, we're gonna incentivize you, we're gonna reward you for closing deals, that's gonna cause everybody to step their game up a little bit. Because to close something out really just takes speed. But you gotta kind of create that wow experience to get someone to buy an additional product or to cross sell our upsell. It's just a different mentality. And to do that then you gotta train people. You gotta train your team to know how to cross sell, how to upsell, how to phrase things. And when you do, I know the rewards will be there. So that's awesome. I love that so much. And then lastly as we wrap up this session and kind of wrap up our talking points is as we move into Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the number of tickets will increase people's urgency to purchase increases. I gotta buy this thing so it can be under the tree or so I can give it to my niece or nephew or kid or whoever. And so talk about speed. How important is speed in these interactions?

Kristina:

Oh man, Brett. Yeah, I don't think this one will ever change, or I'm saying this now, I guess you know, can

Brett:

Quote me. Yeah, it'll never change. I think be bet on that.

Kristina:

Yeah, I don't think it will. But time and time again, we continue to see that first response time is the number one predictor in terms of a customer saying, I had a great experience and also that revenue was attached to that experience. So I was

Brett:

Looking at, well, that's the most important thing. For one thing, I had a good experience. And two, actually buying something is the speed of that initial response.

Kristina:

Yes,

Brett:

Impressive.

Kristina:

And I was actually looking at some data from Shopify and basically businesses that responded to customers within that first five minutes, 70% more likely to actually make a sale. So it's incredibly impactful. One of our amazing brands that we work with Brew Mate, they actually, last day I looked at first response time on chat, 52 seconds over 300 grand in sales attributed 52 per or 52 second, first response time on chat. And that was in a couple month period. It was like, so this is meaningful. And their CSAT rating again was just off the chart close to a five. So it's absolutely critical, Brett.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. And think about that. Not only can you tie that revenue directly, the three 50 K because the response time was under a minute, but also think about what does that do to loyalty? What does that do to repeat purchases over time? What does that do to the number of people that I now refer to Brew eight? Because I have an amazing experience every time I buy or chat with them. I think that the impact there can be pretty amazing. So now I know one of the other things you talked to me about is not just those that fast response time, but how can we automate some things? How do we automate some of the basics so that our team can really focus on those cross sell upsell opportunities? So I think you had an example there if I'm not mistaken.

Kristina:

Yeah. Well Brett, really when I share that, I'm like, Hey, 52 seconds, people are like, That sounds great Christina, and I know this is gonna make me more money, but how the heck do you want me to be able to actually do this? They're like, You're telling me that I'm gonna manage all of these new channels now I'm pulling in ad comments and dms like now I have my SMS pulled in. How so literally, which it's an amazing question, but it's one of the things that I love the most to support brands with, which is how the areas that we can help with automations so that you can have these personalized touchpoints where it matters to build relationship and get people actually into the sale. So I help brands really take a look at, okay, do you have an FAQ page? What's on there? Okay, once we've looked at actually all of our tags and all the information and questions customers have, let's make sure that FAQ is fully just beefed up, has everything in there that we can possibly want to share. And then let's also use areas like self-service chat where people can track their order themselves and really get commonly asked questions answered as quickly as possible and also deflect some of those tickets so our team doesn't have to worry about them. Customers are happy, they get to answer themselves and the team can basically spend more time on things like active live chat.

Brett:

So now people can just find the answer themselves and it, it's now less than 52 seconds, but then we save those CS resources for the interactions that need more of a human touch and need more. And so I think you'd share with me, was it Princess Polly was the example?

Kristina:

It was, right? Yeah. They've got a great example. They're such a amazing brand. We absolutely love working with the team. But you can see here on the right, this is their active live chat, you can see the section. Once that widget pulls back up, you can see their quick answers and then the section for management orders. So this was all curated based off of inquiries that they were actively getting and completely just specific to Princess Poly. But as you can see, they were getting people wanting shipping address changes, they use happy returns, people wanting to get that code right away. So this is completely customizable and set up based off of the commonly asked inquiries so that people can actually come in here, get the answers themselves, and then if they still need more help, of course they can always live chat and move into it. But deflecting some of this kind of top end repeat admin inquiries off the bat, saves the team a ton of time to then actually have the conversations that need to be had.

Brett:

Love it. Makes sure happier shoppers make for a happier CS team too, because they don't love looking up the tracking information for orders a million times a day. And so make everyone happy by

Kristina:

Literally that is the goal, Brett.

Brett:

Yeah, absolutely. Christina, this has been fantastic. We're out of time for this session, but this has been so good. I'm a huge, huge believer as a traffic guy, I am a huge fan of what you guys do because I know when the customer interactions are positive, more conversion rates, we can send more traffic, we can grow more, and it's all just really, really good. And so if someone's watching this and hopefully they're already a Gorgias customer, but if they're not, how should they contact you? How can they get started with Gorgias?

Kristina:

Yeah, if anyone's interested in learning more, they can email me. It's my first name, Christina with a k dot m u n t e a n Im Gorgias.com. I'm sure might have this in the comments or somewhere where you can click that. But happy to give anyone their second and third months free off of Gorgias too, so you can really try it and get a feel for it. And I'm here to answer any questions along the way, but this has been a blast as always. I'm so grateful to get to hang with you and this crew. I just love what you guys do and you always add so much value to everyone. So I feel so lucky to get to hang with you.

Brett:

Awesome. You brought the thunder on this presentation for sure. So email Christina. Yeah, right. christina.Gorgias.com. Cause you get more free, you get more good stuff if you do that way than just going through chat or whatever. So get involved with Gorgias. Love it. Christina, thank you so much.

Kristina:

Thank you Brett.

Brett:

I told you that was gonna be good. So that was Christina Tine from Gorgias. Hope you enjoyed that and learned a lot from it. And now we're gonna transition and talk to Jenna Gordi from Big Commerce and talking about going omni channel. Here we go.

All right. In this session I am delighted to welcome Jenna Lardy and Jenna's with Big Commerce. She's the senior omnichannel growth manager, which is a super cool title. I'm way impressed by this title. But Jenna has really a rich history in digital marketing. She ran an agency and this agency crushed it, shall we say, right top 1% of Google, top 3% of meta, most published case studies ever by Facebook and Instagram. And now she's on the big commerce team. We've recently connected, We keep running into each other at different events. We just keep hanging out, which is super awesome. Love your perspective on marketing, love what you guys are doing in big commerce. And I was telling you, I just haven't been around big commerce a whole lot over the last several years, but I spoke at event in Miami, I met Dan and Juan and some bigwigs at Big Commerce and like, Hey, you should check out Big Commerce. And so as I've gotten plugged into the ecosystem, super impressed with what you guys are doing. So thanks for taking the time to join this Jenna. And why don't you kinda explain to people, so you're the senior omnichannel growth manager, but what does that mean? What do you if it covers?

Jenna:

Yeah, well first thanks for having me. It is kind of a loaded title. So I run three departments here, which is our Omnichannel certified agency, our omnichannel consult division, and then also the integration between Phenomics and BigCommerce. So all things Omni and growth are kind of in my remit. So traditionally I think Big Commerce really focused on getting Merchants Net new onto the big commerce e-commerce platform, where with acquisition of phenomics, it kind of shifted our view a little bit and what's important to us and how we help merchants grow. So Phenomics is platform agnostic. It doesn't matter if you're on BigCommerce anymore. So with the agencies that I work with and the consults that we run in our division, which are all about helping merchants grow and either evaluate their current media mix or look to what are the next best channels that they can add that are really gonna drive revenue for their business. And it's interesting kind of wearing a BC name badge, but sitting almost in a platform agnostic division.

Brett:

Yeah, it's super interesting and I wanna talk a little bit about the big commerce roadmap in a minutes. I think everyone in e-commerce needs to know that, needs to know what you guys are up to. But the main focus of this session is, hey, we're going omnichannel and we're prepping for the holiday and we're on the home stretch and it's gonna be here before we know it. But what are the things we can do now to prep? So that that's gonna be the primary focus of this time. But let's talk about Phenomics really quickly. So I've actually met and interviewed Brian Rosen before one of the founders of Theos. Always been super impressed. All the people that are Google shopping nerds, which I know most of them cause that that's kind of my wheelhouse and part of the origin of OMG all know Theos, like Theos is the best of the best. But for those that don't know, what is phenomics and why did big commerce go out and acquire it?

Jenna:

Yeah, great question. So Phenomics is a feed syndication solution. So it's not just a plug and play, you're connecting your e-commerce website or whatever your source of truth is. Your E R P for inventory, maybe it's your PIM for product data, but it's not just a matter of connecting to omni channels anymore. How are you continuously optimizing the product data that you're sending and does that product out or differ between different channels? You slash if it doesn't, you're sending that same product out to every channel. I guarantee you you're not squeezing out as many conversions as you can. So for,

Brett:

Because every channel needs a little bit different data to optimize for Walmart versus Amazon versus Target plus what you talk about in a minute. It's gotta be a little bit different, right?

Jenna:

Yeah. And then just think about, I mean, talking about Google shopping, you know, need a white background with your product data and there's a different categorization taxonomy with Google than there is with Walmart or there is with Amazon. Those non-branded keywords might differ, probably should differ. You might have a non-brand, a keyword on your product description page that's for organic ranking. But as you send it to these channels, you probably wanna differ that non-branded keyword based on what are the search trends and queries on that specific channel. Or for Google shopping, if you're sending products with a white background, if you're sending that to Instagram, you might wanna have a lifestyle image. So if you're sending that same product data everywhere, you're really not optimizing for that specific channel to be able to get the best results that you can. So with BigCommerce, we're looking at not just how do we give merchants the best eCommerce platform, whether that's B2C or b2b, it's about how can we help merchants sell more everywhere? And that's omni, right? It's being able to connect to the right channels, whether that's through a native integration or through phenomics, and you're optimizing that product data. So it's really a natural next step for us because we wanna be the best omnichannel hub for merchants. We don't just wanna be the best branded site.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. And so just a quick note on that, there are a lot of solutions out there for feeds that are more like they're just connectors. It's just a pipeline pipeline of data from your source of truth, from your database, your platform out to these other channels. But there's really not much else phenomics that optimizes those things. It's like, yes, we'll connect the data, but we're also then looking at what is performance? What does this channel need? So what does the channel need initially, then what's the, what's that feedback loop of performance <affirmative> and how do we continually optimize the data to get the most out of that channel? Which is really powerful because otherwise you're kind of halfway doing it on some channels rather than maximizing.

Jenna:

Yeah, and it's also, I mean, some of these connectors have the capacity to be a change agent and a transformation tool, but who's doing that change? So is that something that falls on the brand? Is it something that goes to an agency you guys all know at O M G commerce that it, It's a lot. And those channels are constantly changing and whether it's the requirements or their category, it's a constant change. So who's managing that? Which s, they're one of the only white glove services where they manage all of that for you. So you have the capacity to have those stop gaps and approvals if you wanna be part of that strategy. But when I did an audit of the Feos platform, less than 5% of merchants or agencies even logged in because they don't have to, right? Yeah, that's something that Theos team manages. And then I also did a survey last year, cause I was curious on the why. Why does this matter to merchants? Why does this matter to agencies? And typically they saved an average of 50 hours a month per brand by utilizing phenomics to optimize their product data versus doing it.

Brett:

Yeah, it really is one of those things where to do it properly, especially if you're a multichannel or omnichannel, you need to have multiple dedicated people to helping you just manage the feeds and the data. And so Phenomics takes care of that, which is a beautiful thing. So let's talk omnichannel and kind of some last minute prep or ideas or suggestions that you would provide. And I wanna underscore this discussion with this point. I'm a big fan of D to C, obviously almost we're exclusively, most of our clients are mainly D TOC or they get a big D to component, so direct to consumer. But I'm convinced now as I've looked at the data as I've talked to a lot of other smart people in the industry, I think growth for pure D to C. So where I'm selling from my site to a customer directly, that's gonna always be limited for your brand to reach your ultimate goals, to reach as many people as possible and rich lives and make profits and all the fun things you wanna do. I think you gotta go beyond D to C, right? You gotta go omni channel, you gotta be in store most likely. You gotta be selling through different marketplaces, you gotta do all these things. I think pure play D TOC is exciting but it's limiting. So let's talk about it for any thoughts from your perspective on omnichannel before we talk about tips?

Jenna:

Yeah, I mean I think it's an imperative. So when we look at big commerce merchants, obviously we have some insight there where we can leverage about 70,000 merchants. And we look at some of this data. If merchants have an omnichannel strategy, typically 67% of their sales are happening offsite. So they're not going direct to consumer. And then of what they're selling on their site, about 20% is coming from a paid ad before they get to the site that's really leading to that GMB on their e-comm site. So if you're looking at 67% as offsite, where is that happening? So typically it's a combination of marketplaces and social commerce and being able to take those products that you already have. They're already selling direct consumer and being able to optimize that product data and syndicate it somewhere else. But then you also have to think about those orders.

So you need to make sure those orders are porting back in. That's something that Phenomics can handle as well to ensure that you're not overselling. And that's something a lot of merchants need to think about in the holiday season is if you're selling on 20 different channels, how are you ensuring you're not overselling and then either putting a bad consumer experience where they're not getting the product when they think they are, or you could potentially get kicked off of some of these marketplaces by not fulfilling when you say you're going to. So it's imperative that you're not running those businesses and silos and you really have a connected system and the right tech stack to be able to support it and to understand where those sales are happening and how you're fulfilling them.

Brett:

It definitely adds a layer of complexity. So now we're selling on Walmart and Amazon and maybe Target Plus and other places we're selling in all these places and our own site. It does ad layer complexity. You gotta have the data nailed down. But I think it's also exciting because as you know Jen, I'm more of a traffic guy <affirmative> and I love top performing YouTube and Google. And so what we've seen though is when our clients are omnichannel and we really hit the gas pedal on YouTube, so we're going 500,000 a million a month on YouTube ads or whatever. I wish we had some clients doing that. If they're on multiple marketplaces there's a much bigger effect, right? Because there's only a certain segment of people they're gonna buy on your D to C site. Even it's the best site that anyone's ever seen. There's still a lot of people that prefer to buy on marketplace. And so I think it boosts sales right away by being on marketplaces, but then it makes everything else so that you do better when you're on marketplace, in my opinion.

Jenna:

Yeah, I mean I got some good stats there for you. I mean typically a consumer is having eight to 10 touches of the brand before they purchase. So you think of what's that user experience, what's that user funnel? A lot of times they might be going to, let's say Google to start that search to educate themselves, but then they might be going to Amazon to actually have that buyin 10 check out because they know their information's loaded from their address to their credit card and payment. But also they know they're gonna get it in two days. So a lot of times people rely on those marketplaces cause they know there's some sense of regularity versus going to all these different individual sites or sometimes it's a higher average order value. Cause they're not having to go just to one brand to purchase something. They can buy a full suite of products.

Brett:

So now I'm being introduced to the brand either through YouTube or Facebook or TikTok or whatever. I may be going to the site to get educated and now I'm clicking around and I'm looking and then I'm just gonna buy it from wherever is most convenient for me and wherever I feel like I'm gonna get the best deal or yeah, I'm mar buying from Amazon, which most people are, then I can just load up that basket and buy the product there. So yes, omni the channel. It is imperative. I like that word. Good choice of words here Jenna. So what can we be doing home stretch here, prepping for the holidays? What can we be doing now to really get the most of holiday? And if you need to share a few tips that <laugh> maybe you should have done a month or two ago, that's fine too, but what are your tips for maximizing holiday?

Jenna:

Yeah, well good news. It's not too late. <laugh> still

Brett:

A agreed,

Jenna:

Agreed. You're definitely not gonna re-platform probably before the holidays

Brett:

Fire a new store, which just really

Jenna:

Maximizes before the holidays.

But there's a lot you can do. So first I think it's looking at your current media mix. Can you evaluate what you're doing? Are you kind of plateaued from a return on your ad spend standpoint and how can you squeeze out more, right? Is there some conversion rate optimization you can do on your site? So the traffic that you're getting, you're squeezing a little more juice out of it. So I think that's always the first step is what am I already doing that I potentially could be pushing the gas a little bit harder, whether it's better budget or more optimization that you can be doing. We do see a lot of merchants, I think through our consult department that are hesitant to do something at this time of year. This is actually the best time of year, especially to test because you have so much more traffic that you have the ability to get to those conclusions a lot faster.

So let's say you're doing conversion rate optimization, you can test a bunch of different variables and you're gonna get to that maximum homeostasis of where you're producing the most by having more traffic and getting to those results faster by not having to wait as long for those conversion campaigns to run. So I think there's a lot you can do in this high traffic holiday season. There's also a lot you can do from adding net new channels from revamping your creative that you're pushing to all these different channels, especially top of funnel. I think a lot of people think about holiday sales kind of post holiday and I think in the past couple years we've seen the trend where people are moving those sales up. So when people are purchasing and all that gifts going is happening that they're actually getting those additional sales then as opposed to after the holidays.

And I think that that is the best trend they've seen in the past couple years from holidays to be able to allow people to have a higher average order value or to say, Hey, I'm buying this for somebody, but I also kind of wanna buy one for myself and I know well then I can do it now instead of waiting until post holiday and really squeeze out and maximize that from a merchant perspective to be able to offer those deals now. And it's not too late to start new channels. I mean I think a lot of people get scared and hesitant when they're getting close to holiday season, but this is the time. If we know consumers take so many touches with a brand before they purchase, why not expand that pie and be on all those potential channels? So if they're searching on Amazon or they're searching on Walmart, they're searching on Target, you're on all those channels and have the ability to be in front of as many merchants as possible.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. Then so what are you recommending people do? So in terms of feed prep and so getting on to get on all these channels or maximize all these channels, what are you guys suggesting is now a good time to do a feed audit? To deep dive into how in shape is our data right now? What would you recommend As far as feed prep?

Jenna:

Yeah it's not waiting until January to get it in shape. <laugh>, you wanna make sure you're looking at that now? Right. So one of the great advantages of the way Phenomics works and how confident they are in the work that they do is those do a complimentary feed audit. So it takes anywhere from three to four business days, you'll get an idea of what your health of your data is. Now, a lot of times it's not that merchants are sending incorrect data, it's that it's not optimized for the specific channel that they're sending it to you. So you might have a different non-branded keyword for Amazon, for Walmart, you might have a lifestyle image for Instagram, but you might wanna have a white background on Google so you can actually submit to Google Shopping. So it's a matter of looking at your data now, seeing if there's any room for improvement, and within a feed audit you're gonna see a score of A to F, you're gonna see what are some of the things that you're doing incorrectly and how can you change. So whether you go with feed omics or not, you're gonna have that actionable data that you can utilize now to maximize your return for the holiday season. But I did a postex survey with Phenomics merchants that decided not to go with Phenomics but still implemented the changes that they recommended in a feed audit. They saw an average of a 20% list in the next 90 days.

Brett:

That's amazing. And so you get the feed on it. Yeah, regardless, no matter what platform you're on, doesn't matter if you're wanting to go feed numbers or not get the free audit, it's totally worth doing. So for sure. Let's talk marketplaces for a minute. So what kind of new or emerging marketplaces or marketplaces that people aren't talking about as much? What are you really excited about or what has surprised you recently with marketplaces?

Jenna:

Yeah, I mean I definitely get excited when I talk about marketplaces and when typically if you're adding one marketplace, you're getting a 39% lift in your revenue. If you go to two or more, you're gonna get 120% increase in your revenue. So for me it's a no brainer. Why aren't more people on more marketplaces <affirmative>? Now every product might not make sense cause different marketplaces take a different haircut and different percentage for selling and having that transaction happen on their site. But there's typically every merchant has some hero products that should be on all these different marketplaces. Target Plus, it's not that anyone doesn't know about it, but they were closed for almost two years. So they weren't

Brett:

Super exclusive to get on Target plus

Jenna:

Invite only, and they were closed for two years. So we just ran a closed beta with them through phenomics and through our omnichannel division of certified agencies. And it's amazing to see what some of these new merchants that just got on Target plus are doing. So we're praying that this gets opened back up before the end of the year but if you are interested, reach out to Bra, he can give you more information, but Target plus you see a huge return because it is so exclusive. So they really particular on even this down to skew level of that, they allow, even if they approve a merchant, they're going down to that skew level of what they're selecting. Cuz they wanna cherry pick what they know is gonna be the best for their merchants and it's gonna perform the best. But what's interesting is in this closed beta, they were requiring all merchants to utilize Phonos because they wanted to ensure that they were getting the healthiest data. They don't want their end consumer not being able to search or to find the products that they're looking for. So it's all about the data that they ingest

Brett:

And really, I mean there's lots of reasons to choose, but if you are a good fit and if you can get approved for Target plus that, that's definitely a reason to push over the edge to get on Target. Plus that's another reason to check it out. And yeah, it's just a different strategy than what Amazon has or even Walmart has. Amazon's like, Hey, we'll take just about anything, maximum amount of skews and see how it goes. And target's more like, no, we want to pick the things that we think will delight or the products will delight our customers. And because of that and because people are just target fanatics I know people that are just nuts about Target. And so the results, and you and I were in Austin, you guys put on the big commerce partner summit and I was there and I got to meet the head of Target Plus from Target and hear some merchant merchant stories and dude, it's like it's working right for the merchants that are on Target. Plus it's opening up a whole new world to go to Disney movie. Yeah,

Jenna:

I mean it's interesting too how many marketplaces are emerging. So I'm seeing pretty much every large big box store now is trying to offer some sort of marketplace offering. A lot of them are using Miracle, which I think is something people don't know about. That's kind of the back miracle, the marketplace platform. So you'll have big box stores like Bed Beyond Best Buy, et cetera. They're all using Miracle as their marketplace platform. So it's branded Bed Bath and Beyond. But the setup and the technology behind it is miracle. So I'm interested to see where some of these marketplaces are going. A lot of people think it's like, hey, we're buying this software to create this marketplace. And that's kind of it, but it's really about curation, right? You wanna make sure you have the right products for your end users that are already coming to your store.

Brett:

Cool. So you've already kinda talked about this, but just I wanna wanna zero in on it a little bit more. Any trends that you're seeing across us marketplaces, there are new ones emerging, which is super interesting. You got Target plus that's really taken off. But any other trends that we need to be aware of with us? Marketplaces?

Jenna:

Actually a trend in the US is to go outside the us So a lot of wanna start to test different geological AR geographies and see kind of do their products resonate there. Now, do they wanna start spinning up a new store that's translated in other language in a different currency, settling in a different bank account? Or do they kinda wanna dip their toe in the water and see if their products even perform, let's say in Latin America? So Mercado Libre is one that's really blowing up Brazil. So it's basically yeah, Latin America, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia, it's like the Latin, it's like in Latin America, that's their Amazon, right? They have Amazon, but it's that same type of volume. They've got like 65 million merchants I mean six 5 million consumers that are on Mercado Libre and are purchasing every day. So it's a great way because they translate everything for you. They handle the taxes, the tariffs, et cetera. So you can keep your US site and English, they help with the translation, they cover taxes, tariffs, currency exchange, everything like that. So that's a big trend that I'm seeing is merchants that want to test in Latin America but aren't ready to make that investment. And Merta Libra is the perfect first step.

Brett:

Love it. Yeah, hear lots of talk about Mercado Libre, so I'm excited to see how that goes. Give us some success stories. What are one or two merchant success stories that are using Theos that are taking advantage of omnichannel consults? That they're a big commerce? Yeah. Share some stories with this.

Jenna:

Yeah, so I mean there's a million different case studies. It kind of depends what vertical we wanna go into. One thing I think that's very interesting that we're about to publish some of these case studies is we're taking the Feos technology and creating a self-serve version that's gonna live within channel manager in the back end of BigCommerce. This is something that's probably gonna go live q1. So not necessarily for holiday season, but something if you evaluate people. But if you evaluate Feed Omics and then say maybe you're not ready yet you're not ready to make that investment, maybe you're a 2 million merchant a year and you're not ready for the investment into Feos, you're not really spending as much on ads and you're kind of starting to get ramped up, this is gonna be a great solution for those type of merchants to be able to grow and go beyond their plateau and really hit that next level.

So it'll give merchants ability to select which products they wanna send to what channel, and to be able to optimize and clean up that data in a self-serve function before they send it to channels. No eCommerce platform on the planet has that capacity to be able to do that. So that's something we wanna be able to offer our merchants to be able to optimize for those channels. Like I said, BigCommerce no longer wants to be the best branded site, whether it's direct to consumer, b2b, we wanna be the best omnichannel hub so merchants can sell more everywhere.

Brett:

Love it. And now that self-serve option of Phenomics will, is that just for big commerce merchants or will that be for will platform agnostic?

Jenna:

So right now we're building it with in tandem between the Phenomics development team and engineers and the big commerce team. So right now that's going to be just for big commerce, where Phenomics platform agnostic, when you have that service offering and that white glove service, that's something that does not matter what platform you're on, but this self-serve will only be on big commerce. But during the preliminary results, we're doing a bunch of case studies where we can see, okay, you have a control group of products that you're just piping straight out from your e-comm store to let's say Google Shopping in this example. And then you have your optimized products that you're sending. We're seeing almost six times the amount of clicks, six times the impressions, five times as many conversions. The conversion value is going up as well. Cause people are able to search and find these products better.

So it's significant when we look at the optimized versus Unoptimized group and it's a huge overall increase in performance compared to the previous months in terms of clicks, impressions, total conversion. So I'm really excited for that to go live for merchants. And that's to me one of the most exciting case studies because a lot of times we're focusing on some of these larger merchants that are in that 20 million to 200 million in that hypergrowth stage. But I wanna ensure that these other merchants have the ability to get to that stage. And I think that this is key, that success.

Brett:

Nice. That's awesome. So I just talked about the big commerce partner summit. So there I got to hear some of the big commerce roadmap. I was very impressed. Big Commerce was really focusing on that 10 million a year to a couple hundred million dollar a year hyper growth e-commerce brand, which is great. That's kind of where we're playing as an agency to OMG commerce. But I'm really excited, I heard a lot of really positive things at that summit, but kinda lay this out for us, what's on the roadmap for big commerce and what are you excited about?

Jenna:

Yeah, I mean before I came to Big Commerce, I was agency side for 13 years and used to do a lot of website builds in addition to performance marketing. And a lot of times we'd quote out three different platforms. Everyone's like, Are you serious? And I'm like, yeah, I wanted the merchant to pick the best tech stack instead of this fanboy culture that follows some other e-commerce channels. We wanted to make sure that for our platform, are we really ensuring as we're building as an agency that this is the correct and e-commerce is always the prettiest square in the room cuz it was lowest to total cost of ownership. You didn't have third party apps that you had no control over the change and you had as a development team, the ability to really customize based on what's the best for the merchant. And I think that's always been the key to big commerce and key to their success is they don't wanna force you to say, this is the payment provider that you have to use and this is how you have to fulfill.

And oh, you can't even use Amazon Buy with Prime. We're gonna kick you off our platform. Instead that you wanna say everything is open and you slot. Choose who's the best payment provider for you. Who's the best fulfillment solution do you wanna customize? Now we wanna obviously try to curate some of the best in breed solutions so it's easier for our merchants and that's why we have our omnichannel consult division. So you can actually come completely complimentary and get an audit of what you're doing now. What's your current media mix? How can you potentially add net new channels? So I think for us and what's moving forward for Big commerce and when I'm really excited about is how open the platform is. I mean we were working on multi-location inventory for almost four years. Our development team was in Keve in the middle of this horrible war and they still launched it on time, which to me it makes me wanna, huge

Brett:

Is crazy.

Jenna:

So we have an unbelievable team and we really care about our merchants. We want to ensure that they're set up for success and for growth. So one of the things I'm most excited is to see, first of all, people use that multi-location inventory and do more with it. We're already seeing some large brands that are able to have one back end and really easy management from a dashboard perspective, but have stores that are really customized for that location, whether it's a different product assortment different language on their site, different currency, but they're really able to customize but have that ease of use to be able to quickly be agile, be nimble with that huge footprint and that large tech stack to be able to have sophisticated merchants be agile is something that you don't see often. Normally it's a huge cruise ship trying to turn around.

So I think having that right tech tag, being able to be open is key. We've got a lot of really great alphas and betas that are about to come out before or the end of the year even in the lot in key one that are really, really all focused around ensuring our merchants can maximize their success on these different omni channels. So obviously I'm biased, I'm in the omni team, so that's really why I spend my day to day. But when you look at the analytics, that's key. So when we look across all big commerce merchants, about 67% of their sales and their GMV online is coming from offsite purchases. So it's these marketplaces, the social commerce being able to check out somewhere else, but then also port those orders back in for proper analytics and their data warehouse. So I'm excited to see some of these new omnichannels that are also changing their ad platforms that I think are for the better. They're gonna give merchants better analytics and better control over the success on those channels. So I'm really excited to see the ability for merchants to sell more everywhere,

Brett:

Lots of good stuff happen and pay attention. Pay attention to what Big Commerce is doing. I'm been very impressed and I'm looking forward to seeing it as well. So Jenna, as people are watching this or listening later or whatever the case may be, and they're like, Hey, I want that feed audit, I want that free feed audit from Feos. Yeah. How can they get that? Or maybe they're like, Hey, I wanna talk to Jenna and team, I want that omnichannel consult. I wanna just see it's complimentary, right? And I've got to hang with you guys a lot. You're just really cool people and fun to talk to and very smart. So how can people take advantage of those options?

Jenna:

Yeah, great question. So we can throw some links in the description to be able to actually book an omnichannel consult. You can book with me or someone else on my team. You'll actually be able to select as you book straight onto our calendar, which I think is nice and efficient. But if you're interested in that or interested in a feed audit, go to Brett, find me on LinkedIn. I mean, we're more than happy either one of us to funnel that for you. My team will help you evaluate your strategy and tell you what are the best next steps. I can help you with that feed audit, but you really need a great agency like OMG Commerce to be able to fulfill that. So it's great to have your feed set up, but you also need creative and you need media buying team. That's something that Feed Omics doesn't do and big commerce aren't implementers, right? We're here to give you the best solutions and the best options and then direct you to the best in class agencies. And that's why I'm here talking OMG Commerce. I think you guys are really killing it in the game and you're getting the best results. And I'm bullish on you guys. I'm excited to see what you do. Awesome.

Brett:

I love it. So yeah, feel free to reach out to Commerce too. We can direct you <affirmative>, we can put you directly in touch with Jenna and team at Big Commerce. But Jenna, this was a ton of fun, man. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for bringing the energy and the insights and I feel just a little bit more ready for holiday. So thank you.

Jenna:

Yeah, and just remember, guys, it's not too late, so act now <laugh> and you could have a totally different holiday season.

Brett:

Awesome. Thanks Jenna.

Jenna:

All right, thanks so much.

‍

‍

I love Arrae as a brand and as a group of products.

I also think Nish Samantray is one of the brightest up-and-coming eCommerce founders in the game right now.

Arrae is unique because it’s a supplement brand that combines natural ingredients with amazing packaging and design. Their supplements are designed to work in under an hour. So their bloat pill allows you to eat pizza and not feel terrible afterward. And the jars are a work of art. So are the labels. It’s truly a product you would love to see in your medicine cabinet or sitting on the counter.

Nish and the team are doing a LOT right in creating Arrae’s meteoric growth.

Here are a few things we discuss in today’s episode:

• Why asking what customers want next is a terrible question and what to ask instead.
• How to think about in-store growth.
• When everything gets more challenging, how do you get better
• Influencer marketing with events and thinking more like a mom who loves to host neighbor kids.
• Nish’s favorite books and resources for growth
• Plus more!

‍

Mentioned in This Episode:

OMG Commerce Resource Guides‍

Nish Samantray

- LinkedIn

- Twitter‍

- Instagram ‍

‍

Arrae

- Website

- Instagram

- Twitter ‍

‍

Native Deodorant‍

Moiz Ali‍

Erewhon Market‍

Smart Marketer Podcast‍

Triple Whale‍

“Blitzscaling” by Reid Hoffman‍

Masters of Scale podcast by Reid Hoffman‍

“Building a StoryBrand” by Donald Miller‍

“$100M Offers” by Alex Hormozi

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today is gonna be a how I done it episode, uh, to use proper grammar there. But we, we are gonna look at a founder story. We're gonna look at an up and coming D TOC brand, a brand that's near and dear to my heart cuz we get to work with this guy on a daily basis. And he's awesome and his brand is amazing.

Are you a D TOC brand spending over six figures a month on paid media? If so, then listen up. My agency, OMG Commerce and I have worked with some of the top eCommerce brands over the years, including Boom, native Groove, moan, Gify, and dozens more. And every year we audit hundreds of Google, YouTube, and Amazon ad accounts and we always find either significant opportunities for growth or wasted ad spend to cut or both. For example, are you missing YouTube ads? Whatever you're spending on top of funnel Facebook, you should be able to spend 30 to 50% of that or more on YouTube with similar returns. So if you're spending 300 to 400,000 a month on Facebook, you should be able to easily spend a hundred to 150,000 or more on YouTube. Visit OMG commerce.com to request a free strategy session or visit our resource page and get some of our free guides loaded with some of our best strategies for YouTube ads, Google Shopping, Amazon DSP and more. Check it all out@omgcommerce.com. I am delighted to introduce N sere to the call founder, uh, co-founder of Array and you'll hear all about array as we go. And so with that Nish, how you doing man? Welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time to do this.

Nish:

Oh, thank you Brett. I'm so excited to be here. But one thing I wanna say is when I first met you, and I've only met you once in person, I knew you were a big guy, but you were a really big guy. That was just one thing that really stood out to me. I was like, Holy shit Fred, why are you so

Brett:

Massive? No, define defined big. You mean like tall and chiseled or do you mean like, Dude, you better go on a diet? Uh,

Nish:

No comment part <laugh>. Oh, that's

Brett:

Awesome. Yeah, it so funny. We were actually just talking about basketball. You and I were offline a minute ago, so there's this guy in my hometown, another business guy, love him. He's like just one of those super honest guys. So we, we played a game one time and afterwards he's like, Brett, you're really good. Uh, you know, if you dropped about 20 pounds you'd be really good. And I'm like, Okay, <laugh>. That was the most unique compliment that I've gotten and sometimes, so, uh, I did actually lose 20 pounds after that, so that was good. So he inspired you

Nish:

Look great Brett, you look great. You're, you're a a big bone chiseled man is what you're <laugh>.

Brett:

Okay. That that is fantastic. So yeah, we, but we recently got to hang out in la which is where you are. We had breakfast at a phenomenal place close to lax and I'm pretty sure we saw Terry Cruz, uh, also having breakfast there, which is a pretty crazy story. Yeah,

Nish:

He did, He just walked in and by the way, this is like the random little spot close to the airport and he just happened to have breakfast. Yeah, LA is weird like that.

Brett:

LA is the place to be. I don't know that by LAX is what I would recommend, but you had to do it for my schedule, which I really, really appreciate. So, uh, let's dive in. I'm so excited to, for the peeps to hear about array and all that you've got going on. Cause lots of lessons here, but let's rewind a little bit. So pre array, what did you do and and how did you get into to e-commerce?

Nish:

That's funny. So I am a mechanical engineer who became a software developer who became a product manager and then kind of worked my way around to becoming an e-commerce founder. Essentially my whole thing, my whole life was that I was really good at math and so I just took very mathematically inclined roles, kind of worked that in school and even did that in in jobs. And so my whole life I was okay, I I like math, I'm gonna go ahead and try to learn how to code cuz it didn't like mechanical engineering coding was really fun. I used to work in the tech technology industry and I worked for some really amazing companies. I worked for software development teams at, at banks in Canada. Um, then I also went and worked at some of the largest like fin tech companies in India and Japan. So there was a time in my life where I was going to India once a month for a company called Paytm.

And that was the probably the best experience of my life because this is where I learned how to build a business that this company went from zero to, it's a $20 billion company. Plus now they also iPod and they have the biggest IPO in India. And so this was really cool experience for me cause I was sitting right next to the founders and CEOs and I was like, Wow, this is how you really build a company. And so after this I was like, okay, I feel really well equipped to start a company. By the way, just to give you a little bit more context, I had started a technology company before starting Array, which was doing fairly well. It was just that when I was working on this, I was so busy working on it and my wife s was working on our own thing and I was like, Damn, if we don't work on something together, we're not gonna be together. And so we just said <laugh>. Yeah. And

Brett:

So we said smart man, prioritizing the most important relationship in your life above anything else. But, uh, I, I see you guys on social media, first of all. You're like super cute together and I tell you fun together. Uh, but yeah. So you guys decided to go all in on a business together?

Nish:

We did. We absolutely did. And I just said, Okay, siv, you come up with the idea and I I will, I will help build whatever you think is right. And so this is kind of how the story of array started where basically the two of us are super polar opposite people. Like I am your very nerdy engineer and she's like the coolest person on Instagram with like 60,000 followers really into fashion. Really cool people love looking and following and you know, liking your stories and all this kind of stuff. But essentially she suffered from a, uh, a fractured rib from a chronic cough and one that happened. The idea was, okay, this is insane. And the doctor prescribed her coding. And so she was like, there's gotta be a better way to take care of herself from a preventative way and just like live a very healthy holistic lifestyle. And for me, I didn't even know what all of that meant. I was just working in tech and it inherently a very stressful environment. But over time I was like, wow, this is amazing to be able to take care of yourself. And so first of all, it started in the world of skincare because you know, she was in the beauty world and I used to be stealing all of her skincare and I was a man with an eight step skincare routine. But after that,

Brett:

A way, way, way to do that proudly. Proudly. Why not? Do you have to ask too? Just just while we have just a quick break here. So you're into math. I I've, I always enjoyed math in school, but I was like just, you know, pretty good at math. You strike me as one. Were you, were you a math athlete? Were you ever on like the math teams and stuff?

Nish:

Yeah, I was, I was,

Brett:

I know a few of my friends are math athletes or former math athletes I should say. Uh, what, what a what an honor, what a cool thing. Yeah, for sure.

Nish:

Yeah. I, uh, keep going, keep going.

Brett:

No, no, no. Uh, yes. But you don't have to be a math athlete to be successful at eCommerce. And that's a good thing for the rest of us. Uh, so anyway, so you guys were doing, you were doing skincare, you had the same step routine, your skin looks great by the way. Um, so it started skincare and then where'd you go from there?

Nish:

We started skincare. And so essentially the idea was that, okay, skincare is obviously progressed a lot in the last 10 years. You look at skincare and it's like, wow, this, this industry's one where everything you're using is first of all really efficacious. It actually works. You know exactly what you're using your products for. And so you can like solve very specific problems on your skin by using a very specific product. Second, all the products are built by doctors or dermatologists with a lot of credibility, a lot of scientific background. So it just really made sense and worked. And last thing was, it was an extremely beautified process. So the, the, the concept and the behavior of buying skincare, especially for women, is such a beautiful, nice experience. The packaging is amazing. The ideology of buying good skincare is so cool. Uh, people respect when you have a six step skin care routine.

That whole idea was really, really fascinating. And in the wellness world, that wasn't the case. We're still, and even today we are still have medicine cabinets that look like, you know, just a bunch of white bottles and you don't even know what it is that you're taking. And so our idea was that, okay, first of all, we can solve certain problems using natural ingredients that that work in under an hour. That's kind of our philosophy. We create a hundred percent natural ingredients that work in under an hour and that is the only thing we're gonna do. Cause we want you to take our supplements and feel the effects in under an hour. Cause that was the idea behind it. And then also we said, well, it's also back it up with a lot of doctors and naturo bag doctors and medical doctors who can actually come and help us with the formulation process. So you know that what you're taking is gonna work. And the last thing is just make it all really beautiful so that you don't have to hide it in your closet. It looks really good on your bedside table.

Brett:

Yeah, it's such a, such an interesting thing. You know, so many companies that are in the supplement space or health and wellness, they don't think about truly building a brand and they don't think about that experience. And so, uh, I want you to talk about kind of your, your core products in a minute. But, but I've purchased both your, your bloat capsules. So pills you take after you eat to reduce bloating. And uh, one of my favorite lines comes from one of your customers, uh, who said, I refuse to choose between eating pizza and feeling good so I can eat pizza and then take the blow pills. And I feel great. Uh, the product is fantastic by the way, but, but thank you even more than that. The, the, the canister that's, I'm sure that's the wrong word. The, the what, what is contained in jar there?

Jar? Yeah, that's, I dunno why that word escaping <laugh>, but a glass jar, nice little lid on it. The the, the label feels pre you hold it in your hand and it feels premium and, and it, it works. And so it's great. You also have the, uh, product called Calm, which is, which is also great. I've taken that, you know, I'm pretty high stress most of the time going all the time. Either, either dealing with eight kids at home or running a business or whatnot. So calm is a good product for me for sure. So, so yeah. So you combined natural ingredients of working under an hour, Love that, uh, with beautiful branding, beautiful packaging, and it, it just, it adds to the experience, right? Which, which is, which is really unique. I don't know really any other brand that's focusing on both like that, like you guys are.

Nish:

Yeah, I mean it seems just really obvious. I think when you're using a product, you want to feel good about using the product also, especially in our world. And what I mean by our world, I mean, prob like problem areas of your body, these things tend to be pretty stigmatized. For example, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, like all these words are not exactly sexy words to talk about, right? <laugh>. But exactly the, the thing is that we all actually suffer from these kind of problems. And so the whole thing is that, okay, we know we suffer from them. Why don't we just make the experience of dealing with them very, very human and something that is actually really pleasant. That's the entire idea behind it. And so we put in so much care into the labeling and like the type of label that we use. And then also when you put the label on, like we put it on at a very specific speed so that it's perfectly parallel. Other, you'll see the labels are actually like, you know, a little bit like upside down some sometimes and whatnot. And so all these little details you pay attention to cuz it just makes that experience so much better. And then you feel proud about the product you're taking. It is, it's a no-brainer.

Brett:

Yeah. You, you feel good about it sitting out on the counter. And, and I, I do recommend everybody check out the site. We will mention it a few times I'm sure, but it's array.com, A r r a e.com and you'll see it. And actually there's some parallels here. Do you know the brand Tushy? Are you familiar with Tushy? Of course. Yeah. So Love Mickey. Uh, go back and listen to the episode where I interviewed Mickey. She's built several brands from scratch, including thinks, which is period proof, uh, underwear. And then Tushi, which is a Bday company, and she talks about being artful and fridge worthy, even for stuff that's a little hard to talk about, like a Bday, right? But there, there's actually some similarities in the way and, and you guys are unique brands, but um, you know, you look at the Toshi side and you're like, this is fun to shop and this looks beautiful, right? And uh, and I feel the same way about about Array as well, which is awesome.

Nish:

So yeah, it's, it's really cool. They, uh, Tushi also has a, uh, comedian match ranks their copy. Like that's how much they've invested in in their kind of brand and ecosystem. So it's, yeah, it's really cool.

Brett:

Yeah, that, that's one of their, one of the things they do, like, they'll write a video script and then they'll bring in comedians to make it, to make it funny and to, to bring something, uh, to life a little bit. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's just a super, super fun brand for sure. So, uh, let's dive in a little bit. Let's talk about the ideation phase. And, and this will be important I think for, for a few reasons. One, there could be people listening that are just getting started and they're in the ideation phase, but I think there's also a lot of people listening to this podcast, cause I get to talk to you guys at events and stuff where you've got a successful business, but you're looking for that next product. You're looking for line extension, you're looking to grow to the next thing. And so that ideation phase never goes away, right? Something you always do as a successful brand. So what was that ideation phase like? Where did you get stuck and how'd you get unstuck?

Nish:

For sure. So I think that there's two major components to this. Number one is I think in this world, building a good product matters more than anything else. I think that right now, the reason why we are still able to continue to acquire new customers, even in a very difficult e-commerce environment is because our product is really good. It works really well. And in this sense it's all because of the r and d that goes into it. So, for example, for us, it took us about a year and a half just to finalize the formulation of a product. So every single one of our products takes about 18 months to bring to a customer from ideation. And that's including your manufacturing time, that's including your, um, kind of, um, r and d time, your, your testing with the customers and whatnot, all of this. So basically first what we do is say, Okay, we have an idea of what the customer wants and we have, we think we know what the ways that people can use our products in, in, in different ways.

Let's go and first validate that. So the first thing is we go and talk to a bunch of different customers, either in our community, we actually try to avoid speaking to friends. It's just way too biased. But we just kind of hit as many people with, uh, who, who don't know us with, with questions that will give us non-leading answers. So, by the way, one thing I learn, Brad, which is super interesting, is we don't go and ask customers, Hey, what's the product you want? We actually go and say, But we are coming with a new product. What do you think it is? That little tweak in that sentence makes them tell you what they, what they think is coming, which is what they actually want. But when you ask them what they want, they don't, they don't know what they want. They give you, they give you answers that are like way too biased. They're just, they're just like, they're like, Oh, I don't really know. But when you guess it, they don't, That's a really interesting copy tweak that really helps. That

Brett:

Is a really interesting twist. Yeah, because I think sometimes when you ask someone what is it that you want, the first place that people go is like, What do you expect me to say? Or what makes me sound smart? Or what makes me sound not like a selfish jerk or, or whatever. Like they, they, they think more about what I should be saying rather than what I actually want, which is hard to, to put their, uh, their finger on. But yeah, that's, that's a really interesting twist. So you use that question in person, asking people in person, or you're doing like well

Nish:

Even email, email service,

Brett:

Email stuff. Yeah,

Nish:

Yeah, yeah. Got it. So like, even when we need actual like, product feedback or we want to know that we don't say that. We said, Hey, we're coming with a product in the next six months, Tell us what you, what, what you think it is. And then we actually take those and then start ideating off of those even though there's no product coming out in six months. Well there is, Well

Brett:

There will be. You just dunno. It will be Exactly,

Nish:

Exactly. It's gonna happen.

Brett:

So, so is that how, okay, so you've got, you've got three core products right now, right? You've got, you got Bloat, you've got Calm and then Sleep Alchemy, which is brand new, right? Just, just came out close to the time of this recording. So is that how you got the idea for Sleep Alchemy was by asking that, that, those questions?

Nish:

Yeah. So well, okay, so sleep we knew before, but all the other ones we do, we are doing this exact method. And the, the idea behind our, the way that we can navigate these different products is just that okay, we think that we can solve certain problems in certain ways that you can actually feel the effective. So those are the products that we are ideating and coming up with the most, but then there's a lot of other problems that actually we get from the customers. I actually don't think if you're in a very innovative space and you're, you're trying to create something a little bit new, I don't think asking customers what they're looking for should inform your decision making. I think this is where you have to be a little bit more of a entrepreneur visionary kind of thing. And I say that in quotes because you just have to have a vision for what you think the world is gonna look like, um, you know, even a year or two years from now. And then you gotta create products for them that they may not know that they want. Like for example, our broad product is by no means a, you know, revolutionary product, but it is truly revolutionary in the way that we have formulated it is revolutionary in the way that we market it. It's very revolutionary in the way that it solves a very specific problem. Like if you go into the market, there was not many products called Bloat. There was actually not no products called bloat. So I think that that mindset is pretty helpful.

Brett:

Yeah, that's that's so good. So good. And I, and yeah, I love that that takeaway alone of, you know, don't ask customers what they want, Ask them other questions that will uncover what they want. Uh, super, super smart. So, uh, what, what else do you feel like you did really well, uh, either in the very beginning or more recently? Like what, what's been some of the keys to your success?

Nish:

So I am Indian and so because of being Indian, we love being super, super scrappy. It is in our blood to be super scrappy. And so the, at the very beginning, so we, like, I used to work obviously in tech, so I was making a lot of money. And so I used to pour everything that I got for my salary into the business. And we didn't even think of raising money. We didn't think of anything except for how do we use this capital as efficiently as possible. And so every little thing we did was just completely boots tracked. We, we, uh, tried to get manufacturers with low MOQs. We went and drove to different places in Canada to find the manufacturers that worked for us. We went and worked with a doctor that we really incentivized to work for in the long run instead of, you know, giving up a lot of money as an example. We, we were just so scrappy in every brel way bread.

Brett:

Mm. I love that. I love that. And what, what's really interesting to me, but been looking at this and, and then different research around this that, uh, really constraints drive creativity and problem solving. So sometimes when you have all the money in the world or, or what feels like an abundance of money, or when you feel like you got all the time you need or whatever, you often don't come up with good solutions, right? But when you're, when you have that scrappy mindset or you have real constraints, or you just create constraints for yourself, often you come up with better solutions and, and, and bigger wins, uh, that, that lead to better outcomes. So that's, that's fantastic. Yeah. Uh, so who's kind of the brains behind the branding here? Is that, is that you or is that si or is it a combination?

Nish:

Si is definitely the brains behind the branding. She's a reason why the company is as cool as this is. I think we are both the brains behind the product and the strategy behind that. But she handles all the branding and marketing. If it was me, this would look like the worst product in the world. So it's definitely all her <laugh>

Brett:

Look like a, like an IT manual or something like that.

Nish:

Absolutely.

Brett:

So, so way to go sift. Good job. Love the branding way to make way to make this product cool. Um, so I wanted, I wanna shift gears a little bit. So, so back when we were having our breakfast with Terry Cruz, I'm just kidding. He was, he was, Terry Cruz was not interested in us. I don't know why. I think if he had known his loss, we were how smart we were. He, he would've just pulled up a chair and and learned a hundred

Nish:

Hundred percent.

Brett:

Uh, uh, but when we were having breakfast, you were talking about influencer marketing, right? And you're, you are in LA but you guys also do some stuff in New York and other places. But talk a little bit about, talk about influencer marketing and talk about events. Cause I think you guys are doing some unique stuff there

Nish:

For sure. So this is actually a really big play for us, and I think that people underestimate the effect, the compounding effect. This has over time for us. We've actually always had a small portion of the budget that's a fixed budget that we put towards branding through influencers and through events. And we use it in a very specific way. So when you're doing events, it is very oriented towards building a community. And when I describe community, I say that when my friends came over to my house when I was really young, my mom used to feed everybody mm-hmm. <affirmative>, all of my friends would be like, Oh my God, this is such a fun time. I'm gonna keep coming back to Nisha's house because this is where we feast, this is where they take, this is where Nisha's mom takes care of all of us, and we just have a really good time.

So for me, when I think of community, I think of a host that is trying to create a really good time for either our customers or other influencers where they get to build valuable relationships with each other. And I am the host of that dinner party, as an example. And so when we build events, this is what we're trying to do. We're trying to build a community where people get a lot of value from meeting other really cool people. And we are simply facilitating that kind of environment and as a byproduct that not only are do we get a lot of exposure and a lot of, um, hype and a lot of people just loving your brands, people actually lead those events being like, Oh my God, I just found a really, really good friend. And so we host these events with not only our customers, but we also host them with, um, influencers, whether they're micro influencers or macro influencers.

We, we have, uh, events for, you know, every stage of different types of influencers. And what we see there is a lot of organic social growth because people just like what you're doing. So one of the things in today's world is that when you're working with influencers, first of all, most influencers say, Okay, x like X and number of dollars and I'll give you y That's the way it's, it is kind of transactional and people can just totally read through the fakeness of what is happening. For us, we're like, we will only invite people who actually like the brand and like the product. And we only invite people who will talk about us because they actually like what we are doing and they actually resonate with a problem trying to solve. So this kind of way of introducing a brand to someone, or because they've been following us on social media and they've been talking about us and we like the content that they're putting out, just using these events as a place where we can amplify that relationship has been working really well for us.

And now as we grow the brand, we are doing it on a bigger and bigger level. So as an example, the biggest one we ever did was just last month when we launched our sleep capsules and we had some of the top influencers who were huge brand fans and we rented out a portion of a hotel in, uh, in, in, uh, um, Santa Barbara. And it was this beautiful hotel overlooking the ocean. Um, and we all had a really amazing dinner there to kind of have people have a sleepover. So they came up, they had a sleepover, we gave them all of our sleep products, we call it a sleepover, it would be a race

Brett:

Food totally ties into the branding, but also ties into the vibe. Like, and I, I love this picture of yeah, you, your house was the house to hang out at when you were a kid because your mom cooked and because everybody wanted to be there and they were welcome. And so I really like that idea that that idea of host facilitator, you're cultivating these relationships. Okay, awesome. So you had a sleepover in Santa Barbara overlooking the ocean. Uh, continue. Sounds awesome. I wish I could. So that

Nish:

Was, you should have been, It was really amazing. So that was amazing. And like, look for me, like when I'm again like said numbers guy, I'm looking at the pnl, I'm like, holy shit. Like look at this line item. This is crazy. But the crazy thing is, Brett, we grew 50% last month, month over month, 50% growth. It took care of the cost threefold because of how successful these types of events are. Yeah. And it took care

Brett:

50% year over year growth, 50% month over month growth, which is staggering. And it's been awesome. It's awesome to watch that this close up. So Yeah,

Nish:

For sure. And it didn't come, you know, it didn't come like on the day of the event as an example, it just came because we are building that over time. Like we do that again and again and again. And it just, it shows up over time. So it, it really works. Events really, really works.

Brett:

Yeah. And I love that because you know, there, there's all kinds of transactional relationships out there, all kinds of other brands that just have, uh, uh, you do this, I'll do this for you, type relationship with their influencers. But when you can be really authentic and actually have this, you know, be known as a, a host and as a, uh, facilitator, cultivator of great relationships and people attend that and they just really like you and then they like, and they like your product and they like being part of it, that creates a deeper connection. And, and you'll get better results too from your influencers, which is, which is super cool. So then how did you, any other, So I think that's a really unique thing that probably most people are missing. I'm assuming you're doing a lot of the same, the standard things as well, like giving your influencers resources, giving them tools, helping them promote things like that. And any, any other tips or suggestions for better influencer marketing?

Nish:

For sure. When it comes to influencers, I think one of the main things is that you gotta know and have someone on the team or maybe should be yourself, Like for example for me is sif is so in touch with who the influencers are, who is up and coming and just the people who are really growing or who are so in touch with your type of consumer. And so having someone, it is honestly more of an art than a science. Finding influencers is, is really an art. And so you gotta have people who have that inherent feeling to be able to do that. And so when you, once you have that, your job is to get in touch with them by either gifting them or, you know, creating different environments for them to be able to be exposed to your brand. That is really the, the influencer and, um, department's kind of job.

And so, so for example, I'll give you an, I'll give you an example of, uh, one of her friends who did this, one of her friends actually bought like this crazy expensive, uh, designer bag, I think it was, I think it was Louiston or something. And they bought that, they filled it up with their products and gave it to one of the biggest influencers in the world. Okay. They just dropped it off at their door and there was no, cuz you know, know these influencers are so hard to get in touch with. And so then the influencer opened up the bag was like, Wow, this is insane. And then she started posting about this, this brand and the brand is making, it's a positive ROI kind of thing. And it's, it's very kind of balls you think, but this is the way you get in touch or kind of find the people that you really think could, you know, move the needle on your brand.

So the first thing is find, be in touch with people, uh, or have, have a touch on the, the influence that are up and coming or could really make the move the needle. The second thing is give with zero expectation in return. For us, from day one, we literally gave products and we were just like, we actually don't care if you post about us. We just want you to try your product cuz we really think we're solving a real, real problem here. And if you try our product, you're gonna love it so much, you might just become a customer. And that was truly where we came from at the heart. But we do not care about if they posted or anything monetary. We just did not care. And even to date, we don't even to date when we go to influencers and ask them to do something for us, even in a paid partnership, we are like, do whatever you want. We are not gonna review your work. You have full autonomy. We don't, we don't have any strict rules. But you know, like if you look at any other brand, like even bigger brands, they're like, okay, we have a three step review process and then by the third step, the influencers like, not even who they are, they're like this different person,

Brett:

Right? Right. And then it doesn't feel authentic and, and the audience doesn't buy it fully or it just doesn't feel right. But I, I love that. So giving was zero expectation in return because, and, and that's, that's gutsy, that's risky. You gotta believe in your product and believe in that you've, you're talking to the right people and it really makes a lot of sense to have someone on your team who can kind of judge that it factor whether an influencer has that it factor that, that ring of authenticity and are they on the come up and all all these things. Uh, so yeah, that, that's great. So given without expectation, um, any, any other thoughts, any other tips on, on influencer marketing?

Nish:

I think that apart from that you have to be really, uh, strategic nowadays about the way you spend money on influencers. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I think that the overall market of, of, uh, influencer kind of, uh, pays is really, really inflated. And so it is extremely rare to find influencers who are actually ROI positive and think, I think there's a, there's a certain group at a very high level, we call 'em the whales who are really good at promoting your brand. They have millions of followers or hundreds of thousands of followers and they can probably break even or be ROI positive. And it's also really good to be associated with them from a brand perspective. And you know, those whales are not, not reducing their price, they're sticking where they are, but then as a byproduct, all of the other influencers who are also up and coming have increased their prices.

And so I think that what you have to do is you have to know who you're gonna spend on from a brand perspective and who are you gonna spend on from a ROI perspective. And just be super clear about that and just be like, okay, you know what if, if this influencers is not gonna bring me money, is she gonna be helpful for me for brand? Okay, I'm gonna justify this as a brand cause if not, I'm not gonna spend the money at all. Because it's really easy to overspend on influencers and see zero returns at the same time. You have to experiment to see if someone's gonna work or not. So it's a very like, fine balance, but uh, don't go overspending at the same time. Just, just be mindful of the way you spend on them.

Brett:

Love that so much. Really, really good advice. So, uh, what, what else are you excited about right now, Nish, in terms of growth for the brand? Uh, I want, I wanna talk about some in-store stuff and just a minute retail distribution in just a minute, but, but anything else more on the online d toc or just online world? What, what's he excited about as far as growth?

Nish:

Well, honestly I think that right now, just cuz where we're at, I think you have to be so nitpicky in every part of the business. And so, you know, before back in the day it would say, Okay, this is do ads, ads, ads. So I spent the first four months of this year just like figuring out our ad strategy across all platforms, making sure we have the right creatives, making sure with the right buyers, making sure we have the right strategy. Um, and team to be able to execute on that, given how difficult it is to grow ads right now. But totally I just think that like, look, this is just one portion of it. You gotta put an equal amount of effort into your cro, which is actually a completely different part of that, that kind of funnel. And it's a, it's a equally important part. And so now I'm just like, okay, building a team around how to go and really optimize the shit out of your landing pages, your website, every single part of the business, you know? Yeah.

Brett:

Cuz sometimes you don't actually have a traffic problem or a quality of ad problem. Somebody's got a CRO problem. Sometimes your, your land in your site just aren't converting enough. So yeah, we, we were talking about this a little bit offline that right now due due to just the crazy environment and who knows what's going on exactly with consumer confidence and the economy and all that. And you know, things are always gonna be uncertain to a, to a certain degree. You gotta be really good, really good at every area, traffic, paid ads, cro, branding, influencer, you gotta be good at all of it. Right. Um, which, which is, which is really cool. Uh, and also overwhelming, but hey, it's overwhelming for your competitors too. So if you can figure it out, it gives you an edge. Cool. Anything else you're excited about right now online?

Nish:

Um, I think that those two things are really cool and, and the last thing is just I'm, I'm really excited about the fact that you can, you have to now go figure out different ways to grow that are not digital digitally native. So yeah, I am, I'm getting really excited about things like sampling, like, like in like physical sampling your products, you know, like that's been something that we just got back after Covid. And you can go and have people try your products out and, and obviously depends on the category you're in, but you just gotta be so diverse with the way that you're acquiring and thinking of acquiring customers. It's, it just pushes you to be a better marketer. And so that's, that's that's fun. Come on. That's gotta be exciting. Know super

Brett:

Fun man. And, and you know, I got my start in on on offline marketing, so TV and direct mail and stuff like that, so I love that. Now some of these top e-commerce brands that we work with at omg, they're, they're thinking about offline marketing and in store stuff and we're gonna talk about like a little bit of direct mail in some cases, which is, which is super interesting. Um, let's talk about what, what is your strategy? What is your approach to get in physical stores? Cause I think, you know, one thing that, that a lot of people know now is that hey d to see eCommerce is still a small percentage of overall retail and likely for you to grow to the heights that you want to grow to and to build this huge successful brand, it probably need some in-store distribution, right? So what, what's your strategy and what's your approach to in-store?

Nish:

Yeah, so I think that this is different for every brand and I think every brand should actually know if they're going to be a heavy business or a D two C heavy business with a blend in the future. So for us, we are a D two C heavy business that can expand further in retail. And so for us, what we noticed is when we initially went off and went into certain retailers, like very boutique ones, you know, we would, the most important metric here is sell through. And so if the people in that area don't know about you, you are not going to have success in that retailer because there's very few places that people are going to explore. Most people, when they're going to buy something, they're like, Okay, I'm gonna go in store, I'm gonna buy something. Maybe I'll pick up a few things here and there.

But like, you gotta be super intentional about that. So for us, we realize that it's important to build our name, our brand, our credibility, and our product before we go into any massive retailer because you want people to be excited about the fact that we are also available in, in a particular retailer store. I'll give you an example about Toronto cuz we are, we were a Canadian based, kind of Toronto based company and we grew in Toronto first. That was our biggest market initially when it grew there. Canada is unfortunately a terrible country for shipping. Shipping is wildly expensive in Canada and it just,

Brett:

Everything is spread out. It's, there's not a ton of people there, right? Like the population of California, but spread throughout this massive geographic area

Nish:

It is, is crazy. And it just takes so long for things to get places. So when we started in Canada, I was like, wow, this is crazy. Like it cost us $15 to ship something out. This is insane. And so, but we, we were doing it, doing it, doing it. And all of a sudden a year in people are like, I I hate how long your shipping is taking, where can I find you in store? And that is the kind of place you wanna be in because then when your retailers get your product, like people are excited to go and buy from them. And when your retailers excited, they're getting more sell through, they're being able to sell their product more and it, it, it honestly did not affect our online business. Like it actually grew our online business. So I think building brand first and building that credibility first, then going into retails in the areas where you're building that brand and, and, and credibility is really important. At least for us, it's been really important. So we, we, we got into I one as an example, you know, about this brand, but

Brett:

Yeah, yeah. I one, yeah, so, so let me, I wanna, I want to uh, key in on I one for just a little bit cuz that was a new newer brand for me as a, as a Midwest guy. But I love this strategy. If you have the skillset to build a d TOC brand first where you're someone direct to consumer online first, then, and especially if you're doing like top of funnel Facebook, top of funnel YouTube, you're, you're building a brand, you've got people out there that are thinking about your brand, then you launch on Amazon, then you go in store, you're building up this demand for your product. So it's been super fun for me to observe this, uh, you know, we're native, uh, was just native deodorant and now it's a line of native client for a long time, used to work with Mo Ali, the founder, uh, but now they're everywhere, right?

They're, they're in Walmart, they're in Target, they're in cvs, they're in Walmarts, they're everywhere. And so they were able to leverage some of their digital strengths and their digital skillset to, to greater in store sales. But you're right, there's a compounding effect, right? If I see it online, I see it in store, I see it wherever, that actually can boost online sales too. It doesn't cannibalize it. We've seen similar things on Amazon. We didn't help, um, native launch on Amazon. They, they did that themselves, but uh, when they launched on Amazon, there was no cannibalization of their in store or their, their D TOC sales, uh, just helped Boom. And Ezra Firestone launch on Amazon recently and it's gone, it's grown from zero to like 15% of sales with zero cannibalization of the D TOC sales D TOC sales are still in the same growth trajectory. So, but that all comes back to those d TOC skill sets and then leveraging your digital, uh, marketing in your paid media to, to really have impact on Amazon and in-store as well, which it's, it's pretty fun to be a part of that.

Nish:

Yeah, for sure. I I just think that this, you're building an ecosystem, you're building it over time. I think the concept that the longer you're in market with fewer products, building your community, the more people associate you with these something and then you can, I think this is the path to building a big brand. I think there's lots of people who can build a nice $5 million business with 1 million in profit and just laid off of that forever. And that's, that's one way of doing e-commerce, right? Yeah, yeah, that's totally fine. And there's the other way which is like if you wanna build big, you know, a hundred million dollar plus for lands, you gotta play the long game. And I think that in today's world, it's probably actually, I, I feel more comfortable being the long game cuz I'm just so not okay with how the entire ecosystem is working. So I think the long game is the way to win in the, in, in this entire ecosystem anyway, so yeah,

Brett:

Totally agree. I I, what's really fun about this for me is I think there was an era, there was like an era drop shipping in E-com, which is fine. There was the early days of, of success on Amazon, which was kind of just like, find some kind of product, slap a label on it, sell it, make millions of dollars. Now though I think the successful brands are brands, they're thinking about building a brand and they're thinking about how all of this compounds, just like we've been talking about Amazon in-store D toc, you're using, you know, leveraging Facebook and, and YouTube and everything to build all of that influencers, you know, having it all work together. So it it's, it's fun to see real brand building taking place rather than just tactics, you know, to, to grow sales. So, um, it's been awesome. Uh, couple things I wanna, well actually, uh, tell us about Air One cause I think, I think for other Midwest peeps or people that are not in the market of where an Aand store is, what is it and why is it so awesome?

Nish:

Well, look, Air one is this weird place, okay, Is this like the holy grail of just, uh, like explorative shopping? It's actually ridiculous. Is all these tos on about IAnd about everything costing $1,350,000 and people would be like, Oh, water for only $1 million and you go buy it. Like it is a joke. <laugh>

Brett:

Must be really great. I'm so hydrated after I drink this water. Way better than that water at the gas station? Yeah,

Nish:

Yeah. Even to regular water. So like, it's just this kind of place where you enter this location, you forget about money as a reality and you just go and, you know, explore these. It it, it is actually really cool. Like it's, it's really, um, topnotch super healthy stuff. Um, you know, things that are just extremely new and revolutionary in the food space and the alcohol space and the supplement space, whatever you want to call it. And they just have everything for anybody with, with any sort of even food intolerance or whatever digestive issue you might have and whatnot. And it's such a cool everything

Brett:

For anybody. If you're somebody who has cash, that's,

Nish:

You're somebody who has, that's first thing

Brett:

Yeah. Disposable income, that's what we're looking for for sure. Uh, awesome. So, so Nish, what, what is next for Array?

Nish:

Well, I am really just excited about coming up with more products that can help more people. I think we've been in market for about two years with just the two products below and comp, we just released our sleep product and I'm really excited just to create products that people can take together to solve real problems. For example, we have a lot of customers who are being able to solve symptoms of IBS and, and Crohn's and other really like symptomatic kind of deep, deep problems because of taking your products. And so you won't do expand around that Ed to be able to help people with food intolerance cuz they know whatever dairy doesn't sit with all with them or they have a chronic issue. And so we're expanding our line out so more people can just truly just help solve like very, very deep issues in their body.

Or they might even, we don't even know that they have an issue and they're just like, Ah, man, I hate eating cheese and I hate eating pizza because it doesn't stay well with me. We're gonna be able to actually help solve these problems so people can go out and eat whatever they want, whenever they want. They can even sleep and rest really well. So the whole idea behind array is like, feel your best, be your best. And we are coming here with products to help you do that in a very holistic way. So I'm just so excited for people to get hands on our products because they're gonna be so life changing, um, just in terms of getting your entire body into nice rhythm. So I'm just excited about that.

Brett:

I love it man. And I love watching your growth, you know, these, these first two years, which is crazy to even say to think about the growth you've had over just two years. So can't wait to see what the next year holds, what the next two year holds. Um, and so that's super, super exciting. Last kinda last question before we wrap up. Any any favorite resources, tools, books? This can be eCommerce focused or it can be just productivity focused or something like that, but in any favorite tools or resources you'd recommend?

Nish:

Ooh, let me think about this a little bit. So I love listening to the Smart Marketer podcast when it comes to all things related to like e-commerce advertising and, and whatnot. I actually really like the Triple Whale weekly emails that they send out. They're,

Brett:

Those emails are great. Yeah, they're fantastic. I get to meet, I get to meet Rob at a, we both spoke at Nick Shackleford, it's the Geek Out event. Rob's one that kind of puts those emails together. Yeah, very thoughtful, fun, but like, gets gets to the point. And yeah, that, that email list is great. That's one that I regularly read. Yeah.

Nish:

Yeah, that, that one's amazing. And then my other favorite just books in general that I like to draw parallels from. I love the Blitzscaling book by Reed Hoffman. I think that's such a good book to read. You're an entrepreneur. It

Brett:

Is. So Reed Hoff Hoffman has a great podcast. So we called the Masters of Scale. I dunno if you've listened to that, but that is a fantastic podcast. Fantastic. But I, I'm not familiar. What's, what's the book you just mentioned?

Nish:

Blitz Scaling, b l i t z Scaling. It is one heck of a book. It really just, it just talks about how to spend money efficiently and very quickly and out career competitors and, and do that in different markets. It's very tech focused, but you can draw parallels from certain parts of it towards eCommerce and it's actually one of the main ways you've being able to grow so fast, uh, for our business. So I love that book, book. And I also loved, uh, Building a Story Brand. I think that's what the book is called.

Brett:

Yeah. Donald Miller Building a Story Brand. Yeah, I love that. I got to, I get to meet him briefly. We both spoke at TC Trafficking version Summit a few years ago where like in the, in the Green room getting this interview thing done. And uh, yeah, great guy. I've read actually several his books. One, one of his first books was about, it was called Blue like Jazz Kind, a story of his Struggles with the Church, but Some Positive Things too. Anyway, awesome Guy. And that book that's so cool. It it ties in so well to Yeah, really being a good marketer is very close to being a good storyteller. Lot, lots of parallels. And uh, yeah, it's a fantastic book. I recommend

Nish:

It for sure. And the last book is a hundred million Dollar Offers. But Alex for Mosey, that was actually a surprisingly amazing read. It was, uh, very tactical and just really helps when it comes to sales, the way thinking about offers. Obviously we all know that Offers is everything. Great book for that.

Brett:

Yeah, that's one that, um, I first saw it, I can't remember where, and I'd never heard Alex uh, speak or anything, so I first thought I was like, eh, yeah. And then, and then a friend recommended it, so I, so I got the audio book, listened to it, It's fantastic. Totally agree. A hundred million offers. Gotta check it out. Fantastic niche. So one more time, how can people check out Ray? And then can people check, uh, can people connect with you on the socials? Are you approachable? Do you like to connect on social medias are more just, uh, to the site

Nish:

<laugh>? No, I am very approachable. At least I hope I am. You <laugh>. You can find us on array.com, a r r ae.com. You can find us on Instagram and twitter@arraycoarray.co or array co. Um, our, our Twitter just got up is actually really funny. I think you'll like it. It's been blowing up. And then you can find me at plenty of niche on Instagram and Twitter.

Brett:

Plenty of niche. That's what everybody is thinking. They're like, I enjoyed this niche, I want more niche. I would like plenty of niche. And so we'll link to that as well. So Niche. Thanks so much man. It's been a ton of fun. Thanks for bringing the value and uh, look forward to chatting again soon.

Nish:

Thank you so much for, this is amazing.

Brett:

Awesome. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear your feedback. Leave us that review on iTunes. Shoot us a note, what would you like to hear more of on the podcast? And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

‍

Content is King. Regardless of the platform.

Want to scale on TikTok? You’re only as good as your content.

Want to step up your IG game? Content, baby.

Want to finally scale on YouTube? Hire OMG (ha!) and create great content!

‍

Today I’m interviewing Danil Saliukov, CEO and Co-Founder of Insense. I met Danil when we both spoke at Geek Out in San Diego a few months ago.

Insense is a marketplace that connects creators with brands and facilitates the creation of great content.

Creating great content comes down to 3 things:

1. Find the right creator for your brand
2. Build authentic content that highlights why your product is great
3. Create content specifically geared toward the platforms you want to run on

‍

Here’s a look at what we breakdown on the show:

• Where brands go wrong when creating content for marketing - Not every creator is an influencer, and not every influencer is a creator.
• What separates brands that do really well from the rest?
• The key to finding creators that best fit a brand.
• How brands can help creators create great content.
• How brands should approach TikTok.
• Actors vs. content creators vs. real customers for UGC.

‍

Mentioned in This Episode:

Danil Saliukov

   - LinkedIn ‍

Insense‍

Insense’s Blog‍

Nick Shackelford’s Twitter

‍

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today we're talking about scaling your eCommerce brand with creators and UGC content. Really, some of my favorite video content is u GC and content that creators crank out. And so we're going deep. Uh, my guest today is the CEO and co-founder of Incense, which you'll hear about in just a minute. And we, his name is, uh, Daniel, uh, Soloff. I may have just butchered that. We're gonna, we're gonna confirm that in one minute, Daniel. Uh, but I first met Daniel at Geek out in San Diego, Uh, one of Nick Shackleford events. We hit it off. I was really impressed with what Daniel had to share, and so I'm like, Hey, you gotta come on the podcast and talk creator content ugc. So, Daniel, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for taking the time. And how badly did I butcher your last name?

Danil:

<laugh>? Not bad at all. Uh, thanks so much, Brett, uh, for inviting me to the podcast.

Brett:

Yeah, absolutely. Really excited to have you here. And, uh, wanted dive right in because we got a lot of good stuff to talk about here. Uh, I, I think most people listening know the power of UGC and the power of creators, but, but really, you know, how we get UGC and how do we partner with creators? It's, it's kind of complex and, and it is time consuming and it's scary, and we don't know where to begin sometimes. So, uh, before we get into some of the how-tos and tips and advice and strategies, first, tell everybody what is incense and, you know, what problem do you guys exist to solve?

Danil:

Yeah. Uh, incense, uh, is a creator marketplace that helps, uh, e-commerce brands to get fresh, authentic content from, uh, creators, basically user generative content. And then, uh, they can apply that like in Facebook ads or TikTok ads and running the campaigns and seeing like, great performance. And the problem we solve is that the content production is not scalable. It's not easy. And to find the right creators for your brand, it's, it's not easy as well as like to negotiate with them, to pitch with them, and like also to send the payments. So we basically one stop shop, uh, to solve that. And, uh, in the end of the day, he comes owners and marketers that they can scale profits with that.

Brett:

Love it. And, and what's beautiful about this is when you get the right piece of content, the right creator saying the right things with the right tone and the right personality, and they say something about your brand, and it's just super powerful, and you then leverage that across all your channels, that's so valuable for your business. The trouble is, yeah, how do you find the right person and how do you pay them and how do you coach them, and how do you coordinate all of that? It just becomes really, really difficult. And so your platform does that. It's a marketplace. It matches brands and creators together. And so more about that coming up. We're gonna dig into to more about Incen. I know people have questions and wanna know about incense. Uh, but let's, let's dive in a little bit and let's, let's get tactical, let's get strategic for brands here. Where, where do brands often go wrong in the content creation process?

Danil:

Great question. Uh, I would say, uh, many brands, they don't have like a lot of experience working with the new social platforms and like new social reality, like Instagram involved, like from the, just the photo sharing service, right? To the video first platform. And right now they're shifting to the creator first platform because of TikTok, because TikTok is a cra creator first platform, right? And, uh, many, uh, marketers, they kind of, they stayed in the world of like static images and, uh, don't get me wrong, like static images, still performing the real grade, but depends on the funnel, Like what it like depends on the product, depends on the, like, uh, offering and so on, so on. So like, so many like little things. And I think like one of the key is like, uh, many marketers, they still, uh, producing a lot of static images instead of like, uh, producing both video content and, uh, static images.

That's number one. The second one, they are, they're treating all social platforms, uh, equally meaning that, okay, what is gonna be working on Instagram? I'm gonna repurpose on TikTok and it's gonna be performing the same. Now, it's not like it's way different platforms, and we have seen like a lot of success, like over repurposing like TikTok content, like in Instagram reel, for instance, but like, not for, uh, Instagram feed. So, and that's like a small nuances that, uh, marketers are doing, uh, are not realizing that. Um, and the last thing, So sometimes they, they don't have, they don't have like a understanding of the platforms and the new concept concept, which is the ugly, the better, meaning that your content doesn't need to be like, super polished, right? So you are not lal, you don't have like these crazy brain guidelines. You should be like more flexible. And, uh, sometimes the content should be like, way great, nice looking, It should be like performing in the of the day. So many marketers, they still, uh, have this approach, uh, and it doesn't work. Uh, and it's not really scalable then

Brett:

Love it. So the uglier the better. Why, why do you think that is? I've got, I've got a theory and, and obviously there, there are, sometimes there are ads that are polished that work great, but, but in a lot of cases, the uglier the better. Why is that?

Danil:

Uh, because of the new platforms, Because of new generations of people, right? So the way how we consume the content, the way how, uh, like next generations are consuming the content. So, uh, it's, uh, popcorn content, right? So like, just a few six seconds, even if it's like, it's not fun, if it's not related to me, then like skip swipe and forget it forever, right? Yeah. So like, that's why right now, uh, you need to be, first of all, explain about your product, explain your, uh, your idea of the advertising, like within the first like 1, 2, 3 seconds, up to three seconds. Uh, that's one thing. Secondly, because of when I see like, my, uh, feet on TikTok or Instagram in stories, even though I see like my friend, like jumping in from the second floor to the pool, right? And like, it's something craziness has happen there. Yeah. And imagine that you see the content, which is like filmed by professional production studios in, uh, like some mountains in Utah, right? So like, and it just like, why I see here that like, uh, I, I'm ready to see that in TV commercials, right? And I'm expecting that, but I don't want to see that. I want to see like something crazy, something that is not gonna be like, so outstanding in my feet. So that's why the ugly the better.

Brett:

I love it. And I think I wanna touch on a couple things. You mentioned, uh, one, one thing that you didn't necessarily mention exactly, but but you implied it for sure, is, you know, being authentic, authenticity is so important, and that's important on every platform, but authenticity looks different on different platforms, right? You talked about how TikTok and Instagram reels, they're pretty similar, right? That's a similar concept. You could probably have the same piece of content work on Instagram reels, also work on TikTok. Uh, you know, we, we do a lot with YouTube at our agency. Occasionally we'll have a client who has the same ad video ad that runs on Facebook, also run on YouTube, but usually not, usually they're quite a bit different. And so if you, if you think about what's happening on TikTok or what's happening on Instagram, you're seeing a lot of raw content, right?

Content from average people. And then when you see something highly polished as you're scrolling through, it immediately screams, this is an ad, this is stilted, this is fake, right? It doesn't feel authentic, it doesn't feel real. Uh, I think this is, this is one of the reasons why if we look at YouTube ads, sometimes actually a little more polished or a little highly produc, more highly produced, does work well there, because there's a lot of YouTube content that's put together, right? Some of your favorite content creators, like, Hey, dude, or dude dad, or, I'm not sure why I'm stuck on dude here, uh, right at the moment. But, but other, other channels on, on, uh, on YouTube, they're a little more polished or a little more put together, feels a little more like tv. So, uh, a slightly higher level of, of production value can work really well on YouTube. It doesn't work well on other platforms, right? And, and I love that you underscored know what the platform is all about, right? Instagram started as a photo sharing platform, and now it's video sharing, and there are lots of travel, so you got all kinds of, you know, landscape photos and travel photos and stuff like that. So that type of content is gonna feel authentic and feel natural as well. So, uh, really love that. Anything, uh, anything else you'd add to that? Um, or should we move on?

Danil:

Yeah, I would adhere. So like, you do expect like, some Polish content, like, uh, on YouTube for sure, because like, that's the nature of the platform. And if you'll see like, uh, the best, uh, creators there, if you, if you don't have like a professional production, somehow professional production, right? Like a good sound, like, uh, all of this stuff, then basically, I'm not sure that you're gonna be successful, like, on the platform. Yeah. So it might be like a bit of shaky, It might be not looks like a tv tv, right? Because it's not tv, it's YouTube, it's different, but like, yeah, I would agree. And like, really depends on the platform. So Facebook or Facebook is way different from Instagram. Instagram is, uh, Instagram basically is like three apps right now. Like, it was Instagram as Instagram, it was like Instagram, which is like Snapchat stories. And right now it's, uh, Instagram, which is reals, which is TikTok, right? So like, that's why like, Instagram is the most complicated and there is a TikTok, right? And like, all of these platforms are really different, and that's why like, you need to approach them like differently. And finding the right creators, some of the creators who are really great, uh, in producing the content, um, that resonates to their audience, like on Instagram, doesn't mean that, uh, this creator will produce the same style content for TikTok. Nah, <laugh>, and

Brett:

Exactly, Yeah. Finding the right creator for the platform is so important. And so I want, I wanna dive into that a little bit. Oh, and one, just one thing point of clarification on, on the YouTube side, what another we found actually is sometimes you can start low production value on YouTube. We have lots of clients that start there, or a mix of high production value with ugc. Mix those two together, right? That some real magic on YouTube, which is great. Um, so let's talk about this for just a minute. You know, I think a lot of people are wondering, Hey, do I need to hire a, a creator? Do I need to go out and find an actor? Do I just need true ugc? So u GC from actual customers, how would you talk about that? Like, how would you kind of compare creator to actor to customer?

Danil:

Yeah, it's a great question. Uh, there is a like, company called VI Media. They're like, Yeah, shout out to them. Shout

Brett:

To those guys. High energy, handlebar, mustache. Cody's always rocking a, a sweet shirt. Um, kinda like, I don't know if, if you've seen the movie, um, Ocean's 11, but, but someone says to Brad Pitt's character, they're like, Why you always dressing like a jilo? And that's, that's how I feel about Cody. Uh, but, but Cody's an awesome guy. I love that guy so much, so Oh, so good. Yeah,

Danil:

Yeah, yeah. And the, the best part, like their, uh, creative scientist, I would put like that. So like, they know what the creators should be like, like consist from, right? So like every single part of that. So they put like a lot of thought there. And like, I love their presentations, like on geek out. Like, I'm sitting there and I'm just like lowering like every single day, right? So like, best guys and why I, why I brought them. So they, uh, the nature of, uh, their business, so like their production studio, right? Like really high quality, and they put like a lot of science there. And, uh, they have like a, a lot of actors. So people who are acting like for the creating u GC style content, uh, it's well scripted, right? But then, uh, what we absorb with them, so we are partners with VI media.

So for Instagram, for instance, like this scripted videos and actors, they, they do work like really well. But for TikTok, no. And that's why like they're studying heavily using incense, uh, for producing like a lot of TikTok. And, uh, then like you, you creating, like, as you mentioned before, like on YouTube, actually, it works like, uh, across all platforms. So something professional, branded content mixed up with the u c, that's the one like that is works like really great. So that's why, like, I don't want to say like, you know, uh, who is the, who's the best, who is the worst? Like in terms of the actors or like, uh, creators and so on. I think like it's, uh, really depends on your goals, right? So sometimes like actors, they can deliver your message like in a really great way. Um, as well as like creators, uh, as well as just like regular people.

I think what what's really important, it's, uh, still be authentic. Yes. So actors, they need to understand your product. They need to try that. If it's coffee, drink this coffee. If it's like some like, I don't know, like, uh, massage machine, then like, try this. Like, just, just before the shooting, just try, just, just have some experience. In that case, you can deliver your message like in proper way. So that's why, uh, this one is really important. And then, like, uh, actors, they're really great, uh, in front of the camera creators. Depends, right? So, uh, someone they acting like really great, someone that still learning, right? With the, uh, just, uh, just your customers. That's the worst part. Select many of them, unfortunately, they can, they don't know how to act, uh, in front of the camera. They don't have like legit sound and so on. So that's why like, this part is tricky one though. They have, uh, the most loyal to your brand if they agree to, uh, shoot some EGC style content. So that's why like, there is a balance between the equality, authenticity, and like, um, if you try this product or not, right? So like, that's why it's really depends on your goals. But I will say, uh, mix this up and see what is it gonna be like the best result for you.

Brett:

Yeah, I love it. And in the way that I would kind of break this down, uh, I've always really, really enjoyed authentic customer testimonials when the customers using their own words. But that's difficult, right? So what I've found, and I've, I used to do TV back in the day, and so I, I've been in, in dozens and dozens of interviews with real customers. We had to like chop up and use for TV ads in other places. But what I found is you can't give a customer a script. You give a customer a script, they all of a sudden become wooden and st most of them wooden and stiff, and it just sounds like fake. So with a, with a customer, you just gotta let them speak and usually ask them questions to kinda get them going. And then you're gonna have to do some editing.

You have to do some editing and chopping and, you know, maybe someone talks for three minutes and you use 10 seconds of that, right? But when somebody says something that's authentic and raw and real, it can be a, a magical, you know, bit of video with a, with an actor, the right actor, you can give him a script, right? You can say, I want you to say exactly this thing, and that can work. Although, you know, people can sniff out if something feels authentic or not, right? Just like watching a good movie and you're like, Nah, not buying it. I don't, I'm not feeling anything when I watch that character. Same thing with an actor in an ad. You gotta feel it, you gotta move it, and then you gonna be moved by it. And then, and then yet creators can maybe be kind of somewhere in the middle, right? You kinda give them guidance, but, uh, let them do their own thing. Uh, maybe you give 'em a script, maybe you don't, uh, but they're usually comfortable on camera, which, which is really, which is really handy. So, um, love that. Let's talk a little bit about what are the keys to finding good creators. So, you know, there's millions now of creators and influencers out there. How do we find the right creator for our brand?

Danil:

Yeah, I think like one of the, uh, another, uh, thought that, uh, I would like to bring, uh, not every creator is an influencer. Not every influencer is the creator. Yeah,

Brett:

Great. So, great. Yeah.

Danil:

It's, it's is the thing that we learned for the past, like few years when we realized, okay, there is an influencer, uh, she or he has like, you know, a million of followers great, right? So like, uh, it's definitely resonates. Something more, more over, like engagement is there, but the point is that when you ask this person, like to create some content for ads, completely fail. So they're really great for the organic, uh, info marketing. So just ask them to create some content, but not for ads, because they don't understand like this, the, your creative brief, which is like kindish, uh, script, right? So like, what, what you asking? Like what is the problem you would like to highlight in, in the video and how you, how your product is gonna be, uh, solved that. So, um, that's like one of the statement, right? So that's why we are really focusing on those micro influencers or our creators.

They are able to produce like great content, uh, and the following, it's more like a social proof. That's like one of the thing. Uh, secondly, uh, about the how to choose the right creator for you, uh, for your brand. So I'll start with the just, uh, just the basic metrics like, uh, first of all, platform, right? Uh, what is the pla, are they good, like on this platform, content that they produce, like on this content, easy to resonate to the audience or not? So meaning that you have like some, uh, engagement rates or number of the views, so like this basement that are just to try to understand whether it's like this person is able to produce great content for this platform or not. Secondly, definitely about the, uh, video resumes or portfolio. So what is the branded content, uh, this person produced? Like for, for the br for the brands before, just take a look, uh, and understand like whether they able to speak about your brands or not.

Uh, and definitely like about categories and like, uh, uh, they audiences. So the way how our customers approach like way different, right? So like, uh, on all platform, you can start the, your campaign like in different ways, uh, with the different filters. So the most common is that, uh, I will just select the platform, then I will select, uh, gender if, if it matters, uh, where this person is located. Super important because, uh, probably I need to ship my product. And, uh, if this person located in somewhere like in Germany and, uh, we don't have the shipping process, then like, it might be problem, uh, then like, where's the audience of this, uh, influencer is located? Just understand like whether it's resonates with the audience, uh, like Indus for instance. Um, and then like a category like beauty blogger or like, uh, instant, right? So that's, that's the niche category that just underst like what is gonna be like, uh, works or not.

And then like, once you selected the, uh, the, all of these paras, then, uh, the next, uh, the next stage is just to get like some video rhythms or like, uh, take a look on the, uh, their portfolio, understand what is the, uh, if the content is, uh, great, uh, fit for your brand or not. And then, uh, chat with them, like ask the questions, uh, and understand like whether they, uh, want to work with you, uh, just for money or they love your product, like, uh, and then, uh, they would like to be compensated for their work.

Brett:

Yeah, that's really good. And so, so of course this is not just a snap your fingers process and it all happens, right? You need to look at what is someone's video resume as a creator? Are they creating content that that really feels and looks authentic in a particular platform, whatever platform you are trying to, to advertise on. And then, yeah, have that dialogue and see do they really love the product or do they love just getting paid and being an influencer? Uh, nothing wrong with getting paid, but you really want someone who loves the product and loves the brand that's gonna be much more authentic. So, uh, I wanna talk a little bit about how do we set a creator up to succeed? Uh, because, you know, you and I were talking about this before you hit record. Sometimes you watch a movie and you think that person's not a very good actor. Yeah. But really that's not, not the problem. The problem is the script and the director and the direction this person was given, and maybe they only could do one take and then they moved on, right? So maybe it's not just the actor, maybe it's the, the person behind the scenes. So as a brand, how do we set up a creator to really create great stuff?

Danil:

Yeah, great question. And uh, your example, like, just to remind me, like this situation would be, uh, one of the actor, uh, in the last series of, uh, Star Wars kbi, right? Yeah. So like, uh, people like starting blaming, like, uh, actor about like, uh, she's not acting like well as and so on, but I believe that, uh, there is a question to the script. There is a question to the director <laugh>, like, not to her, right? So that's why like, it's, uh, definitely resonates, uh, about like, yeah, ask, uh, start asking the questions. Uh, and the key is that definitely,

Brett:

And another another analogy is sports too, right? Like, there, there could be one player that that just kills it on one team, but then they go to a different environment with a different coach and a different everything, and they're no longer good, right? So it's like you gotta create the environment for someone to succeed.

Danil:

Absolutely. Like messy, right? So like, he was a rockstar, like best player, like ever in Barcelona. He's still like great player like, uh, in psg, but like, he's not that not

Brett:

The same level.

Danil:

Yeah, not the same level because the environment is different. Yeah. So, uh, I would say like with the, when you're working with the creators, like it's super important. The creative brief, creative brief is 52% of the success, uh, meaning that you can hire like great creators. But again, like if the creative brief, uh, it's not clear, then uh, you gonna be probably failing. So that's why like we are really, uh, putting like a lot of attention of our customers towards the creative brief. And then like if the, uh, team is not, uh, well educated, we actually spend like a couple of, uh, hours to educate them how to create, uh, good creative briefs, uh, while we, they, while we're onboarding. So there are like a few things, uh, that you need to think about. So one of them is a campaign type. So do you want to get like, just content or you want to ask influencer to post this content?

And then also to boost this content in paid. So like there are like different ways of the, uh, of the campaigns. Also the content formats, uh, formats are like, uh, nine, 16 or just square, uh, landscape. So super important. And then, um, also like just the technical question about the lights, about the sound. So sometimes it's important, sometimes, uh, uh, you are requesting, uh, to film something like in bathroom, for instance, if it comes to the beauty, uh, product and then like, because of the echo, uh, it might be like not the great results if you're feeling that on just iPhone, right? So that's why like it's, uh, like some technical require. You should have like some professional mic, for instance. Uh, that's kind of stuff. Uh, and they then like, uh, the content type and messaging. So like, uh, what exactly you are asking about, um, um, about like just the content, like it's, is it like unboxing video?

Is it like a product demo? If it's like, uh, selfie testimonial. So something that, uh, gonna be explaining how you actually should, should, uh, um, do like this content and then like, uh, the, the, the next, uh, the next, uh, step, like actually what they should do, right? Uh, just like it's a raw footage or it's ready to use ads. Is it like, uh, what is the length of this video and like what exactly you need to do, like showcase the box and unbox the products with attention to details or, uh, show close up of the product, interact with the product, or no, uh, no music, nature, light or like artificial one. So like, yeah, there are like so many questions you, it's better to outline there though, do not beat crazy with so many bullets, because, uh, still remember they are freelancers, they're creators and their creative people.

So yeah, just the most important things. Um, and then, uh, key products, uh, features, uh, like why your product is the best one, right? Help creators to understand that because okay, I tried, I like it the taste, for instance. Uh, but like, then I have no idea why it's so good. So I like hair issue, salt. I always struggled with that's like number one, or, uh, thicker hair instantly. It has never been, uh, this easy to make my hair look thicker, right? So like, that's kind of stuff like you need to drop like, and help, uh, creators as the, again, like, not the scripted text, but more about like the guidance and direction.

Brett:

Nice.

Danil:

Um,

Brett:

So you're recommending more bullet points or one liners, things like that, rather than fully scripting out something?

Danil:

Yes, for sure. Like direction. So you can, you, you can ask like, to say like something specifically if that the part of the program, but like, do not the script, the entire, uh, video. Like, please, it's a, it's not, it doesn't work great with, uh, creators. It does work, uh, great with actors <laugh>, right? Sometimes. Yeah. And the last thing is like, uh, it, uh, just like I touch some, uh, script examples and references, uh, something like that.

Brett:

Yeah. So show, show some other, like, I really love the way this creator did this or love this example. Anytime we can share examples, that's good. Yeah.

Danil:

Yeah. So like for instance, like if you just starting and you don't have like, any references for your brand, right? So in that case, you can take a look on new comparisons or like similar products and then saying like, Okay, I this, like, this is my reference. That's how I feel, uh, you should talk about my brand. So this one like is really important. And the last thing is like a super simple, it's dos and don's. So, uh, show different angles, clear audio or like face should be fully in the camera frame. So that kind of stuff. And don't, like, don't sound like an net. My favorite one. Yeah. Uh, don't use, uh, too many shadows. Don't use filters while filming, because some of the creators, they're using filters, the, uh, Instagram filters, right? Like, while they, they crazy. No, please don't. So yeah, that's kind of, uh, suggestion. Uh, I would give

Brett:

Love that so much. And I think it, it's, you really made it clear like, hey, give direction. Don't leave questions unanswered, but also don't be crazy, right? Gi give, uh, preferences for things that matter, but at the end of the day, we want the creator to be authentic and the creator's gonna be authentic if they can put some of their own style towards this. But, but show them kind of what you want them to say and where they need to be and lighting in some of those tips. But, uh, but give enough, but don't go overboard. I think, uh, would be a way to summarize that. So that's awesome. Uh, just a couple more questions. That's been amazing, Daniel, and we, uh, really, really appreciate it. But, um, what do people need to know about TikTok? TikTok is obviously hot, everybody's talking about it, a few people understand it, I think. So what are the differences with TikTok content versus other platforms?

Danil:

Yeah. Um, it's, uh, it's interesting even though like, uh, TikTok is saying like they, they're kind of like outline is make TikTok is not at Yeah. And I think like that's actually explains like a lot of things Yep. Because, uh, TikTok is a way different platform. Uh, first of all is a, a creator plus platform, meaning that without creators, this pla platform is nothing without creators like Instagram. Uh, we'll survive with the memes, you know, like, and, uh, other like portals. But like, not gonna be like that successful Facebook, for instance, like without creators easy, right? So that's why like, it's, it's so different. Um, another thing like about TikTok, um, people think about like TikTok, it's only for my kids.

Brett:

Yeah.

Danil:

It's not anymore. Like they're all like, uh, a lot of people and the majority of the people at the age of, uh, where they can make decision and purchase the product, meaning that like 20 plus age old, age old, right? And then, uh, they also, um, so many elder generation like actually joined TikTok and found that like, it's, uh, it's my place to go. Another funny thing that what I heard like from, uh, geek out, uh, folks like from the last one in Barcelona, TikTok becoming like the internet for, uh, Gen Z, meaning that they're interesting, they're Google it. They're yeah,

Brett:

Yeah. They're searching on TikTok for things, right? Yeah. Right,

Danil:

Right. And so like

Brett:

Crazy,

Danil:

Their, their request starting with a TikTok, like, do you need to find, like where, uh, would, I would like to, to order like a food, go to TikTok, go to

Brett:

TikTok,

Danil:

Uh, restaurant TikTok. So like, they google it on TikTok, so they toing <laugh>. So

Brett:

Google, Google really appreciates that language where they Google it on TikTok, but Yeah, but it's happy I've heard that too. People start like, yeah, people start on TikTok, which is super interesting.

Danil:

Yeah. So, uh, it's, uh, and also like, it's fascinating to see like that, uh, TikTok took only five years to reach out to reach a, the 1 billion user mark, like just five years. It's like, it's crazy. And like 130 million are active users in the us so it's a massive audience, just massive.

Brett:

Massive, Yeah. Uh, yeah. And, and it's super interesting. Like for me, my, my own journey with TikTok as a user, it wasn't my, my favorite platform. In fact, when I first used it, I, I honestly hated it that I, the stuff I was saying, I was like one of my, like a 13 year old boy, like, what am I looking at? Uh, but then someone was like, Hey, no, no, no, just, just like search for things you like, click on things you like. And now my feet is actually pretty good. It's all like sports and business and comedy and stuff, which is really fun. I still don't use it that much. I'm more like of an Instagram user and a YouTube user, just, just, um, that's what I enjoy. But, um, yeah, TikTok is exploded and it can't be ignored. You gotta look into it.

Um, gotta use it. So, uh, so yeah, but it's really interesting. It is a creator first platform that's, that's super interesting. Whereas Facebook, Matt is people, you know, just people on, on on Facebook. But TikTok is all about the, the creator. Totally makes sense. So, um, let, let's talk about this, Uh, Daniel, let's, let's talk about incense. And so you, you've kind of highlighted a little bit as we've gone what you guys do, but, but really, who, who is this marketplace for? So, so what types of brands, uh, can really benefit from the marketplace and, and kind of walk through what, what is the experience like of using incense to, to find the, the right creators?

Danil:

Right. Uh, so we are creator marketplace, meaning that like, we are really only the transaction between the, uh, creator and the marketer, uh, and helping you to make it happen. And, uh, I would say like our ideal customer profile is, uh, midsize commerce. So, uh, we have like, great now five, uh, hundred brands, uh, and 90% of them are e-commerce. So we love, uh, working with the e-commerce, it's like, it's our bread and butter. So we're doing like a lot of integration with method. You talk easy

Brett:

To get, easy to get creators to talk about like physical products, right? Creators like to talk about yes. Stuff and like to unbox and do some of those fun things more than a, you know, an info product or something like that

Danil:

Ex. Exactly. And like that's one was one of the key reasons. So why we, uh, felt it's better to work with the e-commerce brands because like people, creators, they love working with the e-commerce because they always getting like some new products to test out and see. And also e-commerce brands, they innovators, like I know Mushroom industry, right? So like mushroom milk, Have you ever heard about that? I never thought about that. Right? So, but it is a thing, and you can try this out or like mushroom tea or whatever. Like

Brett:

There is, I drink, I drink a mushroom tea almost every afternoon, just finished one before I recorded this. And I, and I put mushroom creamer in my coffee now, so I don't understand mm-hmm. <affirmative>.

Danil:

Yeah, it just like a so niche products that, uh, e-commerce brands, they, they, they created like every other day. So, and for the creators, they have the access to try this out and like, uh, super early. And then like, uh, with that, it's so easy to explain what is, what is this about? Because, uh, the other, like, small part of our customers, primarily it's mobile apps and, uh, digital native products. And I would say like, sometimes it's so hard to explain about this product and like actually show page that in a, in a authentic way and not like as the app, like for instance, if it's a yoga app, so easy, right? But like, if it's coming like some FinTech product, b2 C completely, like, it looks like cheesy, like when you explain

Brett:

Explaining an app in authentic way is way different than saying, do this my favorite new cream, put my coffee, check it out. Like that's, that's easy. Yeah, yeah,

Danil:

Yeah. So that's why like, we love working with a, with the e-commerce and like, uh, I would say like, we are the best, like for those e-commerce brands that are at, at the stage of scaling. So they, they should spend like some, like thousands of dollars like on ads spend, like Facebook, uh, YouTube, uh, Instagram, uh, TikTok and so on. So buying media and for that they need a lot of s to test out and see like, what is the winners and put the entire budget there. So in that case, like that's the best customers for us.

Brett:

That's fantastic. Cool. And so where those that, that are interested, they wanna find out more, uh, where should they go online to, to learn?

Danil:

Well, uh, my place to go is Twitter. So there are e-commerce marketers, uh, like Nick Shackle fold, uh, Jambo, uh, who are chatting and like posting a lot of stuff like around, uh, creators, u GC and wan, uh, definitely like Twitter and hashtag u gc. So, uh, you can find like a lot of great stuff there. Uh, also you can, uh, go to our blog post, uh,

Brett:

A great blog.

Danil:

Yeah, we're trying to shame that, like being really helpful to community. So what we learn from customers, actually almost every piece of the content there, it's like, it's coming from our partners, so our customers when we're just practically listening them and like then putting together like all thoughts there.

Brett:

Yep. That's great. So incense.pro, and that's i n s e n s e dot p r o. So check that out, check out the blog. Awesome stuff. Great service. Daniel, you're just super smart. Love talking to you. Thanks for being, uh, so open and so, so generous with your ideas. And, uh, now can people follow you on the socials? Are you active on any of those platforms sharing your knowledge or are you mainly sharing on, on the blog?

Danil:

Well, uh, great question. So like, I'm active, but, and I was active and still active on LinkedIn. I love this platform and, uh, everyone told me ex uh, including geek out folks that you should be, uh, on Twitter and I give up on Twitter in 2013. Yeah. So I can, That's what

Brett:

Everybody's like, Yeah, yeah. I, I on Twitter a long time ago, but like everybody's on Twitter now. Uh, I still have not like developed, um, a routine of getting on Twitter and checking stuff. But yeah, I know like Nick Shackleford and others are posting constantly on, on Twitter and posting some really good stuff. I just have not developed a habit of fully, fully being there. I'm, I'm more on Facebook, ig, I'm on LinkedIn some and then, and then of course YouTube. So, uh, Daniel, this has been fantastic, man. Thank you so much for doing this and we'll, we'll have to do it again sometime.

Danil:

Thanks so much, Brad, for much game. Awesome.

Brett:

It was, Thank you. You bet. And as always, thank you for listening. We'd love to hear from you. What do you like about the show? Uh, hey, leave that review on iTunes if you haven't already. Makes my day and helps other people find the show as well. And so with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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